Idea for a New Religion - Chapter 23 - Rituals of Marriage, Rebirth and Unification

MARRIAGE CEREMONY True Love's blessing (Spoken by priest) - True love is the essence of God. True love consecrates all which it touches and, if true love is contained within your vows to each other then they are sacred and binding. Vow of hands (Spoken by couple) - Love, let us be like the left hand and the right; cupping the waters of joy within us; bearing the burden of sorrows together; holding each other in holy prayer and shaping the blessed clay of life between us; now and for the full length of our lives. So long as they have beating in them, let our hearts be owned by each other Prayer for a lasting marriage (spoken by priest) - Our God; who is the eternal within us; the source of all love and the unity of all things, bind these two friends and lovers into a one which is inseperable; a unity which will endure all the forces of sorrow, time and nature. Kiss (spoken by couple) - Let us kiss and remember that our life together should be like a kiss. Though it may be fleeting, it should be filled with love, pleasure, passion and joy. Confirmation (spoken by priest) You are now true husband and wife. Go forth, with God's blessing, and live happily together.

RITE OF REBIRTH On Faith - All that lives and dies is a shining part of the immortal; all souls, a part of one great soul. God is all and all are god. All that lives and dies shall live again for, as the old flesh becomes food for the earth, so the old soul is used in the making of the new. What is bad within it shall be cast away and consumed; what is good of it shall be reborn. On living - Look upon your glimmering lives, my friends, and treasure them dearly for, only by treasuring life may we become good and only by being good, can we make our souls worthy of salvation and rebirth. To the departed - Travel on, dearest soul; round the sphere of rebirth, over deaths dark horizon to the bright other side. See all the colours and hear all the music of heaven; then come home, a new person, reborn. To the grieving - Those who live should not sigh but breathe deeply; should not weep but gaze in wonder at the world beyond the shell of their grief. Let yourself and your departed love go free. Be happy that they are with God and be happy that you are alive.

RITUAL OF UNIFICATION Let us weave our hands together and be as one. One mind united by a single aim; one heart united by a common love; one soul united by the faith we share; one body moving to serve the will of God. Each of you is a sacred part of God, the eternal universal. Within each of you is the power of God, waiting to be awakened. Feel the force of God radiate from within your soul which is the presence of God; feel its golden fire spreading like the beams of the sun, illuminating every part of you and making it golden; feel that divine energy flow between you and the soul of your neighbour. From the unity of our spirit we become a greater being; not many, small, lonely people who are aimless and lost but a giant of kindness with power in her limbs to smash the legions of hatred and level the towers of greed. We are God, alive and awake and moving now upon this earth and all evil shall quake and cower before us. Let us rise up now and speak the words of our faith which unite us and make us strong, "God is within us and we are within God". And when we speak with one voice we shall be like a mighty wind; when we share a common vision we shall be like an all seeing eye, when all of our hands become one then we can bear the weight of this world; when we are one, then we shall win.