Joining hands interfaith5/11/2023 This is the fifth year the girls did something philanthropic, this time raising more than $7,200 for local charities! The funds will benefit the Interfaith Outreach and ICA food shelves.Įmily, the oldest sister, was especially excited: “Seeing how generous people are with their money was amazing. On Saturday, March 19, 2022, the girls’ Cocoa Café was held in their family’s front yard. Sisters Emily and Ashley started a refreshing tradition – not lemonade in the comfortable warmth of summer, but cocoa and coffee in the frigid cold of winter as a way to help our neighbors who experience food insecurity. For more information, please visit marincoastweddings.In the summertime, you might see a neighborhood dotted with lemonade stands run by busy young hands and entrepreneurial minds. Reverend Elizabeth River is an ordained Interfaith Minister based in the North Bay. In the following video clip, Susanna beautifully expresses what I strive to do, in part, for the couples whom I marry: Īnd if you want to check out the results of this approach, please read some of the comments on my website: įinally, as always, my great blessings to you on your wedding, and your marriage! I recommend using Susanna’s wonderful book to help you in that effort. No matter who officiates your wedding, consider asking that person to help create a ceremony that reflects both you and your partner as individuals and as a couple. I refer many couples to this book as we collaborate to create unique cere-monies. She is from New York City, and her book about interfaith weddings, Joining Hands and Hearts: Interfaith, Intercultural Wedding Celebrations, A Practical Guide for Couples, became my guidebook. Her name is Reverend Susanna Stefanachi Macomb. I have the desire now, after 11 years of officiating weddings, to give public acknowledgment and gratitude to the woman who has had the greatest influence on my interfaith wedding ministry. Simply put, my interfaith ministry is about helping people open up to what their own deepest truths are, and encouraging them to express and live them with their mate, fully and joyously. The latter seemed so much more meaningful to me.Īs an interfaith minister, I love marrying couples of different backgrounds: people from different religions, cultures, sexual preferences, creeds, and those with no religious or faith tradition. This was somewhat instinctual for me, as I had attended many weddings and had been, quite honestly, bored by the impersonal language, the rote statements of intentions and vows, and the old-fashioned words and phrases that gave no indication of what it was like for a particular couple to have found one another, and to be making longstanding vows. It’s important to me that their ceremony reflects them, whether it’s a big wedding with family, friends, colleagues and community, or simply an elopement with just the two of them. I was hooked! Over my first year or two, I developed a practice of helping couples to go deeply into themselves in order to find out who they are and what marriage is all about to them. When I was student at an interfaith seminary 11 years ago, I was exposed to the ways and forms of celebration and ritual in many cultures and religions. Instead, these events were viewed as quiet expres-sions of a couple’s commitment and acknowledgment of God’s blessing of it. I grew up Quaker, a member of the Society of Friends, and we didn’t celebrate life events in the way most religions do, with fanfare and rituals. When I first learned about creating wedding ceremonies to honor and mark the important transitions in life, I was captivated.
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