Caustically Optimistic

Hymn of the Lutherans

This post is full of Lutheran humor, if you aren’t able to handle Lutheran humor – or if you’re not really Lutheran (ELCANS, I’m talking to you!) then please stop by again tomorrow.  The title, Hymn of the Lutherans references a hymn written for Emily's forth-coming book, Life Among the Lutherans.

On Sunday, I went to church.  My parents weren’t up when I left and must have gone to a different service (they skipped church) and the people I would usually sit by were also absent from church.  I spied my friend Linda sitting with her family so I went over to talk to her before church knowing that she’d invite me to sit with her.  Linda is sweet and good so you’d never expect that sitting by her in church would be eventful.  It was.  It opened my eyes to the whole church experience.  I have been sitting in the wrong part of the church for far too long. 

The first thing that I notice was when Pastor said, “good morning!”  He is always cheerful and we all say, “good morning,” in response the same cheery way.  Linda uttered it in the manner of someone caught before her coffee.  It reminded me of the one time our Pastor has ever lost his cool and that was when someone told a visitor they were in her seat.  Pastor came unglued the next Sunday.  It was fantastic; he will always be my favorite Pastor.  Lutherans are creatures of habit and we may have started the Reformation of Christendom but after that we’ve looked at change this way: we just want to have Christ and the right to be dumb. 

Linda’s “good morning” opened my eyes: there is a lot of crazy going on at church. 

I noticed our Elder who greets people.  I have never spoken to him personally and I am sure he’s a nice old man.  He looks like a bouncer.  Pastor tells us, “if anyone is visiting for the first time,” and we should be able to tell visitors by who is sitting in unassigned seats, “to please give Jim a hand signal and he’ll give them a welcome packet.”  Yes, I am tempted to give that hand signal but he knows I am not a visitor.  This Sunday it occurred to me that he’s probably on the look out for any lost ELCA who occasionally wander into our sanctuary.  We had to restrain Melissa when she came to visit because even though she’s become LCMS we weren’t confident that anyone had taught her the secret handshake.  We let all kinds of people in: Methodists, Democrats, the homeless, but not those ELCA ruffians.  I am about all the riffraff my church can handle, after me we’d pass the saturation point. 

Sometimes I have to miss church for work and this might have been the Sunday to miss.  It was the fifth Sunday and we do a, “Hymn Sing” where people shout out hymns and then we sign the first verse and move on.  There has to be a better method but to do things differently would be, ‘change’ and we don’t change.  However, Pastor reminded us that it was Lent and we omit the alleluias from our worship.  This prompted two ideas in our heads.  First, I sang the refrain from Emily’s Hymn of the Lutherans for Linda – and all the octogenarians in Belltone Hearing Range – It’s Lent and we’re Lutheran, we won’t sing, “Alleluia!”  We sing thee, “Hosanna!”  It means the same thing.  Linda and I considered looking for all the hymns that had an alleluia in the first verse and shouting out that hymn number but reconsidered when we remembered the watchful eye of Jim and the possibility of being stoned to death by hymnals.  The hymnals are new which would make it a great deal worse than being pelted by the antediluvian Red Hymnals. 

Our fellow parishioners have a bad habit of picking their favorite hymns.  The problem is that Pastor always calls on the old and they always pick songs that have been poorly translated from German and are impossible to sing in English.  It makes me miserable.  I was pleasantly surprised by their choices – they picked mainly Methodist hymns (meaning: written first in English) when they weren’t picking absurd hymns.  The first hymn they picked was Great is Thy Faithfulness which Leah Monster will play on her accordion and sing at my funeral, either that or Our God Our Hope in Ages Past.  The next hymn sung was, Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling, which has the second line of, who will go and work today? This is noteworthy because Linda introduced me to her sister as the person who doesn’t do anything around here to help.  This may or may not be true, but I still have a hangover from being a Lutheran teacher.  Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling is also the hymn I like to change the words to the most of any hymn in the Lutheran arsenal.  Poor Nathan can’t sing that hymn without thinking of my miserable heresies.  After this we sang the Navy Hymn. 

The next hymn would have given away any ELCA in our midst: Onward Christian Soldiers because far from being some GOP jam-fest this song gets my ELCA Grandmother out of her seat and marching in place while she sings.  It’s comical for everyone not related to or sitting with her. We rounded this out with, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  A hymn I never mock.

After this we had Special Music, which was so special the man in front of us ripped out his hearing aids.  The choir sang four verses of a hymn and then we were supposed to sing the fifth with them.  For this verse we were conducted by the choir director – which was absurd because I don’t know what he’s doing with his hands and I was a band nerd.  If I don’t know I’m guessing he was just confusing everyone else as well – if they were paying attention.  I ignored the conducting because it’s enough for me to just sit, stand, and kneel when told to by the Pastor or the field worker. 

To ask me to sing in some sort of order is too much.  I will admit that I liked to randomly stand up during hymns when I was younger because LCMS people are like trained dogs – they’ll all stand up if someone is standing as well.  Linda did this when there was a part of a prayer that the Pastor (or the field worker) reads and we follow along with.  Linda was reading along so everyone around her started and it spread through the church.  Sure, it was an accident on the field worker’s part to tell us to but it was neat how we’re so afraid of not following along that we can gum up the service.

This was followed, more or less, by the reading of the Scriptures.  This part is always good because I don’t have to disagree with anyone’s interpretation and I can read along and not do a “running record” of reading errors.  Not so today.  Today someone read the scripture dramatically.  It was like watching a college speech tournament – yes, Renea, it was that bad.  Linda said, “you can always tell the newly Lutheran because we don’t get excited about anything, ever.” I'm sure the prophet was all "fire and brimstone" when he went at it with the Hebrews, we are not Hebrews.  We are Lutheran.  Don't get excited and NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS.

