Matrimony

“Matrimony is a triumph, analyzing and reconstructing marriage through the ages. This illuminating work challenges the paucity of the modern wedding ritual and offers inspiring, practical pathways for deeper, more meaningful rituals. It’s a bold, clear-eyed view of what the marriage ritual could be, if we are courageous enough to tune in to the ancestors and to follow our truth.” –Manchán Magan, documentarian and author of Thirty-Two Words for Field

“With Matrimony, Stephen Jenkinson trails a troubled beast. A beast many regard as simply AWOL, rarely glimpsed or woefully stretched on the rack of whatever progress report is currently doing the rounds. A beast with hurt feelings. With chewy wit, nimble storytelling, and the unmistakable tang of lived experience, he sets our sights for the initiatory core of the endeavor. Turns out, we barely knew the thing at all. This isn’t a book about groovy intuitions, but mythically reasoned imaginings; far may it sail.” –Martin Shaw, PhD, mythologist and author of Bardskull and the award-winning Mythteller trilogy

“Matrimony is a summons, a reckoning, and a blessing. With the raw grace and precise poetics that are his signature, Stephen Jenkinson lays bare the scaffolding of love and commitment–not as sentimental refuge but as a culture-making labor, as an inheritance both weighty and wondrous. This book will shake loose your assumptions, invite you into the work of witnessing and being witnessed, and, if you let it, alter your understanding of what it is to be bound–to another, to time, to the making of meaning itself.” –Elena Brower, artist and bestselling author of Practice You and Art of Attention

Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, is a cultural worker, teacher, author, and ceremonialist. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, founded in 2010. He has master’s degrees from Harvard University (theology) and the University of Toronto (social work). He’s the author of Come of Age, the award-winning Die Wise, Money and the Soul’s Desires, and Reckoning (with Kimberly Ann Johnson).