Category: Miscellaneous Meditations

Things you’ll never see on Coptic Mardi Gras(i.e. the Sunday before Lent)

  • Wet Tonia contests
  • Priests Gone Wild, where they take their emma off in the presence of the Pope (a big no-no if you didn’t know)
  • People throwing leather crosses at flashers.
  • Everybody just standing around drinking eparcha (communion wine) from plastic Solo cups.
  • Women just whipping off their kerchiefs for plastic beads.
  • Men waking up in a tonia not knowing how they got there or became deacons for that matter.
  • Abouna praying liturgy from a parade float

Wrong Reasons to Enter the Monastery

  • Piss Off the Parents
  • Afraid of Women
  • Unlucky with Women
  • Wish to change your name
  • Never joined a club before
  • Black makes you look slimmer
  • A beard would make you look distinguished
  • The only place where bearded arab men can hang out in large groups and not arouse suspicion
  • Girls like guys in uniform
  • It would be cool to eat fool mudemis year round
  • Desire super powers from God
  • Hope to be included in a new edition of “Paradise of the Fathers”
  • Alway wanted to see your own funeral
  • Need a career change

Fun Liturgy Games

The management at Not So Spiritual Words understands the whole church going experience can be a tad dull so we’ve come up with ways to add a little excitement to it:

  • Trip the lead deacon carrying the cross in a procession and watch them all fall like dominoes.
  • Try to bite abouna’s fingers as he gives you communion, things get really exciting if you succeed.
  • Bring a tape of your favorite liturgy and play in sync with the actually liturgy.
  • Read the church bulletin board, there are probably enough misspellings and malaprops to keep one amused for hours
  • Bring a small water gun with you and when abouna is spraying people, while the congregation looking at him squirt them in the back of the head and watch their suprise at the “miracle”.
  • Move peoples shoes around.

Yet 10 More Coptic Pickup Lines

1. Have your mother/aunt/grandmother ask the girl if she is available would she like to meet you.
2. So you want to teach sunday school together?
3. Why don’t stand next to me and take a look at my liturgy book?
4. Hey don’t we have the same father of confession?
5. You know when I die, I’ll be in the Synaxarium as a martyr to your love.
6. Saint Anthony (or insert the target persons favorite saint) appeared to me in a dream and said you are the one.
7. I was on my way to the monastery till I met you.
8. I definitely won’t be frowning in your face and I’ll gladly call you master. (to be used on men)
9. How about you, me and the Holy Spirit become one?
10. There’s always room for you on my pew.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. THE REAL WORLD EFFICACY OF THESE LINES HAS NOT BEEN TESTED. IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE ANY OF THESE LINES THE WRITER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY SLAPPING OF THE FACE, STOMPING OF THE FOOT, OR ANY OTHER ASSORTED PAINFUL INJURIES THAT MAY OCCUR. THOUGH IF YOU FIND SUCCESS WITH ANY OF THE AFOREMENTIONED LINES, THE WRITER IS OWED A CONSULTING FEE OF $500 AMERICAN DOLLARS TO REMITTED UPON COMPLETION OF THE WEDDING. ALSO PLEASE CONTACT THE WRITER SUCH THAT THE WRITER MAY ALSO USE SAID LINE IN A FUTILE ATTEMPT AT HAPPINESS.

The Legend Of The Emma (Priest’s Hat)

as told to me by a priest

If you look at the priest’s emma, you notice its sort of flat and has a small ridge around it. Whereas that of a bishop is nice and rounded. Originally the priest’s emma was nice and round like the bishop’s but through years of pressure from the hierarchy from above and from the congregation from below has smashed the priest’s emma flat and raised the ridge around the edge. The reason the bishop’s is still round despite potential pressure from below by the congregation there is no pressure from above because the only one above bishops is God and He is compassionate.

Signs Abouna is Burnt Out and Needs a Vacation

  • He becomes personally insulting during confession.
  • Frequently taste tests the wine to make sure it hasn’t gone “bad”.
  • Bought shaving cream.
  • Constantly muttering the first halves of psalms 13 & 22
  • Hides in Sanctuary until everybody leaves the church.
  • Greets everybody by saying “Get thee hence Satan.”
  • Blatantly and purpose commits obvious errors in hopes of being reported to the Pope
  • Starts confessions not with a prayer but asking “What the hell is your problem?”
  • His sermons consist of just reading out of the Keraza or one of the pope’s books.
  • Just stops showing up.

Culinary Hints For the Fast

  • Putting barbecue sauce on foul does not make them taste like baked beans.
  • Putting tahina and duck sauce on bread is not a substitute for peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
  • Tuna selling at 4 cans for a dollar is a deal too good to be true (or edible for that fact)
  • Eating nothing but ramen will cause you to suffer from malnutrition.
  • Eating frozen fish fillets raw claiming its sashimi because your too lazy to cook it, is niether tasty nor particularly health. (p.s. fresh water fish can never be eaten raw for risk of parasites)
  • Bisara should just be avoided, no reason necessary just avoid it.
  • Become well acquainted soy in all its forms (the less it resembles its natural form usually the better tasting)
  • When it comes to the ingredients of many products, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
  • Try to get adopted by the family that runs the nearby Chinese take out to cut down on you food bill.
  • Or to avoid the hassle just develop a medical conditions that prevents you from fasting (e.g. develop kidney stones so you could drink beer, get put on a no carb diet, become pregnant … etc)