You know you're an Episcopalian...

...if the women at your service guild are already asking, "Is it too early for wine?" at a 10:30 a.m. meeting, and the answer is, "Of course not."

...when you watch Star Wars and they say "May the Force be with you", and you automatically reply "And with thy spirit."

...if someone says, "Let us pray" and you automatically hit your knees.

...if you recognize your neighbor, or rector, in the local liquor store *and* go over to greet him/her.

...if you think the height of haute cuisine is a little, triangular cucumber sandwich on white bread, crusts excised, stuck together...with a toothpick.

...if you know the meaning of "garth," "nave," and "undercroft"...AND can locate two out of the three.

...if you have totally memorized Rite I, Rite II and the first three episodes of The Vicar of Dibley.

...if you know the difference between a surplice and a cotta...and the appropriate! use of each.

...if hearing people pray in the language of "justwanna" makes you want to scream.

...if words like: "vouchsafe," "oblation," "supplications," "succor," "bewail," "wherefore," "dost," and "very" (in its archaic sense) are familiar to you even if you don't have a clue what they mean.

...if you can rattle off such tongue twisters like: "...who made there by his one oblation of himself once offered a full and perfect sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the world" and "Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, we thy people, do celebrate and make here with these gifts which we offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make..." without missing a beat.

...if your choir director suggests discussing something over a beer after choir rehearsal.

...if you catch yourself genuflecting or bowing as you enter a row of seats in a theater.

...if you can pronounce: "innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same."

...if you ever find yourself saying, "Oh, but we've never done it that way before."

...if, when visiting a Roman Church, you are the only Ah-men amongst a sea of Ai-mens.

...if your covered dish for the potluck dinner is escargot in puff shells.

...if you know "Smokey Mary's" is a church, not a bar. (Note--hell, it's MY church!)

...if you know that a sursum corda is not a surgical procedure.

...if you don't think Agnus Dei is a woman.

...if your picnic basket has sterling knives and forks (entree, fish, salad and cake).

...if you know that the nave is not a playing card.

...if your friend said "I'm truly sorry..." and you replied, "and you humbly repent?"

...if you know that the Senior Warden and the Junior Warden are not positions in the local prison.

...if you think the most serious breach of propriety one can commit is failure to chill the salad forks.

...if when asked, "Sister/Brother, have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?" you respond "But isn't that a bit selfish?"

...if you think cheese and crackers are as essential as receiving the Sacred Host...

And finally...if you reach a point when you're not sure about anything theologically but you still feel completely at home at the altar rail and somehow know you're meeting God there, even though you can't begin to understand how.

Playboy and Hugh Hefner

I was watching the E!THS about Hugh Hefner and Playboy last night. I have mixed feelings about HH--to start off with, I do think the photos in Playboy (what I've seen of them) are beautiful. I think they're classic American cheesecake with beautiful women--they're not art per se, because their sole purpose is to get a guy off (art is open-ended, asks questions, challenges), but the photos themselves don't bother me because (from what I've seen) they don't demean women. And although I find HH's self-congratulatory attitude about how he led America out of the Puritan age (whatEVER, Hef! I mean, thank God YOU came along, right? ;) a little nauseating, I will say his ideology has a refreshing awareness of political issues. He's come out for gay rights, freedom of speech, abortion rights, birth control (sure, some of that is self-serving but it's nice SOMEONE is standing up for abortion rights!), safe sex. And of course the magazine has always had good articles and a strong fiction selection. However, I wish the magazine featured a lot more models of color--I think it buys way too much into the construct of cheesecake beauty as tall, busty, blonde. Come on! There are tons of gorgeous women of all colors, races, body types--as open-minded as Hef is and as much as he claims Playboy to set the standard, you'd think he would push that a little more (they have had models of color, just not many).

Now on the other hand--personally, I find the man icky and a little sad. An 80-year-old man is just pathetic when he's surrounded by all those baby-blonde Stepford wives. (I'm not even going to touch why those women stay with him--why the HELL are you wasting your 20s on a man who has a harem? Most of the girlfriends don't actually pose for the magazine so they're certainly not getting much out of the arrangement other than room and board!) I mean, come on, man. No one believes you're actually sleeping with all of them, keeping them satisfied. A woman in her 20s is just coming into the period of her strongest sexual drive, and it only gets stronger as she moves into her 30s. An 80-year-old is just not up to the task. And there is something terribly sad about a 70-plus-year old man who settles down, gets married, has a couple of kids...and still can't hold it together enough, until his wife leaves him, and he goes back to that weird, trying-to-convince-everyone-what-a-blast-I'm having, Peter Pan existence. Underneath it all, Peter Pan was actually quite unhappy--the scene of him staring into the window, saying to Mrs. Darling "We can't both have her, ma'am." The weird thing is, I don't know how much of that is organic--I've read interviews with him, and he comes off as very intelligent and thoughtful. I question how much of a hedonist he truly is, or ever was.

All of that said, he must be doing something right as a father because his two young sons are ADORABLE. So endearing, and sweet--the younger one was saying shyly "I think I would just like to have one girlfriend...I think people are meant to be with one person" and kind of stumbling over it because this is apostasy in the Hefner household! His older daughter, Christie, is smart as a whip too, and is apparently President of the Company. Hefner is a little like Donald and Ivana Trump, who against all odds have three normal, hardworking, likeable, intelligent kids. Go figure!