That's My Church!

An interesting weekend in my parish.

First, Sunday morning we sat behind a young lady of, um, ample bottomage, who was wearing a too-short sweater and elastic-waist pants that, even when she stood up, just barely hung on. When she knelt down to pray...well, let's just say that that Frodo Baggins needn't have walked all the way to Mordor to find the Crack of Doom. Furiously averting my gaze, I wondered whether the Missus had noticed as well. A side-long glance revealed that she had her BCP well up over her face. I knew the pages were too close to her eyes for her to make them out, but if she got some of the liturgy wrong, I'm sure God understood. By the time the post-Communion prayer came along, she looked nearly frantic. My biggest fear was that the nine year old, who was sitting with us, suddenly would notice and blurt it out, tact not being her strong suit. Fortunately, she didn't see the bad moon rising. When will people learn?

Second, on a more serious note, during the Prayers for the People the rector read out the names of the victims of the Va. Tech massacre. Among them, he included the shooter himself. This got me noodling on the nature and duty of forgiveness. Is there anybody out there for whom a Christian cannot or may not or should not pray? Or is it our responsibility to embrace everyone, including Cho (and also including, at random, say Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot)? I confess that I can't do it myself. And perhaps that's wrong of me, but there it is. I spoke to the assistant rector about it later on. She noted that the lay reader who read the list at the 11:15 service specifically excluded Cho's name. She also confessed that she was torn on this matter, too.

Third, at our adult forum we got a State of the Church update. Oddly, considering I'm on both the vestry and the adult education committee, I didn't know this talk was coming. So I really wasn't prepared to do much more than take notes. As you might imagine, it was pure Party Line. My sense is that the Powers are beginning to prep us for schism by softening the importance of the Communion: it's just a voluntary association; it hasn't been around all that long anyway; most of the other member Churches fail to appreciate the bottom-up governance of TEC; meddling by one Church into the affairs of another is far worse behavior than anything TEC has done; the Global South Churches aren't nearly as united as is thought; the proposed Anglican Covenant is pretty much DOA. Oh, and Rowan Williams, once a champion of progressive thought, has become a dupe of the hard-liners since his elevation to Archbishop, enslaved by a blind desire for "unity" above all else. Furthermore, TEC has been the champion of calm rationality all this time, under the sooper-dreamy leadership of Her Presiding Priestessness. We are Windsor-compliant. We've answered every question and demand handed down by the Communion in good faith and done everything asked of us. And how dare all those African churches we're bankrolling think they have the right to tell us how to behave anyway? After all, they still believe in the juju! (Okay, I made up that one, but I bet I'm not far off.) As for the Secessionists? Well, at least there isn't any pretense about what the Diocese wants. It wants the property. The people themselves can go to hell.