Stray marks on paper

I always hated "fill in the bubble" type tests. Even in elementary school, the idea that you had to make perfectly round dark dots with no stray marks that the computer couldn't read made me crazy. I secretly admired the smart-alek kid in fourth grade who, when told to go over his dots with a "fine tooth comb" took out his comb and raked over his completed paper. The paper of course tore. The teacher seemed to come apart a the seams a little too. The kid is now a medical doctor. Good on ya.

One year, in frustration, I just filled out the dots on my test willy nilly, making stray marks wherever I liked. I got called into the office for that one and was forced to fill in a new test form. I hated those tests even more after that day.

Government forms are the same, with their warnings of "do not write below the line"... no stray marks, no creativity, fill in the dots and be done. Do it right or do it over. Our way or the highway. Thanks guys, for caring.

Even little check box forms that don't come with dire warnings aren't really very interesting. As an undergraduate, I earned some of my tuition money doing data entry for the admissions department. As clever as high schoolers think they are, there are really no computer programs to encompass their wit, remarks, and petty rebellions. Care not to share your racial background? Data entry will just record you as "white" since there's no place in the computer for "not telling." (Its a reasonable guess; nobody in America has less ethnic pride and fewer scholarship incentives to reveal their race than the middle class white kid.) Got an interesting hobby you want to share? The data entry slaves might get a kick out of it, your card might even be passed from one workstation to the next, but after that it goes no further. There's no computer entry for your witty little hobbies, your unusual characteristics. Cookie cutter or nothing.

As a culture we begin to ignore little relational things, stray marks on a page. Growing up in the computer age, the age of stranger danger, the fill in your bubble and keep your head down era, we've stopped admiring the artistic goofiness that is the person next to us.

Christmas shopping kind of gets to be the same way; buy off the rack, enjoy the cookie cutout gift, smile, spend. Do it all next year. Y'all know I'm working at getting outside of that, digging deeper... and in doing so I found an order form (for slippers and other warm fuzzy things) that read as follows:

SHEPHERD'S FLOCK'S OFFICIAL ORDER FORM (Footnote 1: says "As opposed to our “unofficial” order blank which is whatever piece of paper you can come up with. We are people who can read (as long as it is
legible). Avoid things like toilet paper, paper towels, etc. as the ink bleeds. “Post-Its” with the order details attached to your check are quite acceptable.")

Ha, stray marks with a sense of humor. Its not every day I find an order form that I read out loud to my husband before sending it in. (For the curious, the rest is here, in PDF format.)

What followed are a series of brief exchanges in which I learned such things as: the guy that makes my slippers owns a cat, has an interest in politics, and think rabbits are too much work. Further search of their website shows an appreciation for stray marks on a page along with a significant portion of society who seems to also enjoy making stray marks, being creative or just downright goofy. I don't doodle on order forms (mostly because all my drawings look like the rabbits made them) but those who do show their humanity, their reality.

And our conversation started simply because I responded to his postscript with a postscript of my own... He wrote to tell me my order was shipping, but he wrote (and I read) below the mythic line. Signature line: "It is so darn hard to do email with a cat sitting in your lap" enticed me to talk to strangers, to reply "PS. Its also hard to email with a rabbit on your lap." And a stranger replied, related, and became a former stranger.

The slippers I ordered are warm and well made... but its the stray marks on paper that last longest.

Cracked Walls

I went to WalMart today, which I almost never do.  A few random thoughts that floated through my head:

