Britney Spears, who has since had her wedding to longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari in the backyard of her Beverly Hills mansion, didn't mention what church it was. But reporters figured it out and asked for a statement from St. Monica's Catholic Church, a vibrant parish community in Los Angeles.

The parish said they had no knowledge of Spears ever requesting to get married there.

In a follow-up post, Britney Spears explained that she had asked her wedding planner if she could marry Asghari at St Monica's.

She said, in fact, it was "the first request" she had put to the planner upon agreeing to work with them.

Six weeks later, she had been told no by the planner and assumed the parish had rejected her request.

Now, some Catholics might see Britney Spears as oblivious or uninterested in what exactly it means to get married in a Catholic church. "It's not just a random venue," one of her followers responded to the original post (which has since been taken down).

But Spears' attraction to St Monica's was pretty clearly not just about getting a great spot for the ‘grams.

In her original post, she wrote about her desire to go to St Monica's during the pandemic: "I wanted to go every Sunday," she wrote. "…It's beautiful and they said it was temporarily shut down due to COVID!!!! Then 2 years later when I wanted to get married there they said I had to be Catholic and go through TEST !!!!"

In her second post, she repeated that she has had a long-standing desire to go to St Monica's.

"During the 2 years of Covid, I also wanted to go there … I was told no due to the pandemic …"

These aren't the only times Spears has written in a positive way about Catholicism, either.

In August 2021, she posted about attending a Mass: "I just got back from Mass…I'm Catholic now…let us pray!" Catholic commentator Austin Ivereigh kidded on Twitter, "Next on Catholic news: Britney Spears names her puppy #Traditionis Custodes."

Pundits seemed to spend a lot of energy debating whether or not she had officially converted, but to my mind, they missed the point entirely. She had been to Mass and was happy enough about the experience to mention it and kid around a bit.

In the case of Spears' wedding, it seems that the parish had nothing to do with what happened. And if you're ever visiting Los Angeles, I highly recommend St Monica's. Britney Spears is right. It's a great place.

Situations similar to hers come up pretty often in many of our parishes. Especially when it comes to weddings and funerals, there are times when people come to our churches wanting things that don't necessarily fit our categories.

• They want a pop song at a funeral.
• They want a non-religious ritual included in their wedding.
• Or they want to get married here, even though they aren't Catholic.

It can be very easy to get hung up on the specific problems of their requests, not only because some of the same issues come up again and again (raise your hand if you've had someone insist they need "Stairway to Heaven" at a funeral), but because many of our parishes are already overwhelmed with the normal demands of their regular parishioners.

When you've got only one priest in a parish and maybe a pastoral associate, it can be hard to remember whether or not someone's desires fit our liturgical practices or are phrased the right way; there very well might be something deeply spiritual beneath the surface.

Evangelisation funnel

Some years ago, I interviewed Matt Meeks, then the chief digital officer of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

In our conversation, Meeks had a lot to say about what he called "the evangelisation funnel."

When you're doing marketing, he explained to me; there are three key phases that the evangeliser needs to speak to:

1. general awareness—your potential parishioner isn't in the market for something yet, and you're trying to keep the faith in front of them as something potentially meaningful;
2. consideration—your potential parishioner is looking for options, and you want them to see what you offer; and
3. intent—your potential parishioner is about to choose a place and you tangibly help them come to you (i.e. here's when our Masses and confessions are, and here's what you need to accept or do before participating).

One of the things Meeks said that has always stayed with me is that the church often does not do that first awareness step well.

"We're up to our neck in stories, but we're not telling those stories well."

What we tend to do instead is skip right to consideration, leaping into discussions of doctrine or rules that are way too much too soon.

"If our goal is to pull in people who are not necessarily in the market for God (or, I might add, the Catholic Church), Meeks told me, "you're too far down the funnel for them."

When it comes to moments like weddings or funerals, similar dynamics occur.

Our church buildings themselves give a fantastic taste of the beauty, hope and solace that our faith can offer.

But then, when people come in the door, we end up moving right into the rules—into what's allowed and what isn't—when we should be drawing out what brought them here and thinking about how we can nourish that.

Put another way, the whole reason we build beautiful churches and decorate them with gorgeous art is to give people some glimpse of the God who loves us.

We should not be caught off guard when unexpected people then show up at our doorstep. Continue reading

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They stood around an elephant and the first blind man grabbed the rail.

"An elephant is a thick rope," he said.

The second mam felt the elephant's leg. "No," he said. "The elephant is a strong pillar."

Blind man number three touched the elephant's ear. "You are wrong. The elephant is a piece of cloth."

The fourth who was holding the elephant's trunk, cried, "I have proof that the elephant is a big snake."

Then they had an argument as to who was right.

This story is sometimes told to illustrate the difference in religious teachings, the moral being that all the blind men were wrong.

Yet the truth of the story goes much deeper.

Where God is concerned, we are all intellectually blind. We have ideas about God, but the only direct knowledge of God comes through feeling.

We can call that seeing with the eyes of the heart. It is not about ideas. It's about touch.

Desire to know God makes us open to awareness. That awareness grows according to who we are and we are all different.

Differences in our perception of God, are no aberration. They are normal.

So, in effect, all the blind men in the story, were right. They described how they knew the elephant.

We have four feeling descriptions in this parable.

Jesus chose many more to describe himself; there are eight "I am" metaphors in the Gospel of John alone.

We can reflect on our own desire to know God and how that comes through touches of recognition that can't be adequately named.

There is the touch of beauty. We all know beauty and how it affects us, yet beauty does not feed us, shelter us or protect us. It is a spiritual gift.

Somehow, it connects us with ourselves by taking us out of ourselves.

There is a touch of guidance that will override head knowledge and point us in the right direction.

We feel its authenticity.

In a quiet moment, away from superficial activity, we feel a sense of "Oneness" deep within ourselves.

Paradoxically, this sense is within us and yet much bigger than us.

We pause before the tabernacle in a church with prayer-soaked walls and feel that time is an illusion.

Timelessness is a reality.

The feeling we call love, flows out to embrace all creation. It is like a river flowing through us and everything that exists.

God is love. Love is God.

But the question still exists: What is the shape of God?

All we know is that the word "God " keeps getting bigger until it is in everything that exists and all that is beyond our knowledge.

We are part of all that is known and unknown.

In that, we feel we are crops of water in the ocean of God.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.