chaosvizier | Weekend Wedding Wackiness

This Saturday, I went to a wedding.

One of my coworkers invited the office to attend his eldest daughter's wedding. Sure, we think. Wedding, ceremony, reception, party, it's all good. And it was, but that's later in the tale. Really, it's the service itself that stands above and beyond the call of belief.

katieledge and I arrive 45 minutes late, due to some impressive quantities of traffic. It ain't easy getting from Jersey deep into Long Island, let me tell you... but that's irrelevant. 45 minutes late, we think? The service has to be practically done at that point; we'll walk in, hear "I Now Pronounce You Man And Wife", and go get food and drink.

That, of course, was the completely incorrect assessment of the situation.

First, some background: the gentleman who invited us is a priest in this curious sect of Christianity. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church is what, in restaurant terminology, one would call a "fusion"- a combination of two remarkably different styles into one unit. In this case, a very formal Christian service is completely infused with a lot of the traditional customs of Kerala, India, which is where one (or perhaps both) families originate. The celebrants are all Indian, and the hymns are also sung in the Kerala dialect of Hindi. It's a rather interesting blend of services.

Now, the thing about Indians is that they love to talk. Not idle jabber and banter, but long, rich, full-bodied, adjective-heavy sentences that really convey a lot of meaning. Their language is full of that sort of thing. Words fifteen to twenty letters long are not uncommon, being combinations of words and their modifiers (not as insane as German, perhaps, but not far from it either). And so, when they start to speak English, this modifier-heavy instinct passes on as well.

For example, drawing on my experience with Roman Catholic Church services, we have these two parallel lines of dialogue:

Roman Catholic: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.
Malankara Orthodox Syrian: The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, life-giving preaching from Matthew the Apostle who preaches life and redemption to the world.

That's 9 words vs. 23 words. You do the math.

Those of you who have seen any number of episodes of The Power-Puff Girls are familiar with the arch-villain Mojo Jojo, hyperintelligent monkey and master of excessive verbiage. I liken the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church service to The Gospel According To Mojo Jojo. Behold this impressive sentence:

"Glory be to the eternal Word, the self-existing One, who was, who is and who shall be for all generations, who is exalted on his throne above all the angels who worship Him; who though he is high and lifted up, has in His abundant mercy and compassion for all, and who has brought back our race to him; who by His love has made our nature, which was estranged from Him, worthy to be brought near to Him; who cannot be comprehended by any philosopher or logician except to worship His self-existence; who fashions the crowns of rulers; who loosens and no one unloosens; who binds and no one unbinds; who gives crowns of joy to the Groom and the Bride for the glory of His majesty."

That's right. That was one single sentence. Far be it from me to glorify the ways of the Roman Catholic Church, but I know that their service would have summed it up with the phrase "Glory to God in the Highest, and peace to His people on Earth." That's called efficiency.

Right. With that in mind, let me return to the original story. As I said, we arrived 45 minutes late. We thought we'd totally missed the service. We could not have been more mistaken. They handed us a programme which contained the complete text of the service. It was 26 pages long. We arrived at page 8. That's right, not even a third of the way through the ceremony. 18 pages later, with the ceremony having run a full two hours and forty-five minutes, the bride and groom became husband and wife, and everyone clapped, huzzah.

I stood during the service, because there were no seats by the time we arrived. It got a bit uncomfortable, so eventually I started leaning against a ledge in the wall behind me. It was much comfier that way, leaning with the molding in my shoulderblades. Imagine my surprise when, half an hour later, I leaned forward to see what was happening, and then turned around to see where the ledge was...
OH SHIT I WAS LEANING ON JESUS PLEASE DON'T SMITE ME LORD!!!

OH SHIT I WAS LEANING ON JESUS PLEASE DON'T SMITE ME LORD!!!

Amazingly, the bolt of lightning I was expecting did not strike me then. I think God was still puzzling over that previous sentence.

Ok, enough griping about the wordy service. I actually like churches, because they're usually quite ornate and well-decorated, and this was no exception. The ceiling was a dome, with a number of biblical scenes painted on the inside. Now, again, I'm no bible scholar or anything; I've done my share of reading and learning, but some of the details are still fuzzy. For instance...
Got Lions and Pandas, only in Eden!

For some reason, I never really pictured pandas and kangaroos and monkeys in the Garden of Eden. But of course they had to be there, since God put all the animals there. I think that means that the Garden of Eden is currently located in the middle of the Bronx.

I always forget that Jesus is really a superhero. Sure, people give him credit for being a prophet and a messiah, but really, he's an ordinary guy with extraordinary powers, feared and hated by a world he's sworn to protect. That's right, I'm plagiarizing from the X-Men. Who wants a piece of me?
I want to fly like an eagle...

Behold, 'tis Air Christ! And his twin brother, the Fresh Christ of Bel Aire!

But despite his superpowers, he still preaches the Good Word to all people. He preaches a lot. Loudly. And verbosely, if these Malankara Orthodox Syrians are to be believed...
Quiet up there, dagnabbit! Some of us are tryin' ta sleep!

Quiet up there, dagnabbit! Some of us are tryin' ta sleep!

Note to Jesus: Guys sleeping in caves do not wish to be bothered with proselytization.

Oh, but lo, Jesus is not a benevolent superhero! Woe to he who talks smack unto the Lord for his verbosaliciousness, for he shall be smitten by Christ's Holy Laser Breath!
He shalt unclothe thee, and then shalt he breathe Holy Lasers upon thee, and thou shalt be smitten, Amen.

He shalt unclothe thee, and then shalt he breathe Holy Lasers upon thee, and thou shalt be smitten, Amen.

And I'll smite these two nekkid fools as well, for good measure. Word up.

I'm serious. Look at the pictures. Jesus breathes lasers. Tell me he's not a superhero. I dare you.

In all seriousness, it was a lovely ceremony, and the reception was a lot of fun as well. But that's all old hat- fancy place, appetizers, dinner, la de da. We certainly ate our fill, there's no doubt about that. But it was quite unique among weddings, there's no question. And next time I'm invited to an Indian ceremony, I'll be sure not to feel guilty if I arrive an hour late.

And on a completely unrelated note, last night's Deadwood season finale was awesome. Wu is cool. The Doc is cool. Richardson is cool. It's all good.

Current Mood: heretical
Current Music: If Hell had a soundtrack, it'd be playing for me now...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kokopellinelli

You're so going to hell.

....

I'll save you a seat.

My goodness. Two hours and 45 minutes? Incredible. That's like my high school graduation. Last summer I was in two weddings. First one was about 15 minutes long from start to finish. Second one? 8 minutes. Us Valdezians are efficient, I tell you.

Of course, it probably also helped that neither ceremony was particularily religious. The second one wasn't even in a church, it was outside on the shore.

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