• Can’t find a coffee grinder… do people not grind their own coffee anymore?  Everything’s been taken over by those over priced single cup, premeasured hermetically sealed monstrosities.  Too few variables in those things.  No common pot for making enough to share.  Does that reveal something about our grab and go society?  (As I write this, I’m drinking a cup of home roasted coffee that I came dangerously close to setting on fire the other day… yeah, it tastes a bit smokey… oh well, it has its charm but not its intended quality.)
• The louder the Christmas music blared the more depressed I became.  Especially the “you better be good because Creepy Santa is watching you” theme.  Since when does Christian culture equate to “be good and get stuff.”  I could have sworn the opposite was the faith: we’re not good, we deserve nothing, God gives, we can’t.
• Everything I picked up was made in China…. read down a few blog posts.  ‘Nuff said.  I came in for socks, I left without them.  No non-Chinese socks to be found.  At least not ones worth buying.
• There were entire lines of products intended to be gifts for my stuff.  My ipod has no needs.  Its an inanimate object.  It will  whatever it is without accessories.  There were also tons of things nobody needs being snapped up by unthinking people.  Synthetic pillow pets that serve neither as pillows nor as pets; trinkets and gadgets that clutter and get used once a year if at all.  Garage sale fodder.
• I did find a sweater.  A boring thing.  Not made in China.  Made instead in Bangladesh.  Yea. Exploiting sweatshop laborers for a sweater I don’t actually need.
• Nothing here is real… those words kept going through my mind over and over as I looked on at slick packaging, advertizing galore, phony “jolliness” blared over the speakers, synchronized television displays,  color, shazaam, kitsch and glassy eyed unquestioning customers that never question it all.
• It was awkward to walk from WalMart to meet my family nearby. The dug out shored up landscape was made for cars, not feet. Instead of taking the direct route, I had to go the other way, walk in the road, pretend to basically be a car. Human feet were not expected.
• I understand the premise of the Matrix movie; stay in and feel good, get out and understand what’s really going on.  The truth hurts.  Some days I can live right alongside the rest of the world, happily doing stupid stuff.  Some days I’m outside the Matrix, out of sync with “normal” and knowing that being depressed is the right thing to be.
• I walked out of WalMart empty handed, an hour wasted, and depressed.  Why do so few people question this futility? 

After WalMart I stopped off at my mother-in-law’s house… there’s a crack in the brick wall at her house with flowers growing right out of the wall.  About 18 inches off the ground, I have no idea where their roots could be, but the little Johnny-jumpups are indeed jumping right out of the wall, still blooming a little in the southern climate.  Okay, so its not the best thing that could ever happen to her wall, but its made me smile.  Beauty unexpected, out of place.  Sterility betrayed by beauty.  Cracks indeed in the walls.  

And I guess that’s the Gospel; hope emerging from the cracks in the foundation.

The Other Side of the Story

I thought some of you might be interested in reading the North Korean side of the story... Its boilerplate North Korean rhetoric; nothing unusual here except perhaps that they informed their people as the news was breaking instead of the usual weeks of media delay that would be typical of the propaganda machine. I'm concerned here that the North is attempting to build a case for war, but the North is always building that case among its people. Nothing new under the sun.

calendar>>November 23. 2010 Juch 99



KCNA Blasts US Moves to Tighten Its Alliance with S. Korea


Pyongyang, November 23 (KCNA) -- It is reported recently that the U.S. is working hard to tighten its alliance for aggression with south Korea in all aspects.

The U.S. worked out new "defence cooperation guidelines" on the basis of upgrading its alliance with south Korea with its level and prospect in the new century in view. High-ranking officials of the U.S. Administration in public appearances asserted the importance of a new alliance with south Korea.


There came into being a strategic consultative mechanism for commanding a U.S.-Japan-south Korea force for actual operations and military consultative systems for various branches of arms were rounded off under the pretext of coping with the non-existent "threat" from the DPRK.


It was against this backdrop that the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it would stage the U.S.-south Korea joint military exercises in the West Sea of Korea at any cost with its nuclear-powered carrier George Washington involved.


The evermore undisguised moves of the U.S. to tighten the above-said alliance hint at a new phase of unchallenged military action to put not only the Korean Peninsula but the whole of the Asia-Pacific region under its control.


The peninsula is the main target of the U.S. Asian strategy from a geopolitical point of view.


In pursuance of its political and military purposes the U.S. is desperately driving the south Korean bellicose forces into confrontation with the DPRK and thereby pushing the situation on the peninsula to an extreme phase.


The Korean Peninsula is the region where the north and the south are standing in acute confrontation and it is surrounded by big powers. It is, therefore, the strategic calculation of the U.S. to overpower its military rivals and realize its ambition for dominating the above-said region, taking advantage of the role of south Korea, its junior ally.


This is clear from what was stated in the new "defence cooperation guidelines." What merits most serious attention is that these guidelines call on the U.S. and south Korea to boost the regional "cooperation" through bilateral, tripartite and multilateral activities while maintaining what it called "firm combined defence posture" on the peninsula.


