Vestry Meetings

How is it we can spend thirty minutes tussling over the meaning of the words "Outreach" and Mission" and we can't get people to actually do them?

And why isn't there wine at Vestry meetings?

Random Dots of Thursday

• Alone in the church office, since rector and wife (the church admin) are away today. An odd sensation!

• PH and the team are into Arizona, having finished the California leg of the race. They aren't going very quickly, but that was strategic on their part - slow and steady gets you to the end of the race. Going too fast at the beginning burns you out. Three Time Stations down, only 51 to go!

• Sermon and powerpoint slides are done for this Sunday. Time to start on Wednesday's homily and the sermon for next Sunday. I am telling myself what good experience this is for me.

• Spent yesterday lunchtime with the other priests of the region and our Bishop Coadjutor, who is a very cool guy. I think he will enliven this diocese, which (although the largest in the US and the oldest) has gotten rather worn down by the legal battles over who stays and who leaves TEC, and whether they relinquish their property as church canons state or keep it. Oh, I will be happy when the lawsuits are decided!

• Still no paperwork back from last semester's schoolwork. I actually got a call from one of my profs yesterday who couldn't find the grade for my final paper (delivered in early March) and wanted to know if I had a copy of it. Sigh...I shouldn't be surprised. There is - believe it or not - one class that ended in March 2007 for which I have not received a final grade.

• I'm fantasizing about a week of vacation with PH after this internship ends, and my three day interim ministry class which immediately follows it. It will have to be close, given the gasoline prices, but even a long weekend somewhere in the Shenandoah would revive me.

• I will be going to meet with the Standing Committee of the Diocese on July 17th for the interview for candidacy for ordination. The Commission on Ministry recommended enthusiastically in favor, but in moments of paranoia, I fear the Standing Committee will start all over again with the questions from ground zero. Maybe not. My friend L will be meeting with them in June, so we shall see what her experience is. Since she and I are alike in many ways (with the exception of my kids being more or less grown and her still being pretty young), our interviews have been quite similar.

• And as my Commission on Ministry Liaison was on sabbatical, and thus not there to support me, for the COM interview, my Standing Committee Liaison will also be gone for my meeting with them. Ah well, what doesn't kill makes me me strong.

• Temperatures right now are a balmy 79 degrees. Humidity is low. Thanks be to God! Another few days of heat indexes of 110 and high humidity, and I wouldn have melted into a puddle on the floor.

• Carpet cleaners come to our little townhouse tomorrow. A good thing, since between the cats puking and PH running his bike into the house, that neutral beige carpet is looking pretty grungy. It should stay clean for, oh, about three days.

• PH (along with his father and brother) will be on the ride for Father's Day. So do you think I should get him a massage for when he comes home as his FD present?

Sometimes Poverty Pays...

...at least this year with our taxes. We will get some $$$ back from the Feds and will owe the state a few. All in all, not bad. The downturn in our income, now I'm not even working part-time for the bank, has meant we get a break. Thank goodness. There's plenty of places for that money to go.

But sometimes poverty doesn't pay. I'm thinking of all the children we treated at the Children's Hospital where I did CPE last summer. We never turned a child away for lack of insurance, but I watched parents struggle to even get back and forth from home to visit their sick child because they didn't have a functioning car and didn't have bus fare. The social workers did what they could, but our ability to help was limited.

How can we live in a country where people casually spend $600 on Botox injections, a couple of hundred dollars on a bottle of wine, a grand on a purse that will only be in style for one season, $50-75,000 on a luxury car (which has miserable gas mileage), and some people live on spaghetti or beans and rice and have no means to get to their job interview?

Our priorities, as individuals and as a culture, need to change.