Scots Church Adelaide - Uniting Church in Australia

The Abbot's Cat

In an ancient monastery in the Sinai Desert, the hours of prayer have been kept for centuries. At the appointed hours the monks leave their work and file into the choir stalls.  The music is heavenly.  A visitor noticed that at the beginning of each service an obviously much loved cat was gently placed into a velvet bag. The bag was placed on a small cushion next to the seat of the leader of the monastry.

The visitor was intrigued.
"Why do you do this," she asked.
No one knew. It was part of the ritual, and the prayers would seem incomplete with out it.  Even the oldest of the monks could not recall a time when there was no cat in the bag. There had been many cats before this one, to be sure, but always there was a cat in the bag at prayers.

The visitor was working on her PhD. so she added this feature of the monastery to her notes.  During her wide reading of the monastery records, she would occasionally find mentions of the cat in the bag.  Late one night she found the answer!  A certain abbot adopted a small and beautiful kitten.  The kitten was much loved by all, but developed the habit of interupting the prayers, even jumping on the altar. One day, if frustration, the abbot grabbed his cat and stuck it in a bag. From there, the tradition, supremely practical, had begun centuries before!

We get like that in church, still. So under the Abbot's Cat there are some reminders of our tradition. They show up at random in the sidebars.

(This story is as old as the hills and can be nicely altered to suit the required tradition. :-) )