Just Married! — Gibrán Rivera

tldr: Reflections on getting married. How I think of my relationship with you. The reason why I choose to share what is deeply personal. And only for those interested in this sort of thing, the note ends with our vows. And a few other such sweet and loving things.

ONLY BECAUSE SO MANY OF YOU HAVE ASKED FOR IT

Here is the link to our registry.

THIS IS NOT AN ASK FROM US!!!!

Jumping the Broom was a symbolic way for enslaved people in the United States to recognize their marriages, Today we keep this tradition as a way to honor ancestors who chose love in the midst of despair.

My Relationship with You

You know this is not just a newsletter.

We are involved in a decentralized conspiracy of love.

We are turning towards each other. And to what is emergent. And to what it means to find our way in times that augur catastrophe.

We are the ones who stand on the side of life. The ones who will live with an open heart. No matter how much it breaks.

We are the ones who will refuse to dehumanize the other. No matter how impossible it is to witness the horrors that we see.

We are the ones who will own our own shadows. Who will know our own capacity for evil. Who take responsibility for our actions. Make amends and face the consequences.

We are ancestors in training. We are the keepers of what humanity will need. We are becoming the keepers of the medicine, the keepers of the songs, and the keepers of the wisdom of the ages.

What I share here with you might often be about our work, about strategy and ways of thinking. About amazing people. And about what will help us become better.

But I also mean to share my heart with you. My journey. What I’m learning, and where I mean to go. I mean to share it, because I want to continue to find the others, those of us who are saying yes. We are the ones who’ll face forward. Here we go.

We Got Married

What I share with you is my heart and my life. And so of course I will share with you one of the happiest, fullest days of my life. The day I married Tuesday Rivera. The day we became husband and wife.

As we planned our ceremony, we used one word to anchor our intention, that word was: Exuberant.

And exuberant is what we got. It was an exuberant outpouring of love that flowed from all directions. Yes. The love between us is infectious (I’m not just saying this! It’s based on lots of feedback!). If you don’t mind my longer missives, stay through to the end. Where I share a note from the perspective of one of our beloved friends.

When I say from all directions I am talking about something bigger than our love. I am talking about a long cultivated community of people. People who share a commitment to live with an open heart. A commitment to community. And to the emergence of a new “We.”

When enough people share a powerful commitment and intention, others in the space will feel it too. Even if they can’t quite name it.

We held this space together, not just Tuesday and I. Not just Calvin our officiant or Vetto our DJ/Music Master. But those of us who share and practice life with this intention of togetherness.

Us, Tuesday & Gibrán

I am overcome with the beauty of my wife’s radiance that day, a light that will live within me for the rest of my life.

I am humbled and grateful by the way our children chose to show up. Even after going through the heartbreak of divorce.

I am moved to pieces by the people who traveled near and far to be there with us.

Tuesday and I have been through the transformative crisis that comes with middle age (still unfolding, btw). We made heartbreaking choices that brought us together. And we placed devotion to the Divine at the very center of our relationship.

Here is the Trick: Have Yourself

Tuesday and I met as people who were already learning to have our ownselves. It is this knowing we we are. This knowing that happiness flows from within. Is what makes us able to love each other with wild abandon.

I am not the source of her love. And she is not the source of mine. Which allows us to be wildly in love with each other.

I don’t want to leave you with the illusion of perfection. It is important that you know that we know each other’s weaknesses and failings. Tuesday knows of my devastating capacity to fall, she knows the worst sins of my past. And she knows my willingness to reveal the worst of me as it shows up.

I don’t pretend or expect that she will put up with anything and everything I do wrong. She respects herself too much. But I do trust her to love me when I fall. She married me knowing that there are still things that are not well within me. That the healing journey takes a lifetime. That I have the capacity to hurt and harm that exists within us all. But she also knows that I have a commitment to take responsibility. And to continue to see myself better, and heal - get free.

This is what we have. And this is what we bring.

Know that we are each committed to offering what we are learning. She is in the middle of offering Navigating Transformation. A program for women that is teaser for a longer program next year. I just invited you all to Learn to Breathe with Me. And men are always welcomed to join the Better Men Project.

Know that there is more good stuff coming. Offerings from both of us together. And as I’ve mentioned before, we offer private healing work for couples. Just reach out to us directly if you want to learn more about this work.

I want to close by thanking you if you have read this far, and for sending any love that you have been sending our way.

If you are the type that wants to know more, following you will find:

Our vows
My son’s poem
A note from a dear friend, including Sufi Poetry
A reading from The Radiance Sutras
Shout Outs

Thank you for reading this far. I treasure the gift of your attention.

Tuesday’s Vows

You always tell me that I’m your dream girl. That you conjured me. And I always tell you that I didn’t even KNOW to dream of you. You are more than I ever could have imagined.

So. Here are some things I promise to do to keep this dream we keep dreaming together alive.

I promise to love you big and hard and fierce and strong and too much. My love for you will never be small, and it will never be contained. I won’t even try.

And I promise to accept the love you give me. To keep opening my heart wider to you every day, because love is your superpower, and I am ready to receive it all.

I will be at your back and by your side every day for the rest of our lives - through everything good - all the blessings that are ours and those that will come - and through each trial, too.

I will honor who you are and who you will become with my devotion, adoration, and reverence.

I promise, with your help, to become more my Self every day and invite you into the most sacred parts of me.

I will be relentless in my passion for you. My body will worship yours and receive your worship gratefully.

I will cherish, love, and protect Darshan. And I give my children - Zane and Eily - into your own loving care. I will support you to carry them - the most precious beings in my life - in your own heart, eager for your blessing into their lives.

I will love your family.

And I will love YOU - deeply, faithfully, fully.

I will trust you completely. Not because of what you do, but because of who you are.

