The Holistic Celebrant
I have collected a selection of poems and readings you may like to use during a ceremony, I hope you will find something suitable. I intend to add more regularly.
Music, when soft voice die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
The death of each of us is in the order of things; it follows life as surely as night follows day. We can take the tree of life as a symbol. The human race is the trunk and branches of this tree, and individual men and women are the leaves, which appear one season, flourish for a summer, and then die. I too am like a leaf of this tree, and one day I shall be torn off by a storm, or simply decay and fall and mingle with the earth at it’s roots. But, while I live, I am conscious of the tree’s flowing sap and steadfast strength. When I die and fall the tree of life remains, nourished to some small degree by my life. Millions of leaves have preceded me and millions will follow me; but the tree itself grows and endures.
Sir Herbert Read (adapted) (1893 – 1968)
For what it is to die but to stand
naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing but to free
the breath from it’s restless tides, that it may rise
and expand and seek through unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of
silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall reclaim your limbs,
then you shall truly dance.
Kahlil Gubran (1883 – 1931)
An individual human existence should be like a river –
small at first, narrowly contained within it’s banks,
and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls.
Gradually, the river grows wider, the banks recede,
the waters flow more quietly, and – in the end –
without any visible break, they become merged in
the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.
The man or woman, who, in old age,
can see his or her life in this way,
will not suffer from the fear of death,
since the things they care for will continue.
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)
Death is the most profound and significant
fact of life: it lifts the very last of mortals
above the greyness and banality of life.
And only the fact of death puts the
question of life’s meaning in all it’s depth.
Life in this world has meaning only
because there is death: if there were no
death in our world, life would be deprived
of meaning.
Meaning is linked with ending. And if
there were no end, if in our world there
was evil and endlessness there would be
no meaning to life whatsoever.
The meaning of man’s mortal experience
throughout his whole life, lies in putting
him into a position to comprehend death.
Nikolai Berdyaev (1784 – 1948)
Contact me by phone or email