Sunday

 **The Screen Operator**

I'm back from an extraordinary night's sleep. Sleep — that peculiar state of unconsciousness we all take for granted, but without which we would become psychotic and eventually die.

At Mass last evening, as I sat in my pew contemplating the meaning of worship, G tapped me on the shoulder. "Come and sit up front with the screen operator beside the pianist," she said, "and watch what he does. The job is in high demand and few have mastered it."

So I moved to the front, to a desk dominated by a massive audio mixer with dozens of knobs for unimaginable parameters. Only one channel seemed to be in use. It was labelled "priest." G pushed the slider up, and the priest became more audible.

She introduced me to my mentor. We both nodded and smiled.

He had a computer in front of him, connected to a mysterious black box with lights along the front. On top of that sat six other modules. An impressive setup.

His job was deceptively simple. To turn on the overhead projector and the numerous video screens scattered around the church, he pressed a glowing red square button on the big modular box. On the computer, he used the down-arrow to move through the pre-programmed slides — the responses, the prayers, the hymns.

Not all the words for a hymn fit on one page, so he had to move to the next at the precise moment. He made it look effortless, scrolling faultlessly right on cue. At other times there were pages on the system that weren't needed, so he would quietly scroll past them before hitting the red button to display the next one to the congregation. At one point the priest skipped the Apostles' Creed because there was a baptism, and my mentor quickly conferred with the pianist and flicked past it straight to the Prayers of the Faithful.

If I'm ever asked to do it, I will. Though I'd be a bit nervous. It's not sitting at the front that bothers me — it's that my mind might wander at a crucial moment.

It's really an hour later than my clock says. I'd better go and change all the clocks. I might even go to Mass again and receive Jesus for a second time.

"Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have life," said Our Lord. And laugh if you want — it is true.