As love which flows ...

University feels a very long time ago (maybe because it is). But way back then I lived with a group of people who, even now, when I talk about them in the collective, I refer to as "my housemates" despite the fact that it is more than ten years since we lived together, and that one of them was, strictly speaking, never our housemate in the first place anyway. I am aware that I was very lucky to be thrown together with this group of people who I still count among my best friends.

Lives have moved on of course since university days, and our lives all look very different to they did when were 18 (thank goodness!) and different to each others too. I am really pleased then, that in spite of jobs, marriage, children, physical distance and the general busy-ness of life, we have maintained our friendship.

When, last summer, one of my "housemates" not only asked me if I would read at her wedding but also asked if I had any suggestions of suitable texts, I, somewhat rashly perhaps, offered to write something. Actually, there was nothing rash about it at all. I thought long and hard before making the suggesting the idea. I don't normally write 'to order' but simply when the mood takes me so I knew there was a fairly high chance that I wouldn't be able to come up with anything anyway. More significantly I was also very aware, in making the offer that I wanted her to feel absolutely free to say thanks, but no thanks; both immediately, and more importantly, as a response to whatever I wrote. I didn't want her to be left thinking, 'nah, that's not what we want to say, but I suppose now she's written it we ought to use it'. If I went ahead and made the offer, it was because I decided she knew me well enough to know that when I said I wouldn't be offended if she didn't use it, I really meant it.

Trying to draw together some of the themes they hoped to express at their wedding, and inspired partly by my own experience of, at that point, about ten years of married life (which is probably as close as I'm ever going to get to a romantic comment on this blog), this was the result:

As rain which pours
From endless skies

And in these drops

From heaven sent

Are born

The newness

Of

A source

Welling up

And spilling over

And is this joy? The bubbly exuberance Of refreshment Splashing Into rainbows With The confidence of youth And in this Tumultuous tumbling Swirls A mass of rocky debris These The jagged edges Which might yet be The solid foundations Of a life not yet lived As criss-crossed streams Converge Divide Through friendships formed And moments shared In tracks and grooves Of other lives Or carving out A new way All their own

And is this grace? The giving way To the twisting complications These realities We call life Which bump and spill Through obstacles and invitations The eddies of a pace which speeds and slows But is never Still In streams which meet And flows that mingle Becoming one As a stronger flow Flows on And carries Greater burdens But Promises Greater life A river which at its joining Offers no barriers But opens space Where others too Might find a place

And is this faith? The tumbling Blindly off a cliff With the energy Of trusting Life flows on In an unknown better place Where the other Also leaps To follow No straight line route From a to b Meandering Across The landscape of a lifetime Shaped By this And is this peace? Daring To know The end may not be The destination When on this shore Waves gently lap Across rounded pebbles Rubbed smooth By the trusting of time With the satisfied sigh Of a life well-lived Together

As joy, and grace, and faith, and peace

Find love.