"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Saturday, October 27, 2007

A Rainy October Day...

I attended my second Catholic funeral today, so now I have a measure of comparison. They were both very similar, so I can say this, generally, about Catholic funerals:

-they're very good exercise: you stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand, sit, kneel, sit, stand, sit, etc., and then the practitioners have to go all the way up to the front of the church for the little bread thingie and come all the way back. Oh, and there's some genuflecting involved whenever they pass the altar;

-the prayers are lovely (I'm very partial to Psalm 23);

-the music is lovely (I particularly enjoyed 'Amazing Grace' on a violin today);

-Catholics use 'tu' when speaking to their god??? I didn't realise that they use that level of informality with him;

-incense is used for the same reason Wiccans use it; to carry our prayers to the deity on the smoke;

-they pass around a plate for donations (thankfully, I had some change on me to contribute).

A colleague thought that I was a 'lapsed' Catholic and was therefore surprised by my level of unfamiliarity with the rituals. I informed her that I was raised by the atheist branch of my Catholic family. :-)

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