Happy Llama, Sad Llama
It only makes sense if you chant it, and even then, it makes no sense. “HAPPY Llama! SAD Llama! Oh-ver-ly Ex-CITED Llama! ANGRY Llama! Fat MAMA Llama! DRAMA Llama! Sheep, MOOSE!” …With hand motions, and a gaggle of junior high kids, at the end of youth group, at the end of a very long Sunday evening, when you’re drop-dead tired, it really is funny. Welcome to ministry: you spend years in seminary poring over Leviticus, Lamentations and Latin Vulgate….only to learn that it’s all about Llamas.
“HAPPY Llama! SAD Llama!” -sometimes, when I really need to lighten the spiritual load, I imagine my people as llamas. (Yeah, well, it’s better than imagining them in their underwear!) Stand at the pulpit. Scan the congregation. Yep, we got llamas. Happy llamas. Sad llamas. Whoops, here come the overly excited llamas clattering up the stairs from the Sunday School classrooms. Angry llamas? Yep, we got angry llamas, every church has its angry llamas. Fat mama (and papa) llamas, you betcha. Drama llamas…THOSE need a whole separate entry. Or two. Or twenty. Young llamas, old llamas, friendly kindly gramma-llamas. Lonely llamas, bald llamas, nervous llamas….
…sheep, moose? -got ‘em too. But never in great numbers and never for very long. They are the wanderers-in, the hangers-on, the oddball critters in the llama pen. They are tolerated by the herd, but never quite accepted. They are often first and worst hit by the drama-llamas, and most quickly and easily blamed (well, after the pastor) for whatever problems the church may have. Sooner or later, almost all of them succumb to the unconscious pressure of the herd and make their way out to other, hopefully green, pastures. Some slip away quietly. Others, having learned the trick from the angry llamas, make a scorched-earth retreat.
And every one’s leaving troubles me deeply.
Are sheep, moose and llamas simply not meant to keep house together?
Or did they learn to know something we in the pen have forgotten?
Mad God Woman
