RoadrunnerFlaming Chalice


Rev. Shirley A. Ranck, Ph.D.

Celebrations
Celebrations

One of the great privileges of being a minister is being allowed to share and play an important part in the special moments of people's lives—weddings, baby dedications, memorial services.

Here, I have included two of my favorite weddings, one of which was held aboard a sailboat on San Francisco Bay.  Also included is the dedication of a baby, and a memorial service.  Some of the words are my own; some are quotes that seemed just right for the occasion.

CHILD DEDICATION
 WEDDING CEREMONY DOUBLE WEDDING CEREMONY MEMORIAL SERVICE

CHILD DEDICATION
CEREMONY OF WELCOME FOR EVAN CARSMAN

Opening Words
      
    Minister:   Behold the child.
Children come forth and stand with star dust in their hair, with the rush of planets in their blood, their hearts beating out the seasons of eternity, with a shining in their eyes like the sunlight, with hands to shape with that same force that shaped them out of the raw stuff of the universe.
When one baby is born, it is the symbol of birth and life, and therefore must all rejoice and smile, and all lose their hearts to a child.

Children and Church

    Minister:   The church or fellowship is the hub of the life of the people.
Here will mothers and fathers bring their infants to be named, to celebrate their coming, and to count themselves blessed.
In the fellowship the children will be introduced to their world; here they will learn the meanings we find in the skies, the fields, the hills, and the valleys, and cities with their people.
Here will they learn to count the number of their days and weigh their meaning, to gather into their minds the wisdom of their ancestors, to know why we call one thing right and another wrong, to treasure beauty, mercy, and justice in the deep places of their being.

Charge to the Congregation

    Minister:   Do you, as people of the congregation, take upon you the privilege and responsibility of helping to nurture the character and spirit of this child?

Congregation:   We do.

Child and Parents

    Minister:   Naked are we born, naked of body, mind, and spirit, naked of knowing, dependent and helpless.
For parents is the awesome privilege to be the givers and shapers of the persons of growing men and women. 
Parents give to their baby the bright knowingness of its eyes.
Love they give with their eyes and lips.
From the smile of the father and mother the baby learns to smile in reply, and from their laughter comes the baby's laughter.
To their speech the child makes sounds in answer, and by imitation words; and in the use of words the mind is formed. 
From their walking the child learns to follow; from their gestures are patterned the movements of its hands ant the inflections of its voice.
Their goodness becomes the child's goodness; their evil the child's evil.
Their fear and doubt become the child's own, and also their wisdom, courage, openness, and the adventure of their beliefs.

Charge to the Parents

    Minister:   Do you as parents take upon yourselves the privilege and responsibility to care for this child in body and mind
and spirit that he may grow in the fullness of health and person unto the abundance of his years?

     Parents:   We do.

Naming of the Child

    Minister:   Name this child.

     Parents:   Evan Carsman

    Minister:   Evan Carsman, by this name shall you be known, and your personal dignity and individuality be recognized.

Representative of the fellowship:  We welcome you in love, a new member of our human community. 
It is our hope that you will wear this name in honor and in peace and in courage and that many will come to look upon your name and find it blessed. 
This flower is a token from this fellowship of our affection and respect.

    Minister:   May the blessing of the light be with you always, light without and light within.
May the sun shine upon you and warm your heart
Until it glows like a great fire
So that others may feel the warmth of it.

And may the light of your eyes
Shine like two candle lights
In a window at night bidding the wanderer
To come in out of the dark and the cold.

And may the blessings of this rain be upon you,
The sweet and tender rain,
May it fall upon your spirit
As when flowers spring up and fragrance fills the air.

And may the blessings of the great rain
Wash you clean and fair
And may the storms always leave you stronger
And more beautiful.

And when the rains are over
May there be clear pools of water
Made beautiful by the radiance of your light,
As when a star shines beautiful in the night
Pointing the way for all of us.


