Rob and I have asked his grandfather, an octogenarian and a devout Catholic, to officiate our wedding in Hawaii.
We weren’t sure how it would go over, for obvious reasons. But we now understand that Grandpa Dick has received official notice from Brother Martin of the Universal Life Church that he was ordained a reverend on February 20, 2008 at 02:58:42 p.m.
Says the Rev. Grandfather, “It was a very low-key ordination by email. I am thinking about making arrangements with the Vatican for a more formal and elegant ceremony.”
That’s right. Not only does he know how to email, he takes full advantage of it, engaging his grandchildren in political debates and, oh, becoming an ordained minister.
He is also living an incredible life. Having survived the Depression and raising nine children, among other things, this man still gets up every morning to swim laps. And even though I know he has a lot more important things to say than we do, he is always engaging me or my friends or his grandchildren in an in-depth conversation about what we are doing and thinking and believing.
He holds his wife’s hand at every opportunity, and he has an outlook on life that I’m not sure I could cultivate at 27, let alone 80.
Rob and I can think of no better example for ourselves as we officially kick off our adult life together. So, thank you, Grandpa Dick, for doing us the great honor of marrying us!
Afterword: Grandpa Dick, I realize that Rob’s paranoia and anxiety are genetic, and therefore it may well be that you prefer to remain unnamed and unpictured on the Internet. If you read this and want me to anonymize you further, or delete the post altogether, you know my email address!
Tags: Catholic, internet ordination, octogenarian, Universal Life Church, Vatican
May 5, 2009 at 7:46 pm
[...] winter, we asked Grandpa Dick if he would get ordained on the Internet so he could marry us in Maui. He did, and it was [...]