My swearing in ceremony was nice. It was held in historic Fanueil Hall, and the ceremony and speeches capitalized on that. In a good way, in my opinion. I spoke with a couple of senior associates later in the day who said, “do they still tell all the same corny jokes?” and I said, “but I liked the jokes.” I guess I’m corny.
They let Beloved give me my license. A strange Massachusetts tradition, where your primary loved one (whether that be your grandmother, your toddler or your husband) comes up on stage with you, and THEY are given the license, and they can then give it to you. Beloved and I played along. This was not done in front of an audience, per se.
But my license!
When I received my notification that I passed the bar, it came along with a sheet to fill out indicating my swearing in preference. Do I want to do it in Boston? Or in Western Mass. Is there a reason why I can’t do it during this week of formal ceremonies?
And finally … do I want my license to say “in the year of our Lord…” or just “in the year.”
It seemed like a funny question at the time.
We all know that I’m not only an UNbeliever, but a Bitter Unbeliever. Even still, I felt a bit catty checking that box. The “get the ‘lord’ off my license” box. I checked it still.
Yesterday, Beloved handed me my license. He kissed my cheek. He took my picture (for my parents). Then we stuffed the thing in my bag, and went out to lunch (delish, by the way).
When I returned to the office, I showed my license to a friend. She said, “but you checked the box!” Huh?
There it was, “in the year of our Lord 2007.”
Damn.
If I was feeling catty about checking the box, I certainly feel catty raising a stink because my license has the lord on it.
I think I’m just going to let it go.
Balance of Power 
Heehee. Ok, sorry, but having read your religion-themed posts (and being a sympathetic fundamentalist-raised agnostic/atheist myself), the irony that your license says “in the year of our Lord” is kinda funny.
But seriously, if it really bugs you, get it fixed. Otherwise it will be hanging on your wall mocking you forevermore.
And I think it’s cool that Beloved got to give you your license. We didn’t get anything at our swearing in–my license arrived in the mail two weeks later–and I didn’t even get to sit near DH.
You know you’re going to stare at that on the wall and it’s just going to bother you. Easier to get it fixed now while the ink’s still drying than later when you pitch the whole thing out the window after one of your parents calls to give you some born-again speech.
Glad it otherwise went well!
Funny… I totally have no recollection of being asked if I had such a preference, and being a life-long non-christian, I would have thought that the question would have stuck out in my mind. I went back to check my license and, yup, there the lord resides.
As a Jew it would probably bother me, since the “year of our Lord” is clearly a reference to Hey-Zeus. (I could write Jesus in Spanish, but it would just look the same since I don’t know how to do the little accent thing.)
Interestingly enough, we used to have prayers in synagogue where we said Lord, but were referring to the Big Cheese. A few years ago, they changed it to something else. (I can’t remember what now.) Apparently to a group of egalitarian Jews, the term Lord is classist and elitist.
As egalitarian as I am, I thought it was kinda funny.
Congrats on officially becoming a lawyer!
Eh, I’m Catholic and I still find that weird. What does the lord have to do with the year, or especially the law license? I would have checked the non-lord box too. But then I like to keep my state and my church separate. (Shame my church doesn’t feel the same way.)
That is weird. In MD, we don’t have licenses or license numbers. In fact, the only thing that I have that shows I am licensed attorney is the letter saying I passed the bar — and even that doesn’t show I’m licensed yet.
But I definitely wouldn’t want the the lord thing hanging over me and staring down at me… that is, if I had a license at all.
Silly Puritan Massachusetts. My hatred of religion is pretty much a passion, but I left the lord on my MA license for the tradition, and just the other day, someone in my NY office read it and commented how dumb it is.
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