Wednesday 16 April 2008

Write your own wedding

Jeltje Gordon Lennox has a book of inter-religious wedding ceremonies which has just been published by Labor et Fides.
A few years ago Jeltje set up Ashoka an inter-religious association which offers education and spiritual accompaniment. Jeltje is a theologian and minister and also a qualified psychotherapist. Ashoka offers an alternative inter-religious catechism for children and young people. It also offers personal accompaniment for weddings, funerals, births and other life events.
Many Protestant churches encourage people to write their own marriage services and in most European contexts outside the UK the legal ceremony cannot take place in church thus offering alot of freedom for developing lituriges.
I've not managed to read a copy of Jeltje's book yet but I'm pleased it's come out and that two more on births and funerals will be coming out soon. It represents some of what is really happening at local level where a very high proportion of weddings and funerals are ecumenical and inter-religious.
Where weddings are concerned anything that helps couples write their own vows and personalise the big day has to be a good thing.
For the moment the book is only in French but as Jeltje is trilingual perhaps she'll be working on another language version as well.

1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

Maybe the author of the Stranzblog could translate it into English and seek a UK publisher.