Ichabod

Celebrants can smirk and dancers flex and waddle,
Guitars can plunk and strum
To back the hymns' jejune and drivelling twaddle
But still we're sour and glum.
"Give us joy in our hearts, keep us praising," sing the gladdle*,
But for us the word is mum.


We do not ask for joy or gladness,
Sweet fudge, manufactured to please,
But Truth that acknowledges goodness and badness.
Not modish inanities.
The Flesh and Blood of God Incarnate, holy Madness,
Not dull banalities.


We remember a time when we heard Priests saying
Mass, not a service but an Act.
We followed the Order, privately praying.
Transubstantiation was a Fact
Independent of how our minds were weakly straying,
No need to rejoice or react.


Latin was our language, a universal word, it
Was heard in Paris, Bankok or Benin.
The Priest's face a mask as he said Mass; we heard It
As we wavered between Holiness and sin.
Now it seems there's no Hell - presumptive Heaven. We preferred it
When we knew we had to work to get in.


Is it, I ask myself, the same religion
That we knew and believed when we were young?
When theology strove for and had attained precision
And Aquinas's hymns were still sung.
Before the sentimental falling for the 60s vision
And dotty Jesuits and Johnny Kung.




Gladdle - my coinage, I think = a group of very glad people, c.p.rabble

Is it me.....?

Am I the only non-Jew who finds the uttering of the Hebrew Holy Name of God (YHWH) objectionable?

It started about 50 years ago, was taken up in translations of the Bible, and is used in Bidding Prayers by the kind of people who refer to the Holy Spirit as 'the Spirit'.

I find it irreverent and offensive to our spiritual ancestors, the Jews.

Am I alone in this?