Once upon a time, except it really happened, I was standing in a church office as the pastor returned fuming mad after lunch. A member of the congregation had just lit into him for changing the Lord’s Prayer the Sunday prior. The congregation had “always” used the version with “trespasses” and he had switched the bulletin to the version that used “sins” instead.

As a little girl sitting alone in my acolyte robe on the front pew of my small-town church, my legs too short to touch the floor, I remember being terrified of the pastor. Dressed in his robe of all black, towering over me from the pulpit, he yelled, a lot. Of course, my small, undeveloped brain from nearly 40 years ago does not remember the actual words he used, but the feelings persist.