Originally published as: http://notthechurchlady.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/changing-times/

Riding the subway the other morning, a woman plopped herself down next to me and proceeded to take out her make-up bag.  She then applied every conceivable potion that Revlon sells from dark circle concealer, to foundation & blush.

When the eye brow teasers were removed from her bag of magic tricks I really became squeamish.   The subway was packed with no vacant seats.  Besides, it was a 45 minute commute.  It took great will power for me not to blurt out that grooming is a personal matter but I had my self censor button firmly pressed. I proceeded to get more steamed as my station neared.  The men didn’t seem to notice or pretended not to.  She was getting a few raised eyebrows from the women who weren’t botoxed & could still grimace, but no one said a thing.  NOT ONE WORD.  Is it because the bar has fallen so low on socially accepted behaviour that no one cares anymore?  Or is it because of my age and the rules & norms that I grew up with are not applicable to a younger demographic?

This brings me to church behaviour because I spend almost as much time in churches as I do on city transit. 

I  always wore a dress to church even on the most bitter Canadian winter days except for one particularly cold morning about 25 years ago.  The wind was howling and it felt like minus 1000 when waiting for the bus to take me to my church gig.  I put on trousers thinking it was the sensible thing to do.  I figured I’d be robed & at the organ bench so who would know?  That Sunday,  the organ broke down (see previous posts on my bad luck with church organs) & I had to make my way to the piano.  I was self-conscious standing in front of everyone in my pants thinking that the congregation would assume I had a first class ticket to hell.

Fast forward a number of years.

One Sunday morning when I wasn’t playing the organ I found myself in a pew supporting a clergy friend of mine.  I was sitting in front of an elderly retired priest who always attended church in full black clericals .  During communion people were  making their way up the aisle to receive the elements.  My head was lowered and I heard an audible gasp &  the words,  “My Lord, saints preserve us!”  I looked up and there were 2 people of ample proportions dressed in lime green exercise tights that were about 3 sizes too small, left nothing to the imagination, and red sweat shirts that hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in quite some time.  I had to stifle a laugh.  Not because of how these people were dressed because frankly, I didn’t care.  The days of wearing dresses and gloves had long passed, but I was amused at the priest’s reaction.  For him, it clearly wasn’t what he had been accustomed to seeing when he had spent his days in the pulpit.

Then there was the choir member whose Sunday morning ritual involved clipping his nails during the sermon.  His wife was the choir director.  Why she didn’t say anything to him, I’ll never know.   But I do know for a fact it drove the clergy crazy.

Now it is all about Social Media.  I listened to a radio documentary fairly recently where ministers of hip churches, especially in Calgary, discussed the benefits of using Twitter in the actual church service.  Their enthusiasm for immediate connection to their congregation could only have been surpassed if they were announcing the Second Coming.     What was interesting to me, was that a few weeks before I heard this radio doc,  I witnessed an elderly woman tearing a strip of a young person for using their IPhone  during the service.    I started to think, do we need to get with the programme and expect our seniors to do the same or have we somehow lost a sense of being still and taking time to be holy?

Check out a few of these articles for various thoughts on this topic.  Please let me know what you think the role Social Media should play in an actual service.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0065.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/19/phones-in-church_n_3781132.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57593128-71/one-in-five-americans-use-phones-in-church/