Ephphatha!

So it's Ephphatha Sunday, the day once every three years in the Episcopal Lectionary when we read that story in Mark where Jesus heals a deaf man by putting his fingers into the man's ears, spitting, and touching his tongue. It's so ridiculous, you gotta love it. I imagine the caption of the woodcut on the left to be "Okay, I'm going to put this finger in your ear now..." Click on the picture to see a larger version, in which you can see that the expression on the man's face clearly says, "Lord, you've got to be kidding." Ephphatha, of course, means "be opened." To which the man replied, Umphthphphbhttt, which means "you can stop touching my tongue now."

In other news, I read through Compline in the Breviary for the first time. It's the simplest office (so they say), but it still took me an hour just to understand all the page flipping. Today was a gray, cold, and rainy day; perfect for sitting still indoors and working on stuff like this. With the weather so dreary outside, it makes it easy to focus inside. Inwardly, that is. I'm still excited by the project of combining elements of the Breviary wtih the Book of Common Prayer. I'll keep discussing my ideas as they come to me. First, however, there's learning how to use the darn thing...