We celebrated our 25th Renewal of Marriage Vows with another wedding celebration at the Unitarian Congregation of Mendon and Uxbridge on September 9, 2023, with family and friends.
As an interfaith minister, I LOVE this sign. It welcomes all humanity, of which you are all a part. Not one person is left out. You are worthy.
Below is the picture of our wedding 25 years ago taken on the front steps of this beloved church.
This year, two of our 13 grandchildren were able to ring the church bells before and after the ceremony, signaling to everyone in the town of Mendon that something extraordinary was taking place. Even Eternal Universal Life Force Energy celebrated along with us at the exact moment of our poignant ceremony acknowledging this milestone with a lightning bolt and thunderous serenade. These grandchildren also handed out red roses to all of our guests. John would always bring me a red rose when we were dating.
Rev. Patricia Hatch, minister of the Unitarian Congregation of Mendon and Uxbridge, officiated our ceremony and lovingly and joyously interacted with all our guests, especially our grandchildren, inviting them up to the podium and picking them up so they could see over the edge. They had such big smiles on their faces and did such a great job handing out the red roses. The previous Monday John and I went to their house for dinner, tied lace to the stems, and the 2- and 4-year-old children practiced handing out the red roses to their mother and father, John and me. They did such a good job!
Wait until I tell you our life story. Our ceremony began with my talk, followed by John’s talk. This is our story.
Lin’s Talk
My prayers were answered the day I met you. My knees went weak at our first kiss. You are my Soulmate and the love of my life. When we are together, it is as if there is another huge Presence around us. It is timeless and beautiful. I believe we are blessed by Eternal Universal Life Force Energy. This combination of my I Am Presence and your I Am Presence makes for an Energy so strong, so tender, and so all-encompassing that it overflows out to the world.
You are the valiant open door to all that is possible for me and for us. You are the most courageous person I know in the world. You stand up for justice, integrity, and honor. You never flinch in the face of injustice, no matter what the cost of standing on principle is. You are ahead of your time.
Living with you is like riding the highs of life, like the 30-foot waves at Oahu’s North Shore Sunset Beach we saw when we were there. You break into song when I least expect it, singing songs of love and life as you must have done when you were in a rock n’ roll band at the Gaslight Lounge on the Ramada Inn in Texas before you went to Vietnam. Even there, you were in a rock n’ roll band, singing for the troops to help alleviate their stress during a horrific war. Those at the Montagnard Village, the indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands, thought you WERE the Beatles. You sought to bring joy, peace, and solution wherever you went to soothe the troops.
You were so well thought of that we received a call, when we lived in New Hampshire, from Adrian Cronauer, because the drummer from your band in Vietnam suggested he call you because they were trying to put your band back together for a special ceremony at the Vietnam Memorial. Stars and Stripes Magazine contacted you on two separate occasions to work for them in Japan, but life would not allow this to happen.
I always wondered why I was so captivated by news reports about the Vietnam War. I am a pacifist. But I saw every news report of what was going on. Now I know why, my heart was there with you.
I used the same heart-shaped wreath from our first wedding, replacing the old ribbons, red velvet bow, and red roses with a dozen new red roses, ribbons and bow.
You are the man who tried to pick me up when I was going to teach swimming lessons at White’s Beach in Mendon when I was 14 years old. I bent down to look in the car to see what you wanted and melted into your eyes. I knew my mother was watching from the window and thought she would kill me if I got in your car. You stopped a couple more times, but as I saw you drive around the corner, I ran down the dirt road short cut to the beach.
This is the same yellow polka-dot bikini I wore since I was going around the corner to White’s Beach to teach swimming lessons when John stopped to see if I needed a ride. I had no idea that this man was to be my future husband.
Another time I was talking with my friend across the street from my house on Lake Nipmuc. Your friend spoke with her, and you talked with me. You asked where I lived, and I pointed to my red house on the hill across the street. I never knew you were the same person I had seen before.
This is the red house on the hill where I grew up and my family.
I almost moved to Holliston before the birth of my first child, you did move to Holliston. Later my family moved to Uxbridge. Your family moved to Uxbridge a stone’s throw away. I began writing for the Milford Daily News. You wrote for the Milford Daily News. I told the editor I needed a typewriter, and he brought me one so I could cover the town of Mendon, my hometown. This typewriter had a sticker on it saying, “My work is so secret even I don’t know what I’m doing.” I said this comment once to you when we were dating. You asked me where I had heard it. I told you Nick gave it to me. It was your typewriter.
When it was time for you to meet my parents, we drove to the red house on the hill. You asked me how long I had lived there. I told you all my life. Still, I did not know you were the same man who had crossed my path so many times earlier.
When you met my father, you asked him if he had ever been to Caroll’s Hamburg Stand in Woonsocket. He said yes. He used to buy you and Lou beer because although you were in the Army, you were not yet 21 and were not old enough to buy beer. So, my father used to buy beer for you. My father also told you that he was dating a woman with a daughter. It turns out that was me. You are the man of my dreams, the man I hoped and prayed for. You are HIM. We were meant to be, there is no doubt. I thank God for you.
Between our talks, Rev. Patricia played a Tibetan singing bowl throughout the church for our guests, fascinating the children.
John’s Talk
So, what have Lin and I been doing for the past 27 years? Who have we been? Why are we renewing our vows?
People ask me how we can live in such a small house together, 400 square feet, constantly, 24 hours a day, for so many years and still love each other.
Since we were married the first time in September 98 and then again in October 98, since I wasn’t actually divorced until October, so we were married again in the parking lot of Lowell’s Dairy. So, anyway, since then we have lived in six places, bought five of them:
Milford 1,
Hopedale 2,
Laconia 2,
Derby 7,
Hawaii 2,
and Holland 13.
