Hymnals in reserve

Spare hymnals accumulate behind the folding chairs in a stack currently forty two deep, spines cracked along the same five songs the congregation actually knows by heart. Most copies date from a single reprinting three decades ago, recognizable by a typo on page one hundred and twelve that was never corrected and has since become a kind of authentication mark among the older members. The binding is glue and thread both, a compromise that fails in glue first, so that loose pages tend to surface from hymn two hundred and something, favorites by attrition rather than merit. A handful of copies carry a previous owner's name in fountain pen on the flyleaf, ink faded to the brown of an old photograph, the person behind the name sometimes still attending, sometimes not, the hymnal unaware of the difference. New members are handed one from this stack rather than the good copies kept in the sanctuary pews, an unspoken sorting system that runs on a seniority nobody would admit to enforcing. The stack gets reshelved after every wedding and funeral that draws from it, always slightly shorter than it started, one or two copies quietly walking off in a coat pocket or a moving box, replaced eventually by a donation from an estate sale rather than a purchase, since nobody prints this particular edition anymore. Page one hundred and twelve still says shepherd where it should say shepherds, and will, in all likelihood, for as long as this printing remains in circulation.

H. G. Plimsoll