Special Delivery

It is hard for people of Scotch-Irish or other penny pinching like-minded heritage which prides itself on being skin-flint tightwads frugal with one's hard earned moolah money to pony up and buy crap we don't need something that we already have in one form, even if the form we currently own is perfectly good so why bother buying a new one #@*$&^!?!?! inefficient.

Such was the case with my God's gift to Christian liturgy Book of Common Prayer. I had inherited a common pew edition BCP before I went off to seminary. It was perfectly fine, just a little ratty broken in good. Everyone while I was in seminary kept trying to talk me into buying one of those new fangled BCP/Hymnal combinations.

I always put off buying one because I had assumed that for at least one my ordinations (deacon or priest), someone would buy me one as an ordination present. "So," I asked, "Why buy something someone is going to get me anyway?" In any event, I cringed at the idea of paying $98 for a new one, especially since they are made (like most fancy leather bibles) with that irritatingly fragile cigarette paper. Why, Oh Lord, can your children not print bibles or BCP/Hymnal combos with real paper?

Both ordinations came and went, and I ended up with nary a BCP/Hymnal Combination to show for it. In fact, my diocese was so cheap, when it came to the part in the ordination where my bishop hands me a bible, I had to reuse the same Bible they gave me for my diaconal ordination. In other words, they recycled the bible they had already given me. I think there is an old fashioned term for that that involves Native Americans and charity.

In any event, after my first mass where I showed solidarity with my parishioners and was juggling books at the prayer desk, I decided I had to bite the bullet and break down and buy myself a new BCP/Hymnal combo. I must say it irritated the bejeepers out of me to no end when we have a full church full of perfectly good hymnals and BCPs. But in the interest of being trendy in a weird priestly sort of way professional looking, I succumbed to holy peer pressure and ordered one.

My inner cheapskate thriftiness would not go down without a fight, so I haggled. I found one at Amazon.com which was on sale, and I applied a coupon discount and a giftcard I had been hoarding, so I ended up paying only 40 dollars for it. Of course, since it was over $25, there was free shipping.

I must say, it is certainly nice.

And you know what? It's tax deductible since it's a business expense.

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