{"product_id":"a-wedding-with-spirit-isbn-9780385517898","title":"A Wedding with Spirit","description":"\u003ci\u003eA WEDDING WITH SPIRIT\u003c\/i\u003e has been written for the bride and groom who are searching for something \u003ci\u003emore\u003c\/i\u003e for their wedding—not \u003ci\u003emore\u003c\/i\u003e as in bigger, grander, or more lavish, but \u003ci\u003emore\u003c\/i\u003e as in more meaningful, gracious, and sacred. Ritual and liturgy experts Gertrud Mueller Nelson and Christopher Witt have helped hundreds of couples plan their ceremonies and in these pages they have distilled their years of experience into some basic principles. Instead of trying to orchestrate “the happiest day of your life” and suffering through catering nightmares, Nelson and Witt help the couple see the wedding as a moment in the larger context of their love. To create such a wedding, \u003ci\u003eA WEDDING WITH SPIRIT\u003c\/i\u003e offers advice in general principles such as location, participants, symbols, prayers, format, readings, blessings, and music. Sections include:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e* A look at the history and meaning behind familiar wedding traditions\u003cbr\u003e* A walk through the ceremony (including the rites of gathering, the readings, and the exchanging of vows and rings) and the reception\u003cbr\u003e* Practical advice for the invitations, the rehearsal, and the programs\u003cbr\u003e* Pre-marriage guidance (including pertinent meditations and prayers) to enable the bride and groom to begin their union with a firm footing\u003cbr\u003e*Three model weddings incorporating all the principles of \u003ci\u003eA WEDDING WITH SPIRIT\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA WEDDING WITH SPIRIT\u003c\/i\u003e ensures that one’s wedding day will be about the sacredness of a committed love between two people, about love’s ability to create and nurture life, and about the faithfulness and hope that such a love gives witness to.\u003cb\u003eGertrud Mueller Nelson\u003c\/b\u003e is known internationally as an illustrator, author, and speaker. Her books include \u003ci\u003eA Wedding with Spirit, To Dance with God, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eHere All Dwell Free\u003c\/i\u003e. She lives in San Diego.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChristopher Witt\u003c\/b\u003e is a speech consultant and coach with almost three decades of professional speaking experience. As president of San Diego–based Witt Communications, he has shown CEOs how to gain board approval and companywide support for their initiatives, helped teams of technical experts win multimillion-dollar contracts, and empowered newly promoted managers. He holds a doctorate from Catholic University of America.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Marriage Is a Threshold\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For Now and Always\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We are happy you have chosen this  book. Unlike other wedding books, this one is for both of you, not just for the bride.  As a society we are just beginning to appreciate and honor the equality of man and  woman in marriage. It is time that weddings reflect this equality, not only by eliminating  or altering those parts of the ceremony that slight a woman's dignity but also by  encouraging the man's participation in planning and in being fully part of the celebration  itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We also wrote this book for people who are searching for something \u003ci\u003emore\u003c\/i\u003e for their wedding. Not more as in bigger, grander, or more lavish, but more as in  more meaningful, gracious, and sacred. We approach a wedding less as a production  to be orchestrated according to a complex and often outdated etiquette and more as  a public celebration of a personal commitment, an event that is social and intimate,  holy and joyful. The most successful weddings, to our way of thinking, are marked  by hospitality, graciousness, and inclusivity. Wedding celebrations \"work\" when everyone  present feels brought together--even bound together--in an active, holy, and deeply  satisfying undertaking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book builds on these basic assumptions:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e* A wedding  is for a day, a marriage lasts a lifetime.\u003cbr\u003e * A wedding is a spiritual event, a sacred  threshold to a new life together.\u003cbr\u003e * A wedding is a ritual celebrated by a community.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Lifelong Marriage\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYour wedding is important and will certainly give you a lifetime  of memories. Planning it deserves your full attention. But instead of trying to orchestrate  \"the happiest day of your life,\" see your wedding as a moment in the larger context  of your love. Make it reflect your love for each other, your shared dreams and hopes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Planning a wedding is a major undertaking that requires months of planning, consulting,  negotiating, shopping, and socializing. In some parts of the country it is necessary  to reserve the church, the reception hall, the caterer, musicians, and photographers  a year or more in advance. Bridal magazines and wedding planners publish checklists  that take into account every detail you need to address over the coming months. We  suggest that you use them in conjunction with this book, but we recognize at the  same time how daunting they can make the whole wedding seem. The details that rightly  demand attention can also overwhelm you and make you lose touch with each other and  with the very reason for your efforts. The details can also draw your attention away  from the greater task, the hard and joyful work of making a deep and loving marriage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We wrote this book convinced that it is possible to plan and celebrate a wedding  in a way that both reflects and enriches your love. We address the quality of your  preparations and the ceremony itself. We offer for your consideration the spirit,  attitudes, concerns, and values you bring to bear in the planning. We are, frankly,  less concerned that you finesse the \"perfect wedding\" (something unexpected always  happens) than that you marry with grace and graciousness. For your wedding day is  meant to send you on your way together into a new life--into a loving, life-enhancing  marriage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Remind yourselves, when feeling overwhelmed, that a wedding is for a day,  marriage for a lifetime.