Late afternoon in Prairie Metropolis, the weather is dry and calm and not too cold, ideal for the Hallowe'en spooks about to descend upon us. I have to stop and get candy on the way home from the Most Holy and Undivided; and some kind of pumpkinitude to put in my front window, thereby "showing willing" at least. I am too old and too tired and too "few" to launch into cutting up an actual pumpkin -- and facing what to do with it in its post-jack-o'lantern reality. At least I think I am.
I have no idea at this point how many children of trick-or-treat age are left in our neighbourhood, which is about 40 years old, and has been through several turn-overs of ownership, most of the houses anyway.
Meetings today -- a very frustrating one this morning and a good one this afternoon to take the taste of the morning away. I'm on a committee planning the city-wide service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (pause for laugh). Things that make me lose my temper early in the morning when I don't feel well anyhow: scandalized insistence on altering the language of the liturgy to avoid any male images or pronouns, "because OUR people would just walk out of the service STUNNED." I diverted myself by reading the Excommunication Service printed in the service-book of our host-church. It seemed to express many of my sentiments on the subject quite succinctly. I think I'm a feminist, I loved Elizabeth Johnson's "She Who Is," but this is mere FUSS-POT-ISHNESS ... and the triumph of ideology over tradition... and I've no patience with it. I did remember, though, that my Official Ecumenical Hat should probably prevent me from offering violence to the brethren from other obediences.
This afternoon, by way of contrast, I took minutes for the Board of Directors of an agency managing seniors' apartment buildings. Most of the Directors are themselves seniors, and they give me great hope and comfort with their acumen and good humour.
The Rummage Sale was a vast success and raised more money than ever in living memory--I'm sure it was all that home-made soup!
We're heading into Marriage Preparation here in the parish this Friday evening and Saturday (more soup!)
Time to get on the road for home...
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3 comments:
I concur about the pronouns... it grives me how many great hymns have had the poetry changed by people with (probably) good intentions, but maybe a lack of depth to their thinking?
even harder on ecumenical spirit, lovingkindness, and bonhomie and Gemuetlichkeit, is standing for a hymn next to one of the Politically Correct Ones...who is moved to edit spontaneously as we go on.
Back home, we used to put in the bulletin "In hymn #400andsomething you may change the word 'Son' to 'Child' and 'Father' to 'Parent' in verse 8" etc.
It got to a point where you couldn't understand anyone. The end result was more complaining than before.
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