Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Drive Thru Ashes at Church?! Really?!

Ohio church offers drive-thru for Ash Wednesday


CINCINNATI (AP) - An Ohio church is offering a drive-thru Ash Wednesday blessing for parishioners pressed for time or reluctant to come inside the church for the Lenten observance.
The Rev. Patricia Anderson Cook of Mt. Healthy United Methodist Church in suburban Cincinnati offered the ashes Wednesday evening for people of all faiths beginning around 5 p.m. in the church parking lot.......

Is this what we have come to? What's next drive thru confession? Communion? Maybe a quick shot with a squirt gun and call it a Baptism. Yo Padre I'll have the #3 combo - Absolution with a rosary on the side, and make that absolution a super-size cause mardi gras was a hum-dinger. And could you hurry up I gotta get home and watch Oprah reruns.

I gotta admit that I didn't know churches other than us Catholics did the ash thing. But the total tonnage of things I don't know is enough to fill the grand canyon or one of Roseanne Barr's dresses.

Be that as it may, is this what it has come to? Drive thru church? Are we really that busy that we can't get out of the car and go into the church for ashes? How long would it take for this chick playing church to actually trace a cross on someone's forehead, assuning it wasn't Herman Munster's.What is so important that we have to get on down the road for? See who Kim Kardashian is sleeping with this week? What drug Lindsy Lohan got busted for? Hit Starsux for a $6 Frappuccino Caramel Macchiato Mocha Soy Latte with skim milk of course. Turn on the news to see what civil right the Obama administration has violated now? (here's a clue, all of them have been violated by him)

This is almost as bad as the long lines at the McDonald's near our house. The drive-thru is bumper-to-bumper out to the road and the parking lot is empty. Hey people it would actually be faster to get your super-sized lard-butts OUT of the car, walk in, order, get your grease, and walk back to the car. At least you will burn a few calories and save a few quarters, no make that dollars (can't drill for new oil or import it from Canada in the land of the free), worth of gas.

Sigh, I am getting too old. When I was young I would have considered things like this just silly and something to be mocked. Maybe get in the car with some buddies and grab a few beers, drive thru the right Reverend Patricia's Ashes to Go r' Us (does she have a large black cross in the parking lot instead of golden arches?) and gotten my head tattooed up and told Patty she had a nice ash. Now instead of laughing it off it actually angers me......I am only one step away from being the old guy that sits on the front porch and yells at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn and curses at the teens driving by in their rice-burners with the bass booming while playing their rap "music"

 Rev Pattie-kins finger painting foreheads....hey where has that finger been? And is she using the middle finger?

2 comments:

Ryan L said...

Great post, Wang. You play the part of the cranky old man very well. But I agree with everything you said, so what does that make me?

MarkO said...

I heard there were Ashes being distributed at 30th street station in PHL. Hell, we were AT Church last night, and the usher 'forgot' about the cry room. That's right, I wasn't about to stick my 4 year old and 1 year old out there in the public during the pre witching hour. There were people who bailed after getting ashes, too. Not surprising.