Ay-We…

I enjoy reading out loud, whether it be to my children, at church, in the classroom or with Hubs.

Hubs and I do a lot of reading out loud to one another,

“That’s so cute,” said Daughts when she came over during one of our morning devotions to cadge some milk.

I don’t know about cute, it’s just something we do.

Since the age of thirteen I’ve read at church.  The priest would pop his head out of the sacristy and scan the congregation and make a bee-line for me,

“Could you do the second reading?”

I always said yes and would turn to the insert in the bulletin or the order of service booklet to read it over quickly.  There was no lector schedule in those days, it was all on the fly and often fell to one of the ministers at the altar unless a willing congregant was spotted.  Sometimes I would be asked the week before so I could familiarize myself with the scripture but invariably the translation I had prepared with was not the same as the one at the lectern so I was sight reading to a certain degree.

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Some proper names warranted preparation but they didn’t crop up too often and were even skipped,

“Read the short version this week,” I’d be told by the priest.

Names like Pamphylia, Onesimus, Mesopotamia and Jehoshaphat were spared the injustice of being murdered by an unsuspecting lay reader.

I have to say practice over the decades, coupled with my love of words, has almost made me perfect but I do slip up on occasion.

A trick, I’ve found, is to move on and not say,

“Oops, I’m sorry I’ll read that again,” which draws attention to the gaff (and reminds me of a radio show I used to listen to at boarding school called ISIRTA -I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again-).

Another trick is my English accent…I can get away with mispronunciations when articulated boldly because my American listeners think that’s the way God would say it…

Having said that, I was asked to read for Choral Evensong a couple of weeks ago.  I was sent the lesson via email  and read it through a couple of times using different translations and even checked the lectern that evening to make sure a copy was in place before I sailed up to the chancel empty handed.

All was in order and when my turn came I approached the altar, bowed and walked to my spot.

“A reading from Acts.”  I began,

“Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

During this short paragraph my eye moved ahead and rested upon an unfamiliar word opening the next sentence,

“aWe…”

My mouth continued with the reading while my brain wrestled with ‘aWe’.

It tried to envision the passage we’d been preparing all week,

Was it an anagram?  Was it the end of a word?  If so what was the word?

I skimmed the rest of the sentence for context clues,

“…came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles….”

What came upon everyone?  While I drew a deep breath my brain drew a blank.  I decided to ignore the lower case ‘a’ in favor of the upper case ‘W’ and continued without missing a beat,

We came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles….”

It didn’t make sense but I carried on.

As soon as I sat down Hubs leaned over and pointed to ‘Awe’.

I looked at the three letter, very familiar word and smiled.

In this age of puzzling auto corrected text messages like,

“Goes she ha for a d plastic container draw” (which anyone can see translates to, “Does she have a plastic container drawer?”).

I was really surprised my brain hit a blind spot.

“Good job you didn’t say ‘ay-we,'” he whispered.

“Lol,” I said and nodded.

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ELRAY

2017-05-16 01:55:23 Reply

IT WAS A GREAT MOMENT ONLY WE, I AM SURE SHARED TOGETHER. NO ONE ELSE NOTICED AS THEY WERE WATCHING THEIR BEAUTIFUL ORATOR!

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