Always Another Windmill

Michael Bérubé uncovers the ancient liturgical form for denouncing AND rejecting:

Famously tough but fair questioner: Abrenuntiatis farrakhanae? [Do you renounce Farrakhan?]

Liberal black officeseeker: Abrenuntio.

Famously tough but fair questioner: Et omnibus operibus eius? [And all his works?]

Liberal black officeseeker: Abrenuntio.

Famously tough but fair questioner: Et omnibus pompis eius? [And all his pomps?]

Liberal black officeseeker: Abrenuntio.

Zag is currently marching/dancing around the living room, beating on a tiny little drum I picked up for him in Uganda a couple years ago, and singing/shouting “laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping!” over and over. Every now and then, he stops and points at our creche and tells me how he is singing a song about Mamma Mary and Baby Geezus.

I always hated the song “The little drummer boy”–it just seems to exhude a certain victorian sentimentality, and a relatively poor sense of percussion. I tend to think that a lot of Christmas Carols are greatly improved by adding some light percussion, but generally speaking, “The little drummer boy” is best improved by not singing it at all.^* But watching Zag drum for the Holy Family is fun. Especially when he’s doing it to “What Child is this.”

“Carol” comes from a French or Latin word meaning a circle dance. Somewhere we lost that. But most of the ancient carols still have some dance left in them, and if you can dance to it, you can add some percussion to it. Maybe someday we’ll be at a church again where I can do that–and maybe Zag will help.

I also note that being in charge of Zag all day is a much much richer source of blogable material than being at work all day.

^*I have so far found two versions of the song–both purely instrumental–that are acceptable. One is the classic rendition by the Vince Guaraldi trio as done for the Charlie Brown Christmas special (Zag spent part of a day last week repeating “Bum, badadadum badadadum badadadum dum” quietly to himself). The other is the one done by North Carolina blues guitarist Cool John Ferguson.

Via a complicated chain of posts, I came upon this: Rules for listening to your spouse’s sermon. I think this is supposed to be tongue in cheek,  but the earnestness of the comments scares me. This is what my nightmares about my future as the priest’s spouse look like.  With any luck I’ll be spared this role for a few years by being too occupied with toddler and baby wrangling to be expected to sit listening in rapt attention to Weirdbird’s sermons.  It’s not that I mind listening, but performing while listening?

It turns out it’s not just you. Powerpoint slides accompanying a talk may actually make it harder for the audience to retain the information presented, according to recent research done at the University of New South Wales, Australia. (I’m still looking for the original paper to get more details.) The researcher found that being presented with the same information in written and spoken form simultaneously can overload our ability to process and hold that information in short term memory.

Their findings also have interesting implications for liturgists. From the article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

[The study] also questions the wisdom of centuries-old habits, such as reading along with Bible passages, at the same time they are being read aloud in church. More of the passages would be understood and retained, the researchers suggest, if heard or read separately.

I’ve not been a fan of having the congregation follow along in the liturgy with a complete script, and I have to restrain myself from cringing when there’s an audible page turn during one of the readings in the liturgy as everyone in the congregation dutifully flips the page to read along with what’s being read to them. Seriously, in what other context do we have adults read along with the full text of what’s being said?

Now I have evidence to support my crankiness.

As far as Powerpoint itself goes, it shouldn’t really be news anymore that Powerpoint presentations are generally the antithesis of good communication. I suspect anyone who has been subjected to enough of them has come to this conclusion independently, but if not, Edward Tufte has been on this for years now, detailing some of the many ways that Powerpoint is a corrupting influence on information presentation (for example in The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint, and scattered throughout his books, including a chapter in his most recent book, Beautiful Evidence).

That’s assuming, of course, that you think that the purpose of a presentation is to inform or to communicate.  If the purpose of the presentation is to confuse, obfuscate, or convince the audience that the material is too confusing for them, but that the presenter has it well in hand–also known as “engineering assent,” or, as a colleague of mine recently put it “facipulation” (facilitation + manipulation)–then Powerpoint is the perfect tool. (For an excellent discussion of the history behind this, see this post at Naked Capitalism).

And don’t let me get started on the actual use of Powerpoint in liturgy.

While at church this past Sunday, I suddenly had a quiet epiphany that gave me a new appreciation for one of the ways that liturgical worship works.

Some context: Sunday morning is me and my 21 month old son. My wife is a divinity student and has a field placement a half hour away where she has to spend Sunday mornings.

There are few churches anywhere that are well set up in their liturgy for the needs of a active, social, vocal, exploring toddler. Segregation in a nursery doesn’t count. Most liturgies do not encourage free movement, giving free voice to the congregation, or extensive social interaction. Toddlers are not, on the whole, constitutionally inclined towards being still, listening quietly, or paying attention to the syntax of things. At least mine isn’t. Nor really should he be–he’s got other projects.

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