I wanted to write about how the Ökumenischer Kirchentag was, among all the other things it was, a feast of diversity. But I got distracted.

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We had the third Resurrection Gospel last night, Mark 16:9-20. Something bugged me about it, so I did some research:

So which is true? And which really happened— which is another thing? The point is that we can’t know whether Mark’s or Luke’s version or neither of those is the “correct” one until someone invents a read-only time machine. But it doesn’t matter: both versions are read in the Orthodox Church as part of Resurrection Gospels, because both the hardness of heart at the resurrection and the exultant sharing of experiences are relevant.

According to BibleGateway, “the most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20” so it ends at 16:8, “So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” A good ending, but without the closure one wants in a gospel, so I’m not surprised that someone added the twelve verses that comprise the third Resurrection Gospel. Where they got them from —word of mouth, other writings, their own imagination— we can’t know any more than we can know what “really” happened.

I wonder what Bible literalists make of discrepancies like these, but somehow I don’t feel like making an effort to find out.

I’ve heard the Resurrection Gospels so often that I practically know them by heart, but now Prima stands next to me on the choir platform and that seems to make me notice different things. Today: clueless disciples.

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This Gospel reading has always made me angry, because of verses 29-30, “from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away”— that seemed like the worst imaginable injustice. But today the penny dropped: there is absolutely nobody who doesn’t have anything at all, only some people who refuse to recognise, and to use, what they do have.

I wanted to teach little kids’ church-school about it, but half of my pupils were going to Children’s Book Festival (which I approve of) so I put it off until next week.

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Gospel of the 14th Sunday after Pentecost:

Matthew 22:1 And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.”’ But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

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Great Compline, in the first week of Lent, gets me in the mood immediately. After initial annoyance at the Great Canon —I already know I’m a sinner, I don’t want it rubbed in!— it starts to soak in instead. And about a hundred prostrations are good for the body as well as for the soul, at least my muscles say so. (Note to self: wear a skirt without sequins; the sequins are as black as the skirt so I didn’t realise they were there until I actually knelt on them, ouch)

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No icon this time, but a painting by Rembrandt, because it’s hard (perhaps impossible) to find an icon of the Prophetess Anna by herself rather than as an extra at the Presentation.

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It’s the Feast of the Presentation today. We were practicing the stichera and the canon for weeks beforehand, so that gave me time to think about the actual words. Especially the canon in the third tone, which has “every male who opens the womb” to the most earworm-prone part of the tune. It made me wonder, among other things, what happens if the firstborn is a girl: don’t girls count at all, so the womb isn’t considered open and her younger brother is regarded as the firstborn? It’s even more intriguing because I have only daughters myself, but fortunately I don’t live in Old Testament times.

Luke 2:22 Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the LORD”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

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If I were an atheist, I’d want to call my blog “Athier than Thou”. And searching for that actually turns up some hits. (And it made me find Twenty Sided, which I like a lot.) No blog with that title, at least not one that’s easy to find, but it’s moot anyway because I’m so not an atheist.

After choir practice last night, some of us washed up the coffee cups and stood in the cold kitchen for twenty minutes afterwards arguing fine points of Trinitarian theology. It came from a discussion that started earlier when we were arguing fine points of text placement: these are the people who happen to be most passionate about, and most experienced at, fitting words to music. Some people think we’re a self-appointed “inner circle” but it’s more like a sloppy polygon located in no particular place that usually expresses itself as a triangle but can acquire extra sides whenever convenient.

Some people likely to read this (you know who you are) will now think I’m going to talk about choir politics, but they can rest assured that I’m not. I only want to say explicitly that this is one of the things I like most about my particular corner of the Orthodox Church: that it’s not only possible but normal to argue theology while washing up. It doesn’t need a context that’s specially set apart for it. We’re not only Christians on Sundays, not only in church, not in carefully set-aside “quiet time”, but always. There is no division, no fence between Christian stuff and just stuff. There is no Christian reservation.

It’s said that “all things are holy” and I can agree, but that doesn’t mean that everything is prim, prissy, prudish and possibly other things starting with ‘p’. It does mean that my whole life belongs to God, not just that part of it that happens to take place in church. It doesn’t mean, either, that I am necessarily good all the time: there is such a thing as sin. Allen Ginsberg’s expression of this thought is not mine, but he did get it right.

November 25, the feast of St. Katherine of Alexandria, happened to be on a Sunday so I moved the third-Sunday church school (six- and seven-year-olds) one week to accommodate Girl #2, whose name-day it was.

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