Ash Wednesday

  • Task planning and some email processing at home, Morning Prayer in the cathedral.
  • Dealt with a request from a bishop in Tanzania, whom I met at the Canterbury conference last month, for assistance in applying for a United Thank Offering Grant.
  • Dealt with some administrative detritus pertaining to the three vacant cures we currently have in play.
  • Refined my homily for tonight (at St Matthew's, Bloomington).
  • Worked on the first of my Lenten series presentations (to be at St Paul's, Alton).
  • Made travel arrangements for my trip to attend the consecration of the next Bishop of Central Florida in March. (As I have noted before, this sort of thing is inordinately time-consuming).
  • Wrote a congratulatory note to a bishop-elect whose consecration I will not be attending. 
  • Evening Prayer in the cathedral.
  • Stopped by home to retrieve Brenda, then headed north to preach and celebrate the Ash Wednesday liturgy with the good people of St Matthew's, Bloomington. It was unexpectedly extraordinarily well-attended, with well over 100 in the room (a "Sunday crowd," the rector tells me).
  • Lovely dinner at a Chinese restaurant with Fr Dave and Amy Halt after Mass.

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