Report From St. Luke’s

This morning’s interview and background shooting at St. Luke’s seems to have gone quite smoothly. I greatly enjoyed meeting and talking with Florent, Roger, and the other gentleman (whose name eluded me when first we were introduced) (later: I checked, and he’s Arnaud — Bonjour, Arnaud!); I experienced that very odd sort of double-language consciousness overhearing them converse in French, while I relied mainly on English. It’s been years since I used my French for anything other than reading, and I kept finding myself eager to jump in with an observation en français, but realizing that one of the ten words I needed had utterly fallen out of my vocabulary.

The congregation was fantastic. Jeanette, our priest-in-charge, was very generous in allowing the crew space to work, and the church was relatively full. The choirs sang wonderfully, and all worked together to show our parish at its ordinary-Sunday best.

I hope that our interview provides Florent with useful material for the special he’s working on. A number of people have asked to know when the special airs — they have relatives in France, or they know someone who can receive the French station in New York, or they just want to see a copy of the tape Florent sends me. When they finish production, I’ll be able to look foolish in front of audiences around the world. This constitutes one of the great accomplishments of blogging: universal embarrassment!

I don’t know what I said at all — I kept reaching desperately for the spirit of David Weinberger, for his wit and insight, and unfortunately I kept getting a busy signal. So France 2 will have to settle for a slow-talking, easily-distracted theologian.

3 thoughts on “Report From St. Luke’s

  1. What is the name of the program or series for which the special was made? I’d like to look for it on TV5 (the international French channel). I also have a friend who was a parishioner at St Luke’s when she was a grad student in French at NWU in the 80s. I’m sure she’d like to see it too.
    Thanks for any info you can share.
    Patrick

  2. Speaking of world-wide fame, did you know that you’re in the Blogumentary for about 20 seconds? Right near the Weinberger segment, too.

  3. Patrick, the show is called “”Envoyé Spécial,”” and I got the sense that it would appear on the international French broadcast — which may mean not only New York, but also my in-laws’ cable system in Maine!

    I will say that walking through the streets of Evanston with a camera crew following my every move felt quite surreal. A number of drivers waved at me — did they think they recognized me? For whom did they take me? “Look honey, it’s that guy from Star Trek dressed up like a priest!”

    Krista, I didn’t know that at all! I’m not in the trailer, I don’t think (at least, I missed myself if I am; maybe I got bored by what I was saying and fell asleep watching myself). No, I’m not that guy in the beginning with the big glasses and the crown. (You can see Blogumentary here; David Weinberger refers to me beginning at about 15:45 into the show.)

Leave a Reply to Patrick Coleman Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *