Will your speech be in the top 10?

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It wasn’t quite what we expected. All eyes gathered at the grave after a purifying funeral service, all eyes on the priest on duty as he turned to my cousin: “Fantastic eulogy… definitely in the top 10 for me. To the top actually.”

Everyone managed to smile – and even a grateful laugh to relieve stress. The eulogy for his grandfather was indeed perfectly judged, written and delivered with feeling and aplomb.

But these “comments” also allowed us to talk about something completely separate from the family event. The priest’s frank assessment means we experience his presence as a professional – the public speaking expert under the cloak.

The rest of us probably only set foot in church to celebrate “hole, match, and serve.” But for the clergy it is a workplace, the stage on which they perform week after week. Funerals and other rituals are moments of great personal significance and emotion, but they are also, let’s face it, a nightmare for public speaking — thrusting untrained amateurs into the spotlight usually reserved for professional orators.

There’s a reason why a funeral oration is a great piece of rhetoric, from Pericles to Shakespeare’s Mark Antony with his message “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” (certainly number one of all time). This is because the speaker is tasked with giving a performance that will be judged by him and the deceased. Thucydides puts these words in Pericles’ mouth to describe the danger involved in such a moment: a person’s reputation after death is “endangered by one’s eloquence or want of eloquence, and his virtues are believed or not whether he speaks well or ill.”

Of course the priest’s compliment led to more questions. Did he also have a top 10 wedding speech? What about baptism? And perhaps the worst corresponding list ever? “First, the time I almost drowned the child in the font. Second, the ex-wife objects to the marriage, and third, the fist bumps in the seats.”

As we shared a glass of fizz to console ourselves afterwards, another cousin, the grandson of one of the church’s vicars, offered his own insight: When men (and women, who have reached the highest levels of the Church of England hierarchy) of the cloth gather, they actually compare notes on the best and worst of these occasions. What a mental image!

No wonder the classified sections of magazines contain secret ads for occasional speechwriters—it’s too risky. There are bound to be a lot of suspiciously fluent AI-generated funeral sermons these days, if we go by the search results promising “sincere tributes in minutes.”

I am not convinced by such a monolithic and impersonal approach. When my dear father died two years ago, I found the process of writing a eulogy emotionally rewarding: asking people about their distinct memories of him and then cramming as much of them as I could onto the page. Getting through it that day, of course, is another matter — made all the more troubling by the idea of ​​clergy classifying your delivery.

Evaluations extend from the sacred to the profane as well. A talented political speechwriter of my acquaintance loves to tell tales of his best, most carefully crafted lines spouted by MPs – especially jokes that failed due to inappropriate timing.

Sadly, all of this may provide the opposite morale boost to readers writing a difficult wedding speech, let alone crafting a eulogy for the recently bereaved. Now you know that a priest or priest, spiritual or secular, may mentally arrange a performance—and will describe it to his or her colleagues if you excel or miss it.

However, we all would, I bet. It is very normal for people on the same path in life to “talk” and share their best and worst stories. Consider this French song that I found quoted in one of the novels: “When a viscount meets another viscount, what do they talk about? Viscount stories!“

Which we can translate, trying to preserve a bit of rhyme, as: “When the viscounts are gathered together, what are they chattering about? Why, the viscounts together!” If the French viscounts meet, the priests will also meet. And the letter book. Judging them can be daunting for those of us who aren’t used to the platform – but if you pull it off, just think, you could make the top ten on the platform board.

Miranda. [email protected]