Let my prayer be set forth in THY sight as the incense :
Smoke Signals
Smoke Signals is not a parish publication; it was written and privately distributed by the late Peter Harper, a parishioner and a Sub-deacon at St. John’s. Yet it would never have existed outside a parish like ours.
Smoke Signals arose in 1995 as a response to a delightful but short-lived (1994-1996) leaflet produced by the choir called Square Notes that dealt with the music program and choir life.
Reproduced here are topics relating to church life, catholic customs, and the grandeur and foibles of Mother Church.
Despite the irony and sometimes the ‘tongue-in-cheekness’ of the style, the reader should feel the deep underlying love the author had for the Great Tradition of Western Christianity.
Peter Harper (1942 - 2019)
✠ Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord:
and let light perpetual shine upon him.
The Worldly Priest
Our Lord, the Gospel tells us, kept company with sinners, prostitutes, and assorted other dubious characters. But woe on the present-day priest who tries to follow his example, he will be immediately condemned by his flock and reported to his bishop.
The Cure of Souls
Cannot the Rector be assimilated to the shepherd who must give his life for his sheep (and worse, must put his eternal life on the line) and is not the incumbent more like the hireling for whom the care of the parish is more of a job than anything else?
They Are Taking Over the Earth!
The women will have to find a way to make kids without us (and that entails parthenogenesis!)... so the feminist dream will come true after all... a world without sexism, machism, patriarchism, paternalism... and without men. Human society would be, God forbid, like a nunnery!
And let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice