Pre-worship prayers

We're going to have to look seriously at cutting out the pre-worship devotions.

It all started when someone said "let's have a time of prayer before the main Ceremony each day."  Seemed a good idea - those of us who would be leading could seek blessing on the time that lay before us, and could seek to have our hearts and minds directed for our duties.

And it worked quite well for a while.  In fact it got quite popular.  First it was just the druids, but then the musicians pointed out they would appreciate it.  And given the way they sound, none of us were going to deny them the power of prayer.  And then the pourers-out and fillers-up of beakers wanted to prepare themselves spiritually.  Soon there were ten or more people attending.  And our informal, spontaneous praying style could get a bit chaotic with that many around.  So to bring some order to things, we put the person responsible for leading the pre-worship prayers down on the rota, and that structured things.

But then the people that lead the pre-worship prayers decided they needed a time of spiritual preparation - it was quite challenging, now so many people were getting involved.  So they set aside a time for pre-pre-worship prayers contemplation.  But it was a bit quiet so they started asking their friends along to join them.
But their friends quite enjoyed it, so a few of them started attending before every pre-worship prayer meeting.  And it all started getting a little unstructured, with so many of them.  So they had to appoint somebody to lead it.  And then they realised they needed some pre-pre-pre-worship prayers contemplation devotions.

But that was so quiet and still, without the kids and the trouble-makers and the late-comers.  So people started attending the pre-pre-pre-worship prayers devotions.  So it needed a bit of preparation.
Cutting a long story to just quite long, eventually a book was produced.  The "Wee pre-pre-pre-pre-worship prayers contemplation devotions worship book".  A book with not much content but a huge cover.

Look, everyone's now having to get up at 5am every morning.  The main Occasions are getting later and later.   And then we've got the problem of the post-formal ceremonies worship, and the prayer meeting after that to give thanks for how we've been blessed.   And everyone's really shattered because they daren't not show up at every pre- and post-worship event in case they're considered lightweights.  So all pre-worship preparations and post-worship worship sessions are henceforth banned.

Now maybe we can all get some sleep.