                                                                   -  Adapted from a ceremony by Kenneth Patton

WEDDING CEREMONY

Minister:  We have come together to celebrate the love of Bob and Heide, to share in the joy of their relationship.  We bring to them our love, our wisdom, our strength and above all our great delight in their happiness.
    Maintaining a close living relationship is an adventure, full of excitement and danger.  Our greatest growth as individuals occurs through the close relationships in our lives, relationships in which caring is expressed through honest and open communication with our bodies and our words.  Our greatest pain and stunting of personal growth occurs when caring communication breaks down.  We may care deeply and wish for the other person's fulfillment.  For that caring to be effective we have to express it.  Love is a commitment not only to caring but to communication, wherever honest communication may lead us.  It may lead to a stronger and deeper relationship over the years.  It may at some point lead us out of the relationship.  The great wonder of such love is that it affirms the fulfillment of both partners; in affirming your selfhood I find my own.  The poet e. e. cummings puts it this way:

    i am so glad and very
    merely my fourth will cure
    the laziest self of weary
    the hugest sea of shore

    so far your nearness reaches
    a lucky fifth of you
    turns people into eachs
    and cowards into grow

    our can’ts were born to happen
    our mosts have died in more
    our twentieth will open
    wide a wide open door

    we are so both and oneful
    night cannot be so sky
    sky cannot be so sunful
    i am through you so I

Heide and Bob, you are starting on a great adventure in self-discovery and self-transcendence.  My personal wish for you is that you allow yourselves space and time to be together and to be separate in your relationship.
   
We are here today to share in the convergence of two lives, those of Heide and Bob.  What they mean to each other is obvious in their lives but not easily expressed in the language of a ceremony.  They are adult.  They have known each other for more than three years.  They choose to live together.  The choice is responsible, free and happy.

READING

   
To express what they want their relationship to mean, they have requested a good friend to read a passage from Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Minister to the Parents:  Of all the men and women they know, Heide and Bob have chosen each other as partners in life.  Will you, their parents, give them your blessings and pledge them your love and acceptance?

Parents:  We will.

VOWS AND EXCHANGE OF RINGS


Minister to Bob:  Do you, Bob, promise to love, honor and care for Heide through all the varying experiences of your lives?

Bob:  I do.

Minister to Heide:  Do you, Heide, promise to love, honor and care for Bob through all the varying experiences of your lives?

Heide:  I do.
    (Heide and Bob turn to each other and exchange rings.)

Minister:  Let these rings be the symbol of your love and of your shared hope to continue exploring the exchange between you.  May you reach out to each other through good and bad times and through the reserve which isolates people most of the time.  As you grow a little each day, loving many things in common and not only each other, you will assure your future in terms that matter most.  We wish you the best in your search for that future.
   
Inasmuch as Heide and Bob have made promises to each other and have exchanged these rings, I pronounce them husband and wife.  Go in peace.

DOUBLE WEDDING CEREMONY

OPENING

        By the earth which fashioned us
        And the life which keeps us
        —we come to celebrate your wedding.
        In the quiet of this place
        And by the witness of these friends
        —we come to celebrate your wedding.
        The city's life, close by, pulses through;
        There are many coming, many going;
        Tension and fracture abound.
        By every old ending and new beginning
        —we come to celebrate your wedding.
        Daytime into night and midnight to dawning again,
        May you turn again and find that which you seek
        In each other.
        Give and keep your fidelity,
        And join this child to your love.

    We are gathered here to witness the joining of these couples in marriage; which is an honorable estate, instituted in the necessities of our being, and dedicated to the happiness of persons and the welfare and continuance of humankind; an estate not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, discreetly, soberly, and in all sincerity.
    To be true, this outward form must be a symbol of that which is inner and real: a sacred personal union, which a church may solemnize and a state make legal, but which love only can create, and mutual loyalty fulfill.

READING

    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 it 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.  For relationships too, 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.  One must accept the security of the winged life, of the ebb and flow, of intermittency.
                From Gift from the Sea
                Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Kay and Jock, Julie and Mike, let your love be freely given.  Seek to understand each other and to recognize your potentialities.  Have faith in your future together.  Share with each other your hopes, your dreams, and your pain.  You come together today not only as brides and grooms but as parents and children to create new family relationships in which love can flourish and increase.  May your love be the beginning of a great project, a new creation.

