#dailyoffice

The Office

“ It started with a broken chair ”

The Office

“You know what, I would save the receptionist”

The Office

Honestly, for today's readings ... I got nothin'.

Oh, wait. A childhood friend once asked me to name her cat's new kittens, a trio of bouncy black-and-white bois. I suggested Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Nobody has ever asked me to name kittens since.

Oh, dear. Nothing healthy in the assigned Office readings for today. Instead, we have Psalm 18, with many lovely images, but which dwells too much in siccing the God of Wrath upon our enemies; Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the great idol, which gives us the colloquialism "feet of clay" - which were actually feet of "mixed iron and clay", to indicate that weakness comes from inherent and irreparable civil divisions; tirades in the first letter of John against "antichrists", quite plainly identified as anyone who has left their little monotone ingroup. And for the Good News, we have the Baptist thundering, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!"

“that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me.” (John 17)

we are all together I am the eggman I am the walrus

this year the joint summer reading theme for public libraries is the typically ghastly "All Together Now." It's terrible to try to program around, but as far as Beatles songs go, a much healthier vision of ecclesiological unity. No hierarchy, no one subsumed in anybody else; instead, a joyful observance of all our differences -- "look at you, look at me" -- and how we yet manage to live and love and celebrate together.