With Sunday School over until the fall, Katherine now sits with us in church on Sundays, meaning learning of various bits of etiquette. Being in a highly liturgical tradition, I don’t expect her to have the prayer book memorized or even really follow along all that closely, but polite quietness, standing when everyone stands, etc., is not to much to ask.
She already knows the Lord’s Prayer, so she recites that aloud (loudly) when we do. It occurred to me today that we could teach her some of the other standard prayers and little tunes, a few at a time, so that she could participate more.
At the Offeratory, we sing a doxology (“Praise God from whom all blessings flow …”), during which most of the congregation does an “open hands” kind of prayer stance (hands out to either side, kinda, and open — this is evidently known, in liturgical circles, as the “Orans Posture,” is the subject of some debate in certain quarters). Some folks prefer that as a prayer stance to folded hands, but it’s always struck me a bit as folk-massy — but we (in our congregation, anyway) do it at that part of the service, so what the heck.
So after the service, I told Katherine I would probably try to each her some of the music so she could sing along. I mentioned the doxology, since it’s so short, and I referred to it as the part where we pray with our hands open like that. She’d picked up on that enthusiastically, so I thought she’d remember it.
“Oh, yeah! I did it like this.” She put her hands out like that, and then put her index fingers and thumbs together, suddenly looking more meditative.
“Oh. That’s a little different,” I said, encouragingly.
“Yeah. And I can do this.” She hopped back up on the pew, sat crosslegged, did that with her hands … and started intoning “Azarath … Metrion … Zinthos!”
“Um … maybe that’s more for watching cartoons than for sitting in church.”
“Okay.”
That’s my girl.