That’s 27 years. It felt like minutes.
In that time, we have also visited the Caribbean twice,
California three times,
Oregon,
Indiana,
Florida twice, Lived there for the winter once,
the Bahamas,
Bermuda,
Maine,
New York,
Vermont,
Newport,
New Hampshire,
Cape Cod,
Virginia
Sedona
Phoenix
Dallas
The Grand Canyon
We would have gotten there twice but when we tried to get the pilot in Sedona to fly us to the canyon, he said there was a bad snow storm and he couldn’t, but after Lin called him a coward he did give us a free flight all over Sedona.
and we drove across the country in a Prius C with all our belongings, 13 states.
In that time, we took in and supported two kids, one of them three times.
We paid to relocate two families who were having a difficult time. Took in parents for eight years, and subsidized other relatives who were having a hard time.
We bought ten cars, three of them for other people.
Lin went to school driving an hour each way every day while writing stories for the paper and selling ads.
We built a newspaper from scratch, at the same time she studied and became a certified massage therapist then built the Massage Clinic, a business that had multiple locations where she hired about 10 or 12 people and the business made money until we retired.
This is the first edition of THE LACONIA DAILY SUN newspaper that was published. It was a success from day one.
We tried vegetarian living, Jehovah’s Witness, Catholicism, Protestantism, Gnosticism, atheism, then still having questions, studied metaphysics, theology, philosophy, and politics, and now having finished several bibles, all the ancient scriptures found at Nag Hamadi, the Dead Sea scrolls, and the books of Enoch, we are now deep into the study of the most ancient manuscripts of philosophy, religion, and history, the earliest Sumerian, Akadian and Sanskrit texts as explained in the 1880s by Madam Helena Blavatsky, Russian spiritualist, author, and cofounder of the Theosophical Society.
Lin and I are still learning every single day, not just by happenstance but on purpose in an attempt to find who we are, where we came from, and where we are going, and people all over the world listen to Lin’s interpretations of those early writings.
Lin has taken courses and earned certification in nearly every holistic and energy work discipline in the world, and she has earned the titles of Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Spiritual Awareness and Doctor of Universal Order.
She is also a Reiki master teacher.
She is also an interfaith minister in the Universal Life Church, has earned a Masters in Chaplaincy and spent the better part of a year comforting the sick and dying in Harrington Hospital in Southbridge.
Lin has officiated over weddings and funerals but spends most of her time helping the world through her blog and books.
She is a member in good standing of the British Complimentary Medicine Association, is an authorized crystal practitioner, and a member of the New Paradigm Multi-Dimensional Transformation Association, and she is an authorized 13D teacher of esoteric sciences.
Together, at the same time, we have also published 16 books and three more are under contract while we are each writing another now.
We also volunteered at the senior center in Holland and donated to dozens of charities each year.
Lin’s blog is followed religiously by more than a hundred thousand people worldwide, and in the meantime, she has become a certified holistic counselor and is known worldwide for her position in energy work, while I have won dozens of state, regional and national awards for my column against columnists from some of the largest newspapers in the country. All my awards were for work in the past 27 years while I was married to Lin.
As a matter of fact, everything I have accomplished in the past 27 years was accomplished with the help and support of this incredible woman while she was also doing all those other things that she accomplished herself.
So, when people ask me how Lin and I can live together in a 400 square foot house in the middle of the woods and still love each other I say to them,
“Have you met Lin?
“Do you really know who she is?
“If you really knew her you would never ask that question.”
“Everything I have done of importance in the past 27 years was because of her.
“Lin, I would ask you to marry me every single day of the year, over and over and over and be thankful every time that you said yes.
“You are a force of nature, you are special. You are one of a kind, and I am just thankful to be married to you and that you would still want to be married to me.
“Why? Because I see who you are.”
Rev. Patricia played the Tibetan singing bowl between our talks and prayers, blessing us in the process.
Lin’s Prayer
Thank You, God, for Your LOVE and LIGHT within each one of us,
and for the Unconditional Love of friends and family all these 27 years.
You live in and through us, and in our 7 children and 13 grandchildren.
I thank You for that, and ask You to bless all our friends and families,
with a special blessing that wraps each of them up in a hug of Your Love.
Thank You for timeless, magical moments of treasured times,
of laughter, and joy we all fondly remember.
It is Your Life Force Energy, God, animating our Souls with wonder, awe,
beauty, and new beginnings of hope, inspiration, and good-will.
You are truly eternal, universal, and cosmic, the Wonder of wonders,
that our human selves also generate eternal Souls.
The Laws of Thermodynamics state that Energy cannot be created,
nor destroyed, only changed. Thank You, God, that Your Eternal Universal
Life Force Energy lives on in each of our Souls.
Thank You, God, for all our family and friends, and especially for John,
from the bottom of my heart.
John’s Prayer
I think we all believe in the same God,
even if God is called by different names, or even by no name at all.
Linda and I believe in the God who brings people together
rather than setting them against each other,
the God who teaches us to treat others the way
we would want to be treated ourselves.
who teaches us not to bear false witness against our neighbors,
the God of tolerance rather than self-righteousness, vanity and pride,
the God to whom good deeds are more important than success or wealth,
who preaches feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless
and benefitting the lonely.
We believe in the God of truth and love,
and who forgives our mistakes during our efforts to get better at both.
And we believe that God believes in us and has blessed our marriage.
If this is the same God you believe in,
it is on this common ground that we ask you to spend a moment
in silent prayer to thank God for that blessing.
God Bless Everyone Everywhere
UNIVERSAL WISDOM ENLIGHTENMENT™ LLC 