This guy might be one of those SiMPs, but at least he's not ashamed to look like a priest...Seminarians, the greatest day of the year is coming. No, not Reformation Day you Zwinglians. I mean Halloween.
This is the one day in the whole damn year where you can dress like a proper churchman. You can actually put on a cassock, carry a Psalter, stroll around the seminary campus, walk into a bar, or go wherever the hell you want looking like a man studying for the holy office instead of like an extra from a Richard Simmons video or a used-car salesman trying to get elected District President.
Enjoy it. This is the only time you can wear a cassock on campus without Artie Just wetting himself, or Herman Otten running a broadside predicting CPH to name Mary as Co-Redemptrix and that David Scaer is a secret member of the Jesuits (like the cat hasn't been out of that bag for a while...). This is the only time when you will not be treated as an outcast, expelled from the seminary, and get the Judas treatment from the faculty (at least our Lord got a kiss first) - all for taking seminary life seriously.
And speaking of the faculty - guys and gals, here is your chance to actually wear a clerical collar instead of a polyester suit and shiny gawdawful reject-from-the-clothing-coop-neck tie with a nice safe secular sweater. And fellas, unless you're some kind of Eastern European with an accordion and pinky ring, shit-can the white socks. Okay? And if one of your lords and masters of the seminary (The Almighty Board of Regents) catches a shocking glimpse of a professor in black, you can simply remind him or her that it's Halloween, it's just a costume. Fat belly laughs all round. Har dee har.
Of course, on All Saints Day, churchmanship is over, back on your heads. Back in your polo shirts and khaki pants. Ditch the Psalms for the latest Church Growth crap, and forget about trying to look like a real churchman for another year.
Ironically, Halloween may be the one day a year a seminarian might want to be sober, and emerge from his escapist drunken stupor.
Herr Rev. General-
ReplyDeleteI always knew that Alice Cooper was one of us. But he must have some church growthery tendencies with the long hair and all.
I don't think Rev. David Dissen (member of the CSL Board of Regents who regularly wears black and a clerical collar) considers himself a lord and master of the Seminary.
ReplyDeletePastor Dissen spoke out against the SMPP at the floor committee meetings prior to the 2007 synodical convention.