What should not be overlooked, in particular, is the fact that the guidelines envisage expanding the scope of their application by including Northeast Asian countries in the "defence cooperation" projects, going beyond the limit that "both sides shall defend themselves from outside armed attack" stipulated in the "U.S.-south Korea mutual defence treaty" concluded several decades ago.


The above-said facts provide an irrefutable testimony that the U.S. strategic scenario for carrying out its strategy for dominating the Asia-Pacific region is at the phase of its implementation.


The moves stepped up by the U.S. to tighten the alliance under the fictitious "threat" from the DPRK are nothing but a serious military provocation as they drive the situation into an extreme phase.


The U.S. is the arch criminal threatening the peace and stability of the region including the peninsula and making the hostile relations persist there.


The above-said moves of the U.S. should be held in check at once.

Where I wish I lived.

Sixty degrees and sunny. The perfect day to pick up a few odds and ends at the local mom-and-pop grocer for breakfast. Perfect for a stop in the local nobody ever heard of these guys coffee shop for a cup of slightly too weak but decent brew. Perfect day for walking amongst the fallen leaves past the tree planted in my grandmother's memory, down past houses I knew by the owner's names, once upon a time thirty years ago.

I always wanted to live here. When I was little all my friends lived in town, and I lived too far out to walk over and play. Now that I'm grown, I still crave walkable towns where the coffee shop owner knows me by name and the houses are all tiny and there are sidewalks everywhere, but its perfectly safe to just walk in the street too.

My mother-in-law lives across the street from my grandmother's old house; my children visit grandma on the same street I did. The "old man" who I remember from my childhood is still there, but he doesn't seem to have aged. He's still an eccentric old man, though my kids won't remember him as I did. Last time I was here, I talked to a nameless neighbor on the corner. I don't know him, but I remember that he gave the best candy on the street on Hallowe'en. I remember the little shop where grandma had her hair blued. And the houses where here blue-haired friends lived, now long gone. An old man stood behind me in the grocery store; when I lived near here, he must have been somewhat young. The old ladies in the store were not old then, they were my friends' parents.

It is strange how this town seems to have stepped outside of time. The houses, trees, streets don't age. The grocery looks the same. The drugstore has changed hands and is a coffee shop, but it still looks like the drugstore. But the people age and change, one generation steps up and takes the place of the one before. My grandparents are gone, but their friends faces are echoed in the next generation of townspeople. Ageless.

My mother-in-law blogs about this town. I'm glad she lives here. It is the closest thing I have to a hometown. I think I'd still like to live here. But part of its charm is that at the end of the week, I'll leave... back to another world, where time marches at a more typical pace.

Safety, sterility, and the general store

Today I ended up needing gas in Nowheresville, PA (also known as Ruff Creek). The interstate sign promised me a BP station (and nothing else) and the car was down to one bar... so off we went to the local BP.

The BP sign was fresh and green, bright cheery 21st century advertising. We're used to it. But what was unusual was how it stood out, garish against the muted landscape. Expecting the standard gas and go quickie mart next to the filling station, I was a little surprised to see that the sign next to the BP sign, was a rusted 1950's vintage general store sign. The building itself was a little dilapidated, but having need of a bottle of water, I wondered in. Passing the bags of dog food on display that gave the shop the air of a feed store and opening the door, I was greeted by a scent I couldn't quite place. After a few steps, my foot slipped a little, a quick adjustment, a look down... the wooden floor had recently been oiled. Ah, that was the scent. A fifties era painted tin sign told me I could get my hunting license at the counter. It was an old-fashioned country store, and I had stepped back in time.

Most people would drive on by. If my tank hadn't been empty I would have too. Surely no one other than the fuel desperate would have much reason to pull off at metropolitan Ruff Creek (no doubt pronounced "crick"). Surely passers by don't often wonder into general stores whose exterior blends into the landscape, where the dilapidated facade fails to call to strangers. But inside the welcome was warm, the atmosphere worth the trip alone.

I found the contrast shocking. How long has it been since you stepped into a general store with fresh oiled wood floors? Usually they floors are all the same, industrial tile. The goods are all the same, prepackaged, premeasured.

