Random Dots of Monday

• I've made an initial stab (or poke) at the next sermon in my queue: Matt 10:1-7. Go do good stuff and preach and share the good news, but go the the Jews, not those heathen Gentiles. Should be fun. Only two more sermons for my time here at Saint Diverse. Only three more weeks here...the time has gone so quickly.

• Lunch plans today with my rector from my home parish - that should be fascinating, as he is just back from a trip to Africa as part of our diocesan work on the complicity of the church in the slave trade. All that and Indian food...it will be a feeding of body and soul.

• Blue Saabie is in the shop with a flukey ABS controller. The instrument lights on the dashboard panel - all those little warning lights that usually come on when I turn the car on in the morning and they do the self-test - stay on all the time. The car runs fine, but my mechanic says the braking system may punk out if I don't get it fixed. If I took it to the dealership, they'd make me get the whole board replaced, to the tune of $3K. My trusty Swedish Motors guys send the board to someone who rebuilds it...only $700. Of course, it's $700 I don't really have, but we will figure it out. I'm just hoping Saabie will last until I'm through with seminary. Then I can get something tiny and green, with all-wheel drive for when I get middle-of-the-night pastoral calls. I always wondered why clergy all seemed to have Subaru Outbacks. Now I understand.

• StrongOpinions is having a blast at the writer's conference where she's spending the summer months. She's been invited to read some of her work publicly, and she'll be interviewed on local radio about the nexus of poetry and political activism. Can you tell this is happening in a radically liberal college in a radically liberal mountain community in the Rockies?

• StoneMason is coming down here for a visit. in a few weeks. We're trying to figure out the cheapest way to get him down from the Green Mountain State without spending megabucks. It may be possible to coordinate his visit with StrongOpinions'...it would be great to have them both here at the same time.

• PH is having that test on Wednesday that all of us have to have when we turn fifty. For a surgeon's son, he has little stomach for things medical. He will start the prep meds tonight. We may move the television and his laptop into our tiny WC for the duration. Poor baby! Say a prayer it all goes well. We expect no problems, since there is no family history of such stuff.

• Summer months are quiet at little churches, and I have moments of feeling guilty that I'm not more busy here at Saint Diverse. The convener of my peer colloquy group says that this is one of the things we as soon-to-be-priests need to learn - to be at peace with the lull times as well as to be ready to dig in during the busy times. Frankly, I'm happier when I've got my hands full.