Somebody Else's Favorite Song Sunday, August 24, 2003

The priest was a new one this morning, and I had high hopes. He looked like a Samoan: thick as a hill, short but not squat, an air of extravagant serenity. Then he got up to give his sermon, and began by saying, "Some of you may remember a movie called 'Lady Sings the Blues.'" You see, just as Joshua and the disciples were committed to God, so was Diana Ross committed to the role of Billie Holiday. OY VEY, in seventy-two point type across six columns. So began my retreat from the day.

The most interesting part of the service was the epistle reading, a selection from Paul. Paul Johnson, no relation, thinks the apostle essentially created the Christian relationship between worshippers and God, positioned the divine as an object of study for people. (I'm paraphrasing six months after reading that, so forgive me if I'm off.) But Paul is problematic, as today's reading demonstrated. It had some interesting bits about men loving their wives and being joined as one flesh; but as printed in the missal it included That Passage, about women subordinating themselves to their husbands.

So picture the scene: a churchful of old biddies, indigent loonies and one or two grudging aesthetes (including yours truly) following along in the booklet as the lector, an old biddie herself, reads the passage aloud. The whole church sees those lines; the whole church knows they're coming. The whole church also knows that not a single wife in those pews has taken a minute's worth of shit from her husband. This ain't the old country.

The lector began to speak; at least one grudging aesthete started squirming in the pew. And she skippedthe goddamn passage entirely.

There are provisions for this. The passage was "bracketed," making it an optional cut (as we say in the news business). But we have never, and I mean never, skipped a passage thus marked; not even on Easter, when the call-and-response runs to a hefty ten pages.

I was fascinated. Who decided to skip that section? Do the readers get instructions beforehand? Do they use their own discretion? And why didn't anybody mention what had been cut out and why? Wouldn't it be better to hear the line as it originally was, in the gloriously uncomfortable original, then get an explication of why we don't agree with it anymore? You could write a year's worth of sermons about how the church has changed its interpretations of old strictures, about how it has evolved and why, stuff that most of us in the pews would love to understand. Instead, we get a Stalinist elision--and, even worse, we all participate in it by keeping quiet.

Yadda yadda angry young man. Not a very Waugh morning. Not a very Waugh evening Friday; Steely Dan at Jones Beach with buddies. A nice set, but overall I thought they leaned too heavily on the oldies. Then again, the crowd was mostly oldies: boomers booming out of their T-shirts (not to mention hairlines). My friends and I were the only grudging aesthetes I could see. The guy in front of us spent most of the first three songs explaining to his wife why she should like the music. At least fifty people around us spent the first three songs arriving, then remembering they had to urinate. Not much dope smoke, but then again, there was a strong headwind.

But...I love those guys beyond all reason and will follow them as long as they have voices. Just like I'll keep getting up Sundays. I may not hear what I want, but there are bigger issues at stake.

Prayers and love for the madball. Ciao, babies!

@ 10:29:00 AM,

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