Once Upon A Time

In A Land Not So Far Away



There was a preacher more than a bit annoyed at the seeming indifference of his flock who came late, left early, and seemed to pay less attention to what was going on than the urgent phone call that had them jumping up and running out to get.

So he proposed issuing an edict posted outside the door to the sanctuary:

The following are rules and prohibited conduct for the edification of all:

1. Please dress appropriately to the worship so you are not distracting

2. Please leave your cell phone at home.



Well, this seemed like a good proposal for keeping order (and to not have to look at why people were disinterested or bored with the sermons) until Mrs. McGillicuddy had a heart attack and her doctor was sitting in Mass while his pager and cell phone rang off the hook back home in his kitchen. He enjoyed the Mass, then the coffee social hour, then caught a movie. Mrs. McGillicuddy enjoyed the ER then the hereafter.



And the dress distraction earned him the following note:



Dear Pastor Perturbed:

I find your dress distracting. It is such a lovely piece of embroidery I wonder if it were machine woven or hand made. My late grandmother, may she rest in peace, taught me to embroider so everytime I see such a fine piece of embroidery I lose myself dreaming of her and copy in my mind the patterns for my next project rather than listening to your homily. I find particularly artful the dress you wear with Our Lady of Guateloupe taking over your entire backside as I had a table cloth that looked exactly like it and I wonder if your seemstress found the same bargain at Sears and turned it into your dress. I also am distracted by the fact that whether you wear a pink dress, one with doiley lace, a green one or one white with elaborate embroidery, you seem to always wear the same dark brown or black sox. My sister tells me that socks are supposed to match the pants not the shoes. Which has me wondering if you actually wear pants under your dress, or only on cold days and whether they are similarly embroidered-because embroidery is somehow holy. Also, this has me (forgive me Lord) wondering if you got a pair of those cute boxers with little Santa Clauses all over them for Christmas like my brother- in- law got in his stocking. You see, we don't usually see men in America wear dresses or robes like that unless they are in the hospital or a gay nightclub or somewhere in Vegas. This has me wondering whether Jesus dressed like a transvestite.

What were you saying?