Friday, April 29, 2011

Royal Wedding


Love this image by photographer Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images which showed up on Vanity Fair by mid-morning. Love that bridesmaid Grace Van Cutsem (her real name) is not cropped out, as she has been in other versions of Macdiarmid's picture of Kate and William's first kiss.

I discovered this on Twitter where, in case you don't already know, I spend many of my waking hours and have darned good reasons for doing so. (See, e.g., @Virtual_Abbey and @HealthFaith).

Twitter is great for observing culture commentary emerging in real time. There was lots relative to the #RoyalWedding.*  Much was delightfully snarky but there was a lot of earnestly appalled and downright rude commentary from and among tweeps who consider themselves people of deep faith.

I get it. Really, I do. I get how the costly pomp of this royal wedding seems obscenely profligate considering the British economy, fights for liberation in the Middle East, and worldwide natural disasters of Biblical proportion.

But I also get the importance of celebrating joy and hope for new beginnings; of public sacraments; of pledges that invoke eternity while anchored in the corporeal.  These seem like fine things to observe, especially during this Easter season. Get it?

* The hashtag (#) is a tagging convention used in social media.