Minister:  Jock, will you have Kay to be your wife, to live together in the holy estate of marriage?  Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, and be faithful to her, as long as you both shall live?

Jock:  I will.

Minister:  Kay, will you have Jock to be your husband, to live together in the holy estate of marriage?  Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, and be faithful to him, as long as you both shall live?

Kay:  I will.

(Repeat for Mike and Julie.)

Minister:  Melanie, are you happy that your mother is getting married to Mike?

Melanie:  Yes.

Minister:  Who presents Julie to be married to Mike?

Mother:  I do.

VOWS

Mike:  (repeating after Minister)  I Mike, take you Julie, to be my wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death shall part us.

Julie:  (repeating after Minister)  I Julie take you Mike, to be my husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death shall part us.

(Kay and Jock repeat same vows.)

EXCHANGE OF RINGS

    The metal in these rings
    Has little real value
    Except in its use today.
    These words are gone
    As I say them,
    But as I say them,
    Your lives are changed forever.
    You are man and woman,
    Born to trouble and to joy;
    And this is your greatest triumph—
    That the greatest of gifts
    Are yours for the risk
    Of asking.
    We are to witness now
    The sealing of these promises with these rings
    Sign and token before the world
    Of the world you will create—
    Single, whole, and quiet—
    Within the world outside.
    Together you are one; as one you are a world.

Kay:  With this ring I marry you and pledge you my faithful love.

(Repeat for Jock, Mike and Julie.)

Minister:  Kay and Jock have chosen one another from the many men and women of the earth, have declared their love and purpose before this gathering, and have made their pledges each to the other.  Therefore I declare that they are husband and wife.

Julie and Mike have chosen one another from the many men and women of the earth, have declared their love and purpose before this gathering, and have made their pledges each to the other.  Therefore I declare that they are husband and wife.

May you be strong in each other.  May you grow together through many winters and many springtimes.  Congratulations!
MEMORIAL SERVICE
CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE
Of
LADD L. WHITCHER


CHALICE LIGHTING AND OPENING WORDS
    We gather in affirmation of the ageless truth that, as no one of us lives alone, so no one dies alone:  we are diminished by the passing of any.  The society in which we live is made forever less for the stillness which from this time forth must be.  We come together, then, in sorrow for what is lost; in mourning for what, once touched and loved, is now beyond touching though not beyond loving; in celebration of the grasp of life made more secure for the presence—certain though fleeting—of one another; and finally in courage—ever tested and ever renewed—that we shall walk alone yet with one another, through the days, alike of joy and sadness, which lie ahead.

SONG:  Gather the Spirit - #347

WELCOME
    Today we honor the memory of Ladd Whitcher, and once again we know how keenly the passing of friends and loved ones affects us, and how deeply our own eventual passing enters into all that we are and do.  No one has found a way to avoid death, to pass around it.  Those old ones who have met it, who have reached the place where death stands waiting, have not pointed out a way to circumvent it.  Death is difficult to face. 
    At such a time the various faiths which sustain us separately come together in a harmony which acts across all creeds and assures us of the permanence of goodness, the inspiration of dedication, the value of a well-lived life.
    Human life has for long been described as like the grass of the fields in its brevity, but it also represents the flowering of some great cosmic urge that brings forth intelligence, a sense of law and order, of love and duty and responsibility, and a sense of creative beauty and song.  Though our days be brief they represent and reflect all time.  Creation’s wonders are in us, creation’s tragedies, creation’s miracles and secrets.  Our comings and goings are the pulsations of eternity.