In Pennsylvania, farmers markets are endangered by legislation which tries to measure out food "safety" so that large corporations give us our pre-packaged, premeasured sterility. While local famers, markets out of time, wood floored general stores are driven out of business by the same "safety" concerns that drove used clothing stores to close over legislated fears over lead paint on children's buttons. (If my kid is eating buttons I have bigger worries than a microscopic amount of lead.) We worship at the idol of safety, sterility, conformity.

Relationships aren't safe... exchanging greetings with my favorite Korean grocier, the general store clerk, the farmer who grew my produce... but relationships, and the risks involved in them, actually produce more safety than TSA, FDA, the CDC or whatever government agency has been charged with "public safety" today. Instead of stabbing an innoculation for every passing germ into my children's and my own flesh, buying soulless prepackaged measured "nutrition" and shopping only in brightly lit, standard issue Targets and Walmarts, I'd rather support the local mom-and-pop shop, eat a little dirt along with a fresh garden carrot, slurp up a little local honey from the county fair.

And maybe in the short-run I may catch a little bug now and then, but in the long run, germs build immunities... and that's a metaphor for life.

11/18/2005

A stranger
A sister,
A mother unknown.
Across a room, across a globe.
While others laugh, she has lost.
While others smile, she mourns.
Time slips away, he grows unseen.
A letter unread,
A whisp of memory,
A song, a name, a cry.
Does he know her name?
Would he know her face?
Will he speak her tongue someday?
To meet,
To know,
To hear,
To love,
A stranger, a mother unknown.

Lies my culture told me.

So I guess this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the birth control pill. From time to time someone references this in the media, as it floats into my email inbox. It all leaves me to wonder, what is there to celebrate? I'm a GenX woman, "the pill" has always existed in my world. It is taken for granted by people my age. Its hard for people who hold certain truths to be self-evident to realize that the premise is based on a lie, but my generation believes the freedom of the pill to be self-evident indeed, it was the woman's Declaration of Independence, back in its day. And so, what follows are the lies my culture has told me.

The pill will give you freedom. Ah freedom from slagging around a gaggle of children. But instead the modern American household is now a two income home, mom is chained to an office as much as dad is. And in the meantime someone still has to do the laundry. Women are more stressed out, scheduled, and burdened now than they ever were. So much for freedom.

You don't have to risk 'losing your body.' I love this one... the idea that children make you fat. Clinically proven, its the pill that causes weight gain. Birthing babies may cause some changes, but wider hips are nothing, a few curves here and there; the alternative is actual weight of the kind that puts women at risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes.

Birthing more than a culturally accepted number of children cannot be healthy. In fact, pregnancy and breastfeeding reduce a woman's risk of a number of cancers. Birthing and breastfeeding, it seems, are actually good for our bodies. Since when is it healthy to dose our bodies with hormones that don't belong there?

Women have more important things to do. Like what? Earning the almighty dollar? Promotions don't give you grandchildren, and corporate awards don't give you snuggles. You live, you earn, you die, and you can't take it with you. With kids, there's someone to outlive you, from generation to generation.

Women don't need men. Nope, with the pill women can just use them. But funny, we've become a culture of women who seem to need someone to use.

Birth control is good for families. Oh, except for all the little family members hormonally aborted. Never mind them.

When are we going to stop buying into this rubbish and see the truth? Hormonal birth control hurts women.

A Sermon on Revelation 7 for the Feast of All Saints (transferred) with baptism.

