- Task planning at home. Morning Prayer in the cathedral.
- Debriefed with the Archdeacon on last night's visit to Lincoln.
- Prepared some music (using the music publishing software Finale and converting it to a graphics file) for the cathedral staff for insertion into the Good Friday bulletin.
- Worked on planning music for my formal "welcoming and seating" (formerly known as "enthronement") in St Paul's Cathedral on May 15.
- Drove to Decatur to meet with the Rector of St John's over lunch and then with him and the Senior Warden for a while in the parish offices.
- To my dismay, I spent the rest of the afternoon, interspersed with a couple of incoming phone calls, working on the seating/enthronement service. It's not all that simple, actually. The essential outline is found in the Book of Occasional Services, but it assumes that the opening formalities will be followed by a celebration of the Eucharist. In this case, we're transitioning into Evensong instead ... but not quite. It's an adaptation of an adaptation of the evening office known as Great Paschal Vespers. It has the potential for great liturgical and musical richness, but presents a host of ceremonial and musical decisions to be made. So I now have the broad strokes (and some of the fine ones) in a document and have distributed it to some of the key players asking for their input.
- Evening Prayer in my office.
- Grilled burgers, Cubs baseball, some financial chores, and a few pages of a novel in the evening.
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Ten years ago, minus about six weeks, I served as the supply priest for Trinity, Lincoln six days before my consecration as Bishop of Springfield. Today I was there for the final regular scheduled canonical parish visitation of my episcopate. (I have a few more gigs on my calendar: March 7 in Mattoon, the Chrism Mass, the Triduum at the cathedral, May 30 in Cairo, and June 27 back at the cathedral--May 2 is available and not yet spoken for--but the every Sunday routine of my life for the past decade (in a larger sense, for the last 32 years) is at a major flex point.) As much as it could have been in the midst of a pandemic, this morning at Trinity was luminous. We confirmed eight adults, six of them qualifying as "young." My homily had to compete with the sounds of active young children. (I would much rather do that than have no kids in church.) Trinity is one of the exciting points of light in my ministry in the diocese. I took my time getting out of Lincoln because I wante...
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