Soothsaying
Everyone else is doing it so…
I had a crazy dream last night. I was inside of a church (Catholic or Episcopal; I’ve been affiliated with both) and I was sitting off to the side of the altar with my teen daughter (maybe we were going to sing?). We were watching the service which, if you don’t know these formalized rituals, begins with readings from the Bible: three stories, usually, and then someone speaks at length about the stories to interpret them into today’s world, then the second half is repetitive/familiar/communal prayers — it is an hourlong ritual usually, and then it is over. Sometmes there’s singing between.
Well, in my dream, a woman read one of the stories and just stopped. It was the one that includes “wives, be submissive to your husbands, husbands love your wives” — she stopped and wouldn’t go on.
The priest was livid and tried to make her read and she said, low enough so only those of us sitting near the altar could hear her, “I’m sorry. I just don’t think this reading is appropriate anymore. People always misinterpret it and use it to do bad things.”
The priest obviously didn’t want to have the conversation in public — there was a ritual to be completed, and there was a sense that the public might burn the whole church down if they saw the discord within. The priest wanted harmony, but he also wanted to just…
