Friday (Thomas Bray)

  • Usual early AM routine.
  • Processed a short-stack of late-arriving emails.
  • Attended to some routine personal finance chores.
  • Packed and loaded the car, with Brenda in tow, and headed south, departing our garage at 1145. Arrived at the office in Springfield around 3:30.
  • Briefly conferred with the Communicator and the Archdeacon, then headed out to get a haircut and a carwash. (Yes, I'm still more comfortable accomplishing some of the mundane chores of life in Springfield than in Chicago.)
  • Returned to the office and did the finish work on my homily for Epiphany VI, this Sunday at St Thomas', Glen Carbon. Other than ending up with output from a printer that I can put in my car, "finish work" includes carefully reviewing the text for "orality," A sermon is an oral event; it is spoken and heart, primarily, and only secondarily something that might be read. The spoken word has both more constraints (simple sentence structure, accessible vocabulary) and more opportunities (rhythm, pacing, repetition, alliteration). When I create a first rough draft of a sermon text, I *try* to attend to these things, but I always find that, when I come back to it later, I always find several places where I can recognize more deeply that what I'm working on is not an essay or a blog post, but a sermon.
  • Evening Prayer with Brenda in the cathedral. Then out to dinner at NuhVo (first-time visit to a newish endeavor).
  • Back in the office: sealed Fr Morsch's institution certificate, wrote a memo to the Standing Committee.

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