It’s pathetic, really. Ask me to trot out several thousand words on a trip to the barber’s or a single solitary day spent in town, and you can barely get me to shut up about it. But confronted suddenly with something truly, life-alteringly, alchemically glorious—like, say, having my beautiful, witty, kind, devout, gifted, loving lady-love accept my most inadequate proposal of marriage—I’m reduced to drooling inarticulacy. Like dear Uncle Gilbert, I may be able to trifle tremendously (or at length, at any rate), but unlike him I don’t really have the literary wherewithal to do anything approaching justice to such truly magnificent things.
As the more astute of you will have picked up by now, on Friday, the feast of St Lawrence (O’Toole) of Dublin, the delightful Seraphic Single of Still Seraphic (very soon to be blogging under the new banner “Seraphic Meets Bridezilla“), practically my longest and certainly most loyal reader here, agreed to marry me. Yes, amazing, isn’t it? Fulfilling one of my own McRules criteria, I’m pinching myself black and blue. Fulfilling another, she seems to have fallen for me just as I am (“without one plea,” etc.). “Jings!” with added “Crivvens!”, and also at the same time “Help ma Boab!” (or, “Assistez vous mon Robert!” for my French(-Canadian) readers). If you think I am anything other than the luckiest man alive (and very well aware of being so) then I’m afraid you simply haven’t been paying attention.
I am trying terribly hard not to gush about my fiancée ( *grins athletically* ) and my luck at the moment—the poor creature has suffered enough in private—and another couple of dozen words into this and I’ll blow it completely by blurting out things like Providence, eye-watering loveliness, deeply blessed, most gorgeous of creatures, etc. Nobody really needs to hear that kind of loved-up old tommyrot, so I’ll leave off for now. If you would know the circumstances under which all this marvellous stuff came to be, follow the (charmingly accomplished and mercifully discreet) account of it as it gloriously unfolded over on Still Seraphic. Oh, and while you’re there—buy a blinkin’ book! Transatlantic nuptial arrangements being terribly expensive and we parties thereto being endearingly hard-up, buy several. There’s dears.
To end then, I would like with an unfeignedly grateful heart to thank all of you who supported us in any way—by nod-and-wink, by cheering-on, by hint-dropping, by buying my sweetheart’s splendid books, by wining and dining us, but just dropping by our blogs. Thank you all. My final and most important request is that you pray for us—please help us give thanks to Him who wrought all this joy-making work, and ask that we may be the husband and wife He would have us be.
Now I really will sign off, for I think I must, ahem, have something in my eye…
November 17, 2008 at 3:19 am
Thank you, my dear. When we are fifty, I’m going to read this post out loud to you at the breakfast table.
November 17, 2008 at 1:28 pm
In the lectionary of the Novus Ordo (so you won’t have heard it being a good Vetus Ordo boy!), yesterday 16th November, was the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle A and the Old Testament Lesson was Proverbs31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31:
“A perfect wife – who can find her?
She is far beyond the price of pearls.
Her husband’s heart has confidence in her,
from her he will derive no little profit.
Advantage and not hurt she brings him
all the days of her life.
She is always busy with wool and with flax,
she does her work with eager hands.
She sets her hands to the distaff,
her fingers grasp the spindle.
She holds out her hand to the poor,
she opens her arms to the needy.
Charm is deceitful, and beauty empty;
the woman who is wise is the one to praise.
Give her a share in what her hands have worked for,
and let her works tell her praises at the city gates”
“A perfect wife – who can find her?” You have Mr Benedict Ambrose!
November 17, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Oh dear. I have to live up to THAT? Where’s the part about lounging around on the sofa scarfing chocolates?
November 17, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Don’t worry, my dear, it’s in the Scottish appendix—along with a whole heap of other stuff (like letting the poor kids leave the breakfast table before hearing their still-doting parents fondly recite old their love-letters to one another).
B(reakfast) A(utocrat)
November 17, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Is this how you feel these days?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eONhto0x_nI
November 17, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Remember: Marriage is not just a word.
It’s a sentence!
November 18, 2008 at 2:22 am
And an institution.
Fortunately, I believe the inmates will be running that particular institution.
November 21, 2008 at 12:17 am
Best congratulations.
November 25, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Dear friend
I thought you might be interested to know that the Scots Language Centre will be broadcasting readings from the Scots New Testament thoughout the year. The readings will follow the Catholic liturgical calendar and will be broadcast on the main Christian festivals. The first Sunday of Advent will be celebrated with a reading from the Gospel of St Mark.
We hope you will join us over the next few weeks for gospel readings on the Sundays of Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, St Stephen’s Day, St Sylvester’s Day, New Year’s Day and Epiphany.
You can hear the readings at http://www.scotslanguage.com
Best wishes.
Michael Hance
Director
Scots Language Centre
November 26, 2008 at 8:18 am
Scots New Testament? What??
November 26, 2008 at 9:53 am
Not to worry, dear Notburga—it’s not re-written for Scots just translated into “Scots” (“Lallan(d)s”, actually, and even then but). Google for New Testament + Scots + Lorimer. [Warning: the wikipedia article on Lorimer is actually in Scots.]
What might a written-for-Scots version of the NT be like, I wonder. Would Our Lord, instead of miraculously multiplying the loaves and fishes for the five thousand, instead address them with, “Ye’ll have had yer tea?”. Only in the Edinburgh version, I suppose…
November 26, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I actually OWN a Scots New Testament, but I suspect it is still in Boston. Little did I know, etc.
In the Scots version, our Lord does seem to say things like “Awa’ wi’ yer skirling.” My memory of this is shaky, though, and I could not get through much of it.
November 26, 2008 at 9:27 pm
My grandma only ever used Scots to threaten me with a skelping. Awful, ghastly language. How am I going to learn it? Woe is me!
November 27, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Well, my dear, you won’t really have to learn it—and the worst you’ll hear of it (from me, at any rate) will be the occasional threat to “put ye oot tae sleep on the lawn in naethin’ but yer simmet!” And even then, only to provoke a giggle.
Maybe I should think of brining some Broons annuals with me on my BenAmbropalooza though…
November 30, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Even so. It always made me squirm to have the Holy Bible translated into dialects “just for fun” when there was no-one who would be unable to understand it in the corresponding “high” language. Of course, Scots is entirely different, but our dialects are mostly used on a rather lower level of speech, not for the expression of highly developed thoughts, for which vocabulary often would be lacking. Plus, everyone knows how difficult translating the Bible is, and how easily interpretation is added to translation (like putting in “alon” into the sentence of “we are saved by Faith”). It is a certain safeguard that a big group of Bible Scholars have sat down together and that a bishop’s conference has approved of the work (ICEL translations are the proof that this cannot be claimed absolutely). But to me, it seems somewhat irreverent to put any dialect into Our Lord’s mouth for the sake of effect. Yes, He did not speek English, either; but as I cannot read the inspired texts in their original I have to use some translation I can understand, and would be glad if it stays as close to the “atmosphere” (bad word. but late. don’t know better) of the original.