Random Dots of Thursday

• a friend and former parishioner who had recently been ordained to the vocational diaconate died this morning after a long and difficult battle with metastatic breast cancer. I'm glad she is no longer in pain and that she is with her Lord, but I will miss her.
• another friend died suddenly of cardiac arrest in a triathlon - he had raised money for the past decade for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation at such events, in honor of his son, a lymphoma survivor. My heart aches for his family.
• on Saturday we laid to rest a parishioner who had been ill for a long time and was longing to be with God and her late husband.
  
• another parishioner is terribly ill with a brain cancer. He is one of the stalwart faithful of this parish, and many of his family attend (four generations worth). So hard to see him struggle with this illness, and so hard to see his family try to make meaning of all this.
  

and yet...

• last Sunday we baptized five children, in a service full of joy and music and the power of the Holy Spirit among us.
• on Saturday, PH will be presiding at a wedding at a beautiful inn on the bay a few hours from here and he and I get a free mini-vacation there tomorrow and Saturday. Well, a busman's holiday vacation, but a vacation nonetheless.
• our vestry meeting - the first of the program year - was wonderful. Such great people, with humor and passion and love of God. I am blessed to serve here.
• our various summer mission projects (housing the homeless, taking out teens to work on home rehab for needy people out in coal country) were transformative moments for all.
• our Committee on the Diaconate meeting today was full of those moments that remind us that God pushes us through our limitations and grows God's church in spite of us and sometimes through us. A good thing, indeed.

And now, a prayer for nighttime, one of my favorites from the New Zealand Prayer Book:

Lord, it is night.

The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done.

Let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us, all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day, new joys, new possibilities.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

True that.