What do you do when someone ruins your worship experience?

I confess. I do not love everyone with the love of Jesus. I play favorites. There are many people I meet who if I found out I had to sit next to them on a four hour bus trip would make my heart sink.

Over the last few days, I've popped in and out of the Anglican Essentials Conference in Ottawa where Anglicans from across Canada have gathered to figure out how to proceed now that the Anglican Church of Canada has approved the sanctity of same sex relationships.

The conference attracted about 700 people from charismatic and traditional wings of the church, drawn together by essentials such as the belief in the authority of scripture. Since this group is objecting to what the overall church agreed to at their last synod, they didn't hold it in one of the big Anglican churches in town. Instead, they held it in a modern Pentacostal church with plush upholstered pews, stark modern wood interior, a stage, no symbols, no art, no stained glass windows. And, the Anglicans couldn't have wine even at communion so as not to offend their hosts, so they used grape juice from common chalices. And there was no where to kneel on receiving.

Anyway, they sang some wonderful hymns, among this one "I bind myself today"

The first worship service I attended used a modern liturgy that I found so empty. Today used portions of the Book of Common Prayer which I am now familiar with because of my little cathedral.

Today, though, I was sitting next to a woman who I guessed was in her sixties. She had a lined face, a sensible short haircut, sensible black loafers, black pants and black shirt. She seemed very worshipful, often raising her hands in prayer and singing the hymns fervently.

So, what was my problem? She had an extremely loud voice that sounded like a cat caterwauling. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, this loud, scratchy, swooping, screechy voice was irritating me, or at the very least, tempting me to be irritated. In self defence, I tried singing at the top of my lungs and that helped. I'm a pretty loud singer when I fill my belly with air, but this gal could out belt me.

Finally, I moved over several spaces so that I could not hear her anymore.

Lord, please make sure someone tells me when my voice no longer adds to the harmony.
But, of course, I didn't kindly take her aside and say, "Honey, you sound like a cat singing. Please ratchet down the volume several notches, okay?"

Instead I was thinking about my now deceased father who hated congregational singing. He had a beautiful bass baritone voice and used to get paid to sing in Episcopal Church choirs, the kind that paid soloists sing in on Sundays to earn some extra change. He sang in a choir at the Mass for John F. Kennedy back in 1964. I wondered about him, if he was singing in a sublime heavenly choir. I hoped so. I wondered if this obviously devout woman would get a new voice in heaven, one that sounded beautiful. Perhaps to Jesus her loud praises were already beautiful. I dunno.

Then, there was a moment of silence during the worship service, and this being a bunch with a lot of charismatics in it, some people started offering short prophetic words.

I couldn't believe it. Rising from the middle of the vast plush auditorium came a loud, warbling soprano voice. Couldn't make out the words. Was she singing in tongues? The vibrato was as wide as the Mississippi River. It sounded like formerly trained voice run amok.

I'm so unkind. I was thinking how much fun it would be to write about it.