One of the things that I’ve often been asked is what is my favorite passage of Scripture. And often I’ve felt that choosing a favorite verse or chapter is like choosing a favorite child; after all, we’re supposed to love them all, right? But of course, we don’t love them all. There are passages we just don’t understand, would rather not have to preach or teach on, or find somehow distasteful. We’re fallen people, imperfect and limited, and so we fail to wrestle perfectly with the full implications of the Scripture. For a lot of Christians, the book of Revelation is one of those parts of the Bible that they’d rather not approach. It frightens us, it’s disturbing. The images are vivid but full of unknowns. It doesn’t help that the plot is so readily made into an apocalyptic horror movie and modern writers have abused the text to sell sensationalistic novels.
The truth is that over the years, I’ve come to realize that I don’t love every passage as I should and there are passages I love more than others, even though I ought to love them all. And one of my very favorite passages of Scripture is in Acts, where the officials at Thessalonica accuse the Christians of “turning the world upside down.”
For the record, my other favorite passage of Scripture is in Genesis in which Joseph tells his brothers that what they intended for evil against him, God has intended for good. You might wonder why I have chosen those two verses as my favorites; they’re certainly not the cuddly usual choices. But the reason I love those two passages is that the one, what man intends for evil, God redeems for good, is the summary of the entire Bible. Man intended evil in the garden, throughout the course of human history, and most supremely at the cross of Christ. And it is at that point of utter darkness, on Good Friday, that God turns the world upside down. The son of God who existed from eternity dies. The crucified and buried Christ raises himself from the grave. Time-bound and mortal man is given release into eternity. Christ was scarred to make us perfect, he became sin who knew no sin, so that we might be raised to life immortal. In other words, what man intended for evil, God redeemed for good, and thus the whole created order is turned upside down.
It is the upside-down-ness that is our lens for viewing the Book of Revelation. I know that a lot of American Christians shy away from Revelation. In almost every church I’ve served, there has been at least one brave soul who admits that they have not and do not plan to ever read that book! And I don’t think I’ve ever had someone answer the “favorite passage” question with: “Revelation! I just LOVE Revelation!” Especially not stuff like we find here in the first few chapters.
And most of us know the sixth chapter in the context of apocalyptic horror movies. Even without the movies, the Bible’s words are vivid, shocking. The whole company of heaven is gathered around to read the scroll, the last will and testament of one so great that none can be found worthy to break the seal. And then, one by one, the lamb, surrounded by the strange and mysterious and powerful company of heaven, begins to open the seals. The tension builds, as each seal is broken. Each seal brings forth an angel at the ready with power to harm, destroy. The armies are lined up, but not unleashed. War, death, famine. At the fifth seal the souls of those who have been martyred for daring to proclaim God’s truth cry out, how long? How long must evil reign? How long must the suffering go on? The faithful cry out, the sun takes on mourning clothes, the skies are rolled away and left naked of the stars.
This is what people think of when they think of Revelation. Terror. But it is the nature of our God, remember, that the world is turned upside down. The powers of destruction are held back by an angelic hand, as the sixth seal is broken. While the pressure of the narrative builds, while terror is added upon terror, the Lord interrupts the story. He musters his army, marks them for his service. No assurances are given of safety; for God’s people are about to face a great tribulation.
More and more the pressure builds. And just when we think the top is going to blow off the whole thing, St. John says he looked, and he sees something startling. In the middle of the darkness, he sees an image of those clothed in white robes. Amid the terror, he sees those who are at peace. The same God who musters his army is the one at whose throne they are permitted to worship, who wipes the tears from their eyes, who is their shade against the scorching heat of the sun. Famine is at the gates, but these will neither hunger or thirst. It is like a painting, dark and brooding, and in the middle is a stark contrasting point of light. Who are these?
These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation.
Americans are afraid to read Revelation because we’re afraid of tribulation. We are afraid to suffer, to take risks, to die. We say we want to live for Jesus, but we don’t understand that the only faith worth living for is one which is also worth dying for. We are afraid to read Revelation because we cannot identify with these who come out of the great tribulation, because we ourselves are too timid to enter the tribulation at all.
But Jesus says, blessed are the persecuted. Again, the world is turned upside down. Blessed are the persecuted. Not only in the sky by and by, but blessed here and now are the persecuted. I think we, in the comfort of our American churches, can easily turn a blind eye to the reality of persecution in the world. We don’t want to see it for the same reason we’re afraid to read the book of Revelation, we are afraid that these things could happen to us. We like to think that persecution no longer happens in the world, but persecution is not limited in time or geography. But in all times and all places, blessed are those who are persecuted for the love of Jesus. In the prison, Paul and Silas were singing hymns. Even today in China and Iraq, Christians are imprisoned and the hope which they have is reflected in the singing of hymns. And by this hope, despite the high cost in their countries, many prison guards have become Christians. In the face of imminent death, Stephen announced that he saw angels. For God did not abandon him to suffer death alone. In North Korea, Christians are placed in prison camps, never allowed to look at anything other than the ground. Their backs are permanently stooped over. And in North Korea, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, and many other places, even today, Christians face death for our faith but never alone.
Following Jesus means persecution, for we follow him to the cross. It was by his cross that the world was turned upside down. Jesus who existed from before eternity, the immortal one, died on that cross. The world was turned upside down. Jesus a man, in frail flesh, crucified and buried, retained the power and the authority to raise himself from the grave. The world was turned upside down on Easter Sunday. Christians are to turn the world upside down because Jesus turned the world around. From death to life eternal, from fallen and frail to whole and perfected. Jesus turned the world upside down, changed the very fabric of the universe. And it should come as no surprise that he rightly demands no less than our very lives in response. If we withhold ourselves from him, there is no hope for us. But if we are his, there is no need to fear what the world calls fearful. Our world is upside down, even persecution becomes a means of his blessing and there is no such thing as hopelessness.
Today, we will welcome into the household of God a new child of God. Small and helpless, we want to believe that nothing will ever harm her, that her days will be long and pleasant. It may even be offensive to you that we would talk about persecution at such a time as this. But we welcome her, not only into our little congregation, but into the whole family of God. Our people will become her people. Her family will now go back through the generations to a people who stood bravely in persecution, remained faithful in times of plenty. She will carry the legacy of those who lived imperfect lives devoted to a perfect savior. And while no one can promise that she will never face adversity and even persecution, the promises of God have never been broken; that she will be filled with hope, her world turned upside down.
For those of you, therefore, who remain afraid of the words of Revelation, this is my advice. Know that this God of ours has turned the world upside down. The powers of destruction that are promised to be unleashed are unleashed on all the evils of our world. What harms you, causes you agony, grief, fear, these things will be destroyed in the last days. Even death itself will be trampled down. The process isn’t pretty, but he does not leave you hopeless even in the murky midst of your troubles and the depth of your tribulations.
I find it helpful, if you are taking on reading these things for the first time, to begin at the end. To know how the story comes out. I think this is what God wants for us, to know that his promise is full of hope and beauty. Read the end first, and then read the rest with the knowledge that it marks the destruction of all that is wrong and evil, all persecution and plague, and that even if you stand in the very midst of the chaos, you do not stand alone.
And, in the words of Revelation after all that is wrong with this world has been destroyed, “the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also on either side of the river the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and its leaves were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever.”
Today we baptize a new sister, whose true destiny is indeed to reign with Christ forever and ever.

