---

"You Were Born Together",  by Khalil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

---

Song of Solomon, the Old Testament

 I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine
My beloved speaks and says to me:
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;
for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come,
 and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine
 O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face, let me hear your voice,
for your voice is sweet, and your face is comely. 
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave. 
It flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement flame
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house,
it would be utterly scorned.
I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine

---

I Corinthians: Inspiration from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians

If I speak in the tongues of men
and of angels,
but have not love,
I am nothing more than a noisy gong
or a clanging cymbal. 
And if I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries,
and have all knowledge,
and a faith that can move mountains,
but have not love,
I am nothing ...
Love is patient; love is kind.
It is never jealous,
nor boastful, proud or rude.
It’s is never selfish, resentful, or quick-tempered.
It keeps no records of wrongs.
Love rejoices with truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
And love never ends.
Faith, Hope and Love ... abide in these three.
But the greatest of these ... is love.
May love always be your aim.
Amen.

 (edited version)

---

 From "The Hymn of the Universe",  by Teilhard de Chardin  

Only love can bring individual beings to their perfect  completion, as individuals, by uniting them one with another, because only love takes  possession of them and unites them by what lies deepest within them. This is simply a fact  of our everyday experience. For indeed at what moment do lovers come into the most  complete possession of themselves if not when they say that they are lost in one another?  And is not love all the time achieving - in couples, in teams, all around us - the magical  and reputedly contradictory feat of personalizing through totalizing? And why should not  what is thus daily achieved on a small scale be repeated one day on world-wide dimensions?

Humanity, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples, the paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, of  the one with the many: all these are regarded as utopian fantasies, yet they are  biologically necessary; and if we would see them made flesh in the world what more need we  do than imagine our power to love growing and broadening, till it can embrace the totality  of human beings and of the earth?

---

Sonnet 116,  by William Shakespeare 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering barque
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

---