Get Her Words Out

Buffy Season Eight #9 ---No Future For You Part IV

"Now why don't you change into your play clothes?  The blood of the innocents is a real pain in the neck to wash out of cotton blends."

The world's most dangerous Christmas tree

It's been sitting on top of a bookcase in my mother's living room for years now:

It's a triangular piece of clear glass with shards of colored glass glued to it.  I've always thought of it as something Irwin Mainway would have sold.  It's like the craft project you would have made from Bag O' Glass.

One nice touch is the way the jagged pieces extend beyond the edge of the smooth base piece.  You have to be very careful when you pick it up not to slice your finger open.

It's also cool that it's not just pieces of stained glass, but also pieces of broken beer bottles.

How does this work?

Last Friday I ordered two items from the Apple website.  The two items were shipped separately.

One package left the factory in Suzhou, China on Saturday and passed through FedEx facilities in Shanghai, Anchorage, Indianapolis and Denver before being delivered here Tuesday morning.

The other package arrived at the Memphis FedEx facility on Sunday morning.  And it's still there.

Is it just me or does it seem odd that it takes longer to get here from Memphis than it does from Suzhou?

Update 12/7:  It finally came, I think it just took them three or four days to wind up the slingshot tight enough to get it all the way to Colorado.

Antonym

Actors will talk about how one of their jobs is to create "the illusion of the first time."  That is, even on the 200th performance, when they've been doing the show 8 times a week for six months, they still need to convey to the audience that this is the first time that the events in the play have ever happened.

Watching the various lay leaders in worship this morning I got to wondering what the opposite of the illusion of the first time would be.  All three of them sounded like they were reading their piece for the very first time, which might be the truth, but I don't think it's what you want worship to sound like.

I'm not trying to say that we should only have highly trained people leading worship. (although to be honest it is very frustrating to me that they get to do it badly while I'm not able to do it at all.)   I don't need polished performance, or dulcet tones, but I would like to be able to believe that the words they're saying are important.  Important to them and important to me.

Two of the examples today were people reading scripture, the first a father mumbling his way through part of Isaiah 2 for the lighting of the Advent candle (and when did it become law that families had to light the Advent candles?  But I digress) and the second was someone reading a very large piece of Luke 1, including the Magnificat, and she did fine except maybe when she talked about the "fruit of Mary's loom."

But what really set me off on this rant was the recently ordained deacon who lifted the chalice high with his left hand and then looked straight down at the table while he read the words of institution like it was the first time he had ever been exposed to them.  I almost laughed out loud.