You are my person, love. You are my all. My Parvati Pataye.

And I promise to be yours every day for the rest of our lives.

Gibrán’s Vows

Tuesday, my beloved. Light of my days, and star of my nights.

I made a vow long ago.

A vow to give my heart to my Lord and my God.

To worship the Goddess in all of her forms.

I did this. And She gave me you.

And so this is my first vow to you, to always love you and gaze upon you like the most sacred gift from my Lord.

I vow to stand for you, and behind you.

To raise you up and to hold you.

To honor you and protect you.

I vow to cherish you, and adore you

Now, today, and through my very last exhale.

Tuesday, my love and my life.

I vow to honor your children,

to respect their father and their love for that good, beautiful man.

I vow to hold them deeply inside my heart.

To love them, even more than I already do.

To be a good steward in their lives,

Not just now, but as long as we have life.

Tuesday, gift to my soul

I honor the way

You’ve turned horror and pain into gold

I am in awe of the alchemy of your heart

I feel, know and I trust your wisdom

The medicine

The divine power that moves through you.

And is you.

I vow to know and gaze upon you

As the embodiment of Goddess

That I know your Self to be true

I vow to receive and learn to receive

I vow to allow and learn to allow

The Grace and power that moves through you

That heals my heart and guides my path.

I vow to be your ground and your anchor.

I vow to be your man and your rock.

And I vow to live this life together as a prayer and the worship, of all and whatever comes.The joyful, the tragic, and the mundane. Because all of it is made of Love.

As an altar to the most ancestral of all Gods.

To her shakti, to this force that moves through us and that is us,

The Divine truth that we call love, liberation…

kindness, awareness, consciousness and bliss.

All of this I vow to you, here on this sacred day,

As our precious children bear witness

Our dearest family

And our sacred community of friends.

Amen, Ahó, Ashé, Satgurunath Mahra Ki Jay!

My Son’s Poem

Turning to my inner child

Accepting him

Letting him feel

Giving him a hug

He loves his dad

More than anything

I may have been sad or mad

But now we’re closer than ever

I love his now wife

And I am really truly happy for him

I hope kindness continues to brew

Between you

And in your hearts

I wish you well in this journey

Of life, And love

Thank you for being the pillar I can always lean on,

The Father I can always trust

I really and truly love you

-Your son

A note from a dear friend

I wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know how inspired I was by the ceremony yesterday and by your love in general. There are times in life when you experience something new. Something you theoretically understood but failed to truly grasp. A new location on the existential map. A mode of being that opens the door to new possibilities.

Yesterday was very much one of those moments for me. Watching the two of you holding hands with your eyes closed as you chanted showed me something I deeply desire, but don't think I believed was possible. A passionate romantic love deeply grounded in a spiritual connection.

Standing in front of us at that moment, you embodied the saying:

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

It felt like this Al Basri poem:

In Love, nothing exists

between heart and heart.

Speech is born out of longing,

True description from the real taste.

The one who tastes, knows;

the one who explains, lies.

How can you describe

the true form of Something

In whose presence you are blotted out?

And in whose being you still exist?

And who lives as a sign for your journey?

It was fitting that there was a Rumi reading. As I told Gibran at the reception, in the west Sufi poems are mostly recited in a romantic context without any understanding of the spiritual path they were intended to point towards. I can honestly say that yesterday, more than any other time in my life I saw the full expression of that poetry. The perfect union of both romantic and spiritual meanings embodied in your love.

Gibran's experience of you as a gift from his Guru reminds me of one of my favorite Sufi poems Tuesday.

When the Day came,

The Day I had lived and died for,

The Day that is not in any calendar,

Clouds heavy with love Showered me with wild abundance.

Inside me, my soul was drenched.

Around me, even the desert grew green.

~ Kabir

You're an inspiration to so many of us and I can't wait to see how your love continues to blossom across the years.

Mike Norman

A Reading from The Radiance Sutras

verses 13 - 21

The Radiance Sutras is a lively, modern version of a classic tantric scripture. The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. It describes 112 different doorways into meditation.

Let me tell you of the luminous path.

I am beyond measure. I cannot be calculated.

I am beyond space and time.

I am beyond ancient and beyond the future.

There are no directions to me.

I am always here.

I am the embrace

Of your most intimate experience.

Though I am beyond the intellect, I am not beyond your daring.

I am the nourishing state of fullness

That is the essence of soul.

You belong to me, and I am yours.

My nature is spotless, completely uncontaminated.

I am not covered up, not even by a billion galaxies.

So who is there to worship and adore?

There is no one to appease.

Sacred texts sing of my reality,

But I cannot be found in them,

For I am the one listening.

I am always closer than breath.

Heat and fire are not two separate things.

These are just verbal distinctions.

The Goddess and the One who holds Her

Are one and the same.

We are inseparable.

The way to me is through Her.

I am everywhere, infusing everything.

To find me,

Become absorbed in intense experience.

Go all the way.

Be drenched in the energies of life.

Enter the world beyond separation.

The light of a candle reveals a room.

The rays of the sun reveal the world.

So does the divine feminine

Illumine the way to me.

Shout Outs

Our kids
- her son and daughter for receiving guests and walking her down the aisle
- my son for receiving guests and the courageous and honest poem he shared
Jen McSween for her invaluable support planning our wedding
Karen James for her reading from the Radiance Sutras
Kendra Lara for her heart rending acapella rendition of “The Vow,” written by Sandi Ncube & Dato Seiko
Calvin Feliciano for doing an absolutely amazing and sacred job as officiant
Vetto Casado for #killinit with the music, making it party AND ceremony
Gwendy Rodriguez for her remarkable photography
Wilber Renderos for his friendship and videography
The good people at Willow Spring Vineyard, our venue in Haverhill