MUSIC

READINGS
    Poet, singer, and writer alike have looked squarely into the face of this greatest of life’s mysteries, and all through the ages have sung their messages and songs of faith and courage.
    Some poets express well our anguish and our anger.  Edna St. Vincent Millay writes:  I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.  So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:  into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
    And Dylan Thomas pleads:  Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
    But when the rage is spent, when sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as a part of life.  Let the heart be open to pain; let it be stretched by it.  All the evidence we have says that this is the better way.  Anguish, like ecstasy, is not forever.  There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness.  This, too, is a door to life.  Here also is a deepening of meaning, and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of the soul…And in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning, all is well.
    Helen Keller wrote:  We bereaved are not alone.  We belong to the largest company in all the world—the company of those who have known suffering.  When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance, and inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy, their understanding.
    John Muir wrote:  The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as homegoing.  So the snow-flowers go home when they melt and flow to the sea, and the rock-ferns, after unrolling their fronds to the light and beautifying the rocks, roll them up close again in the autumn and blend with the soil.  Myriads of rejoicing living creatures, daily, hourly, perhaps every moment sink into death's arms, dust to dust, spirit to spirit—each arriving at its own destiny.  All the merry dwellers of the trees and streams, and the myriad swarms of the air, called into life by the sunbeam of a summer morning, go home through death, wings folded perhaps in the last red rays of sunset of the day they were first tried.  Trees towering in the sky, braving storms of centuries, flowers turning faces to the light for a single day or hour, having enjoyed their share of life’s feast—all alike pass on and away under the law of death and love.  Yet all are brothers and sisters and they enjoy life as we do, share blessings with us, die and are buried in hallowed ground, come with us out of eternity and return into eternity.  Our lives are rounded with a sleep.
    And Hugh Robert Orr wrote:  They are not gone who pass beyond the clasp of hand, out from the strong embrace.  They are but come so close we need not grope with hands, nor look to see, nor try to catch the sound of feet.  They have put off their shoes, softly to walk by day within our thoughts, to tread at night our dream-led paths of sleep.
They are not lost who find the sunset gate, the goal of all their faithful years.  Not lost are they who reach the summit of their climb, the peak above the clouds and storms.  They are not lost who find the light of the sun and the stars.
They are not dead who live in hearts they leave behind.  In those whom they have blessed they live a life again, and shall live through the years eternal life, and grow each day more beautiful as time declares their good, forgets the rest, and proves their immortality.

MUSIC SOLO

WORDS ABOUT LADD - Part I
    Ladd L. Whitcher was born to John Dewey Whitcher and Hulda Amelia Carlson on December 29, 1923, in Kearney, Nebraska.  At that time Kearney was a typical midwestern town built around farming and a state college and the railroad.  Although Ladd lived in town, he spent many weekends and summers on the farms of both sets of grandparents and those of his aunts and uncles.  His father was a skilled cabinetmaker and his mother a dressmaker.  Ladd inherited their artistic talents as well as a gift for music.
    Ladd was the big brother of his family.  He was six when his brother Jean was born and twelve when Charles joined the family.  Ladd also had a close extended family.  Several aunts stayed at John and Hulda’s house because they could find work in Kearney, then the business center of the farming community.
    Ladd met Jeanette Mattson in Anchorage in 1945.  He was stationed there in the Army Air Corps, and she was just finishing her senior year at Anchorage high school.  They met at a roller rink where according to Jeanette, Ladd was a handsome and very graceful skater much admired by all the young women.  Of course Jeanette won out over the other girls.  Ladd was discharged from the Air Corps on November 30, 1945 and he and Jeanette were married on December 4, 1945 at University Unitarian Church in Seattle.
    In honor of their long and happy marriage I would like to share with you this poem by Margaret Atwood.

    I would like to watch you sleeping,
    Which may not happen.
    I would like to watch you
    Sleeping.  I would like to sleep
    With you, to enter
    Your sleep as its smooth dark wave
    Slides over my head

    And walk with you through that lucent
    Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
    With its watery sun & three moons
    Towards the cave where you must descend
    Towards your worst fear

    I would like to give you the silver
    Branch, the small white flower, the one
    Word that will protect you
    From the grief at the center
    Of your dream, from the grief
    At the center.  I would like to follow
    You up the long stairway
    Again & become
    The boat that would row you back
    Carefully, a flame
    In two cupped hands
    To where your body lies
    Beside me, and you enter
    It as easily as breathing in

    I would like to be the air
    That inhabits you for a moment
    Only.  I would like to be that unnoticed
    & that necessary.

