Time was, when Rogation Sunday meant long country walks and the beating of a healthy young shaver at various points. I mean, look at this image of an urban Rogation, with the congregation standing on the railway lines and the impudent tyke shimmying up a rope. Wouldn't be able to do this now. Health and Safety regulations and fast express trains have taken over.
There's also a general air of apathy about it. Attendances at this morning's services was very reduced - maybe everyone has gone on holiday. No Rogation Walk either this year (we did one last year, and I don't like repeating such events too quickly or else it becomes expected and "tradition"). The Intercessions at the two Eucharist services were said indoors, mainly because of mobility problems in both congregations, but we turned and faced the four points of the compass as we prayed God's blessing on agriculture, fishing, coal and oil production, earth resources, and manufacturing. This afternoon, if the showers hold off, we'll get outside the church door for our "rogare".
Now, I've just got time to put together a Prawn Cocktail for lunch ...
We have deftly side-stepped the Rogation theme this year (well, we make it central every other year) and are continuing in our explorations of John's discourses. Not quite so graphic, I know, and no walks or processions .... but I, too, might stretch to a prawn cocktail! (I thought you didn't like seafood.)
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely right about seafood - but I can manage prawn cocktail, so long as there aren't any whole prawns with black eyes adorning the top and gazing sightlessly at me. I have also enjoyed a Cocquille St Jacques in France, but only the once. I will happily eat cod and salmon, cold tuna in a salad - can't stand it hot - or in a poor man's kedgeree, or the real thing with smoked haddock. Wouldn't be able to cope with a platter of Fruits de Mer, but at least I can now sit opposite someone cracking the shells and carapaces without throwing up!
ReplyDeleteI know - what a wimp!
You'd probably be had up for child molestation, and rightly so, if you tried this sort of things nowadays. As a schoolboy I wore flannel shorts of the type worn by the kid engaged in the totally pointless, so far as I can tell, exercise of shinning up or down the wall. The large contingent of guys clustered around his feet would likely have got quite a view as they stood there, gazing upwards. Note that the only two ladies in attendance (love their outfits) are standing at a suitably decorous distance.
ReplyDeleteI can only assume, LB, that the lad is ascending the wall as it forms the parish boundary. I know that in some parishes where the boundary ran across a river or lake, the boy was thrown in! Ah, what fun, what japes!
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