The Year of a Thousand Cranes

It has been some time since I’ve sat down to write a blog post, and I confess that the greatest reason is that I have spent all my spare time in the last few months planning our D.I.Y. wedding. My partner and I at long last had a beautiful wedding ceremony in a rustic state park in the heart of Virginia’s Cumberland forest. Friends and family surrounded us as we offered blessings and khatags to each other and spoke the following vows:

Do you pledge to help each other to cultivate compassion, patience, and wisdom in all the seasons of life?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to see all circumstances as opportunities to grow, to open your hearts, to accept yourselves, and each other and to generate compassion?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to honor the mystery of each other, even as you seek to understand yourselves, each other, and all living beings?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to examine your own minds continually and to regard all the mysteries of life with curiosity and joy?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to preserve and enrich your affection for each other, and to share it with other beings?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to take the loving feelings you have for one another and your vision of each other’s potential and inner beauty as an example and to radiate this love outwards?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to remember the disadvantages of fear, anger, judgment and clinging attachment, and to apply antidotes when these arise in your minds?
“Yes.”

Do you pledge to support each other and help each other deepen the other’s experience of the Tao, holding in your awareness that all things and beings are empty of a separate existence?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to continually return to the awareness of your own Buddha nature and the Buddha nature of all beings?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to continually return to the awareness that all things are impermanent?

“Yes.”

Do you pledge to allow this awareness of the impermanence of all things to help you achieve your greatest potential and lasting happiness?

“Yes.”

The Japanese tradition of Senbazuru, or the making of a thousand origami paper cranes, is said to bring the maker of them eternal good luck and a blessing or wish come to pass. And, so, I embark for the remainder of the year on making a thousand paper cranes with the intention of inviting the blessing that I may every day remember my vows and remember who I was on that day–a true being connected to every other being by the purest of love–a girl with her heart blown wide open with love and gratitude.