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Thursday 17 April 2014

Holy Thursday

Since I am so given to whinging when things at my current parish aren't done the way they should be the way I want them, it is only right that I take the time to praise what is praiseworthy.

We never have an entrance procession, so it is striking and most fitting when it is done, as it was tonight, (though how much better it would have been if they had had a server or two and vested them!) (Ooops, see? I can't help myself.)

Sermon, as usual from the pastor, was excellent, (I wonder if any of my RelEd kids was there, and thus will finally take a stab at guessing what the sign "Source and Summit!" I have put up in our classroom means.

No footwashing, no clacker, (but no bells, either, which we ALWAYS use under normal circumstances, so I'll take it.)

EP I was used, and while that is notable because it is never done otherwise, the striking thing about it was that it was prayed like a great piece of oratory.

The naming of the Roman martyrs! Not rattled off, or stumbled over, but not tarted up with acting, with "helping the text too much, as an acting teacher I knew once criticized and actor whose hammy love of his voice was ruining a moment,) ... no, those names of  martyred saints' were proclaimed, solemnly and proudly, as one would the list of first responders killed in an emergency.

Which I just realized, they of course are, they absolutely ARE - Martyrs as first responders, and the emergent Church in which, or rather, for Whom they gave their lives was certainly in dire straits.

It was moving, and excellently done.

The organist provided a meditative, and rather gloriously harmonized WONDROUS LOVE. (And yeah, I wish she hadn't but if she was going to play an instrumental piece, this was the one to play.)

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