Friday (Nicholas Ferrar)

  • Got a little bit of a late start to the morning due to late arrival home last night.
  • Task planning and Morning Prayer at home.
  • Took some time with Brenda to work through a health-related planning issue. In the office just past 10.
  • Consulted with Paige briefly over a Gnosis issue.
  • Got to work on notes to clergy celebrating birthdays and anniversaries in December. Birthdays and wedding anniversaries done by hand-written note; ordination anniversaries, since there is such a plethora in December, scheduled to be done by email.
  • Conferred briefly with the Dean on a couple of things.
  • Dealt by email with a scheduling issue.
  • Lunch from China 1, eaten at home.
  • Quick email to the Church Pension Group over a technical issue.
  • Attended to an unexpectedly emergent pastoral/administrative issue.
  • Refined and printed my homily for this Sunday, to be delivered at St John's, Centralia.
  • Via consultation with the Archdeacon, perusal of the canons, and email, moved the ball down the field with respect to an ordination-process issue.
  • Performed surgery on an old sermon text for Advent II, in preparation for preaching at St Michael's, O'Fallon.
  • As part of my Friday prayer practice, spent some time at the console of the cathedral organ playing through Advent hymns. My attention was arrested by hymnic petitions that we be "released" from our sins. So often we understand ourselves as sinners to be responsible for casting off our sins, and, indeed, we should repent actively. But we are also profoundly captive to our sinful impulses and incapable of liberating ourselves, which is why we need a Savior.
  • Evening Prayer in the cathedral.

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