Methodist Madness.

Further to my comments yesterday about ‘Bind us Together, Lord’, I feel compelled to make some observations about this morning’s service. Darren-the-Vicar is in hyper-joyful mode and everything is BIG! and HAPPY! and THANKFUL! which is lovely but whoever chose the music has made darn sure that I don’t feel HAPPY! or THANKFUL! in the slightest! The song I second most love to hate is on the menu this morning - ‘Make Me a Channel of Your Peace’. The words are lovely if you like that sort of thing but let’s face it, the day that the Lord makes me a peaceful person we’ll probably be hailing the onset of the Apocalypse… It’s the tune that gets on my nerves though – it’s too high for most people to sing comfortably so it gets this whiney quality – I really can’t explain what it is that I have against it but the composer of Bind us Together, Lord probably went to this guy for lessons! I wouldn’t mind but at this point I have already suffered through Give Thanks, twice – which is more than necessary, and Jesus Put this Song into our Hearts which is actually not a bad song but only three of us know it so it just gets embarrassing… when we’ve finished it, Darren-the-vicar tells us that the song is about DANCING! and that we have to sing the last verse again and really LET GO! My toes curl and I start laughing in an hysterical-they’re-coming-to-take-me-away type manner because the congregation is three bars behind the pianist… and then Let There be Love which is misprinted on the screen and Darren-the-vicar asks us all which word was missing and then points out that we all need more LOVE! and guess what?! That’s right, we sing it again, only I am laughing so hard that I have to look at the floor just in case I accidentally catch someone’s eye and explode in a paroxysm of afore mentioned hysteria… So you can see that by the time we get to Make me etc., I really couldn’t take any more… at least no one was indulging in a bit of Holy Swaying or random closed-eye pointing into the air…

Sad news from the other side of the world…. Big B, my very own Pastor-Idol has announced that he feels called away from TUC… how very, very gutting.

Bound together across the ages...

Ardent followers of The Big Old Tokyo Hurrah may remember the lambaste I penned about the EPS at TUC some years ago in which I mentioned a song called Bind us Together, Lord. A friend of mine, who wishes only to be known as 'Rhiannon', commented that she wished I had written more about my experiences with said song. Well... in a purely co-incidental, but utterly sick-inducing nonetheless, way last Sunday, I was forced to sing the song at the evening service. As Norman played the introduction, I could actually feel myself tensing in a fight or flight way... when I was a child, we had to sing it at my church and everyone would insist on holding hands and then they would sway because it's that kind of song. I hated it. In the same way that I hated 'songs with actions'. With a Passion. I still hate it. I fear the person next to me will grab my hand even though I've never seen them before and drag me into the Holy Swaying ... I also hate the tune which sounds like a drunk 5 year old who has been given permission to play a Stradivarius with a saw. Thankfully, Methodists are much more reserved so it would seem and I escaped almost unscathed. I breathed a massive sigh of relief when it was over and tried to put it out of my mind. We were just settling ourselves when the Lady Vicar from Caerphilly Methodist who was preaching that evening said brightly "Oh my, we are very reserved, aren't we?" I thought for a panic filled minute that she was going to make us sing it again with linked arms but she limited her comments to "When we had this song this morning at Caerphilly, I had my nose in my Bible because I was doing the reading next, and when I looked up, from the back row, the entire congregation had started to hold hands... and then, they began swaying...! Marvellous." And all this with a grin the size of the moon on her face...

My Blog Grows ever Colder...

I used to blog almost every day when I lived in Tokyo, since returning, I've averaged a blog approximately every three months, if that. That's rubbish - I've been re-reading some of my posts and if I say so myself, I am quite hilarious. Note to self: spend less time on Facebook and more time making extremely amusing observations in the blogosphere.
So, where to start...? Summer was ok, a little stressful because I had two jobs; I was teaching Monday to Friday and working at the cinema on Saturdays and sometimes an evening, too. It got exhausting and as soon as I was sure the teaching was to be made permanent, I quit the cinema. The teaching was then made un-permanent and once again, I have no job. Terrific. I've written the nativity play I began in 2008 so that's good and this week I will go to my first yoga class. I've bought a pair of high heels and signed up to be in the Passion play - I'll be playing Thomas or as I prefer to call him, 'disciple number 4' this is because none of us have any lines so I don't see the need to have a 'character'. Every week at rehearsals we have to do warm-up exercises which involve us walking 'in character' ... it's bizarre. I won't go into it - I hope the play turns out well.
The Cat who Walked Alone arrives tomorrow and I am looking forward to a few days of madness and fun. More later this week, I hope.