Lesser Feasts

Sunset on St Andrew's Day (yesterday), as seen from my office I think I've used that line as a title for a post before, but I don't care. It's a great song. Some beginnings are coming to an end this week. Yesterday was my last full day in DC until the spring semester begins. I devoted most of it to grading and teaching prep. Whoever decided that for my last full week of classes I would schedule two articles I'd never taught before clearly did not have my best interests at heart. The evening was given over to Solemn Evensong and Benediction at St Paul's, K Street, a splendid celebration of the 50th ordination anniversary of the Revd Canon Dr Tony Lewis, Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary, whom I've know since my own K Street days. (He was also the preacher at the consecration of my new bishop back in September.) It was a nice smoky service requiring three masters of ceremonies, a dozen acolytes, and enough bishops to start a ...

Ian Fleming RSA RSW Sunburst - Yellow Theme, 1972   Friday, 1 April, being the Feast of F. D. Maurice, Priest In view of two early mornings in a row, I have used points to rent a hotel room in St Petersburg. There's a great little diner a few minutes' walk from my hotel. I have a nutritious meal of sangria and tater tots and then return to work on my sermon and my adult formation presentation. Do I care about the Quartodecimans ? It seems to me very much that I don't. ***** Saturday, 2 April, being the special convention to elect a bishop coadjutor for the Diocese of Southwest Florida I arrive a little after 8:00, fully breakfasted. The Cathedral is abuzz with activity. I put on my cassock, because that is how priests should dress for a diocesan convention. No one else is in a cassock. "Father," I say to an old friend (which is to say, a friend of long standing; he's quite a bit younger than I am), "I was sure that at least you would wear a cassock....

Tess It's been three months since I last posted. The blog rather slipped my mind, actually. Things have been busy, and today I felt the need to get some things "on paper" before getting back to my spring break tasks, which consist largely of getting caught up to where I should have been last week. Or last month, more like it. Anyway, the big news is that in January we welcomed a dog into our home. The shelter had given her the name Sweet Caroline. Her foster dad felt that that wasn't her name and tried Care Bear instead. We settled pretty quickly on Tess (we're a very Victorian-novel sort of household), and she recognized it as her name within a day or two. We were told she's an American Staffordshire Terrier and Australian Cattle Dog mix--we're awaiting DNA testing to confirm that--and about three years old. She's sweet, relaxed, nonreactive, and affectionate, and I am utterly smitten with her. In the meantime, I had work to do on two search committee...

  Sir William Gillies, Wet Weather  (1961) Since returning from the conference I've had hardly a moment to collect my thoughts. There's been so much to do that I have felt overwhelmed at times, though in fact everything's gone pretty well. In the twenty minutes or so that I have before I leave for the meeting of the bishop search committee, I want to think back on -- really, just inventory -- what's gone on in the last couple of weeks. I bought the painting that I used as the image in my previous post. It's hanging in Edinburgh until the exhibition closes in three weeks, and then it will be shipped here. I am truly excited about this. I reviewed applications, and then reviewed them some more. I did four classes on Berkeley, each weirder and wilder than the one before, and got fantastic questions from students. I celebrated the Eucharist and preached on the High Priesthood of Christ. I confronted a student about some egregious plagiarism and became so genuinely worri...

John Maclauchlan Milne, Iona Shore (As is so often the case on this blog, the painting has nothing to do with the post. It's just a piece of Scottish art that I love.) I have a fairly easy gig right now in my day job. Because I'm teaching a 300-student lecture, I am just teaching one course this semester. That means only 100 minutes of classroom time a week. Now obviously there's preparation, supervising teaching assistants, wrestling with USF's reliably unreliable IT, and so forth, but still, it's an easy gig. And I just sent off a ton of research around the beginning of the month, so I can take a breather in that aspect of the job as well. (There are only so many times you can copyedit your own translation of Anselm's On the Procession of the Holy Spirit  before you feel like giving up on the whole enterprise and turning Unitarian.) So the Church's timing in claiming more of my attention is excellent. I am now on the Diocese of Southwest Florida's bish...