Friday (St Chad)
by Bishop Daniel
on March 2, 2018
- Task planning at home, Morning Prayer in the cathedral.
- Took care of a small administrative chore that was waiting for me on my desk. Debriefed with the Archdeacon on a range of ongoing issues.
- Edited, refined, formatted, printed, and scheduled for internet publication my homily for Lent III, this Sunday at Springfield Cathedral.
- Kept a scheduled appointment with a Hindu leader from Nevada who was in town to open both houses of the Illinois legislature with a Hindu prayer earlier in the morning. It was essentially a meet-and-greet. He seemed interested in my assessment of the state of “religion” in the country and the world.
- Drove the few blocks up to St John’s hospital to look in on Fr John Henry, who had spent the night there as a cardiac patient. He was in good spirits, and looked forward to the installation of a pacemaker later in the day. Prayed and anointed.
- Stopped by Taco Gringo for lunch and took it home to eat. While in line at the drive-thru, took a substantive phone call from one of our clergy.
- Performed the same tasks for my Lent IV homily (St Christopher’s, Rantoul) as I had done earlier for Lent III. Why am I so far ahead? Because I’ll be gone Monday through Saturday next week at the House of Bishops in Texas.
- Laid down the broad strokes of my next Lenten series teaching gig at St George’s, Belleville on the 15th.
- Repaired to the cathedral for an Ignatian-style meditation on the gospel reading for the daily office–Mark’s version of the “stilling of the storm.”
- Dealt by email with a pastoral-administrative matter that involved metaphorically using the business end of my crozier. Not necessarily a pleasant experience for the one being “crozed,” I would expect. Nor for the one doing the crozing.
- Reviewed the latest edited version of the next teaching video in the “Seven Marks of Discipleship” series. Gave it a thumbs-up, with a request for a small tweak.
- Worked on my Palm Sunday sermon, taking if from “message statement” to “developed outline.”
- Routine task: scan accumulated hard copy; tag and appropriately categorize.
- Evening Prayer in the office.
