X and Y I would like to share three special wishes with you that I hope will help to make your marriage even more inspired and inspiring than it already is.
First up, I wish that you manage to create a marriage that is committed to lifelong learning
In the next few years you will learn an enormous amount about each other as well as from each other. And you can continue to learn from and about each other for the rest of your lives. But you can also craft a partnership in which you regularly learn with each other. The universe and our life in it is so wonderful and awe-inspiring, our discovery of its treasures so exciting and ongoing that I can think of nothing better for you than to be a married couple that learns the universe’s secrets, mysteries and lessons together in a lifelong exploration.
How you learn from and with each other is also important. Conversation is central to human existence. How partners talk to and with each other is also the foundation of all good marriages. So it's essential that you give your conversations the attention they deserve. Now, from your own experience, you will both already know that your best conversations are always a creative collaboration, a pooling of ideas from which the truth emerges as a shared learning. These are the conversations that are the most exciting and satisfying ones. We call them true “dialogue” – a joint exploration from which shared meaning evolves! They are the conversations that create and sustain collaborative partnerships and craft creative marriages.
Of course, your conversation can also become a competitive discussion or debate, in which one person's opinion eventually triumphs as "the" accepted perspective on how things are. No doubt with your shared academic background you have had a number of such discussions and debates! And you probably will both have experienced the separation you feel when one of you wins and the other loses an argument. Discussion and debate is when you have made up your mind on a topic, and then spend time trying to convince the other person that you are right.
Dialogue, on the other hand, is a shared exploration where you both strive to learn something new, together. Dialogue is when you are open to different perspectives, when you are committed to allowing new truth to emerge from your conversations together. Dialogue favours "both/and" rather than "either/or" thinking. It's inclusive not divisive. And dialogue depends on deep listening skills. It may take longer than discussion or debate, but the payoff is huge. It is the favoured method of skilled lifelong learners.
So, my first wish is that you "create a marriage that is committed to lifelong learning and the habit of dialogue". It’s a habit that will help you enormously over the long haul ahead.
My second wish is that your marriage will be filled with priceless Epicurean pleasures
Epicurus, one of the early Greek philosophers, was the first thinker (though by no means the last) to argue for the ethical legitimacy of the pursuit of pleasure. His life and philosophy provide some wonderful insights that can enrich every marriage. And the pleasures he praised were all priceless in that anyone and everyone can afford them.
His first insight: is that friendship is the most important pleasure available to human beings. Epicurus said “Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship” So strong was his evaluation of congenial company that he recommended that we should never eat alone. “Before you eat or drink anything, consider carefully who you eat or drink with rather than what you eat or drink: for feeding without a friend is the life of a lone lion or solitary wolf”. For Epicureans the greatest pleasure was to share a meal with friends, in the shade of a tree in the garden, while discussing matters of importance. Now isn’t that a great recipe for a satisfying marriage!
His second insight: is that the highest pleasure is not only eating with friends in the garden. It also involves engaging in enlightened conversation about some of the key issues in life: politics, sex, religion, ecology, life, death, pleasure and suffering. So, my wish is that your sharing of meals with your friends will be enriched because your dialogue will focus on issues of intellectual import rather than frivolities. Like Socrates before him, Epicurus believed that the unexamined life was hardly worth living.
My second wish then is that you make your home a place where friends love to visit, share a meal and enjoy dialogues that go on till it’s very, very late.
And my final wedding wish for you both is that your marriage is one of ecstatic passion, deep friendship, compassionate action and a shared ecological intelligence that values and loves life in all its diversity . The modern French philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville claims that love is a crucial concept in defining what it means to be human. And he has written a fair bit about love which he says is the most interesting of all subjects. But then he would, wouldn’t he – he’s French!
The early Greek philosophers had two words for love: eros and philia; and much later a third Greek word was added – agape. And I believe we now need a fourth Greek word to fully encapsulate the importance and meaning of love in human life. But let’s look at the first three first.
Eros is what brought you two together! So, three cheers for erotic love: it’s what drives and sustains our species. Eros is that powerful, almost blind biological love that makes you long for what you do not have and weakens when you get it. Eros is such a strong passion, with characteristic butterflies in the tummy that we are often tempted to think that erotic love is what life is all about! But not all love is erotic, passionate and possessive – spent as soon as it has been attained. There are, as Aristotle argued, other forms of love; “to love is to be joyful” within the context of intimate friendships.
Philia is the love shared by intimate friends and it is a joyful delight. Usually translated from the Greek as Friendship, philia is a “benevolent” love that loves another for the other’s sake. It is a love that rejoices in the pleasure that it gives and is the secret of happy relationships. If you ask any of the couples that have been married for a long time and who still seem very happy together what their secret is they will say: we are best friends. Eros brought them together and philia kept them together joyfully making love and making love work. So, my wedding wish for you two is that you thoroughly enjoy your erotic love and simultaneously build a relationship of deep friendship that will carry you ecstatically as best mates into the decades ahead.
Neither Plato nor Aristotle would have known the Greek word agape. They knew only passion or friendship. Long after their time, Jesus, a seemingly insignificant Jew in a far-flung Roman colony began in his strange Semitic tongue to say astonishing things like “love your neighbour” and “love your enemy” which basically meant “love everyone”. No early Greek word for this! Who in their right mind would get passionate about humankind? Or who could, absurdly, be close friends with their enemies? The English translation of agape is usually charity which carries the meaning of compassionate care for others who are in need. It is a love that is liberated from egotism and is therefore in itself liberating. One of the characteristics of a truly human spirituality is that it transcends the ego and reaches out to care compassionately for people beyond the circle of your family and friends.
So, my wedding wish for you is that your love remains passionate; that you become each other’s best friend and that your spiritual love is marked by a wide-reaching compassionate care for all those less fortunate than yourselves. But wait, there’s more! There’s a fourth aspect to love.
Earth Scientist James Lovelock has used the name of the Greek Earth Goddess “Gaia” in his work on the planet’s ecological systems and our species integral part within the web of life that Gaia supports. As a species humans are doing terrible damage to planet earth, our only home. In the face of this a new spirituality is emerging in which growing numbers of people are learning to love not only their neighbours and their enemies, but also Gaia their planet. A new blend of science and soul is urgently required, a new movement of people who compassionately care for the planet and its rich diversity. And I believe that you two as a married unit are part of a new group of humans whose love extends beyond yourselves, beyond your families and friends, beyond those in need of compassion, to include planet earth in all its richness and present travail.
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