"Can we borrow Ganesh for the weekend? We're having a petting zoo for the kid's birthday party..."

Real Live Preacher blogs about being asked to perform a wedding, but to leave out all that God and Jesus stuff.

It's odd that we live in a society where people can have such a ridiculous, shallow grasp on what religion really means to the faithful. As if it were a political party. As if it were this season's fashions. As if it were a preference for a TV show. As if it were, "you want fries with that?"

It's difficult to be articulate or cogent on the topic because it would be similar to explaining how offensive something like "you got a cute teenage daughter there, mind if me and the missus borrow her for a threesome?" would be to someone who's so clueless as to actually ask something like that in the first place. We're dealing with such a profound disconnect, it would take a month of Sundays to try and explain. (Thanks and apologies to Emmylou, and Carter/Clark, for that phrase.) Or, as I said in the Preacher's comment area, will this couple who asked him to perform their wedding without all the Jesus stuff try to contract a Rabbi to do a Bris when they want their boy(s) circumcised? Or ask a Hindu to cater the affair with hamburgers and all-beef hot dogs? And have their Moslem friends run the open bar? (Kinda reminds me of that Monty Python skit "Bells": "The Shintos don't come here shattering sheet-glass in the shithouse, shouting slogans!")

Sheesh. Some people's kids.