MINISTRY!
So I recently returned home from a long long looooooong (okay, two weeks) trip to Germany and Austria, and while I am not gonna be like “Man, Europe changed me, but you wouldn’t understand (you bourgeois American pig),” I am also not going to pretend that there are things to do here that are more fun than sleeping til noon in a pensione and going to weird dance clubs built over canals that don’t smell weird and learning about German health bread.
So since returning home, I have found myself in a predicament: Europe allowed me to break out of the “working late/eating out/binge drinking out of social anxiety/ reading blogs to annoy myself and then falling asleep watching ‘Daria’ on Youtube and silently reflecting on yet another wasted day” rut I had dug myself into over the course of the past few years. But what was I to do after returning rut-free to my home? I tried to come up with some assignments for myself to keep that air of zany, carefree vacation adventure in my life at home, but only one of them has panned out so far: I am now a minister.
Of the Universal Life Church. Remember when your friend from high school, the one who liked John Cage and smoked so much pot he forgot to apply to college, told you he had become a minister? This is the church he is a minister in, too. I guess it is sort of like the Seth Green of churches (Church of the Subgenius is like the Wiley Wiggins of churches, in case you were keeping track at home). The Universal Life Church will ordain anyone as a minister over the internet, on the principal that we are all our own ministers or have our own relationship with God or something. I don’t remember the details of the philosophy, but I remember liking it.
But anyway! The reason I am bringing this up on the internet is that, as a minister of the ULC, I have limited capabilities. I can perform funerals and weddings. I think it would be completely inappropriate to have me perform any kind of funeral, even for a pet (actually, I find those sadder than human funerals mostly), but I am ready to perform a wedding. I am raring! Is that how you spell “raring”? “Rarring,” maybe?
Anyway, if you are getting married, I am right now officially asking you to let me perform your wedding. I will be an awesome minister. I promise to wear a nice blouse with no stains on it and to not switch the index cards with the vows you wrote yourself on them with index cards that have the lyrics to “Riders on the Storm” on them. I know I have officially gone on record as saying that I think marriage is a bunch of outdated patriarchal nonsense, and it is, but if you let ME perform your wedding, I can guarantee that your marriage will be the least outdated and patriarchal in a 10 mile radius. Just make sure you’re not planning on having kids. People who drink as much as you would need to drink to have me perform your wedding shouldn’t be having kids. But anyway, if you’re a well-meaning drunkard who’s had a vasectomy and you’re in love with a gal and you live in New York and you’re reading this right now, I implore you to do the right thing and allow me and the lyrics to “Riders on the Storm” to help you make an honest woman of her. You can contact me at highandwideblog (at) gmail (dot) com!
Also: This Ministry:
