Typical of the clergy, isn’t it? Just because you don’t squawk about how much you know, they assume you’re half–witted. I’ll bet the rector has a pokerwork sign in his study that reads: “Don’t underestimate yourself. Let me do it for you.”
Okay, so I haven’t been to college, but if you hang around churches for a couple of hundred years, you’re bound to pick up something.
I might be a little short on paper qualifications, but eagles have very sharp eyes and extraordinarily acute hearing. We can detect a tiny posse of field mice picking their way through a field of corn from 5,000 feet up.
Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s amazing what you can learn if you just keep your eyes and ears open and take the time to look and listen.
Sermons are all very well, of course. But, believe me, when you’ve spent a couple of hundred years listening to parsons drone on and on, any kind of a change is entirely welcome.
Not any kind of change, actually. We had far too much change in the Church in the 1960s and ’70s to my way of thinking. In fact, it was the memory of those changes that made me jump at the chance to broaden my job skills when Mr. Threadgill offered me the website position.
You see, back in the ’60s and ’70s hundreds of brass eagles were thrown out of work when they introduced those guitars and the “also with you’s.” They thought we were too “fuddy–duddy” for the kind of folks they were trying to attract.
So out went the altar and in came the butcher’s blocks in the middle of the chancel. Out went the old hymns and in came the Kumbayas. It was an awful time to be a brass eagle.
A lot of us got pink slips. Some found new jobs in restaurants, holding up reservation books for the maitre d’s (not very dignified, that, but a heck of a lot better that the scrap metal yard).
I was under a dust sheet in the lumber room of my old church in Connecticut when Bill Matthews found me, loaded me into his van, and brought me to St. Stephen’s. Very grateful I am, too. It’s not as posh as my old place, but it is a lot better than working in a restaurant.
Anyway, as I was saying, it’s amazing what you can pick up if you keep your eyes and ears open. Some of those choristers talk about the most remarkable things during rehearsals and—under their breath, of course—during services. That’s how I learned all that techie stuff that got me the job.
Well that’s it for now! Come and visit me here at the web site or on Facebook. (And while you’re there, don’t forget to Like St Stephen’s!) Meanwhile, just because I seem to be gazing up into space, don’t think I don’t notice when you drop off to sleep during the sermon. Always remember, Isaac’s got his eye on you!
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