CELEBRATING 25TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY OF BABS&KU-SOONOGO 19940709 ©

CELEBRANT: Welcome everyone. 
PEOPLE: And welcome to you.
CELEBRANT: Do we come in peace and admiration for this couple: Baz and Babs on this special anniversary?
PEOPLE: We come in peace and admiration.
CELEBRANT: It is an anniversary of committment to each other, to their respective families and to their own family, their children and to those who came before them and to those who will follow them. Do we, will we encourage our own families to do and be likewise?
PEOPLE: We do.
CELEBRANT: Their steadfastness is a statement of courage, patience, determination - and most of all a statement of love.
PEOPLE: It is a statement of love for themselves, but equally for our community and the families that make up our community.
CELEBRANT: Ours is a community that has known the deliberate breakup and breakdown of our families. The separation of wife from husband and parent from child and child from the past. Today, as in the past we still struggle to save our children, our future and our families. Our dearest sister Babs and our dearest brother Ku-Soonogo today are a fine example of how we have tried to preserve our families in the face of enormous pressures and oppressions. As the Prophet said: "We've had many rivers to cross." As the prophet said we look for a world in which, "No woman, no man, no child will cry." As the prophet asked, "Who hath believed our report? For we have been despised and rejected. We are a people acquainted with sorrow and with grief." Today, we look for a world in which a human in the process of being will be more valued than a human in the process of having. But that world will come when we have been able to build our families, able to instill in our children the values of long-term committment to re-claiming andbuilding our families from the pressures of unemployment, from the pressures of mis-education. That world will come when we re-claim for ourselves and for our children the knowledge that no matter what life brings to us, that ultimately our lives and future and progress rest in our own hands, rest in our own efforts, rest in our own understanding that building our families require that we support our community financially, that we use our resources first and foremost in the interests of humanity, and in the interests of our community and its children.
We will listen to a call from Ku-Soonogo to his Babs.
KU-SOONOGO: Reading ...
CELEBRANT: We will listen to a call from Babs to her Ku-Soonogo.
BABS: Reading ...
CELEBRANT: Even during the most trying times, our ancestors, when they could tried to join families, to preserve their children. They would jump the Broom, a simple step, signifying their committment to their families and to their communities. People present, should we ask our dearest beloved: Babs and Kus-Soonogo to show their continued committment to family and community by also asking them to jump the broom?
(The Broom is brought by one of the children to the sound of drumming. Babs and Ku-Soonogo dance to it and jump the Broom from East to West from Sunrise to Sunset from Africa to the Americas)
PEOPLE: Babs and Ku-Soonogo, jump the Broom; your family with you.
BABS/KO-SOONOGO: (with their family) now call on other families who are 25 years and more to stand, and if they wish to also come and jump the Broom after them; then to those less than 25 years to join them in jumping over the Broom, signifying our common committment to family and community.
SATURDAY, JULY 9TH 1994

MY DEAREST KU-SOONOGO:
I HAVE HAD THE HONOUR, AND THE PLEASURE - NO LESS, TO HAVE BEEN SPOUSE, AND LOVER WITH YOU. THEY HAVE BEEN YEARS THAT HAD THEIR HARDSHIPS, THEIR DISAPPOINTMENTS AND THEIR STRAIN. BUT THEY HAVE ALSO BEEN YEARS, THAT DID NOT SEE A SINGLE YEAR IN ALL THOSE YEARS WHEN MY LOVE FOR YOU DID NOT GROW. IT IS AS IF THE HARDSHIPS AND DIFFICULTIES BROUGHT ME CLOSER TO YOU, MADE MORE IN LOVE AND COMMITTED TO BEING WITH YOU AND RAISING A FAMILY WITH YOU.
I REMEMBER YOU WHEN YOU HAD ALL YOUR HAIR. I REMEMBER YOU WHEN YOU HAD ALL YOUR ZEST. I REMEMBER YOU WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG - WHEN I, TOO WAS YOUNG. WHAT A TIME. AND I REMEMBER NOW HOW YOU PLEASED ME AND LOVED ME. AND I KNOW THAT IF YOU HAD A THOUSAND LIVES AND TEN THOUSAND OPPORTUNITIES THAT YOU WOULD STILL TAKE AS SPOUSE AND LOVER YOUR OWN BABS. AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW IN THE PRESENCE OF ALL THIS COMPANY GATHERED HERE TODAY, THAT IN THE SAME WAY AS I WAS NERVOUS ON OUR WEDDING DAY, THAT I'M STILL NERVOUS TODAY; AND THAT AS I LOVED YOU AND LOOKED FORWARD TO LIVING AND HAVING OUR CHILDREN AND FAMILY WITH YOU THAT NOW, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, THAT I WOULD DO IT AGAIN; THAT I WOULD LOVE YOU AGAIN, AND THAT IF IT WAS POSSIBLE THAT I WOULD LOVE YOU AND CARE FOR YOU MORE, MORE AND MUCH MORE - BECAUSE MY DEAREST KU-SOONOGO, I YOUR BABS, STILL TRULY, TRULY LOVE YOU!
BABS!

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