Thanks, Kate & William

May I engage my hyperbole thrusters and declare, on behalf of a weary, beleaguered humanity: We needed that royal wedding.

The April 11 cover of Newsweek magazine said it with words I wouldn't have chosen, being a Unity minister, but I couldn't help cheering at the sentiment: "In a world gone to hell--thank God, a wedding."

What drove millions of Americans to rise in the dark before dawn or set their TV's to record this event? Why did an estimated 2 billion people worldwide--people from all faiths, representing over 1/4 Earth's population--watch some kind of coverage of this church ritual in England? Not everyone was happy with the unprecedented attention given to a couple's nuptials in "a world gone to hell."

Hari Sreenivasan writes on the PBS website: "According to the World Health Organization about 2.6 billion people lack an improved latrine, and 1.1 billion have no access to clean drinking water...Someday perhaps as many people will pay as much attention to them as to a guest list, a wedding, a carriage, a kiss." [1]

I concur with Mr. Sreenvisan's sense of urgency about the needs of an overpopulated, under-fed world. However, while working to make conditions better, all people need to take every opportunity to celebrate the good of this life. Rites and festivals of season, harvest, fertility and new growth are so deeply woven into the structure of human life that we clergy are sometimes shocked when absent parishioners--folks we haven't seen on any regular basis, or perhaps complete strangers--show up at those moments for a blessing at key events like baptisms, wedding and funerals. Even non-observant, empty-church Europe needs its cathedrals for rites of passage.

So, two billion souls witnessed the full spectacle of a high church, Anglican wedding, complete with King James language and angelic choirs. It was like sneaking into Mecca during the Hajj, or celebrating Diwali with Hindus in India. Rites of passage give even the ultra-self-sufficient among us an excuse to remember the heritage: We come from people who gathered around the fire and danced the hunt; people who sang prayer before they spoke it; people who hadn't the sophistication to know what they were doing, but it didn't matter because doing always precedes and transcends explaining.

And, yes. We need fairy tales to promise a brighter possibility for the future. Just because people sometimes fail to meet their own highest expectations does not make the effort less noble, less divine.

So, I saith unto thee--Hooray for Kate and William. They remind us that young people are standing in the wings, ready to take up the management of whatever world we deliver to them. I, for one, hope it comes with clean drinking water and better latrines for all God's children, and fairy tale weddings, too.





[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/04/2-billion-royal-wedding-viewers-really.html