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It's Maundy Thursday and I'm
Apr. 5th, 2012 06:39 pm...staying home. Wait- what?
Really. I can't actually remember if I've coherently blogged about it this year or not (I did have a mega rant on facebook) but the Parish Politics means that St Raph's has nothing for me to do until Easter Sunday.
Whilst I was on holiday my mum did get a couple of badly-written sheets of paper telling me to "Inform what out of the listed services below the servers will be attending" for today (there's only one at St Mike's, which is miles away, tomorrow 'Adult Stations of the Cross at St Raph's' (I'll come back to this one) or something else that was incorrect but what they meant was 'Veneration of the Cross' (at St Bede's) or The Easter Vigil (at St Mike's, probably won't finish till midnight, no buses). and then I was to "submit this slip to A Bloke Who Was Once A Scoutmaster and Thinks That Makes Him King". Erm. No.
There are hardly any services across the area: that means that there are MOUNTAINOUS AMOUNTS of servers. At Veneration of the Cross you need AT MAXIMUM three servers, and this is when you've got one priest who is perhaps old or frail and can't hold the cross up for the duration. At Stations of the Cross you don't need servers, Maundy Thursday you need a maximum of three- two is perfectly do-able and at the Easter Vigil there will be no less than 5 priests and a deacon already present. With 1 priest you ideally want 4 servers, but I when I was around twelve served it On My Own with 1 priest and a deacon. St Mike's has their own servers plus, we can safely assume, the officious twonk who wrote the slips, plus in all probabilty several other of the adult servers who are the type to go to that service anyway. It's all a case of too-many-cooks.
In Addition The Powers That Be have decreed that the Adult Stations of the Cross, which have always run at St Pius will be at St Raphs, whilst the Children's Stations, which have always been at St Raphs, will be at St Pius. AT THE SAME TIME.
As nobody in St Pius or St Raphs wanted this change because people were quite happy going to their preferred service for the past nine years, there is next to no buy in so we're pretty much running the show. Well, Mum. But I have to be there, I'm always there and they've no chance of getting any of the servers under me at the Adult Stations because they are all children
If it wasn't for doing the children's stations I was thinking of spending the next few days in Lancaster as the chaplaincy centre there is so REFRESHINGLY FREE from this kind of narkiness that comes of officious cliques and centuries of grudge matches.
Don't get me wrong, tomorrow is going to be horrendous combining fasting with dealing with potentially many people in a venue we barely no and with next to no support is going to be FRAUGHT, but once that is over I will have Nothing To Serve At - and no services to go to- until Easter Sunday.
It's actually quite sad. And bewildering. I don't think I've ever had so little to go to for Holy Week before. I mean I only started serving and going to the veneration of the cross in recent years because before that I always served Maundy Thursday and the Vigil and then did the children's stations Friday morning, so Friday afternoon I would collapse in a tired heap at Nanny's for a bit as my mid-way recovery period before the vigil.
Really. I can't actually remember if I've coherently blogged about it this year or not (I did have a mega rant on facebook) but the Parish Politics means that St Raph's has nothing for me to do until Easter Sunday.
Whilst I was on holiday my mum did get a couple of badly-written sheets of paper telling me to "Inform what out of the listed services below the servers will be attending" for today (there's only one at St Mike's, which is miles away, tomorrow 'Adult Stations of the Cross at St Raph's' (I'll come back to this one) or something else that was incorrect but what they meant was 'Veneration of the Cross' (at St Bede's) or The Easter Vigil (at St Mike's, probably won't finish till midnight, no buses). and then I was to "submit this slip to A Bloke Who Was Once A Scoutmaster and Thinks That Makes Him King". Erm. No.
There are hardly any services across the area: that means that there are MOUNTAINOUS AMOUNTS of servers. At Veneration of the Cross you need AT MAXIMUM three servers, and this is when you've got one priest who is perhaps old or frail and can't hold the cross up for the duration. At Stations of the Cross you don't need servers, Maundy Thursday you need a maximum of three- two is perfectly do-able and at the Easter Vigil there will be no less than 5 priests and a deacon already present. With 1 priest you ideally want 4 servers, but I when I was around twelve served it On My Own with 1 priest and a deacon. St Mike's has their own servers plus, we can safely assume, the officious twonk who wrote the slips, plus in all probabilty several other of the adult servers who are the type to go to that service anyway. It's all a case of too-many-cooks.
In Addition The Powers That Be have decreed that the Adult Stations of the Cross, which have always run at St Pius will be at St Raphs, whilst the Children's Stations, which have always been at St Raphs, will be at St Pius. AT THE SAME TIME.
As nobody in St Pius or St Raphs wanted this change because people were quite happy going to their preferred service for the past nine years, there is next to no buy in so we're pretty much running the show. Well, Mum. But I have to be there, I'm always there and they've no chance of getting any of the servers under me at the Adult Stations because they are all children
If it wasn't for doing the children's stations I was thinking of spending the next few days in Lancaster as the chaplaincy centre there is so REFRESHINGLY FREE from this kind of narkiness that comes of officious cliques and centuries of grudge matches.
Don't get me wrong, tomorrow is going to be horrendous combining fasting with dealing with potentially many people in a venue we barely no and with next to no support is going to be FRAUGHT, but once that is over I will have Nothing To Serve At - and no services to go to- until Easter Sunday.
It's actually quite sad. And bewildering. I don't think I've ever had so little to go to for Holy Week before. I mean I only started serving and going to the veneration of the cross in recent years because before that I always served Maundy Thursday and the Vigil and then did the children's stations Friday morning, so Friday afternoon I would collapse in a tired heap at Nanny's for a bit as my mid-way recovery period before the vigil.
