Wedding Recap

First, to assure everyone, the wedding went smoothly. Yon Priest arrived with an hour to spare and, though he was annoyed by my host of questions, he answered them, realizing he had not earned the right to be "miffed." (He even walked me through the part where I was to bow before Jesus so I had that down by the time the wedding started. The groomsmen bowed too -- pretty cool.)

The bride looked awesome, the groom was nice and calm, the bridesmaids all sniffled appropriately and the guys remembered to cross their right hand over their left. Jesus looked down at everyone from the cross even when the couple exchanged spit. It was a holy event.

But the priest was something else altogether. He was like a comedian officiating worship. When he was serious he usually was pretty poignant, but when he was cutting up (which was most of the time) he had the crowd in the palm of his hand. It reminded me a lot of Ben Affleck in Keeping the Faith except for Ben Affleck and his Catholic counterpart (can't remember who played the priest) were a bit more mild. The priest is probably in his 50s, but has only been ordained about 7 years -- so the same amount of time as I have give or take. He is really good one on one -- I can see that he'd be great for premarital counseling and for alternative worship services. He's a great combination of that ever popular (but fading) contemporary worship and the more reverent Gen X emerging worship. I'm tempted to make the trip up to the church again some Saturday evening to worship with him "live." My curiosity has been peaked. Oh, for an example of something he did . . . mid-homily he changes stoles and puts on a "God Bless the Florida Gators" stole. It was very appropriate for the couple who met in Gainesville, but so untraditional in the Catholic church. I think that church has a treasure in him, but I can see that it would take time to get used to someone so radically different. Makes me aware of the many hesitancies people feel whenever I "mess with" the traditional way of things. When I talked with the priest after the service, he stated that he couldn't be anyone except himself and while the other priest didn't start out too thrilled over his approach, the church was experiencing a renewal in the number of younger people coming into the church. Personally, I say God can use any of us, no matter who we are or how crazy we tend to be.

Hubby and I skipped out on the reception last night. (is that taboo??) It was an off-site reception and already late and I had to preach the next morning so we just went out and had ourselves a nice dinner (Red Lobster is as nice as it gets out here in Arbuckle Creek world) and then went home where I made him dance with me. We were exhausted, to say the least. All of the worrying about weddings gone wild had done me in.

And that's the news from Arbuckle Creek, where all the women drive golf carts, the men are blatant carnivores, and the children watch for alligators in their backyards.