Thankfully, this was the point at which Pastor took control of the service from the field worker and gave his children’s sermon (I tuned in for that, they played follow-the-leader,  and talked about following Jesus when you hit a ‘fork in the road’), I was switching channels through the adult sermon (it’s a longer version of the children’s sermon), we prayed (without incident), confirmed some new members and had our benediction.  There was a social hour after church, which I know didn’t happen without incident but I had to deliver a hatchback and missed the social. 

I learned an important lesson though: sitting in the balcony means you’re missing a great deal and missing church at all is missing 

the exception proves the rule

My best friend is the kind of guy who will spend time making decisions. I have more chutzpah and tend to make decisions and act on them without thinking a great deal on the issue. I am trying to grow up and be more responsible with my decisions, especially those committing my time and money – not unlike my friend. Sometimes, and very rarely, my friend errs on the side of caution and loses out. I usually lose out because I am impetuous.

When it came to seeing Weezer and Foo Fighters in concert the weekend after next, I took Jeremy’s approach to decision making. I thought about it and looked at my money. I checked the calendars at both of my jobs and asked to use the car first. I lined all of my ducks up before I bought the tickets. Any other time I have seen a concert, I bought the tickets and then had to move heaven and earth to find myself at the concert. I nearly lost money because of my impetuous behavior. This time my impetuous behavior would not cost me money. Everything was worked out.

I called Jeremy after work tonight to return a call from him and I told him that despite other reservations, I would go on and buy the tickets for the concert and go. I proudly announced that I had circumvented my ADHD impetuous tendencies to arrive at a decision in an adult, reasonable way just as he would have.

When the phone call ended, I went to the computer, checked on the Internet postings for my Graduate classes, and then went over to Ticket Master to buy my tickets and they were sold out. Not just the cheap seats, but the expensive ones as well. I checked before work and there were $24 tickets left and six hours later: they were gone. I keep trying the page over and over, with no luck.

The rest of the evening included weeping and gnashing of teeth: had I behaved as I normally do I would be asleep right now with tickets printed and pinned to my shirt. I did what my parents and friends had always hoped I would do: be just a little more like Jeremy – and this time I ended up with the short end of the stick. I feel the disappointment that you only feel when the person who has let you down is yourself.

While I was mourning my inability to get tickets, my sister introduced me to the Dark Side: she taught me to use eBay. I am still confused as to how it works but she assures me that I do have the potential to be the owner of tickets to see the concert if all goes well. This eBay witchcraft is still a great mystery to me and tomorrow I will call Ticket Master and try mortgaging my soul to them once more in the morning but for now I am winning an auction on eBay.

Also, while I was on the phone with my friend I made the comment that while I was a kid if anyone had the peer pressure vibe with me it was most certainly and only ever Jeremy. He was the first of my friends my parents ever liked and the only person they have ever said, “you should be more like…” and finally his peer pressure had worked for good: I looked before I leaped, I looked long and hard. The one time I take advice or follow his example and it has to be the one time the exception proves the rule.

if you want to destroy my sweater

Yesterday, I went into my second job to score some free food. I am off my diet while I am fighting an infection and thought that there was no better way to be off your diet than to be on fast food. One of my coworkers noted that I looked pissed off, and I did. I was furious. My sister/roommate has not paid me for her half of the groceries or the internet bill, I am okay with that because life happens and you do not always have the money. It is part of being in a family to help each other out. However, she had spent the entire night complaining about not having money for the train to go to a Social Distortion concert, for which she already had bought the tickets. She could have saved money on seeing Social Distortion – she has seen them many times before – and paid me back so I could have afforded my much-wanted extra: tickets to see Weezer and Foo Fighters together in concert. I have never seen either band in concert; I always miss my shot. It really bothered me that I had essentially bought someone else’s concert ticket and would be sitting my concert out, again.

I knew it was bothering me but I thought it was in the same vein as other roommate annoyances along the lines of lost remote controls, overnight dirty dishes or being left a dribble of Kool-Aid. I walked to the supermarket (she borrowed my car to go, left hers without gas and I am not paying for her tickets and gas) and fumed about it some more on the phone to a friend but realized that I was truly, madly, deeply offended when “Buddy Holly” was playing on the radio at the supermarket.

I got home and there was an email from Jeremy, which said that I should go because I owed it to myself to do something fun and that I should do it for him since he always has to work when there are good concerts in town.

I usually disagree with that statement and it bothers me when people say they need to do something for themselves. Most people who say that only do things for themselves and I really do try to add some altruism and generosity into my world. Also, it is hard to justify concert tickets when you have tuition payments due and there are natural disaster victims galore that need your help.

I will just make the generalization that those people do not enjoy Weezer, and enjoy Weezer FOR them and instead of them. I will go, not just for me, but also for Jeremy, and all the other fans that have to work and cannot make the show. I will go for Nathan who could not get tickets. I will go for Peter who is out of the country – a fact I am sorely bitter about because Peter would have bought my ticket for me – and cannot go. I will go for all of these people, all of them. I will take one for the team. Jeremy is always there for me. Nathan is always there to tell me I am a bad person. Peter is basically a jerk with much coin that buys my friendship because I am shallow and materialistic. I will do it for them, for all of them. I might even get them a t-shirt, but (if I get the day off…) I am going.

Also, I guess my sister/roommate/oppressor/nemesis/closet Bush supporter does work hard and deserve a night out, but so do I.