Beaker Covenant Service - Cancelled

I'm sorry, but we're going to have to cancel the Beaker Covenant Service, which we had planned for New Year's Day.

Afraid the Worship Planning Group has decided there's nothing we can do with it. In tribute to my former experiences with the Extremely Primitive Methodists, I wanted to base our service on the Methodist Covenant Prayer (traditional version). I thought it would give me a nice, nostalgic feeling.

But the Worship Planning Group made so many changes in the interests of "bringing it up to date" and "making it real" that I don't think we can go forward with it.

For myself, I was concerned about "rank me with whom you will". I'm the blooming Archdruid, and I've got the hat and the house and everything. I'm not going to give up all the things that I've worked for (and many of the things that my ancestors acquired by various wrong-side-of-the-blanket liaisions) just for some start-of-the-year nostalgia.

Mr Woodhouse risked coming all the way out to the Moot House to tell us that he didn't like the sound of "put me to suffering", as that might be dangerous - and neither did Mrs Woodhouse, who was once again unable to join us due to a fit of the vapours.

Many were unhappy with the concept of being "employed by you",  the Divine being notoriously unlikely to respect the Working Hours Directive. While others were terrified by the thought of being "laid aside" as they wondered where they would find their worth in those circumstances. The idea of having "nothing" was regarded as scarily communistic.  And while our Folk frequently feel "empty", we prefer the concept of being able to fill up our spiritual tanks with convenient and efficient ceremonial - rather than being content with our lot.

And so the Beaker Covenant Prayer ended up as "Let me be full, let me have all things". Which I suppose summarises our position quite well, but to be honest I wouldn't like that to be the start-of-year ceremony.

So I guess we'll be letting off the fireworks instead, same as usual.