Holy Crap!

The intertubes are a buzzin' today with this hot new pic of Robbo the LLamabutcher swingin'---Anglican style.

(My memory is probably distorted, but the worst task in 9-ish years of being an Altar Boy was holding the censer during a procession. The trick was getting it in front of you at arms full length, but at a good angle, say 2 oclock. If you held it sideways, you'd get clipped by the priest, full in front, you'd get the cloud of incense in your face. You also had to keep an eye out for the style of the priest. Our saintly parish priest had a gentle censer swing--he would hold the chain three quarters of the way to the end, and give it a quick but gentle swing on a short parabola. One time we had a visiting priest (who was a stuck up butthead from the Diocese, but that's another story) and he nearly took out my teeth. I was standing behind and to the right, holding the dish of incense, and he whipped that sucker back without holding the chain except by the big ring at the end. Nothing quite like three pounds of lead, brass and smoke whipping unexpectedly by your head to get you to focus on the Almighty. Father Sheilds, our parish priest, told me that he was going to name that particular censer "logos," because the Word was almost made Flesh. I didn't get it at the time, but it always makes me smile.

The Diocesan priest, by the way, is one I hold a personal animosity towards. (I can't remember whether I've ever written about this) He was the one who effectively silenced me. At a separate Mass, I was standing next to him at the very end, and we were singing the final hymn. I was singing with gusto, but not very well. After we proceeded to the sacristy, he turned to me and said, "Some can also give glory to God by not singing." Like a bad magic trick, to this day I cannot open my mouth to sing.

I guess it could've been much worse, given the criminal crap he and his bishop were up to at the time serving the bidding of Bernard Cardinal Law.