    Ladd and Jeanette  had four children, all born in Olympia.  Their son John is the oldest.  He married Susan White and they have two daughters, Ursula and Susannah.   Celia, the second of Ladd and Jeanette’s children, married Gary Tobin and they have a son John and a daughter Alisa.  Mark, Ladd and Jeanette’s third child, was married to Roberta Rockett and they have two daughters, Veronica and Jeanette.  The fourth child, Linda, married Greg Rohner and they have a son Eric.  Ladd is remembered by his children and grandchildren as one who adored babies.
    Ladd worked for many years as a technician for AT&T but found his greatest joy and satisfaction in the woodworking he did at home.  He and his father were the master builders of the home he created for his family, a home with a spectacular view of the water and of Mt. Rainier.  Ladd designed and built this pulpit and the three matching stands.  But Ladd also combined his woodworking talent with his love of music.  “In the beginning was the Sound,” begins an Inuit creation legend.  Not the Word, but the Sound: vibration, tone.  Was music the beginning?  The more contemporary physicists learn about matter, the more vibrating, whirling particles they find—the music of the spheres.  Ladd was fascinated with sound.  He built many exquisite guitars and experimented with the building of many other instruments including drums and Baroque instruments.  He was a member of the Seattle Classical Guitar Society and the World Rhythm Festival Association.  He also designed jewelry and taught classes about it at Evergreen College.
    Above all else and from early in his life Ladd followed his own distinctive passions and interests.  He died surrounded not only by his family but also by the lovely home he had built and by the many beautiful objects he had created.       

SONG:  For the Beauty of the Earth #21

WORDS ABOUT LADD - Part II
MUSIC (recorded - Segovia)

MEDITATION
    Let us join now in meditation.  An unknown poet once wrote:
    Do not stand at my grave and weep;
    I am not there, I do not sleep.
    I am a thousand winds that blow,
    I am the diamond glints on snow.
    I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
    I am the gentle autumn's rain.
    When you awaken in the morning's hush
    I am the swift uplifting rush
    Of quiet birds in circled flight.
    I am the soft star that shines at night.
    Do not stand at my grave and cry.
    I am not there; I did not die.
Nothing now can detract from the joy and beauty that you shared with Ladd; nothing can possibly affect the happiness and depth of experience that he himself knew.  What has been, has been—forever.  The past, with all its meanings, is sacred and secure.  Your love for him and his love for you, his friends and family, cannot be altered by time or circumstance.
    Rejoice that Ladd was and still is a part of your lives.  His influence endures in the unending consequences flowing from his character and deeds; it endures in your own acts and thoughts.  Remember him as a living, vital presence.  And that memory will bring refreshment to your hearts and strengthen you in times of trouble.  These are reflections to treasure; for there can never be too much friendship in the world, or too much human warmth and affection.
9.
    Let us be silent now with our thoughts and memories….Amen.
SONG:  May nothing Evil Cross this Door - #1
READING  -  Poem by May Sarton
    Now voyager, lay here your dazzled head.
    Come back to earth from air, be nourished,
    Not with that light on light, but with this bread.

    Here close to earth be cherished, mortal heart,
    Hold your way deep as roots push rocks apart
    To bring the spurt of green up from the dark.

    Where music thundered let the mind be still,
    Where the will triumphed let there be no will,
    What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.

    Here close to earth the deeper pulse is stirred.
    Here where no wings rush and no sudden bird,
    But only heart-beat upon beat is heard.

    Here let the fiery burden be all spilled,
    The passionate voice at last be calmed and stilled
    And the long yearning of the blood fulfilled.

    Now voyager, come home, come to rest,
    Here on the long-lost country of earth’s breast
    Lay down the fiery vision, and be blest, be blest.

CHOIR - Kyrie

CLOSING WORDS
    Now may the love of friends, the treasure of memory and the fellowship of spirit sustain and abide in you this day and evermore.  Blessed be!
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