Wedding of Angus and Lorraine, 20th July 2000
Investing and animating
Before I begin there are just a couple of personal words that I'd
like to share with you. Firstly, I want
to thank you Angus for putting your confidence in me taking your wedding. I remember that when I married Ruth, Angus,
whom I didn't know that well at that stage, and who was a lot taller than me,
put his arm around her and looking at me said, "She is my sister. You make sure you take care of
her." And then he gave me a bit of
a stare. So I assume that the fact you
have asked me to do this today means that I have done okay so far.
And to you Lorraine I want to say that it is great to welcome you
to the family. Because to marry a
Wilson is the most fantastic privilege anyone could wish for. It says here. In Ruth's writing.
When you consider marriage, you can often feel like a mosquito in
a nudist camp - you hardly know where to begin. There is at terrible poster that came out in the seventies. For some unknown reason it has a deer on it,
and the caption reads, "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it was meant to
be." It actually makes me feel a
bit queasy, but it is definitely true in your case, and I am sure that there is
a real spark between you, which has lasted down the years. But as you begin your life as husband and
wife today I've taken my cue from a similarly pithy phrase, but one that I
think is true for everyone. And it's
this. Love works for those who work at
love.
It's hard work, love. It
can have you up in the morning early, thinking you'll never be able to do it,
and it can keep you occupied till late at night. But we're off to a good start here, because you both know
something about hard work. Lorraine, I
know you have a lot of knowledge about money.
I'd like to congratulate you on the policy you are opening today. We live in a world where many like to
speculate about their investments, rather than to commit themselves to one
policy. But as you know, speculation
has just bred insecurity into the whole system. The way you have chosen to invest may seem foolish to some, but
the dividends it promises are rich and sure.
But I hope that you realise that this policy won't grow of its own
accord. It will require careful and
wise investment. You will find that it
will change and will need reassessing from time to time. I've heard that good investors check every
day to see how their bonding and sharing is going. They know that the value of what they have is subject to external
pressures, and so a regular audit is necessary. Indeed you will find that the value of what you have seems to go
up and down, but the trick is to stick with the policy and perhaps consider
which new areas you need to move into, even though this might feel risky.
I've been investing in Ruth.com for nearly ten years now, and I
would like to offer you a few trading hints.
I find the most valuable commodities are communication and
forgiveness. You can never buy enough
of these, and the irony is the more you buy, the more you seem to have. Forgiveness is essential. The more you get to know your policy, the
more weaknesses you will see in it. You
will therefore find it useful to keep short accounts, and to write off any
debts as soon as possible. I would also
encourage you to concentrate on income, rather than expenditure. By this I don’t mean the income you can acquire
from your partner. When you are making
such a long term investment, the best way in which you can help it grow is by
refusing to concentrate on the profits you are making: "What am I getting out of
this?" Instead, try to think of
new ways in which you can add to the investment, what you can put
into it. Similarly, if you are overly
interested in how much the budget is being balanced in your policy: “Is my
partner putting in his or her fair share of love?”, you will quickly drain the life out of it.
A lot of people think that investments grow best in an atmosphere
of competition. Here you will have to
part company with conventional wisdom. For
your investment will flourish in an atmosphere of worship. To worship your investment means to
continually tell it what it is worth, to tell it how valuable it is. Indeed, you will find that the more you tell
your investment how valuable it is, and the more you treat it as if it is
valuable, the more its value will actually increase. Worship your investment, make it your task to bring out its
worth, and it will yield rich dividends.
And so Angus. Now we turn
to you. What do you know of the work of
love? Can I suggest that you are about
to embark on the most exciting animation project you have had so far. Because to animate things is a divine task. God animated human beings when he breathed
life into their nostrils. To animate
means to give spirit to something, to bring something to life.
Today you are beginning to create an animation. You are starting a lifelong task in which
you will need to continually think of ways to breathe spirit and life into
it. In what happens here you are
setting up the outline and foundation.
From now on you will need to bring colour, texture, and life into your
animation. You will need to introduce
spontaneity, unexpected elements. Think
of new ways in which it will learn to function. You might find that the animation doesn't always look the way you
expected. Rather than try and force it
into your mould you might have to adapt your own creative ideas. Whatever happens, your aim is not to love
the animation as a piece of virtual reality, but to treat it as your own flesh
and blood.
You will also find the experience is a bit like playing a game,
and so it should be. Play will always
be important. But this is a game in which point scoring is irrelevant. Because the beauty of this game is that it
won't finish if you aren't playing it well - it doesn't depend on how well you
are performing. Game Over has been
written out. You are free to fail. You may find you drop back a level from time
to time, but you are free to continue to play, with the added knowledge your
mistakes have given you.
Another thing to say about this graphic you are animating is that
it will only truly come to life if it is three dimensional. You will therefore need an inward dimension,
in which you nurture each other. You
will need an outward dimension, in which other people can help you to
grow. And you will need an upward, or
God-ward, dimension in which your whole animation can make sense.
Because if you are to run your animation successfully, you will
need an operating system from which to run it.
You cannot create your own graphic out of nothing. It needs to abide in a programme that can
give it a shape. The software for this
has been written for us all from the beginning, and if you abide in this
programme, you will find it enables your application to run smoothly. It is the software which booted up creation
and brought us into being. It is called
the love of God, and unlike Windows will not crash. Like Windows, it has a worldwide monopoly. So you don't need your
own operating programme, the language has already been written, the potential
has been set. It was written through
the investment of blood, sweat and tears, and will still be running when your
animation has run its course.
So today we pray that you will invest wisely and continually be
people who animate each other. And may
you have a three dimensional marriage which yields a rich and fruitful profit
for you and for those whom you love.
Amen.