Beyond words, just beyond words.

A few weeks ago, ToAllTheWorld blogged about Calvary Church's so called "Seusscharist" and I was beyond words. It took me days, really, before I could even say anything about this, and then words still were inadequate.

But it's Pittsburgh. I have friends in Pittsburgh. I care about what they do here, even if this is a TEC church and should therefore no longer be my concern. And really, I wanted to hold out the opinion that maybe this wasn't as tacky, pedantic and condescending as it looked.

I'm sorry. I was wrong. I would very much like to say that I was wrong in my assumption that a "Seusscharist" was a bad idea. That's not the kind of wrong I was. Calvary now has their liturgy, all of it, online here. I can't say I've read it all. So far I've not gotten past the "readings." But here's an excerpt:

The Collect for Purity, those ancient words "to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid" has become this:

Almighty God
to you all hearts are open wide,
All of our want-wanting in you we confide
and from you our secrets we just can not hide:
Clean the thinks of our thumpers
And we shall be happy jump-jumpers.
So, by the help of your Holy Ghost,
Your Name we may deservingly boast;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.

I think I'm going to vomit in my striped hat.

Words fail, again when the first lection is the Book of Yertle the Turtle (no kidding) and for those of us on the ACNA side of the ugly divide that brings to mind a rather less than glamorous blog post from Jim Simons of TEC-PGH likening our Bishop Duncan to that same tyrannical turtle. I shall spare you that link. Hopefully Calvary's connection there was coincidence, but it makes my stomach roll just to think on it.

If you can handle more, the "Confession" is certainly note-worthy:

God, we have wronged you
And we need to say boo-hoo
For the things we did and didn’t do
We are not content
we want to repent
One hundred percent
Oh so sorry we say
Won’t you forgive us this day;
So we can walk in your way
Absolution
All Powerful God have mercy on yous
And forget the sins of we Whos
Keep you from all strife
And lead you into new life

I'm sorry friends in TEC. I don't know what to say, what comfort to offer. With regard to Seusscharist, my mamma done taught me...
if I can't say anything nice, I musn't say anything at all.

I remain speechless.