Church yesterday, 9 AM service. As a part of the
Episcopalian liturgical rite (I do
so
love a liturgy - should my attention wander for a bit I know just where we are
when I come back to the moment) and just prior to the celebration of the
eucharist, comes the "Prayers of the People." The deacon leads these from the
Book of Common Prayer, and they cover a lot of ground: Prayers for the church,
government, heads of state, unity of faith, peace and justice, etc. At the very
end the deacon will ask prayers for those whom prayers have been asked:
Travelers, the infirm, the recently or anniversary departed. It can go on
(especially in a church with a lot of aged members) and at the end, the deacon
will solicit "Prayers for any those who need them, either aloud or in your
hearts."
It's common at this point to
hear murmurs in the congregation: "Mom," someone will say, or "Steve."
Occasionally, if it has not already been done, someone will ask for prayers for
a group of people in hardship. Sunday's example along these lines made me sigh
aloud and almost physically bite my tongue. I have a tendency, a lamentable
tendency at times, to over-react.
It
went thusly: "Let us pray for the children of Iraq" (fine, no problem) "and
their parents" (heavens yes) "who are dying of cancer" (em... sure, why not?)
"because of our use of depleted uranium." (Oh.
My.)
A woman's voice, a woman of a
certain age. Ah. Collective guilt. We should all be ashamed. All of us but her,
because, hey: She called us on it. We usually sit in one of the transepts, while
she sat in the main Nave (and you thought aviation jargon was heavy) so I
couldn't see her face. But, oh, I could see every feature: The frown lines
engendered by her perpetual sense of aggravation at the world and all of its
disappointments, all the less perfectly concerned persons than she herself. The
high blush of color in her cheeks at the delicious
frisson
of rubbing our collective noses in it, the fevered eye. There! That should wake
them up out of their precious contentment, their self-satisfied worship of a
higher power! Let's focus instead on all the evil that Amerikkka has done in the
world! Like depleted uranium,
buddy!
Lord, I hate that sort of thing
- it puts me right out of sorts. The Hobbit clamped an arm around me to keep me
from asking aloud that the Lord "shield us from sanctimonious, arrogant
ignorance, masquerading as compassion." Or that we say a prayer for the 300,000
victims of the previous regime and for the
souls of those in foreign lands that winked at its atrocities. And maybe offer
up a prayer the 500,000 unnecessary interbellum Iraqi deaths because we were
asked to "give sanctions a chance," and to our eternal shame, did just that
between 1991 and 2003.
You see, it
isn't just that she was wrong. It isn't even that the whole thing is
emblematic of people who are absolutely convinced that everyone else in the
country that doesn't agree with them is somehow morally inferior. It's because
we were in
church.
And that's not what church is for, not at any level.
But I let it go this time. I tried to
turn the other cheek. I tried to keep above
it.
She tries it again next week and
I'm taking the gloves off.
May the
devil take the hindmost.
Posted @
08:22 PM
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Posted in
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Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
