Our Lady of Perpetual Irresponsibility, an American Catholic Community in the liberal Presbyterian tradition, is seeking new hymn texts to celebrate its 7th semi-annual experimental-worship conference, tentatively titled “Forward Together At Last: Walking Hand in Hand with Foot and Mouth.”
Hymn texts should explore the scriptural connection between genetically modified oat products and the devastating increase in preventable livestock maladies. Texts which frame the political and theological issues of GMOP in a specifically post-feminist cultural space of sub-Christian liminality will be given special consideration.
Texts should avoid archaic linguistic constructs, such as verb-pronoun agreement, apostrophatic contractions, and semi-gendered gerund clauses. Additionally, only unpublished texts written in 7676D will be considered.
By entering this competition, you are assigning the rights to the entered text, and all other texts written by you, to the board of trustees of Our Lady of Perpetual Irresponsibility ACC*P, Inc.
A non-refundable entry fee of $75 is required. Checks may be made out to OLPIACCP.
First place: $75 prize and inclusion in the disposable leaflets printed for the concluding liturgiscope of the conference.
Perhaps getting off-topic — but here is my new hymn:
Hymn for the Year of Faith
O God, who are prevenient, consubstantial, and ineffable,
Humbly grant, we pray, that some men will come to know of your most prevenient preveniency,
In a similar way, we pray, may some men come to know of your most consubtustantial constubstantialilty,
In a similiarly similar way, we humbly beseech that you will vouchsafe that many men will come to know know of your ineffable ineffability,
May some men come to know of your precious and holy oblation of hypostatic hypostasis …
Let me go ahead and copyright a few rhymes now:
bovine/wine
womanhood/common good
the sending/earth-rending
Don Quixote/ falsely-oatey
If anyone uses these rhymes please send me money. Thank you.
Hmm, this hymn doesn't rhyme, and I can't make out the meter. But the theology is excellent!
Lord, You are ineffable,
By your Holy Spirit,
G.M. food's inedlble,
And over the limit.
By our boycott of Monsanto
earth is justified again
Sing we songs in Esperanto
On the hills and in the plain.
"Trample all the earth, subdue it,"
No! We touch it tenderly!
Wisdom gaia songs embue it.
Ever shall our singing be!
Winner: To the tune "Clementine"
Nope. Nettleton. It's always Nettleton.
Johannes Petrus has an aversion to NETTLETON, always thinks it's Dufner's text. So, let's try a little something closer to home, from Wales, HYFRYDOL, and see if this satisfies the panel. You can bill my entry fee.
Lord, how feebly flawed we fumble
Fond we crave thy milk divine
That which nurtures oats to circle
Finds no hearth in things bovine
Deign their methane to ne'er, e'er profane
Life, our breath, our sweet here below
May our off'ring bring us Thy nursing
Foretaste of thy grace bestowed.
I may have troched my iambs (feed my iambs, tend my sheep….)
5- "Deign their methane ne'er to profane." should suffice.
And yes, I am a very disturbed person….
Too much verb-pronoun agreement.
Also, while semi-feminist (+1), I think "Thy nursing" could be construed as a semi-gendered gerund (-1).
I think it's just punctuated incorrectly.
REF:
O God Who are prevenient,
Consubstantial,
And ineffable,
Grant that some men will come to know:
Of Your most prevenient
Preveniency,
We pray humbly;
REF:
O God Who are prevenient,
Consubstantial,
And ineffable,
Grant that some men will come to know:
Of Your most consubstantial
Consubstantiality —
We pray similarly;
REF:
O God Who are prevenient,
Consubstantial
And ineffable,
Grant that some men will come to know:
Of your ineffable
Ineffability —
We beseech untellably;
REF:
O God Who are prevenient,
Consubstantial,
And ineffable,
Grant that some men will come to know:
Of your oblation holy
Of hypostatic hypostasis —
O Lord, amaze us!
What? You've never been attended by a male nurse. I knew it was rigged! Dagnabit.
That's why it's only SEMI gendered, which if you'll read the rules, was the exact exclusion.
—
Also, while I try not to find too much entertainment in my own satire (as I don't really need to add Pride to my existing Sloth and Gluttony), can I just say:
For some reason I'm particularly proud of coining the word "liturgiscope," and believe it should be immediately adopted and thereafter appropriated as positive by the people perpretating such nonsense.
Here's some semi-serious parody for those still in a Haugen-daze:
Gather us, When?
1. Here in this place, daylight is streaming
Darkness is banished, the blinds will not shut.
Feel in this space the warmth of the spirit:
The fans overheated; the AC’s kaput.
Refrain
Gather us when the child support funds come
Gather us when tuition checks clear
Catholic schools will teach of God’s kingdom
Give us a C-note and we’ll persevere.
2. We are the old who hated the TAKS test
We are the young, all full of ideals
We won’t accept instruction that lacks zest
Nor personnel who are not full of zeal.
Refrain
Gather us when we pray in the classroom
Gather us when right conduct we preach
Keep us in faith when all around breeds gloom
Help us more students with God’s word to reach
And the rest:
3. Maybe someday our kids will get vouchers
Someday, perhaps, our ships will come in
Till then we’ll try to not become grouchers,
Buy some more duct tape and bulk safety pins.
Refrain
Gather us when our causes seem futile
Gather us when our broken hearts ache
For we know well, when life seem most brutal
Christ, His own people can never forsake.
W. Pat Cunningham 2007-8