Wedding Readings to Share at Your Humanist Ceremony
Are you looking for the perfect wedding readings for your humanist ceremony? Maybe you want something with a humanist sentiment?
As a humanist wedding celebrant in London, Brighton and well, all over the south of England, I’m often asked about humanist wedding readings.
I love any reading that is unusual and different. You can check out my blog on modern, non-religious wedding readings which includes inspiration from TV, literature and songs.
For couples who are looking for readings with a humanist sentiment, I’ve compiled a short list of some of my favourites below.
Humanism is a simple philosophy of life. It’s ethics are based on a concern for humanity and the natural world. Humanists believe that every society needs a moral code if people are to live together in harmony, and that morality comes from within ourselves. It’s about being the best people we can possibly be, showing kindness and consideration towards others and accepting responsibility for our own lives whilst recognising our responsibility to the whole world. Humanism is a non-religious approach.
1. Inspired by Carl Sagan
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home; and yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the past few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival.
Our little planet floats like a mote of dust in the morning sky. All that you see, all that can be seen, exploded out of a star billions of years ago and the particles slowly arranged themselves into living things, including all of us. We are made of star stuff. We are the mechanism by which the universe can comprehend itself. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth. We should remain grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
The sum of all our evolution, our thinking and our accomplishments is love. A marriage makes two fractional lives whole. It gives to two questioning natures a renewed reason for living. It brings a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth and a new mystery to life.
2. From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
You are together now and together you shall be for evermore
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Yes, you shall be together even in the silent memory of Nature.
But
Let there be spaces in your togetherness
Let the winds of the heavens dance between you
Love one another but make not a bond of love
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music
Give your hearts but not into each other’s keeping
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts
And stand together yet not too near together
For the pillars of the temple stand apart
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
3. The Art of Marriage by Wilfred A Peterson
A good marriage must be created.
In the marriage, the little things are the big things.
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once each day,
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is having a mutual sense of values and objectives.
It is standing together and facing the world.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each person can grow.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is not only marrying the right person
It is being the right partner.
4. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
I will love you forever; whatever happens.
Till I die and after I die,
and when I find my way out of the land of the dead,
I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms,
till I find you again…
I’ll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment.
And when we do find each other again,
we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart.
Every atom of me and every atom of you
We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams
And when they use our atoms to make new lives,
they won’t just be able to take one,
they’ll have to take two,
one of you and one of me.
5. Choices
We may think of marriage as a single choice.
The choice you have made today.
He is the man for me. She is the woman for me;
as if that was the end of it.
But of course far from being the end of it,
it is only the very beginning.
Marriage is, over time, made up of a
multitude of choices.
Choices made on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily,
hourly basis.
Good choices that you continue to make
that are wise, sensitive, caring
and supportive in order to create a stable
loving environment.
Part of the business of making good choices is
to eliminate bad choices.
These decisions we take not because they are
always easy but because they are right.
6. All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulgham
All of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned...
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours. Say sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Give them to someone who feels sad. Live a balanced life.
Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day.
Take a nap every afternoon. Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
7. All I Know About Love by Neil Gaiman
This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I've learned about marriage: nothing.
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.
It's not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it's what they mean.
Somebody's got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn't want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.
It's not two broken halves becoming one.
It's the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours,
and it's a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.
And that's all I know about love.
What are your favourite humanist wedding readings? Here is some more info on what to expect from a humanist ceremony.