Outside the dining-room window this morning, a brisk 24 degrees above zero, Fahrenheit. A sparkly morning...frost on the cars, for the first time this year. And here we go again.
After yesterday morning's farce with the Lurking Pager, I have spent some hours this morning dealing with the desk-top. Trying not just to make big piles where there were little ones -- except in the paper-recycle bin! Which is gratifyingly fuller than it was!
Yesterday was on the whole a good one, but oh DEAR I will be glad when Wonder Secketry is back at her post. Please keep her in your prayers? Her recovery from surgery is taking longer...and is less "linear"...than we had all hoped. I don't think she's very strong, really...very prone to coughs and colds that hang on and on...
At any rate; I had a long counselling conversation with a parishioner in the morning; somewhere in there it was BORNE IN UPON ME that I was supposed to be at a Clergy Day on the far side of the city, and I'm afraid my reaction to that insight was, "Well, tough."
Then a number of intense phone conversations...and at 3:30 a "hospital service" where in spite of short notice (the administrator forgot to put our service in the monthly calendar) we eventually mustered about 20 souls for a "distribution of communion from the reserved sacrament" with Sunday's reading from Philippians and three hymns and some prayers and a couple of Mildly Amusing Anecdotes recounted by the Rambler. "Faith of Our Fathers," "Blest Be the Tie that Binds," and "What a Friend," all well received; and the good news of our Tall Physician's imminent return from Kandahar, praise God...and that seemed to be enough.
It comforts me to observe, that although I still tend to drag my heels a bit en route to these services, nonetheless they now constitute a high point in the day/week/month. When I began in ministry they were a Major Dread...and now I feel much more at home in my skin when I'm officiating. Of all the indignities that disfigure the disabled and/or incapacitated...he only thing that still throws me off stride, really, is drooling. I have to have a serious talk with my gag reflex, about that one.
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I think we may be walking about in each other's lives a bit sometimes. My last nursing home I had a bit longer notice than yours but shorter than I like. I too was not comfy at first, heel drag a bit on the way, but once there find it a joy and a blessing to be able to provide for these folk. We have at this point, no droolers. TBTG. I did the near miss thing with an article deadline as well but was able to pull out and have been working on the piles and organizing to avoid that heart-stopping rush again. Blessings on your effrorts and the seketry's quick and full recovery
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