NOTE: With a few recent weddings as well as REI’s awesome announcement on marriage equality yesterday, I thought now would be a great time to publish my vows to Marja. I originally wrote and recited these wedding vows to her on Piha Beach in New Zealand on November 17, 2006. I cross-published them to Medium on our 10th anniversary in 2016.
The wedding vows
Photo © Claudia Gaitzsch. View more of our wedding photos.
I’ve learned a new word while we’ve been traveling around New Zealand: tapu. I was told that it’s a Maori word meaning something akin to the Unknown and that the Maori use it when referring to anything new or unexplored; they consider the tapu to be sacred. The tapu evoke a sense of the greater universe and its inner workings; special, unique and mysterious, these attributes should be cherished and conserved, loved and honored.
Marja, I don’t know what the next hundred years will hold – they are tapu. But since we will be together, I have no fear. Just like the curves of Coromandel, they will lead us to new sunrises, new rivers that let out to the ocean, new forests that open up into clearings.
“Though round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day has come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.” (source)
The unknown is beautiful, Marja, and I look forward to sharing it with you.
