I promise to be your lover, companion and friend
Your partner in parenthood
Your ally in conflict
Your greatest fan and your toughest adversary
Your comrade in adventure
Your student and your teacher
Your consolation in disappointment
Your accomplice in mischief
Your strength in your need and
Vulnerable to you in my own.

From this day forward,
I bind my fortune with yours.

I take you to be my wife/husband.
I love you.
As I stand before you now,
I vow that these are my solemn intentions.

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm and arm, now face to face, now back to back -- it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. The joy of such pattern is not only the joy of creation nor the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined.



Index