Not Exactly As Planned

... was a fair description for this morning. Today I was slow in getting ready and just a bit disorganized in trying to get my Prayer Book (the one I usually use for leading services -- given to my grandfather on his confirmation!), Fr. Daniel's excellent homily (I hope he'll send me an electronic copy for the church website) and the bulletins Kathy had helpfully prepared yesterday all pulled together. So it was already 10 minutes past our planned departure time when we got to the garage.

I started my car up... and it quit. Several attempts later it was clear something was very wrong, so we climbed into Seumas Ruaraidh ("Red Jimmy" -- our cars have Gaelic names) and headed off to church, with our arrival to be less than 10 minutes before start of service. Not good, given that I had to vest, light the candles (the rule I was taught is that the candles are lit 10 minutes before the service), and do whatever else was needed before the service.

We arrived at 8 minutes before the hour. Kathy went off to make a copy of the homily for one parishioner who is hard of hearing, and I headed to the Sacristy, noting that its lights were on. To my surprise Deacon Ed was there; I had thought he wouldn't be back until the following week. But this was a big help under the circumstances as he was ready to go, and could read the lessons -- it being way too late to switch over to a Deacon's Mass.

The homily original back and on the pulpit, I thought we were ready until John pointed out that the hymnboard was wrong. Sure enough, the date had been updated but the board still had last week's hymns on it! It being about 1 minute before the hour, I had to pull the board down, take it into the sacristy, update the hymn numbers (we barely had enough '4's and '7's to cover the hymns and canticles!) and re-install it.

Although we started a couple of minutes late, I thought I was home free.

Nope.

In a slight but understandable oversight, the bulletin noted simply that after each lesson we would sing a canticle, giving the hymn number and page in the Prayer Book... but not the name. So I ended up fishing around in the small hymnals we have in the Sanctuary to figure out #624 and #644 were (Benedictus es, Domine and Jubilate Deo) in order to announce them correctly.

But all in all, we got through in good order and once again I heard how some of us remember "sung Morning Prayer" and their wish that we could do it more often on Suundays. But we have our church Canons to deal with in that regard.