Chantry Begins at Home

You know, I sometimes wonder if the baby wasn't thrown out with the Walsingham well-water at the Reformation. So many things we've lost that we should have kept - not Papal Supremacy, Confession, priestly celibacy, Marian devotion and all that stuff of course - I'm referring to Rosaries, nice pictures and chanting - all the lovely stuff.

But now, we're picking up all the good stuff. The Beaker Rosaries in the Beaker Bazaar are doing a roaring trade, and the Plainchant Workshop is a great success. So we thought it would be the right time to introduce Chantries.

Obviously we won't be praying for the souls of dead people. For a start, they're dreadful at paying - never respond even to final demands. And since we don't believe in Purgatory, we've no idea what we'd pray for them anyway. So we're going to be praying to order for living people. Or, at least, since we have some doubt about the whole concept of effective prayer, and we'd be a bit embarrassed about coming before the divine on a contract basis, we'll be doing the Beaker equivalent of prayer:

For £5.00 we will light a tea light for you to have a day's well-being.

For £7.00 we will tie a bit of ribbon to an ash tree for you.

For £10 we will write your name on a holy paper boat, and float it downstream.

For £30 we will walk four times round the Moot House, shouting out that you deserve a promotion. (Extra laps of the Moot House will be a fiver each)

Or, for 50p a shot, we will mention your name in an approving way at "Pouring-out of Beakers".

(Terms and conditions apply. A Beaker Prayer is no guarantee of preferential treatment from the Divine, in this world or the next. At times of peak prayer demand we reserve the right to outsource prayer work to our offshore prayer resource in Middlesex, Fr Zadok Koala, whose idea it was in the first place.)