[Magdalen] Terminology query (was Re: speaking of downsizing...)

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

I was privileged to be in the room when Professor James Washington did a
little off-topic rambling on this hymn.

He simply recited the refrain, but converting it into genuine dialogue. It
became for all of us a hymn which brought out in detail the here-and-now
real presence of God in the writer's life.

Since the hymn is a meditation on the scene where the Magdalenian Lady
encounters Jesus (that is, after all, why it is called "In the Garden"),
it's kind of stupid to talk about it in terms of individuality, since it is
by definition the thoughts of one woman.

The snarky liturgics instructor would, I presume, also exclude "Saint
Patrick's Breastplate."

How easy it is to mock heathen stuff we don't know much about. We're so
much better than those -- those -- those snake handlers.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 10:47 AM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford
> <oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "In the Garden"
>
> I took a liturgy class in our diocesan education program in Michigan,
> and the priest who taught it railed at "In the Garden" for its
> individualism: "And he walks with ME, and he talks with ME, and he
> tells ME that *I* am his own!" ... and that it's thus a most
> inappropriate hymn for communal worship. I can't argue with that.
>
>
> --
> Scott R. Knitter
> Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA
>