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Spiritual Event\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Marriage is caught up in the mystery  of God. All major faith traditions consider marriage holy. They recognize something  sacred about the committed love between two people, about love's ability to create  and nurture life, about the faithfulness and hope that such a love gives witness  to. For this reason, all major religions mark the beginning of marriage with rich  communal rituals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For Christians marriage is indeed holy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Orthodox and Catholic  churches teach that it is one of the seven sacraments, a sign of God's presence in  the world and a means of grace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIN THE JEWISH TRADITION, a wedding is much more  than the joining of two people or even two families. It is a celebration for the  entire community and for God. The central symbol of the wedding ceremony, the canopy,  represents the ideal home, which the couple enters at the beginning of the wedding  ceremony, escorted by their parents. Traditionally, close friends or family members  hold the canopy's poles, to symbolize the support that others pledge to the couple  throughout their lives together. The canopy, a home without walls, calls to mind  the presence of the Shechinah, the protecting presence of God.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e IN BURMA, Buddhists  begin their wedding day by hosting a special meal in the bride's house for the village  monks. During their wedding ceremony at the local shrine their hands are held together  and immersed in a bowl of water to make \"their union as indivisible as water.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e HINDU WEDDING CEREMONIES differ from region to region and for each different caste  in India, but there are certain essential elements common to them all. The wedding  date is fixed only after careful astrological calculations have been made. The bridegroom  is conducted to the home of his future parents-in-law, who receive him as an honored  guest. After the parents and the couple make offerings to the fire, the groom takes  his bride by the hand and leads her around this sacrificial fire. They take seven  steps together to solemnize their irrevocable unity. Then both are conducted to their  new home, which the bride enters without touching the threshold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Episcopal  Book of Common Prayer says: \"The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind  is intended by God for their mutual joy, for the help and comfort given one another  in prosperity and adversity, and, when it is God's will, for the procreation of children  and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The minister's instruction  at the beginning of the Lutheran marriage ceremony states: \"The Lord God in his goodness  created us male and female, and by the gift of marriage founded human community in  a joy that begins now and is brought to perfection in the life to come.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A Quaker  man and woman marry at a public gathering, where they declare their commitment to  each other without the services of a minister. They believe that God alone makes  a couple husband and wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Although each church has its own ritual for celebrating  and blessing the marriage of its members, they are amazingly similar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Perhaps you  aren't presently involved with a particular church. It could be that you drifted  away from the religious community of your childhood and got caught up in other issues  and concerns. Although you haven't thought about religion, you may still feel a connection  with something you vaguely feel as spirituality. Maybe you can't articulate what  you believe about God or faith or religion. Perhaps you don't even understand why,  when you think about your wedding, you are naturally drawn to a spiritual wedding,  whether in a church or outside a church. That's fine. This book isn't about converting  or convincing you to join a religion. Rather, it asks you to be open to mystery,  to the possibility that God is gracious and desires your mutual happiness and well-being.  We hope this book will help you appreciate the rituals of whatever church you feel  connected to and experience the presence and blessings of God in and through your  wedding ceremony. And if, for whatever reason, you decide not to be married in a  church, we hope this book will help you create a ceremony grounded in the sacred  and in your own spiritual sensibilities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Sacred Ritual\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Life is filled with  ritual. Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends, turkey, and all the trimmings  is a ritual. A birthday party with a cake and candles, with singing, and a wish is  a ritual. Certainly a wedding with its special attire, with processions, music, vows,  and the exchange of rings is a ritual.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ritual is what brings people together in  community. It unites us in a physical place and time and on a deeper level binds  us together in a common undertaking. Ritual uses traditional elements and actions  to create a safe passage for the central participants, that they might pass from  one state of being to a new one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Throughout this book we discuss a variety of customs,  actions, and gestures you can employ to gather your families and guests into a community.  Most of these customs are drawn from Christian traditions. We help you reclaim traditions  of substance, reframe customs that have lost their value, and discard trivial or  demeaning practices. We suggest ways you can involve your guests in celebrating with  you, in witnessing your commitment, and in surrounding you with their blessings and  love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Wedding Industry\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To create the wedding both of you hope for, you may  enlist the services of a small army of professionals--caterers, florists, photographers,  seamstresses, printers, bakers, janitors, deejays, and musicians. Many professionals  are committed to providing a necessary and helpful service, although there are some  who profit by catering to an engaged couple's insecurities. They create false needs  and pander to a couple's desire to do \"the right thing.\" Throughout this book we  call them \"the wedding industry,\" and we suggest ways you can reduce your reliance  on them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Distrust anyone who offers you a product or service, saying, \"You deserve  the best\" or \"This is your special day\" or \"It happens only once in a lifetime\" or  \"A wedding would be incomplete without this.