Have Your Wedding Any Way You Want It!

“Lavish [love] on others, receive it gratefully when it comes to you.
Cultivate friendship like a garden. It is the best love of all.” ~ Sister Helen Prejean

Putting together a wedding can be an exhilarating experience as well as a somewhat taxing one. After all, there are no “do-overs” for your big day! One thing you want to be sure of is your wedding officiant. There’s nothing worse than one who is not a good match for the two of you. Authenticity is at the heart of lasting relationships and good memories launched on this important day.

Your ceremony truly reflects who you are as people, to each other as well as to all your loved ones. The wedding-day celebration is the public declaration of your feelings for each other and for your community of support. Make sure it celebrates your love and feels true to you.

More and more couples are choosing a Wedding Officiant-led service over traditional (church or synagogue) clergy or a justice of the peace. Why? Because a wedding officiant can be dependable in offering a creative ceremony that respects your preferences and values. I have been a wedding officiant for over a decade and I offer a wide range of frameworks that can draw on any one of the traditions below (or none but your own):

*Secular

*Religious

*Spiritual

*Humanist

*Interfaith

*Traditional

*Nondenominational

*Contemporary

or any combination of the above!

I’ll work one-on-one with the two of you as your wedding officiant. Though I received my doctorate in psychology (PhD) and religion and my masters of divinity (MDiv) at Princeton Seminary, I obtained my minister credentials solely for the purpose of legally performing weddings. I come from a background that includes public speaking, teaching, counseling, writing and design. My gifts stem from passion, experience, innate creativity and open-mindedness.

Learn more by contacting me: Jennifer Manlowe, MDiv, PhD
Life Design Unlimited
jlmanlowe@comcast.net
206.617-8832

Making Time When None Can Be Found by Jennifer Manlowe

Time Is Just An Invention!

“Today, like every other day, I wake up empty and frightened. Don’t go to the door of the study and read a book. Instead take down the dulcimer, let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground, there are a thousand ways to go home again.” ~ Rumi

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
~ Socrates

Little by little, I realize that nobody ever finds time—time is not lost. Time is actually related to the word “tide” (in Old English tima). It’s not a thing, but something that we experience with our senses. Time is something that we carve out of the rocky schedule or impenetrable wall of activity in which we live.

I’m coming to accept that time must be attended to, like a garden, or one will surely pay via its drying up; neglect produces parchedness. Time must be nurtured, it must be coddled and affirmed—doing so will ensure it will give back ten-fold.

So many Americans live lives that are frantically busy, driven by sense of lack, and without reflection. Socrates would roll over in his grave with our general lack of rigorous self-examination. “There’s no time,” we all snap back. “Who has time to examine their choices, their habits, their ways of being with others, their ways of being alone?” Do we ever think about what our busy-ness gives or promises us? Can we afford to live such unexamined lives?

What would Socrates say? Is this lifestyle of frantic activity (multi-tasking, multi-texting, even while driving) making our lives worth living? “Time is money,” they say. The truth is, time is what we make it to be. It’s like an ordinary piece of fabric—we can make with it a mat to rest upon or a noose to hang ourselves with…it’s up to us.

At this particular time in my life, I’m making time to write—“just three pages a day,” as The Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron suggests. She calls them “morning pages” because they can start the flow of creativity the first thing in the morning, just like meditation. I’ve called them “mourning pages” because even as a kid they were a kind of lamentation of my half-lived life. If I hang in there with the writing, it usually unearths the shadowy parts of myself that often experience sadness, fear, anger or loss of some kind.

If you were willing to take responsibility for making time for your reflection, what would you discover? Do you hope to get somewhere else by moving faster through life? Such unexpressed feeling often turns into depression or general moodiness. Everyone benefits when I use my “mourning pages.”

Making This Practice My Own:

I commit to writing three pages a day this week, right after I get up in the morning.

I commit to move my pen on paper—without criticism for what I see during this time. I will not edit my words or thoughts, I will let my imagination run wild with thick description for what I’m feeling, seeing, noticing this moment.

During this time, I will let my brain drain out onto the page. I will let myself “let it rip” if I want to complain. I will let myself rant if I want to rant. I will let myself be full of self-pity if I want to be full of self-pity—accounting for all the wrongs done to me in my lifetime. If I want to moan, I’ll moan while I do this. If I want to imagine myself in a horror movie, I’ll spell out the details in my morning writing. If I want to imagine myself in some tawdry affair, I’ll not miss one drop of saucy description. If I want to make this one long wish list, for seven whole days, that’s just great.

How does using time to listen to your unexpressed feelings feel? What’s it like to carve out space for yourself to just exhale—no resistance, no holding back to what you’ve been feeling? Can you bring more of your plucky self (what Buddhist’s call your “original nature”) to what you do in work and love?

Do you need support in sticking with this commitment? I hope to hear from you! Contact me through my this blog or my home website!