Wednesday

  • Morning Prayer in the cathedral.
  • Prepared for the midday Mass.
  • Debriefed a bit with the Archdeacon on a couple of issues.
  • Got to work on the homily I've been asked to give at the requiem this Saturday for Fr Tom Davis. Normally, I follow a pretty careful and somewhat elaborate process when preparing a sermon. But when I have to preach at a funeral, time is usually of the essence. So it's a much more "trust the Holy Spirit right now" sort of endeavor. I offer an earnest prayer, take a deep breath, and start writing. I have no master plan about where I want to end up, no simple message statement to unpack. I just write one sentence, then another one, and so on. Somehow, it comes together. This consumed the entire morning--save for time spent on a couple of incoming calls: one from a priest-friend outside the diocese, the other from someone who is a "player" on the scene of Anglican ecclesial politics. But I ended up with a printed manuscript in a file folder in the back seat of my car. Done.
  • Presided and preached at the midday cathedral Mass, using the propers for the ferial Wednesday in the week of Proper 20.
  • Lunch was from La Bamba, eaten at home.
  • Checked in by phone with one of our key lay leaders who has had fragile health of late.
  • Attended to some details pertaining to the early-November clergy conference.
  • Took care of a routine Forward Movement board member chore.
  • Checked in via email, in Spanish, with Bishop Alejandro Mesco of the emerging not-quite-diocese of Arequipa (Peru).
  • Ran the accumulated contents of my physical inbox through my desktop scanner. I now have an empty inbox.
  • Evening Prayer kind of fell by the wayside today, to my regret. It was after six, I an had to weigh the importance of saying my prayers against the importance of being a husband who arrives home for dinner at a reasonable hour.

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