There is so much going on in Anglican / Episcopal land, and so little sense to it, that here at Preludium we took a break. This last Sunday afternoon, after having preached at The Episcopal Church of St. Andrew and St. Matthew, I returned to Lewes, the village by the bay and the big water, to bless the Air Cannon for a group of women and their male assistants who are entering their Cannon in the Pumpkin' Chunkin' contest this year. They are using their entry as a way to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research.
In what I hope is right fashion, in which we bless people and then what they do, we prayed first for all those who have or have had breast cancer and those who love and care for them, then blessed the group and their work and community, and then the beast of a cannon as an instrument of delight and joy. The cannon has a fifty foot barrel and shoots a pumpkin about 4500 feet using a high pressure blast of air to drive it. A lot of the pumpkins get smashed in the process of leaving the barrel, but many make it. In the picture to the right you can see the pumpkin as a small dot in the upper right hand.So, being a Canon in The Episcopal Church in the Philippines firing a cannon in Lewes for a gang of wonderful people chunkin' pumpkin' for breast cancer research, is amazingly simple when compared to the attempt to weed out the important from the crazy in Anglican and Episcopal affairs of state.
It was a relief to pull the lanyard and fire the thing.
A fine lower Deleware Tradition for some years now.
ReplyDeleteAny moment now someone on a wrong wing blog will be writing a piece about how there is no scriptural authority for blessing flying pumpkins. A commenter will observe that Halloween is a pagan event and therefore clearly TEC is now pagan.
ReplyDeleteI have just saved your readers a lot of blog research time here.....
FWIW
jimB
I sincerely hope they were heterosexual cannons...
ReplyDeleteAh, but Jim, the objects fired were pumpkins, not jack-o-lanterns.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is nit-picking, but so are the wrong wingers.
Marilyn
As I read it, it is the cannon that is going to be blessed not the pumpkins. I suspect we can find scriptural authority for the blessing of weapons, and certainly tradition upholds cannon blessings. A lovely activity for All Saints (not that pagan event that precedes it).
ReplyDeleteAs a breast cancer survivor, I thank them and you! Bless it, blow it and chunk it baby!!!
ReplyDeleteAnd my word thingy is "counfun" --not sure, but it sounds right.
Dear Canon Boom Boom,
ReplyDeleteYour are such a delightful heretic!
Blessings.
Fr. Maxwell Smart+
Oh Mark, this is too good for the way you wrote this.
ReplyDeleteYou could fire the pumpkins at the wrong wingers.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I'm angry but not gentle, so don't bother being shocked and outraged.
Mark,
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure blessing produce and cannons is allowed when it's all for the benefit of cancer research :-)
Great story. It must be very funny to watch those pumpkins fly (or not).
I'm impressed, Mark! Out here on the prairie I have served as Loader to a colleague who has a Spud Gun, but we never aspired to Pumpkin Cannonry. 50-foot barrel? 4500-foot range? Astounding! I hope you were firing this thing out to sea -- we just chunked our taters into a neighboring cornfield.
ReplyDeleteAim it at interloping foreign bishops. Mess with us and it's a mess of pie filling coming right at ya.
ReplyDelete