Sunday, June 26, 2011

The Egyptian and the one-armed man

So, prison went well this morning. Everything fitted together so well you'd have thought we'd spent days planning it instead of 10 minutes. Jez, our musician, played one of his own songs, which went down extremely well. So well that they asked for a replay at the end of the morning and several of the men asked for copies of the words. It was a very thoughtful and honest song.

The only what-could-have-been-a-hiccup came to my attention at the end so I didn't stress about it at the time. We began by looking at the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, being chased by the Egyptians, the parting of the Red Sea, and the drowning of the Egyptians. Carolyn who read out the story told me afterwards that when she'd sat down the man sitting next to her and leaned in and whispered, 'I'm Egyptian.'

Could have been tricky but wasn't quite as bad as the time when we told the story of the Ragman. It involved a one-armed man and who should be sitting in the congregation but a one-armed man. The story wasn't derogatory about disability or anything like that but Debbie who was telling it did feel a little uncomfortable.

In those days we had to take the service twice for different groups of men so, after the first service, Debbie asked the chaplain if there'd be a one-armed man in the next service too.
'No, no,' he'd assured her. 'How likely would that be to happen?'
And he was right; there wasn't a one-armed man in the next congregation. There was however a completely armless man.

4 comments:

Katney said...

I think I might have speculated with the Egyptian that he was probably not a descendant of one of pharoah's charioteers.

We read that passage at the Easter Vigil and since I schedule the readers, I tend to schedule myself for that one. I like the way that "pharoah's chariots and charioteers" rolls off the tongue in repetition.

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

Well , no . The chances of there being two men , one at each service , and only one arm between them does seem remote .
But not if you were involved !

Liz Hinds said...

I'm not sure what carolyn said, katney.

You've noticed how things like that happen to me too, sonata?!

CherryPie said...

Life does these things to us. Character building I say ;-)