MEMO

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

TO: All Episcopal bishops and clergy

FROM: David Booth Beers

RE: New EPA dust standards

As many of you know, the Environmental Protection Agency recently issued new regulations designed to greatly reduce the amount of dust in Earth’s atmosphere. The Presiding Bishop feels that dust reduction is an important matter of Christian stewardship of this Earth of ours and has declared that, as far as possible, the Episcopal Church will comply with them.

I cannot emphasize enough how strongly Bishop Katharine feels about this. She wishes me to make it clear to all of you that deliberate failure to comply with Church guidelines in this matter will be considered an excommunicable offense. These guidelines include but are not limited to:

(1) Walking - One of the leading causes of dust the atmosphere is incorrect walking. People walk too quickly, they shuffle their feet, they don’t watch what they kick up, etc. and as a result, all sorts of pollutants are hurtled into the atmosphere.

You should shortly receieve in the mail a Trinity-Wall Street production on DVD entitled How to Walk Green which demonstrates acceptable Episcopal Church methods and speeds of walking. These standards are to be observed by all the employees of your parish and in your homes by you and your families.

You are also to emphasize to your congregation the importance of walking correctly. We suggest praising those who walk correctly and while pointing at, ridiculing and laughing at those who do not.

(2) Prayer books - Prayer books are a major source of dust and are to be sent to a local recycling center at the earliest opportunity. The entire service can be projected on to a large screen at the front of your churches. Actually speaking the prayers out loud, by either you or your congregation, should be discouraged since it moves dust around. We suggest highlighting appropriate parts of the service at the proper times.

(3) Music - For much the same reasons, hymnals are also to be eliminated. Lyrics can be easily projected in one place that can be seen by everyone. We know and treasure what music does in our liturgies so we have no desire to eliminate it. But from now on, in order to minimize the amount of dust kicked up, all hymns are only to be hummed.

(4) Sermons - As Episcopal sermons regularly cause too much bored movement, fidgeting and what not, sermons are, effective immediately, no longer to be read out loud. As before, their words can easily be projected on a large screen for people to read.

(5) Cleanliness - It’s sad but true that one of the major sources of dust is people themselves, namely the amount of skin cells all of us slough off every day. While we realize that we can never eliminate the human contribution, we can minimize it.

Effectively immediately, all Episcopal bishops, priests and anyone who works in Episcopal parishes will be required to bathe at least 50 times a day and facilities to allow this are to be installed in every parish. Once again, the importance of this should be regularly preached to your congregations and laughter and ridicule should be employed against anyone who disagrees.

We’ve only just begun this process so if you have any suggestions of your own as to how else we might implement the Presiding Bishop’s vision, I’d be delighted to hear them. But I’ll be out of the office until the week of the 23rd. Bishop Katharine will be leading a staff retreat in Spain’s Costa del Sol until then so I may be a little tough to get hold of.