Royal Wedding Edition

With kathrynzj's help, here is a Royal Wedding Friday Five:

1) Will you be watching? If so, is this your first royal wedding?

Watching, oh my yes. I woke up at 1 a.m., but realized that the next three hours (Mountain Daylight Saving Time) would consist entirely of variations on "OH ITZHAK this is SEWWWW exciting" ~~ a family-cherished line from the Three Tenors' concert in L.A., years ago ~~ so went back to bed with the alarm set for 4, and was up in front of the TV with Nefertiti the Loyal Cat in time to see Catherine enter the Abbey. Watched, on the CBC, until they closed the doors to the balcony.

NOT my first royal wedding but maybe the first one I watched right through? We had a cassette tape of Charles and Diana's wedding, including the encouraging whispers of the Archbishop to the couple, which I found very touching.

I do remember watching the Coronation on television in '53, and for me, also it was almost the first television I saw. Also in the Abbey.

I paid attention to Charles and Diana's wedding out of identification with the couple -- this time around, it's all about the officiating, the preaching, and the music.

2) The bride has chosen as her wedding cake a fruitcake. Where do you stand on this pastry?

I am really sorry that so few of my contemporaries apparently have ever encountered GOOD fruitcake. (The criteria are: don't stint on the candied fruit and don't stint on the BOOZE.) From where I sit -- nothing else IS a wedding cake. Ideally, it should have been baked and set to "ripen" before Advent 2010 and even so it would be a bit "new" at this point. It's a confection more than a "cake" -- and it's concocted so as to last virtually forever without spoiling or going stale. I like other kinds of cake just fine thank you, qua cake, but not for Christmas and not for weddings. Too....flimsy.

3) The dress code for royal weddings has not seen the same sad decline as that for most other weddings. If you could design your own royal wedding hat, what color would it be and what special decoration would it feature?

I guess at this season of my life the hat would have to be red! With maybe a nice silk rose. But I have very poor luck trying to find a ready-made hat to fit the size 8 head I came equipped with.


4) Any chance the Archbishop of Canterbury is using a Sustainable Sermon (tip of the mitre to the Vicar of Hogsmeade)? What would you tell the couple were you offering the homily?

I was sorry not to hear +++Rowan preach, but it was interesting to hear +Richard. I thought he could have preached better with the material that he had -- which I liked, both the quotation from Catherine of Siena and the quotation from Chaucer, which was gently mischievous.

Probably, though, until all memory of The Princess Bride has evaporated, glittering prelates should not begin their sentences with the word "Marriage," even without a lisp.

I think I would have been more likely than his lordship was, to have drawn helpful analogies from baseball.

And I am fond of the theology and the language of the Book of Common Prayer...which repays mulling over in memory. I like the idea of children "Christianly and virtuously brought up." I like the idea of "amiable" wives. I like "troth" -- "either to other".

5) Believe it or not, kathrynzj is getting up early mostly to see the wedding dress. By the time this post is up, the world will have seen it. Did you like it?

Very much -- it FIT, hurray; and otherwise, I'm with Martha on this one, SLEEVES, oh thanks be to God. If it starts a trend AWAY from the strapless...it will be a great favour to one and all especially clergy who often have to stand one step above the couple, confronting more decolletage than is healthy (20 pounds of custard in a 10 pound basket...ewwww) And I liked the understated veil, understated bouquet, relatively abbreviated train, discreet tiara.

the Friday Five

Dorcas has given us this introduction to the Friday Five, over at RevGalBlogPals:

"Though I am from a non-liturgical denomination, I find myself longing for some of the expressions others of you may experience at this time of year. The same thing happens to me during Advent. At both times I am drawn to the symbolism of darkness becoming light, of longing turning to joy. One of my favorite things at this time of year used to be draping the wooden cross at the rear of our sanctuary with a dark purple velvet cloth and adding a crown of (ouch!) thorns--and what a lovely thing it was to see that same cross on Easter Sunday morning, draped in glowing white with a golden, jewel-studded crown added. Not being a pastor this year, I am missing some of the symbolism I always tried to employ. I may find a nearby Episcopalian or Lutheran congregation to visit at some point, actually.

Meanwhile, today I am asking for your thoughts on that movement from darkness to light. Tell us five ways in which you are anticipating, or your life is moving towards light, joy, hope--new things: new ideas, new hobbies, new people...and so on."

And here are mine

1. LIGHT -- just plan flat out candle-power. More light in the evenings, now at last more light in the mornings. A dawn worth waking up to see.

2. BIRDS -- There is a chickadee in my yard who has found two notes that please him, and bellows them early and late. I haven't seen robins yet, but their whooping and bragging is unmistakable. And the geese, bless them. They remind me of a long ago April a long way from where I am now (in every dimension)...stepping out into a lovely soft New England evening, I heard a tiny repeated sound...and there was a "VEE" labouring northward, so high in the sky they were at the limit of what I could see. [Pause while you picture the Rambler running up and down the sidewalk in short homesick bursts, crying ank-ank, ank-ank, ank-ank, don't leave me...well, no, not quite, but the impulse was there!]

3. GROWING GREEN The church garden at St. Curious is under the windows against the south wall. A lovely sun-trap. And there are all manner of bulb-things showing green -- and indomitable leaves from the hollyhocks, already as big as the palm of my hand. Poignant when we remember we can still have a killing frost any time in the next six weeks... And in the meantime I am confident that my tulips are reaching for the sky, and light, and air, against the south wall of Tether's End, here...in their "igloo greenhouse" where the neighbour has piled the snow from his driveway all winter. It is melting away from underneath.

4. and so here and elsewhere, WATER -- running water, everywhere, on the sidewalks, in the streets, in the lanes, in the ravines, in the creeks. The best sound ever.

5. SPRING CLEANING accelerating the thinning and purging of bookshelves, closets, file cabinets, sordid little caches of this, that, and the other, all over the house. In honour of spring, and in anticipation of ...

5A. DOG and a very new and different engagement with time, place, energy, activity. S/He's not even a pup yet, just a notion...but this year, for sure, for sure.