[Magdalen] Little prayers, please

[Marion Thompson]

It's very quiet here today.  Must be the long weekend ....

On Thursday I had a lot of heavy duty dental work done, in particular, 
she had to dig and delve to remove the root of a long-truncated tooth 
and also its whole neighbour.  Do you realise how much of our food 
requires even a little chewing, and I can't. Ice cream, I thought, cool, 
creamy, refreshing -- nope, my house brand of butter pecan is generously 
full of pecan bits.  Mashed bananas are good.  Likewise mashed potato 
and gravy.  Tonight's dinner is Lipton's spicy onion soup in a container 
of organic chicken broth.  Sigh.  The swelling is lessening, but my 
upper lip is not right yet.  It still looks unnaturally long from nose 
to lip, like a chimpanzee's.

This shall pass, but it's unwelcome.  Yesterday, hardly at my best, the 
other warden and I visited a parishioner to hear her concerns ostensibly 
about the elimination of the position of Parish Secretary.  I find it 
hard to listen to people who really are still Presbyterian mooing about 
how we are now too high church for them and that's why people are 
leaving.  I did comment that this is who the selection committee picked 
in its wisdom.  "Well, we didn't know what they were looking for."   
Really?  Really? Funny how people who are well educated and of limitless 
means and who have been intimately involved in major projects around the 
place can be so ignorant? Unaware?  Un-whatever.  The thing is that I 
don't think they care unless it means no change at all.

Reminds me of a friend who was selected as their priest by a former 
church of mine.   Now, I grant that he was given to wearing a biretta, 
but they were shocked!  shocked!!!  "We didn't know what you meant by 
Catholic"  And neither were they listening when he told them how he was 
wired.

I wonder how effectively selection committees communicate with the folks 
in the pews and, indeed, how thorough a job is done in preparing a 
congregation for change, any change!!!

At least TEC seems to have people who are specifically trained to be 
interims and to help people know who they are and where they want to go 
and why.

Marion, a pilgrim