Friday (St Tikhon)

Apologies for being AWOL all week. Tuesday through Thursday I was occupied with a meeting of the Communion Partner bishops at the "interestingly" named Camp Week, about 90 miles west of Jacksonville, Florida. It was a gratifyingly focused and fruitful meeting. We heard a report on the work of the Marriage Task Force. (The expectation is that they will introduce legislation at the 2018 General Convention to revise the Book of Common Prayer piecemeal, beginning with making it completely "gender neutral," especially with respect to marriage, starting with a draft to be approved on first reading in 2018 and adopted for use in 2021.) We heard reports from the Lambeth Design Group (one of our number is a member), the situation among the Global South provinces (drifting toward a tighter connection with GAFCON), the situation in the Anglican Church of Canada (those who are communion-minded and hold a traditional biblical understanding of marriage make up nearly one-third of their House of Bishops), the situation in Province IX (all but one of the dioceses are led by bishops who number themselves among us), and the situation in the Church of England (intense conflict, but overwhelming support for traditional marriage doctrine). We discussed strategic approaches to the 2018 General Convention and the 2020 Lambeth Conference. And ... with flight delays on both ends of my journey, I got home at 1:15am.
So I got a bit of a late start on the day:
  • Picked up my laptop computer from the shop where I had left it for diagnosis and cure. A thorough dust abatement and addition of RAM have made it much happier.
  • Morning Prayer in the cathedral.
  • Conferred with the Dean on sundry matters, most relating to Holy Week liturgies.
  • Devoted the rest of the morning to a long list of administrative and pastoral minutia (I don't mean that last term to imply that any of it was unimportant or trivial.) In the midst of this, walked several laps around the cathedral nave.
  • Lunch from TG, eaten at home.
  • Reviewed and revised the text of a homily from a prior year for Easter II, which I will redeploy at St John the Baptist, Mt Carmel on the 23rd of this month.
  • Yet more administrative and pastoral minutia.
  • Prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.
  • Offered Evening Prayer, a tad bit on the early side.
  • Left at 4:15 to retrieve Brenda and head east in the YFNBmobile for dinner in Champaign and then a spectacular musical/poetic/devotional event at the Chapel of St John the Divine--a performance of Marcel Dupré's musical interpretation of the Stations of the Cross by Stephen Buzzard, music director at St James' Cathedral in Chicago. It was stunning.

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