The Language of Ceremony
A glimpse into the voice behind your words
People often ask what a ceremony script from me actually sounds like. It is one thing to describe custom writing, and another to simply read it. So here, without a service to sell or a package to explain, are two pieces of contemplative writing that reflect the voice I bring to this work — the same voice that shapes blessings, memorials, and every ceremony in between.
As a Certified Life Cycle Celebrant, Ordained Minister, and Third Order Benedictine Oblate, I move comfortably between the sacred and the secular, the traditional and the deeply personal. These two invocations lean toward the contemplative and interfaith. Your ceremony may sound nothing like this — it will sound like you. But this is the craft underneath it.
In the Light
Invocation of Recognition
Divine Light that illuminates our hearts,
may we become still enough
to remember.
May we rest in the spark of recognition —
the quiet knowing
that the Light we seek
is ever present.
The inner radiance we share
awakens the deepest well
of love within us,
and may that love
become a blessing
in the world around us.
Discover — we turn inward.
Recognize — we see the Light that was already there.
Remember — we return to it again and again.
Live — we carry it into the world.
Before the Names
Before there were words for the Holy,
there was the Mystery.
Before we called it Creator,
Spirit, Light,
or Love,
there was the One.
The One reminds us
that the Divine cannot be contained.
It is the silence before the song.
The light before the flame.
The source before all things.
And when that light touches the human heart,
something within us remembers.
Before the names, there was silence.
Before the words, there was wonder.
Before every teaching,
every tradition,
and every path,
there was the Mystery
the One beyond all names.
Listen in the silence.
Open the heart awakened by love.
Recognize the light within — the divine presence
already dwelling within you.
Awaken to the truth
that you are held in a love
greater than you can name.
Then follow the path of love
lived in the world.
As a way of being.
A light carried into ordinary moments.
A kindness offered.
A presence shared.
A life remembered.
Listen in the silence.
Awaken the heart through love.
Recognize the light within.
Walk the path of love in the world.
Whatever your ceremony calls for — sacred, secular, or somewhere between the two — I write toward the same thing: words still enough to hold what matters most.