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A Very Good Week

02/23/09

Permalink 06:06:50 am, by dissidens Email , 351 words, 1403 views   English (US)
Categories: Old Main

A Very Good Week

This week I found a doorknob hanger on my front entry. There was a picture of what looked like a hotel headboard and two sets of pillows. Below the photo was written: "DO NOT DISTURB—stay in bed on Sunday mornings! Attend Lake Pointe Church Saturday night at 6 p.m."

I thought this was most helpful. I find that after a week of lugging around a cross and repetitive self-denial I am sometimes too worn out to drag my weary bones into church for their 11 a.m. Sunday service. Clearly some dear shepherd of the flock is holding my needs close to his heart.

If it turns out that this church has adequate parking, reclining theater seats and cup holders, I think I might go hearken to some shyster telling me how to become all that God wants me to be.

Also this week I heard someone expressing his wish that the entire church be more diverse in its liturgy. This too sounds helpful. Diversity is something we all long for.

I was blessed to be born into a non-fundamentalist home where a respectful distance was maintained between the children and honky-tonk piano-bangers. (Emergence hadn't yet come into existence due to an insufficient number of idiots in the population.) It wasn't until I got a bit older that I realized liturgical diversity meant permitting the most banal twaddle in the church house.

It occurred to me that it would be a rich blessing if your kids were raised along the same lines I was raised, where diversity meant more than an excuse to savage tender sensibilities; where the pieties of past Christians were considered rather than the shallow self-interests of contemporary reprobates.

For those of you who might care to try real diversity, check this out: One Thousand Years of Ukrainian Sacred Music.

I don't imagine most of you will like it, and I don't suppose anything here will find its way into a contemporary "hymnbook", but it will leave you prepared to discuss diversity with the next kid you see in church with a bass guitar.

 

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1 Comment from: the divine passive [Visitor] Email
Liturgical diversity... another service we should advertise on the brochures we hand out door to door. I could see the unlaundered masses flocking to hear Ukranian sacred music from the eleventh century as thumped out, more or less, on a bass guitar. I think everyone present would be happy, which seems to be the point.

By "present" I am not thinking of "omnipresent" but rather "specially present."
PermalinkPermalink 02/23/09 @ 12:49

Reply to comment 5966 by the divine passive

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2 Comment from: dissidens [Member] Email

Yep.

A lot of people talkin’ ‘bout diversity haven’t a clue, and I recall again that a people with a debased and meaningless language are ripe for the plucking.
PermalinkPermalink 02/24/09 @ 09:59

Reply to comment 5967 by dissidens

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3 Comment from: the divine passive [Visitor] Email
Here's some more diversity for the diversity-minded:

http://www.harmoniamundi.com/usa/album_fiche.php?album_id=983
PermalinkPermalink 02/24/09 @ 11:16

Reply to comment 5968 by the divine passive

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4 Comment from: dissidens [Member] Email

Great works performed well.
PermalinkPermalink 02/24/09 @ 17:15

Reply to comment 5969 by dissidens

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5 Comment from: Stuart [Visitor] Email
I appreciate your thoughts. The modern evangelical church is a far cry from tue Christianity. Check out this blog which lists "25 Errors of Modern Evangelicals". There also is a very challenging article on "Taking the Mask off Calvinism". I think you'll see the point.

http://fromonewecanjudgetherest.blogspot.com/search/label/Authored%20by%20Pr.%20Stuart%20Wood
PermalinkPermalink 02/25/09 @ 15:11

Reply to comment 5970 by Stuart

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6 Comment from: Grace [Visitor] Email · http://www.plasticsurgerynut.com
I agree with you, diversity is not thwarted, even in church, but everything should be in the measures.
PermalinkPermalink 02/26/09 @ 06:49

Reply to comment 5971 by Grace

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7 Comment from: dissidens [Member] Email

Fortunately in music nearly everything is done in measures.

(Sorry, I tried to resist the temptation but the flesh is weak.)

Actually, I’ve lost all patience with people who talk about “reform in measures”. The house is burning down, the children are trapped upstairs and some people think they are being heroic because they are spitting at the fire.

The next time I hear a fundagelical talk about balance, he'd better be saying "we've been weighed in the balance and found wanting".
PermalinkPermalink 02/26/09 @ 09:26

Reply to comment 5972 by dissidens

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8 Comment from: danofsteel [Member] Email
As I compare One Thousand Years of Ukrainian Sacred Music with Horror #2 discussed previously, I'm saddened by the realization that Horror #2 has a better chance of being played in my church.

PermalinkPermalink 02/27/09 @ 17:24

Reply to comment 5978 by danofsteel

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9 Comment from: dissidens [Member] Email

I’ve come to believe this is the only way out: look at what was done in the past, compare it to what we now do, and cultivate that natural contempt we feel when we see something desecrated.

But as Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Our present guardians of piety created (and still defend) this stuff.
PermalinkPermalink 02/27/09 @ 18:27

Reply to comment 5979 by dissidens

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