CoW and Woodmans

The women are mad.

Changes are being made to my beloved grocery store. They expanded the produce section, moved some aisles, did a little rearranging. Nobody can find anything. Every trip to the grocery store results in commiserating with total strangers (or overhearing others commiserating with other total strangers) about where the brown rice went, or where the salad dressing went, or where the spices went. I can no longer tell Child-A to run down a certain aisle and fetch the peanut butter while Child-B runs down another aisle to fetch the lemon juice while I head down a third aisle to pick up pasta. We must hunt for our food.

I. am. not. a. lioness.
It is not right to have to hunt for food in Woodmans.

It takes twice as long to do the grocery shopping now.
(One of those Total Strangers told me it's taking her three times as long to buy her groceries now.)

A month or so ago, when the renovations were just beginning, I was searching for sunflower nuts. They weren't where they belonged. I found a complete mess in the next aisle over. Carts in aisle 3 were full of what had been pulled off the shelves in aisle 4. Employees jam-packed aisle 3, putting items back on the shelf. No customer cart would fit through that aisle. Abandoning my cart at the end of the aisle, I managed to squeeze my way through, hunting for my sunflower seeds. A manager asked if he could help. I teased about their moving things all around. Then he made the mistake.

He told me that they weren't "moving things all around." They were only taking the contents of each aisle and moving them one aisle to the north. Ha! I started rattling off for him which things were in different places, and how things had been on the top shelf on the south side of the aisle, but were now on a middle shelf on the north side of the aisle, and further west. After hearing a mere START on list of items that had been hidden (NOT "just moved over an aisle"), he halted me and admitted that, yes indeed, maaaybe some things had been "moved" a little more than he'd realized.

The women who are hunting the aisles for spaghetti sauce and apple sauce and cheese sauce all understand this! But the ones making the changes don't think it's any big deal. They're making improvements! They're giving us a better store! It's all to serve us better! The women are mad.




The Commission on Worship was given the unenviable task of combining two old hymnals into one new hymnal. Changes had to be made, due to choosing either the TLH version or the LW version. Like at my grocery store, the changes are noticeable. Every little spot in the new hymnal where there's something like "He imparteth consolation" changed to "There He sends true consolation," I notice. Every place where a half note and then a quarter note is switched around to a quarter then a half, I notice. When they left out a stanza or two (say, for instance, in "The Church's One Foundation" or "Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me") I stumble.

Circumstances will force me to get used to the grocery store, whether or not I like the changes. If I make a mistake in the renovated grocery store, if I can't find the cat food, I have to search and search and search until I conquer. That's not how it is with the renovated hymnal though. If I stumble over words, if I am distracted by the changes to the point that I cannot pray the hymns and the psalms, there's no "natural consequence" to remedy that. Those hymns and psalms aren't likely to show up again for months, or even until next year.

Now that we're suffering through the growing pains of getting ourselves back into one hymnal shared amongst all the synod, I hope that next time there's a new hymnal, the changes really will be so minor that it does not cause pain. Ot (like at my grocery store) will some people think "new and improved" is more important than sticking with what people know? The store has a vested interest in shuffling things around; it's a ploy to get people to see more items and thus spend more money. The Church, however, has a vested interest in not changing; the saints need to have the liturgy and hymns ingrained deeply into their beings.