#605 Quaint Saints

It’s interesting going to a foreign country for a wedding.
Well, it wasn’t actually a foreign country, it was Spokane, Washington.
I kept expecting everything to be red. Cause people talk about Spokane being in the heart of the red side of the state.
That red and blue thing is funny. As near as I can tell, most democrats—normally represented by blue—are not particularly depressed. And most republicans—represented by the color red—are probably not entirely happy being spattered with the same color they once flung against Commies.
Calling a republican red was once tantamount to saying his mother wore army boots.
Which I saw a little of in Spokane. It was kind of odd there.
Spokane is a big city but it’s still a farm town. And farmers are, well, practical.
The Catholic Church we went to, St. Aloysius, showed some of that in its décor. It had all kinds of graven images in it that my protestant predecessors would have roundly condemned, but they were all different shapes and sizes.
In one section, oversized cupid angel thingies dwarfed a full-figured statue of Jesus. It was all unsymmetrical and disproportionate and stuff.
Pretty as the idols were, the mis-sizing made them look as if they’d been acquired at some two-for-one Catholic flea market; as if a bunch of parishes closed up and had a rummage sale or something. Maybe a big statue of the Virgin Mary with a “you haul it, you got it” sign draped around her neck.
A quaint and practical décor solution. And hey, a deal’s a deal.
The wedding itself began on a bad note when the priest led it off with the standard Catholic injunction against divorce (“what god put together let no man tear asunder”) then sat down and listened to the first bible verse reading—from the bride’s divorced mother. Oops. I guess they should have gone over that one in rehearsal.
To cap it all off, as we drove out of town, we saw this sign at a mattress place. It said, “Wedding gift? Diamonds may be forever, but you can’t consummate a marriage on one.”
Did I mention farmers are practical?
America, ya gotta love it