posted on July 29, 2000 10:04:03 PM
The Sunday sermon had gone on and on - and on.
And a little girl, who really had been trying to behave herself, knew that after the sermon, there was still the offertory to go, and probably a final hymn. She began to grow more and more restless.
Then she had an idea!
Leaning over toward her mother, she whispered quietly into her ear, "Mommy, do you think that maybe if we just went ahead and gave him the money now, he'd let us go?"
posted on July 30, 2000 05:33:36 AM
In Boston I was a communicant of a very old, seriously "smells-n-bells" Anglo-Catholic church, which was also very old (no AC). Lots of vestments year-round, sung High Mass, full peal of bells on which a full change is rung monthly, the works. Black tie, no less, for Christmas Eve mass; always suits for the men and about 60% of the women (including the under-40s) wear very serious hats, even when it's not Easter. Sermons are liberally peppered with references to The New Yorker and quotations from the various Philosophers, often in Latin or Greek. There is a sherry hour every Sunday afternoon. I miss all of it terribly.
Boston has some of the most brutal weather in the country: bitterly damp cold in February, lethally humid heat in August.
One August Sunday the pink and perspiring rector (straight out of a Jane Austen novel, BTW) took his place in the pulpit for the sermon. He loomed over the lectern scowling at his wilting congregation and delivered one line:
