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Saturday, 16 October 2010

A celebration of vapid worship

This promises to be an exciting day of singing songs that may be perfectly OK in the context of a balanced diet of modern church music, but get a bit much when you stick them all together into a glorious melange of very little genuine meaning. We've carefully designed this act of worship to appeal to people of all faith or none, and even Drayton Parslow says he's got no problem with joining in, as he can't see any theological content at all.

Dress code: gypsy-style dresses and pashminas or big gauzy scarves.  Women can wear what they like.

Introit
We process into the hall singing "Down the Mountains the river flows". This has the additional advantage of being geographically dubious.

Following on the riverine theme, and with even less geographical validity, we segue into "Over the mountains and the sea".  At this point we may start to feel a little sea-sick, but stay with it. It's just the cognitive dissonance cutting in.

Ministry of some words
Reading: Anyone's self-written poem would do here, as long as it's introspective and obsessive.

We sing "I want to be out of my depth in your love", a song that has the great advantage that it could be addressed to almost anyone or anything.

Response

Actual prayers would be out of the question at this point, so instead we will each be issued with a pebble and be left to wonder how the pebble might be feeling today. Meanwhile the Beaker Band will sing "I will dance (undignified)". It is, we shouldn't.

We sing "Teach me to dance", while physically demonstrating why that would be a good idea. And we all wonder how exactly "blaze" rhymes with "face".

Regressional

We exit the Moot House, singing "We are marching in the light of God", and dance in a circle around the sundial for no particular reason while Ambit accompanies us on the woodblock. This song has the great advantage of very little meaning, combined with that world-music feel.  What better way to finish?

1 comment:

  1. There is no mention of tea-lights, you must have tea-lights!

    ReplyDelete

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