The Alexanders went visiting today. As Alexander has a good priest friend who has recently taken on a new parish and as neither Alexander nor I had the wherewithal to get back on the freeway even to get to church, we decided to go visiting.
Things at this parish run basically the same as at our home parish. We follow the service in the Book of Common Prayer, sing hymns from the hymnal, read the appointed lessons, and even insert a praise chorus or two. At announcement time range day was announced (I've been around Christendom enough to know that announcement time is the common denominator in the denominational divide) . As a member of the range, the priest could bring along friends to shoot to their heart's content and so a men's range day was organized. Alexander and Young Alexander's ears perked up. They found their people. Having grown up around guns and in a house full of boys I thought it sounded like a good day for the guys; but mostly I was heartened at the idea that men could still get together and do men sorts of things without the girls tagging along. It's been a bugaboo of mine that women have invaded all male territories in the exercise of their supposed rights. That's when a woman behind me spoke up asking if the women could come. "I knew it," I thought, "of course this would happen." My attention returned to the priest who answered with a solid NO. The men, he explained, needed a time together during which they would have no need of making apologies for their behavior. The women of the parish could have their own range day if they liked. I thought he had shown both backbone and diplomacy. He was not cowed by the women and the women in turn were satisfied that they would not be left out and in their own turn could also shoot to their heart's content.
I felt encouraged in church today, not as I usually am by the readings, the sermon, or the songs, but by evidence that in this muddled up world where equality is often confused with equivalence men can still be men and women can still be women. The idea that men and women are different is not a politically correct notion today, but that is the way it has always been and it's a good thing. God said so.
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