Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Wednesday, as ever was




Back at the old lemonade stand doing all those things we learned about in seminary like proofreading vestry minutes, ordering in cases of "bathroom tissue" (the first one to say, "expecting big things at MH&U" will be sent to time out), shifting tables and chairs, measuring out coffee, drinking my own, nibbling my cinnamon bun, and wondering what in heaven's name local retailers mean by not opening for business until TEN A.M. For pity's sake, the day's half over, you guys!

I have to do intensive telephone patrol here in a minute...

Bi-monthly meeting of Prairie Metropolis's Council of Churches here at 11:45, and no agenda written yet.

Lovely interlude last night engaged with the "social utility" (is that the term?) that rhymes with "space-hook," chatting with one of our ordinands in another city far far away. We went from our shared appreciation of pumpkin beer through mutual disclosure of where we were born and grew up and how we spent our summers and the wit and wisdom of the Archbishop of Canterbury, thence to what she's doing at present and what her plans are and what her husband's doing (he's also a theolog), and I wound up with an email of the paper he's co-presenting today in a seminar on ecumenical dialogue...it's a proposal to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (acronymed around here to WOP4CU or "wop-for-cue") with an ecumenical eucharistic fast, in our own churches. Various liturgical suggestions of what this might look like, in the various traditions. On the rationale, approximately, of "Until we authentically CAN do this altogether, we will from time to time symbolically abstain in mourning for our scandalous divisions" -- cf. Holy Saturday practice.

This young man, whom I really don't know well at all, is much involved with the Anglican-Orthodox dialogues that have gone on. I plainly have to dig out my notes from NAAE in St. Louis and get them to him in some readable form.

It did not feel like a wasted evening! Even though I went home and fell asleep under the spell of the idiot box and didn't rouse up properly until nearly 5 a.m.

Okay. Agenda, here I come.

4 comments:

Kathryn said...

I'm kind of avoiding assorted essential trivia too...and wondered if we could waste each other's time on that social utility you mentioned.
I'm there under my own name (my surname is shared by the creator of James Bond, or if you prefer, the discoverer of penicillin - though sadly there is no connection to either of them)

Crimson Rambler said...

Kathryn, I would be delighted. There are 70 entries that match what you've given me -- even eliminating the Americans, the antipodeans, and the teenagers leaves a fair list of possibles. Can you give me another clue? perhaps the current number of "friends" you have listed? or a name from among them?

Terri said...

Sounds like a lovely evening....hope the meeting for wop4cu went well (never hear it called that before...but it works!)

Julie said...

Ah, the tasks that we learn in seminary in addition to book stuff...I've cleaned toilets, served dinners, pulled up carpet and repeatedly cleaned out the same blasted closet in the years since graduation! :)