The first one was free.
That's how it works when you're a pastor. Someone in the congregation asks, you say yes, you show up with your robe and your notes and your prayers. You don't invoice them. The idea wouldn't occur to you.
I did this for nineteen years.
A few weeks ago, someone asked if I do weddings. I said yes. They asked what I charge. I said I'd never charged.
They looked at me like I'd said something strange.
They were right to.
The pastoral instinct to give it away was correct in context. You don't charge your congregation for sacraments. You're tending a community, not running a business.
But I'm not in that context anymore. The ordination didn't expire. The calling didn't expire. I just don't have a building.
Which means I can show up for people who want something real at the front of the room — without an institution to go with it.
Most couples spend about forty-five minutes thinking about the officiant.
They spend weeks on the flowers.
I understand the flowers. The flowers are in every photo. The officiant is the person who talks for twelve minutes and gets out of the way.
But those twelve minutes are the only ones that can't be redone. The cake gets eaten. The flowers wilt. The photos fade. What gets said at the front of the room on a Saturday afternoon is what stays.
Couples don't want performance. They want presence.
They don't want someone who reads the words. They want someone who means them.
The difference is detectable from the third row.
I know it is, because I've been the person in the robe at the hardest and best moments of other people's lives for nineteen years — weddings, yes, but also the funerals, the hospital rooms, the 6:15 mornings. You cannot fake the difference between saying a thing and meaning it. Not to a room that's paying attention. And a wedding is the one day a room is always paying attention.
I'm available. Alabama, and wherever else you need me.
The ordination is current. The building is just somewhere else now.
— I write about the rest of that story throughout these essays. If you want the version with the farm and the years that pulled the building out from under me, start with The Whole of It or the one about walking with a limp. Reach me at matt@theaisle.app.
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