There comes a point in every young woman’s life where she wakes up, looks in the mirror and asks herself, “Why aren’t I an ordained minister yet?” Hurriedly, I opened my Google Chrome browser to the Google homepage and typed in “I want to become an ordained minister online for free.”

Google doesn’t like to screw around. Google wants me to be direct with my questions, and therefore Google will be direct with its answers. We have a good relationship in that respect. The first link read “Become a Minister and get Ordained.”

Forget parochial schooling and studying Bible verses and asking God for guidance while I’m down on my knees with my hands lifted toward the sky. My hands were right where they needed to be, gracing over my keyboard and becoming a minister as fast as my fingers would verify that I was I more than 13 years of age.

I clicked. I saw. I conquered. INSTANT ONLINE ORDINATION, the top of the website read. It was perfect because I wanted ordination, I wanted it online, and I wanted it instantly. Per usual, Google came through for me.

The website had some warnings about using the service legally and responsibly, for being an instantly ordained minister online is a “serious religious rite,” according to themonastary.org.

At the end of the information-entering fest, themonastary.org went on to remind me again that by clicking “submit” I was confirming I was at least 13 years of age. This time I wondered why I had not tried to become a minister about five years ago, when I first turned 13.

Five minutes and one e-mail later, themonastary.org kindly gave me an easy three-step guide to performing weddings that I could download via PDF. It also turned out that my certificate was strictly online and really only for my own personal uses – unless, that is, I decided to order a hardcopy from the online store for verification and a letter of good standing. Unfortunately, some states DO require a letter of good standing to legally marry two people.If you are in one of those states, well, then you’re screwed out of 10 bucks.

What did I learn through this long and scrupulous journey? That America values the sacred institution of marriage enough to let us all be ministers, so that we might never have a shortage of teenagers with ring pops for engagement rings who decide to go for broke and risk it all for each other in the throes of young love and get married in a back alley by a homeless man who has access to a computer in the public library, and thus, themonastary.org.

For a much simpler and less-wordy comparison – I’d say that Bing is to Google what the Rev. Anya Zentmeyer now is to legal ordained ministry – a shoddy and pathetic shell of the real deal.

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