What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The Past Tense

    Sometimes museums are terribly annoying. I found myself getting all worked up about this thurible.

    image

    Well, It wasn’t exactly the thurible that got me worked up but the card next to it.

    image

    The caption uses the past tense. “Censors were used…”

    Censors are used. It somehow felt so frustrating to look at an object that I could pick up and use in my daily work and which seemed to me to be in as good a state as when it was first made and yet see the caption speaking about the use as being something in the past.

    As I looked around the same gallery, all the references to anything liturgical were expressed in the same way:

    “Music was important in the Christian liturgy…”

    There’s no was about it.

3 responses to “Six Points for Preachers”

  1. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    I think I would add: if it does not matter to you, yourself, then don’t imagine it is likely to matter to anybody else. Find, if you can, the point where your concerns and the concerns of the text cross. Better to say a very little that matters, than a lot which really does not.

    Also: read (to yourself, before you start) the whole passage you are going to speak on and read what comes before and after. You do not have to agree with it. You do have to enter into dialogue with it. Supine agreement of Scripture is not (in my opinion) required. Taking it seriously, is.

    Reply
  2. Dent-de-Lion » The Messenger

    […] Dent-de-Lion by admin Posted on November 2, 2012  Six Points for Preachers […]

    Reply
  3. Melissa Holloway Avatar
    Melissa Holloway

    I’ve noticed how uncomfortable preachers are with the word ‘love’. Discounting the times in is used in a pre-set theological phrase like ‘love of Christ’ as sort of a plug in, I rarely hear it in sermons.

    Its a reason to be Episcopalian – if the preacher avoids love, you can always hear it – or see it- or taste it – in the Eucharist.

    Reply

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