We Needed This

We heard this morning from a friend, an American, and a man, who said a royal wedding is just what the doctor ordered.  Couldn’t get enough.  What a nice respite from King Scowl of Trump Tower.  The news has been dark with school shootings, Gaza and Trump at every turn.  To borrow from our friend, all of it is just killing our souls.  We needed a dose of civility, of honor, of races loving one another.  Too bad it was there and not here.  But hey, we’ll take what we can get.

Imagine an African-American bishop raising his voice (and a few eyebrows) in stately old Windsor Castle.  Michael Curry’s sermon quoted Dr. Martin Luther King:

“We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love.  And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world.”

Beyond the bishop, there is a seriously rich case of irony here.  It took an American to drag the stodgy royal family into modern times.  From The New York Times:

• “A thousand-year-old English castle echoed with the exhortations of a black preacher and a gospel choir on Saturday, as Prince Harry wed Meghan Markle, an American actress, nudging the British royal family into a new era.”
• Prince Harry, who is sixth in line for the throne, has long called on Britain’s monarchy to modernize, and draw closer to the daily life of its people. But the most extraordinary thing he has done is to marry Ms. Markle, an American actress who is three years his senior, biracial, divorced and outspoken in her views.