Today our friends IT and her wife BP will celebrate their blessing ceremony in church. BP and IT were married in the window of opportunity when California law allowed for same-sex marriages. The law was later reversed in the infamous Proposition 8, but the marriages of the couples during the time when the law was in force are still valid.
I pray for IT and BP a lovely and joyous day.
Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life. By the power of the Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing upon IT and BP. Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads.
Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death. Finally, in your mercy, bring them to that table where your saints feast forever in your heavenly home; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.
The prayer is taken from the blessing ceremony of Susan Russell and Louise Brooks on February 18, 2006. I hope Louise and Susan don't mind my borrowing.
The banner at the head of the post is the work of my good friend Paul the BB, who blogs at Byzigenous Buddhapalian.
