Opinion


Celebrants don’t have a


doctor’s power over life and death, thank goodness, but we do affect our clients’ wellbeing and happiness. We vary as much as people in any other profession, of course, some celebrants having more empathy than others, but our minds are applied to every element of what we do, and when we’re preparing or delivering a ceremony we give equal thought to body language, presentation and words. Training and experience give us the ability to create suitable ceremonies, rather than simply empathising and sharing our clients’ emotions, however strongly we feel. No one wants a weeping, incoherent celebrant, and no one wants an expressionless, robotic one either. It isn’t always easy to find the balance between the two, and be both warm and proficient, but when we’re doing it well we make it look easy. If helping people is our goal,


we can use our minds to convert empathy into action. Without action, it’s my belief that both reason and compassion are rendered useless, amounting to nothing at all. l


27 www.humanism-scotland.org.uk


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