#from the personal experience of one who learns by making mistakes #funny

A little light-hearted post in a quiet moment on a busy day – sparked by yellow LEGO man whose parable is yet to be written but continues to expand:

1. Never add a potential choking hazard to anything edible. LEGO people as cake toppers, for instance.
2. Kinetic sand sounds like a smart idea. But it is impossible to get out of carpet. Church council and church cleaners get very very cranky with you. For the weeks it takes to get it all gone.
3. Never EVER instinctively reach out to grab a piece of bread that has missed a congregant’s hand and is heading for her bosom during Holy Communion (not my mistake – but I did save a colleague from a whole heap of trouble)!
4. Practise lighting candles before your first public appearance in an alb or cassock – and make sure the arms are the just-right-length to avoid setting yourself on fire.
5. Always have tissues on hand. Under the pulpit or behind the communion table. Preferably not from your own pocket. If you don’t want anyone to cry when you’re around, avoid gently putting a hand on their shoulder when you ask how they are or singing songs like “Come as you are.”
6. Remember that the moment you call for a time of silence, a phone will ring, a child will cry, or someone will develop an awful tickle in the back of their throat that will only grow in proportion to their efforts to suppress it.
7. On a completely serious note for number 7, if someone behaves in a way that violates your comfort levels or your boundaries in terms of personal space, you need to tell them. I know that takes a tremendous amount of courage – especially if you’re new – but once its happened once, it will just get worse if they’ve been allowed to get away with it. And if speaking up is unacceptable, then that might not be the right community for you.
8. Choose the most comfortable seat possible. Once things start, you have no idea when you will be able to get up again or out of there. Same goes for shoes. Seriously.
9. Know that if you ask a question without a prepared, scripted answer, the results are either going to be “Jesus” or something so unpredictable that you’re going in your head, “Sweet Jesus, what am I supposed to do with that?”
10. Do not go to the toilet with a lapel microphone anywhere on your person. No one should ever expect their tech team to instantly make sense of what strange sounds might be coming through the system before someone else in the congregation does.