Friday (Channing Moore Williams)

  • Usual planning and Morning Prayer at home.
  • Appointment with my primary care physician. Bronchitis.
  • Drafted a letter formally appointing the Archdeacon to the enviable position of Title IV Intake Officer. This is only one of a series of administrative moves I have to make to ensure that our processes are ready for clergy-behaving-badly (which we hope, of course, never happens).
  • Conceived and hatched a homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 18, at St Barnabas', Havana. That visit will conclude my first full round. I will have then presided and preached at 38 Eucharistic Communities in the Diocese of Springfield.
  • Lunch at home.
  • Fleshed out a draft of a sermon for Advent III (Saturday night at St Andrew's, Paris and Sunday morning at Trinity, Mattoon).
  • Responded on Facebook to a fairly substantive pastoral care issue.
  • Prayed the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary in front of the lovely statue of Our Lady holding the infant Jesus that stands in the rear of the cathedral nave.
  • Created an Excel spreadsheet for use in weighing various options when making travel plans. Living in Springfield, there are a number of options for air travel (none of them particularly good, I might add). I'm hoping this device will enable me to more efficiently make the wisest decisions.
  • Evening Prayer in the cathedra.
  • The evening took Brenda and me to a delightful concert by the Illinois Chamber Orchestra. What a gem: Handel's Water Music (or parts thereof); the Et incarnatus est section from Mozart's Mass in C-minor, followed by his Exultate Jubilate, both sung by a very fine soprano; Wagner's Sigfied Idyll; and three Respighi tone poems on paintings by Botticelli. And we only had to drive about ten minutes to the venue. Sweet.

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