April Fool’s service 3/29

Standard welcome.

This is our annual April Fools chaos service. This is as much an homage to the weather in Texas as it is to anything else. About the only thing we haven’t had for this service has been snow. And I think an actual tornado because we hold the service too early in the day for one of those, but we have had watches in effect for later in the day. So we have weather chaos, congregation chaos, outsider chaos, just about any kind of non-destructive chaos you can imagine. Today we have “No toilets” chaos. And somehow we have managed to control and somewhat harness that chaos for the benefit of the church and the larger community.

Now join with me as we call the quarters in the traditional April Fool’s fashion.

East: Yo! Air! Here, quarter quarter quarter! We wanna breathe here, and think. Y’all come!

South: Yo! Fire! Here quarter quarter quarter! Let’s warm things up with some passion. Y’all come!

West: Yo! Water! Here quarter quarter quarter! Let’s splash around and feel things emotionally. Y’all come!

North: Yo! Earth! Here quarter quarter quarter! It’s time to get down and dirty and be stable. Y’all come!

Center: Yo! Center! The gods might be crazy, so send them here to party! We light a beacon so we can enjoy their company. Y’all play nice now. Open beer and place on altar

Aphrodite: Your contributions to chaos are many and varied, most notable your son/daughter Hermaphroditus. We love you, just like you love us, so everybody love everybody as you join our party and ritual.

Lunation deity

Play “Duck Amuck” Video

Yes, who is responsible for this? I demand to know. My life seems like a series of short stories or at most novellas written by different writers intent on different things, including changing the name of the main character in the middle of the story. And such starkly unbelievable stuff as surviving getting hit by a truck doing 60 MPH and only spending 13 days in hospital before sorta walking out. I mean who does that outside of a work of fiction? That is literally a million to one shot. And that’s not the only unbelievable thing that has happened in my life, just the most recent. I demand script approval and rewrite privileges. Or I would if I could find the freaking writer.

Sometimes we bring the chaos on all by ourselves, which I have also done. For instance the lovely bride who graces my life was somewhat forced there by a combination of stupid mistakes, mine, hers, and ours. But somehow we survived it anyway and we have been together for almost 40 years. I’m sure the rest of you can tell similar tales of preventable mistakes that had life-altering consequences for you and yours. It happens to everybody. But we survive, and sometimes prosper, in spite of and sometimes because of our mistakes. We live through it, and we move on.

Candles of “Why did I do that?” To share how this works, light a candle while sharing a mistake that ended up helping your life in the long run.

While this is going on blow bubbles from the altar.

Pass basket while sharing announcements.

Announce that there will be no pot luck this evening

Dismiss Aphrodite with gratitude for controlling the various guest deities with her expansive love.

Center: We thank all the various deities who have graced today’s circle. Go in peace, at least until you get past the property line. Then you become somebody else’s problem.

North: Thank you for lending your stability in these times of chaos. You may leave with our gratitude.

West: Thank you for lending your calming emotions to these times of chaos. You may leave with our gratitude.

South: Thank you for lending your passion and transformation to these times of chaos. You may leave with our gratitude.

East: Thank you for lending your intellect and communication in these times of chaos. You may leave with our gratitude.

The circle is open, but unbroken. Merry meet, to merry part, to merry meet again! Blessed be, and don’t forget to turn your phones back on.

PSA, Opus

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Happy Pearl Harbor Day for Wreck-Free Sunday

This is going to sound like an awful pun, but I used to have a friend who would “celebrate” Pearl Harbor Day by going out and getting bombed on Kamikazes. Well until his liver went on strike for a few days after a bout of alcohol poisoning, then he switched to sushi. Still “celebrates” with over-consumption, just on California Rolls and gunkan-maki and sometimes some Tempura (I swear the dude would eat just about anything battered and deep-fried). I celebrated by going to a Christmas concert with Mrs. the Poet (she does not get the “unkillable badass” in her surname) and one of the tenants. We saw (and heard) a local group called the Vocal Majority, a barbershop chorus that started about the time my voice stabilized enough that I could get back into choir again as a second Bass, and has been going strong and getting better ever since. One thing I have in common with the VM (as they refer to themselves) is we have both performed with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. My performance was a Christmas concert with all the local High School choirs that was broadcast in SLC and northern Utah, theirs was a TV concert that was broadcast world-wide. Slliiiiggght bit of difference there. 😉 XD

I have been roped into writing two more services for SJF next year, one on 2/15 and the other on 3/29. I’m hoping they will accept my disability and allow me to just write the service and not have to perform it as well. Seriously, I haven’t done ANY public speaking since that day teaching a class where everything just vanished from my memory, including my name for a second. I could not remember what came next, nor could I remember what I had already said so that I could reconstruct the lesson from what I had given and knowing what had to be taught. I could not remember anything for a while. I mean sure my name(s) came back after a few seconds, and what day of the week after a few more seconds, and why I was standing in front of these people a few seconds after that so I was only doing my impression of a fish out of water less than a minute. That was still too long. I can still read a service, but it would be wooden and lack grace, even if I wrote it myself.

Anyway the first service has numerous ways I can go, a service about L’Amore on the day after Valentine’s Day paying homage to our patroness for the year Aphrodite, A chocolate ritual (the last chocolate ritual we did was for Mrs. the Poet’s and my 25th wedding anniversary, and two people were hospitalized from either chocolate toxicity or not taking enough insulin before the service (it has been a while), or something sappy for said wedding anniversary that will take place three days later… I’m thinking that a service in homage to Aphrodite would get me in less trouble. I have been asked if I could do a re-run on the coffee ritual, too, so that is a possibility.

The 3/29 ritual is also rife with possibility… I could do a fast-forward autobiography covering all the times I have done foolish things in my life, but I have a hard 90 minute time limit, so I would have to skip a large number of things, very foolish things, just for lack of time. A long time ago I did an Animaniacs-themed service involving the children invoking the elements as Yakko, Wakko, and their sister Dot as Air, Fire, and Water respectively and an adult representing the element of Earth as Hellooo Nurse! who went with them to light the actual candles as the child invoked the element. The youngest kid in that ritual was just entering K the fall of year of the ritual we did in the Spring, she’s now a freshman in High School… and now I just made myself feel decrepit. I have done several Bugs Bunny-Daffy Duck rituals and one Urusei Yatsura ritual featuring Ataru Moroboshi as the Japanese version of Wile E. Coyote. And I can tell the people doing the spell check on this browser are classic Anime fans because there are no red squiggles under any of the names I just typed. And the only reason I could remember Ataru Moroboshi is a friend sent me a link to some scanlated Lum manga recently.

So, should I rewrite the “Duck Amuck” service, or the Urusei Yatsura service, now that I can incorporate Hotei since we have a person who does that particular deity now since He won the patron auction a few years back. Or should I do a “Disasters in Fast forward” autobiography? Leave comments below with your votes.

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet