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Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means.
-- Charles Dickens, "Bleak House"
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes...
-- Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
The law's delay. I thought about that venerable phrase the other day as I joined my co-religionists in worship at Shove Chapel on Easter Sunday. I'm not particularly religious, nor do I go to church very often, but when I do, I re-affirm the faith of my ancestors.
For centuries, we have been Episcopalians. And since we settled in Colorado Springs during the 1870s, we have attended Grace Episcopal Church. We have been baptized there, married there and buried there. My parents were the first couple to be married in the magnificent building that stands on North Tejon Street.
But, thanks to a bitter split in the congregation, I no longer enter the building where I was baptized, where I went to Sunday School, where I wept at the funerals of my parents and my grandparents, where my sister was married.
Half the parishioners, led by then-Rector Don Armstrong, left the Episcopal...