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.
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 glint on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain
I am in gentle autumn rain,
When you awaken in the morning hush
I am swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the star-shine at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I do not die
Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905 – 2004)
If I should go before the rest of you,
Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone,
Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must, parting is hell,
But life goes on, so sing as well.
Joyce Grenfell (1910 – 1979)
A whisper in the wind,
A shadow on the wall,
The feeling that someone is there
But no answer to your call.
A kind of warmth when days are cold,
A hand held out to guide,
A glow that lights the darkest night,
A presence by your side.
If these things happen, curb your fears
Just smile a knowing smile
It’s me, you see, watching over you
Across the coming years.
Anon
Those we love
are never really lost to us –
we feel them
in so many special ways –
through friends
they always cared about
and dreams they left behind,
in beauty that they added to our days…
in words of wisdom we still carry with us
and memories that never will be gone…
Those we love are never really lost to us –
For everywhere their special love lives on.
Anon
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all that I have and deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
As for prophecies, they will pass away;
As for tongues, they will cease,
As for knowledge, it will pass away.
For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will fade away.
When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
So faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13
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