on the occasion of my sister’s wedding.

Love is passion, true, and love is dynamic, dramatic, feral and free, but love also is gentle stillness, serenity and calm in the face of misfortune.

Love is sharing. Love is consideration, giving till there is nothing left to give, but also is love selfish, greedy, domineering, demanding of full attention, faith, and faithfulness. Love is desire and need, patience and sacrifice.

Few of us have not known the hard dull edge of a day when love has done us wrong, and fewer still are unaware of the saccharine bliss of when we’ve become full up in our hearts for someone for the first time – when we’ve become overwhelmed by the possibilities presented in a new relationship and the possibilities newly present in ourselves.

We must have both sides of the coin, both halves of the whole. In love, we require both storm and stillness. And in the storm we find our surrender to the power of an emotion, of a concept greater than ourselves. In the stillness we find our surrender to a person dearer to us than ourselves. In both, we place the outcome in hands other than our own, we relinquish total control. We trust in the power of our feeling and our faith, because the essence of it all, the roots of love, are found, through both fury and tranquility, in trust.

In youth, in newness, with exploration, love is tempest and torrent.
In time, with age and understanding, love is serenity and sacrifice.

These are the two disparate and unified facets of love, divided only by experience. And it is at the threshold between them that these two find themselves poised.

I’d like to end with this Sicilian proverb:

Matrimoni e viscuvati, di lu celu su mannati,

meaning,

Weddings and spiritual matters are heaven sent.

This is surely such a union. Sent from heaven and a blessing to us all. Thank you.

(I wrote this for my little sister’s wedding yesterday)