The Shriving

Gentle visitors, from time to time, your humble Contributor receives a dark and terrible vision of what will be. We would prefer to keep this terror from you, but no prophet can rightly withhold what he foresees. What follows is a vision of a strange ritual of the sect of New Puritans, circa 2020, which has its precursors in the present day.

Deaconess: Sistren and brethren and othren, do we have a penitent who wishes to be shriven?

Kowalski: I wish it.

Deaconess:  Come forward penitent. [Kowalski advances, kneels, and hands the Deaconess a parchment.]

Deaconess: Brother Kowalski, thou hast sinned and done evil in the sight of the people.

Kowalski: I have.

Deaconess: Time and again, thou took up the fowle leaf of towbacco and set it afire with an infernal flame. And, thou breathed it in – unlike the blessed example of our Master William, who took only the curative fruit of the hemp – and then thou breathed out of thy mouth the awefull fumes upon the Elect, stinging and beclouding their eyes and befowling their lungs, such that they all perished in awefull pain and agony.

Kowalski: I confess.

Deaconess: Time and again, thou devoured murderous meat and fat, serving thy unsightly belly, and therefrom becoming unshapely and unfit and taxing the common wealth. And, in doing so, thou brought mortal assault upon the persons of our peaceful four-legged sistren and brethren of the field, such that they all perished in awefull pain and agony.

Kowalski: I confess.

Deaconess: Time and again, thou brought the devil’s draught to thy lips, swilling the sirup of gluttonie and fowle carbon, and therefrom becoming unshapely and unfit and taxing the common wealth.

Kowalski: I confess.

Deaconess: Time and again, thou sat by idlie whilst thy sistren and brethren and othren Elect labored in great and wholesom exertion, toiling upon the machinerie of goodly health, and by thy sloth became unshapely and unfit and taxed the common wealth.

Kowalski: I confess.

Deaconess: Time and again, thou set out upon thy smouldering carriage, burning the bastard childe of carbon in infernal flames and spewing his reek upon Holy Mother Earth, choking her blessed frame and bringing her awefull pain and agony and well nigh her perishment.

Kowalski: I confess.

Deaconess: Vile sinner, thou hast been obdurate in thy sins as well as in thy awefull paleness and stubborn fixedness of gender, violating the great Law of Diverseness.

Kowalski: I confess.

Deaconess: Sinner, thou art Impure!

Congregation: Impure!

Kowalski: I am impure.

Deaconess: Dost thou ask to be shriven and made over?

Kowalski: I do.

Priestess Hillary: Sinner, be glad that thou hast, at last, found thy voice and confessed thy sins. Thou art shriven. Let him be flailed and reassigned and made over in the image of the Goddess. [congregation applauds]

Deaconess: Step forward Penitent No 1 and receive thy penance with joy. Do we have another penitent who wishes to be shriven? ...

Comments

[zbigpigula]

Hello,

I've been reading this board for quite a long time. Recently, firefox tries to stop me from visiting - it says that this website is infected.

Can you do something about it?

Thanks in advance