The passage read by the minister, from Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow
Lindbergh (1955, reissued in October 1991 by Pantheon books; ISBN:
0679406832; available at bookstores or via www.amazon.com)

"The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or
expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in
looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in
dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting
it as it is now."

[The passage continues in the essay: "For relationships,
too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and
now, within their limits-islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea,
continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security
of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency." -

Read at Ellyn's Wedding, in "the Wedding", Sent in by listee Mary B