Friday, November 26, 2010

Lo, how a what???


Here are two facts:

1. Sunday is the First Sunday in Advent.
2. I’m finally beginning to lose it.

I am usually quite accurate about spelling (I always won the weekly spelling bees in school), but this week I had one of those moments. Most of you know that I was hired this past September to provide music at a Methodist Church. To be technically accurate, the church doesn’t have an organ or a piano; it has an electronic thingie called a Yamaha Clavinova that can make a plethora of sounds. It can do everything but toast bread. However, of the many possible toots and bells and whistles settings available, I confine myself to using just three: grand piano, tubular chimes, and pipe organ. The rest can just disappear for all I care. Some people somewhere may actually want to hear “Holy, Holy, Holy!” played badly on the saxophone or a rendition of “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” on the tuba, but they won’t be hearing either one from me.

When I began, the pastor asked me to select the hymns each week in addition to playing a prelude, an offertory, and a postlude. The names of the prelude and postlude are not printed in the weekly bulletin, but the hymns and offertory are.

Anyhoo, on Tuesday I told Patty, the church’s administrative assistant, that the offertory for this Sunday (the First Sunday in Advent, remember?) would be “Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming.” I wrote it down for her. What I should have written, of course, was “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” (the English title of a 15th-century German carol called “Es ist ein Ros ent­sprung­en”).

Ere and e’er mean two different things.

A rose ere (before) blooming is no rose at all, just a bunch of foliage and thorns, but a rose e’er (ever) blooming, now that’s something to contemplate while the offering plate is passed.

Normally the church office is staffed Monday through Thursday. However, because this week was Thanksgiving week, the office was staffed on Monday and Tuesday only. Normally Patty puts the bulletin together on Wednesday and prints it on Thursday morning. By the time I realized my error, it was Tuesday evening, Patty had long since gone home, not just for the day but for the week, and the bulletins were already printed. Come Sunday, my error is going to be out there for the local Methodist churchgoing public to see, and for those with discerning eyes I shall be exposed as less than a perfect speller.

Oh, the shame of it all.

Okay, maybe I'm being a little melodramatic, or as The Amplified Bible might put it, “Okay [fine, all right], maybe [possibly, perhaps] I’m [merely] being a little [more] melodramatic [than usual].”

I will try to see the bigger picture. So I misspelled a word. Big deal.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and I must bring this post to a close.

Before you leave, though, please pick Door #1 . . . . . Door #2 . . . . . or Door #3.

7 comments:

  1. Oh just blame Patty. She won't mind and only you and the few followers you have (snickering) will know better.

    And it should actually be 'es ist ein Rose entsprungen'. Or perhaps even 'eine Rose'. But German was never my forte. We cannot blame Patty for that.

    Word verification = misme. And I did miss you too ;-)

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  2. I picked doors one and three, but my head spun round and round when I saw that they were hymns, so I was too discouraged to try door one.

    Look at the bright side, my friend, at least you didn't misspell "Amazing Grace," which you might have screwed up unforgivably had the first word turned into "Amusing." That's the thing about spelling errors, they can turn into whole new words.

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  3. i bet she corrected the error before she printed the program so it willl be in just the way you want it<><<<>eh??????

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  4. Church Standards WatchdogNovember 27, 2010 at 10:34 AM

    It has come to our notice that you - R.Brague of Canton, Georgia - have recently committed a heinous and sacrilegious spelling misdemeanour in spite of the clear instruction contained in the eleventh commandment "Thou shalt not confuse e'er with ere". It is our considered verdict that for forty days and nights you shall wear an undershirt lined with blackberry stems and blackthorn and you shall select other sounds when playing keyboards in the Lord's house - beginning with harmonica and progressing to Scottish bagpipes. Amen.

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  5. Putz, no such luck. Patty e-mails several people, including me, a copy of the finished bulletin and "ere" it was.

    CSW, from Clue 1 (misdemeanour) and Clue 2 (period outside quotation marks) I conclude that you are none other than that blackguard, Lord Pudding of Yorkshire, and I remind you, sir, that in pretending to be part of Ye Olde Society of Watchdogs of Church Standards, Both Anciente and Moderne, you have broken one or more of the original ten commandments. There is still time to repent.

    Carolina, you're only encouraging him.

    ReplyDelete

<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...