“The mother of Jesus said
to him, ‘They have no wine.’” St. John
2:3
A friend of
mine made her debut on reality TV a few years ago. Now, this was in England, where they spend
even less on broadcast production than here, and where they seem to find the
clergy endlessly fascinating. She was
part of a series that followed newly ordained clergy in her rural diocese in
the West Country.
And when the
time came for her to officiate at her first wedding, the BBC camera crews were
on hand. She was nervous, of course, and
I guess her hands shook a bit, and she would be the first one to say that she’s
always been a little clumsy. She took
the rings, as she practiced many times before, and laid them on her open prayer
book for the blessing. And then she
dropped them—right through enormous cast iron grate on the chancel floor, down
into the belly of a Victorian coal furnace.
I think they ended up calling the local fire department to get them
out. Of the hundreds of hours of film
they shot that summer, well you can guess which scene got top billing in that
episode.