\" They are making a thinly disguised  sales pitch. Unless you approach such professionals with common sense and with your  own values clearly in mind, you can easily exhaust your savings and forgo the down  payment on a fair-sized house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e You \u003ci\u003edo \u003c\/i\u003edeserve the best--which has little to do with  what money can buy. You deserve the fondest support, the dearest expressions of love  that family and friends can provide. You deserve the blessings of God. It is your  special day--a special day for you both--but it is also a special day in the lives  of everyone who loves you. And it can be perfect--not flawless, but perfectly wonderful,  right, true, joyful--as perfect as our less-than-perfect world allows. And its perfection  is nothing you pay for but exists because of who you are as a couple and because  of the Spirit you invite to the wedding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Book's Format\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The next five chapters  discuss the general principles of a wedding. \"Crossing the Threshold\" introduces  the overriding metaphor of this book, while the following chapters reflect on the  place, people, symbols, and music of a wedding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The second section, \"The Ceremony  and the Reception,\" moves step by step through the ceremony itself. It focuses on  the gathering rite (welcoming your guests, the procession, and the opening prayer),  the readings and instruction, the wedding ritual itself (the vows, rings, and blessing).  The section concludes with the reception, since it is a social recapitulation of  the religious ceremony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Matters of Hospitality\" deals with the practicalities of  invitations, the rehearsal, instructions you can give to your readers, and models  for a printed program.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Making a Marriage\" is a collection of meditations--preparing  for marriage, dealing with doubts and jitters, exploring dimensions of marriage in  the Bible, and praying.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Finally, \"Making the Day: Examples\" describes three different  weddings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e May your wedding--this crossing of the threshold--be a step into the  sacred. May the hand of the holy one who leads you bless and protect you all the  days of your life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCrossing the Threshold\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Once upon a time, and not so long ago  at that, it was customary for a man to carry his bride over the threshold into his  house. The custom, an outward sign of a couple's entry into marriage, is preserved  today more in memory than in observance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some trace the practice to ancient Rome,  where a day of wedding festivities ended at night with a procession. With torches  blazing and to the accompaniment of music and singing, the groom's friends escorted  the bride to her husband's house, where the entry had been festooned with garlands  of flowers in preparation for her arrival. There the married men--those still sober  enough to do so--lifted the bride and carried her over the threshold of the groom's  doorway into his house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This Roman custom may, in turn, be a relic of a still more  ancient, more primitive practice, when a man quite literally \"took a bride.\" Those  were times when a man may have captured a woman, sometimes from a neighboring tribe,  and dragged her forcibly into his house. Or the Roman custom may have reflected some  early religious beliefs. Many ancient peoples believed that each place had its own  attendant spirit. Spirits resided in mountains and lakes, in fields and forests.  They lived in the rocks and in crops. They had their place in barns and sheds and  households, where they lurked in the rafters or stood guard at the doorsill. Anyone  who ignored the spirits of a place ran the risk of offending them and incurring their  wrath. The spirits that haunted the threshold were especially powerful, and people  believed that stumbling or treading on them through ignorance or preoccupation brought  bad luck. Therefore, to make sure the bride didn't trip up and begin her marriage  on a wrong footing, she was carried over the threshold in safety.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Today few of us  accept the notion that a man takes possession of his wife or, for that matter, that  she needs his protection against the impish spirits that lie in wait around doorways.  Through gradual disuse more than by conscious consensus, we have allowed the custom  to die out slowly. It is a rare groom who carries his bride over the threshold on  their wedding night. And yet, even as we reject the custom's superstitious and sexist  implications, we can still discover in it a deeper kernel of value. Old practices  often express a symbolic truth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A Wedding Is a Threshold\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When you marry, you  make a transition. You step over a threshold, crossing from one way of life to another,  from being single to being married. You walk across the threshold, not one of you  carrying the other, but hand in hand, as equals and as two persons in mutual support.  You enter a whole new way of relating to each other and assume an entirely new position  in the society around you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At the threshold of your wedding you step away from what  is familiar and predictable and enter a place you have never been before. This transition  is like and unlike other thresholds you have already crossed--being born, entering  adolescence, graduating, starting a new job--and ones you may yet encounter--giving  birth, raising a family, growing old, retiring, dying--in that you have no way of  knowing beforehand where you will end up or what you will experience on the other  side. In a sense, your wedding is a passage that takes you from the comfortably familiar  into a place of mystery. In crossing, you almost hover and are not yet here or there.  You step into a time that will leave you feeling disoriented and out of control.  You will take on new roles and identities. You will no longer be \"your own person,\"  free to do as you please. No longer simply your parents' child, you will be, after  a brief ceremony, husband and wife. For as often as you have seen marriage played  out by others, or imagined yourselves as married, you don't actually know what married  life will be like for you. Even if you have been married before, you still don't  know what \u003ci\u003ethis \u003c\/i\u003emarriage will hold for you.previously titled Sacred Threshold","brand":"Harmony","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305485488357,"sku":"NP9780385517898","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385517898.jpg?v=1767720911","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-wedding-with-spirit-isbn-9780385517898","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}