Monday, July 18, 2005

Church Camp

The Christian walk is not always serious. Some very funny things can happen along the way. My pastor shared an amusing story with me a while ago.
Our altar is a truly beautiful work of art. It is solid mahogany and like many of the pieces within our sanctuary it is an original African artwork commissioned by a Chicago artist. But this altar was not original to the building. One prior to it was quite different with an opening underneath. One night my pastor heard the alarm go off in the sanctuary. They entered to find a homeless man. They pulled back the altar cloth only to find cigarettes and all of the other paraphernalia of his life under there. He told him he had been living under our altar for quite a while. When they informed him that they would find him a shelter to go to and help him get on his feet.
He responded, " Well can't I stay here until you do? I like living here!"

Also a more recent occurrence. During Palm Sunday, our visiting priest who does our 8:30 mass was standing in the balcony, using the little whisk they use to bless the palms with holy water. As he was blessing the palms the whisk flew out of his hand and through the air. He said "oops" and someone standing with him yelled quite loudly to the people below, "DUCK!" Soon giggles began to break out, until the entire church was giggling uncontrollably...

I'm thinking that there must be a lot of funny church stories out there, and I invite you to share them.

4 comments:

Constantine said...

Both of these are really a hoot! Especially the "Altar" story.

Dan Trabue said...

Great DUCK story.

Here's an episode that happened at our Going away service for our pastor as she was leaving for sabbatical.

Near the beginning of the church, one of our members, a lady with a slight Tennessee accent, was saying a blessing that went like this:

We are a garden, each with a role. In our garden, God is the Seed Planter and Cindy, the Hoer...

As she continued her blessing, folk were looking at one another, thinking, "Did she just call our pastor a whore?" and as it sunk in, shoulders were bouncing up and down in suppressed giggles, many of which burst out.

It gets better.

After the service, Cindy called her mom and told her the story and they both laughed over it. Later, Cindy's mom tried calling Cindy and got the answering machine so she left a message: Is my daughter, the hoer there?

But her mom had misdialed and called Cindy's sister by mistake, who was no doubt wondering what she had done to piss off her mom...

voixd'ange said...

Hilarious Dan! Thanks again!

existentialist said...

The altar sounds beautiful! I am really fixated on bark cloth my self. I want some Africa to paint on! Do I have anything from Africa? Not anymore...I gave it away or lost it. Too bad.