Tuesday, October 19, 2004

I've just decided...

that democracy is an over-rated concept.This comes at the end of a day which started (though only after I had locked myself out of the house first thing, and had to scale the back gate via a wheelie bin...I should really have known what sort of day it was going to be after this :-( ) with a meeting with the CME officer, followed by a staff meeting, followed by the funeral of my former vicar's mother, followed by a youth work committee meeting, followed by a worship committee meeting. The two last were gruelling beyond all.I truly had lost the will to do anything except gibber in a corner with a large glass of almost anything alcoholic by the time we finished. Over an hour of discussion on whether or not the 10.00 Eucharist should revert to 9.30, a heated debate about whether we should celebrate Epiphany on the day itself or the appropriate Sunday, and the piece de resistance, which was so splendid that I feel I should protect my readers by obliterating it from the blog.
We started the meeting at 7.30. By 9.45 all hope had been abandoned, and I was seriously wondering whether to stow away when the vicar heads off to Australia next month.And of course, he and I had very clear ideas of what we hoped to achieve in the course of the evening, but we didn't really stand a chance tonight.Made me positively nostalgic for a "father knows best" culture, it did. Bearing in mind that this is one very ordinary parish, with only one church to worry about, it also made me wonder why anyone in their right minds might want to be a bishop of the Anglican Church....perhaps after all the Windsor report is protecting the gay community rather than oppressing it?

2 comments:

Tony said...

a) This is at least one, if not two, more committee meetings than you should have on any one day (in any one week?)
b) No meeting should go on later than 9.30 p.m. - at this time, this vicar's brain stops. Hence our agendas say: 'The meeting will end at 9.30. Any outstanding business will be deferred till the next meeting.' This really works! and the threat of another meeting concentrates people's minds wonderfully.
But having said this: Don't despair! Every meeting of the Church is a meeting of God's dearly beloved children, however hard it is to tell, sometimes.

Kathryn said...

Ooh, yes please...any advice on subversion most gratefully received :-)