My father has asked me to do a reading/write a reading for his second marriage. Can anyone help?

Question

I am happy to do it, they've been together 7 years, they make each other happy but...they got together while he was married to my Mum so there's a bit of awkardness there, and while I'm going to support him, I'm not really sure why the whole marriage thing is necessary so would like to participate but not say anything that doesn't ring true for me. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Why not stick with a classic? I prefer Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

I also like a poem called Learning to Love that would be appropriate. It goes like this:

There are many who want me to tell them of secret ways of becoming perfect and I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God, and the only way of attaining that love is by loving. You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. Begin as a mere apprentice and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master of the art.
St. Francis De Sales

Answer 2

do you love your father unconditionally?? i am sure you do or you wouldnt be going to this length for advice.....
i experienced THROUGH my father a second marriage - although it was after my mother had passed, it was fairly close to the time of her death. i want you to know that i fully understand your hesitation, but i also have some thoughts as to why you should support him anyway. in my experience - my father supported me all the time, no matter what i was doing. if his being happy required a second marriage....than i was all for it. you have to think about it - really hard and know in your heart that it is only about the present, not about what may or may have happened in the past. and honestly my main advice would be that you NEVER want to regret your actions while you are still able to be a part of your father life.....i say this because my sister did not react to positively at the time my father remarried. now, that he has passed as well - i know she regrets not being open to his remarrying/happiness. now she has to hold onto the "what-ifs" for the rest of her life. i may have rambled - for that i am sorry - but i know you are in tough spot....just make your speech from your heart. your dad picked you for a reason, and you want to reflect the same love in your speech. dont focus on the negative, for everything happens for a reason, and i am sure you will come up with a speech he will rmemeber and be proud of. as i am sure he is of you.

Answer 3

How about this reading? it's kind of a good reminder to take the good with the bad in marriage- and that's it's not always easy. I think it's good for second marriages.

From "Gift From The Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.