Friday

  • Usual routine at home; Morning Prayer in the cathedral.
  • Processed a batch of emails.
  • Had a scheduled phone conversation with Fr Victor Sheldon, a canonically resident priest of the diocese who is on active duty as a Navy chaplain. now stateside after two somewhat harrowing years in Landstuhl, Germany ministering to those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fr Sheldon and I go way back; we served together in the Diocese of Louisiana in the early '90s, and he then succeeded me as Vicar of St Margaret's, Baton Rouge.
  • Took care of some deployment-related tasks on behalf of one of our congregations in search mode.
  • Met with Fr Jeff Kozuzcek, priest-in-charge at St Thomas' in Salem, and then went to lunch with him at the Holy Land Diner, two blocks from the diocesan office.
  • Got back to work on a closer reading and evaluation of the contest essays I am helping judge.
  • Met with one of the finalists, and his wife, for the position of rector of Trinity, Lincoln.
  • Conceived and hatched a homily for my visit to St Mark's, West Frankfort on August 21. Why such an early start? Because, when you back out my vacation, it's only three weeks away. (I am "on holiday" beginning a week from today, and will be back in the office on August 12.)
  • One of the ways I pray regularly is to sit down at a keyboard and play through hymns. I had the cathedral and its organ all to myself for that purpose late in the afternoon.
  • Evening Prayer in the cathedral.
  • In the evening, I churned out a significant post on my "real" blog. Check it out.

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