MIA: Welcome to this day for celebration and appreciation, as we
gather to witness the marriage of Joshua David Larios and Elizabeth
Cameron Parish.

Traditionally, this would be the part of the ceremony where Josh and
Cam would be warned that although marriage is an institution to be
entered in joy, it is a sacred institution and not to be entered into
without forethought and consideration.  But they know very well what
they are signing up for, which is why they've asked us all to be here
today.  So instead, I will ask Josh's Aunt Mary to read a short poem
on the subject.


MARY: "Habitation", by Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire


MIA: Thank you.

Into this closest of relationships, Josh and Cam come now to be joined
by a ceremony symbolizing something inner and real - a sacred union of
hearts and lives - that religions can bless, and the state can make
legal for some, but which only love can create and mutual loyalty
fulfill.

Josh, do you affirm before these, your family and friends, that it is
your desire to join your life in marriage with Cam today, to stand
with her through your years together? If so, say "I do".

JOSH: I do.

MIA: Cam, do you affirm before these, your family and friends, that it
is your desire to join your life in marriage with Josh today, to stand
with him through your years together? If so, say "I do".

CAM: I do.

MIA: A marriage should be a consecration of each person to the other,
and of both to the wider community of which they are a part. Because
Cam and Josh feel a great closeness and respect for each of you here,
they have chosen each of you to witness their vows today. Marriage is
an intensely personal act, but their union must also be supported by
their greater community of family and friends. In this spirit, Josh
and Cam ask each of you now: do you support their marriage and accept
the new partner into your life as family and a friend of your own? If
so, say "We do".

FOLKS: We do.

MIA: Cam and Josh have asked their friends Ulysses and Carol to read
this passage from Wendell Berry's "Poetry and Marriage":

ULYSSES AND CAROL: The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of
words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our
word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining
ourselves to one another we join ourselves to the unknown. We can join
one another only by joining the unknown. We must not be misled by the
procedures of experimental thought: in life, in the world, we are
never given two known results to choose between, but only one result
that we choose without knowing what it is.

Marriage rests upon the immutable givens that compose it: words,
bodies, characters, histories, places. Some wishes cannot succeed;
some victories cannot be won; some loneliness is incorrigible. But
there is relief and freedom in knowing what is real; these givens come
to us out of the perennial reality of the world, like the terrain we
live on. One does not care for this ground to make it a different
place, or to make it perfect, but to make it inhabitable and to make
it better. To flee from its realities is only to arrive at them
unprepared.

Because the condition of marriage is worldly and its meaning communal,
no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it
ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it
to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you--and
marriage, time, life, history, and the world--will take it. You do not
know the road; you have committed your life to a way.

Forms join us to time, to the consequences and fruitions of our own
passing. The Zen student, the poet, the husband, the wife--none knows
with certainty what he or she is staying for, but all know the
likelihood that they will be staying "a while": to find out what they
are staying for. And it is the faith of all of these disciplines that
they will not stay to find that they should not have stayed.

That faith has nothing to do with what is usually called optimism. As
the traditional marriage ceremony insists, not everything that we stay
to find out will make us happy. The faith, rather, is that by staying,
and only by staying, we will learn something of the truth, that the
truth is good to know, and that it is always both different and larger
than we thought.

MIA: Thank you.

Cam, do you take Josh to be your husband? Do you promise to love him,
to honor, respect and cherish him, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness
and in health, to help him when he needs it and to turn to him for
help when you do, and to be to him in all things a good and faithful
wife as long as you both shall live? If so, say "I do".

CAM: I do.

MIA: Josh, do you take Cam to be your wife? Do you promise to love
her, to honor, respect and cherish her, in joy and in sorrow, in
sickness and in health, to help her when she needs it and to turn to
her for help when you do, and to be to her in all things a good and
faithful husband as long as you both shall live? If so, say "I do".

JOSH: I do.

MIA: Traditionally, the passage to the status of husband and wife is
marked by the exchange of rings. These rings are a symbol of the
unbroken circle of love. Love freely given has no beginning and no
end, no giver and no receiver, for each is the giver and each is the
receiver. May these rings always remind you of the vows you have
taken.

Josh, please repeat after me:

I give you this ring as an outward sign of all that I hold in my heart. I
give you this ring as I give you my love.

Cam, please repeat after me:

I give you this ring as an outward sign of all that I hold in my heart. I
give you this ring as I give you my love.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joshua and Cameron Larios. Make with the
kissing, you two.