Jerry Chasen's Blog

Obviously, I didn’t take this photo (I’d have been young to be doing such good self-portraits!)

This is the balance of the commitment ceremony. There are an odd number of vows. In the service, Mark and I alternated reading sentences in the vows, starting over again when we’d gone thru it once. That way, we each said all of the vows.

When Mark and I decided to have a commitment ceremony, it was immediately clear to me that I couldn’t recite anyone else’s words. So we explored what we wanted the ceremony to say, and then I wrote it. Written in rhyme (natch), the ceremony explores the nature of relationships, looking at traits common to none, some, all and specifically, ours. The entire ceremony was originally presented in a program book, and posted here are two posters made from the program book. The audio for this is done individually, so each section of the ceremony is recorded separately.

I knew first how this poem would end–”I’m in no rush, none whatsoever”

I’ve long believed that we create ourselves by our responses–to situations, to challenges, and of course, to some basic questions. Using journalism’s “4 w’s and and h”, I tried to explore some interesting, defining questions.