Aliens in This World

An ordinary Catholic and a science fiction and fantasy fan.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Choir News



Choir is almost over for another year. But fear not. One of our number has apparently successfully infiltrated the Parish Council. Mwahahaha!

Next Sunday we celebrate Ascension, and our non-permanent not-a-deacon-anymore celebrates his first Mass. We will be doing all sorts of prelude music and Mass music and such. We learned "Regina Coeli"! Isn't that exciting? It's like being a Chaucer character or something.... Even the old ladies didn't know that one.

I won't be in town for Pentecost, as it conflicts with Marcon. I feel kinda bad about this, especially as I'm not reallll hep to go to the con at all this year. But I will go be POD down at St. Patrick's down the street from the convention center/hotel complex. Perhaps I will wear A Hat in honor of the feast. (Although I guess we won't be waiting to eat until a Wonder shows up. These days it's hard to arrange for ladies chasing fawns or maniacal giants with axes and strong views on barter.)

The Flowers of the Forest



Anyway, Nadine of the Funeral Choir (known to its members as the "Sob Sisters", which was probably Nadine's idea) had a story to tell last night at practice. "A thousand years ago, when banners were first invented", there was a certain banner hanging in church. Nobody noticed the problem except Nadine. She kept almost losing it all through Mass, and finally went up to the priest afterward. You've got to take that banner down during funerals, she said. Why? he said. Look at it, she said.

The banner said, "Bloom Where You're Planted".

(Ah, to be a piper at that funeral! You could've played "The flowers of the forest are a' wede awa".)

1 Comments:

  • At 6:41 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I hope you don't mind my posting a general comment here, but I can't find an email contact for you on this page. Anyway, I really like your blog and I can't believe I come across it before - I ran across your dán díreach page a few years ago I think, and I thought that was a wonderful resource.

    So I was just reading your archives and I came across you post on hallah. I don't know if you know about the afikoman, though (surely you would have mentioned it in the post if you had?), so I will describe it. It is a tradition particular to Ashkenazi Passover seders. Passover is the feast of unleavened bread, so the matzoh is central to every seder. But in Ashkenazi tradition, the following happens: when the matzoh is first uncovered and presented in the seder, three pieces of matzoh are presented. The second one is then broken in two, and the larger of the two pieces is hidden away - this is the afikoman. The seder then proceeds, but the children present are expected to try to find and repossess the afikoman before the very end of the meal. The leader then ransoms the afikoman back from the successful child, breaks it into pieces and distributes the pieces as dessert.

    Atlantic

     

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