Padre's ponderings

Monday: I just had a walk in a winter wonderland.  Delightful.  Invigorating (not all walks are).

Now to a work task I've managed to avoid most of my professional life.  That is working at home.  Church work.  Except for polishing sermons, which I can never do enough of.  I've made it a priority during my career to work at the office, and not at home.  That's probably why I was never called to be a cardinal rector much less a bishop.  No complaints there.

One thing about the snow reminded me of Gulf Shores.  Actually it is not the snow as such, which in the almost twenty years we've been there we've seen once.  It was the quiet.  The stillness.  As if the world had gone to sleep, and I wasn't.  In the early hours of the morning we could not hear traffic on the interstate.  There wasn't much traffic to be sure, but the sound from the little there was was wonderfully muffled by the snow.  It was glorious.  I laid wide awake in bed probably two hours or more listening to the silence.  Very much like Gulf Shores, which if we hear anything in the night is an occasional siren. And when the surf is up the surf, but the surf is a welcome sound.  Hearing traffic on the interstate, not that we always listen, but hearing it is a reality of living on this one-of-a-kind property.  I'm not complaining, just sharing a fact.

Wasn't Emmalyn Anne, at her baptism, one of the cutest babies you've ever seen?  Except, understandably, her parents and grandparents, for whom she had to be, no doubt, the cutest ever.  I don't think you could program a child to be better behaved that she was.  We'll see at the next baptism, February 27.  This is not a contest.

Many of you know by now that Judith removed the tip of her right index finger last Wednesday in a car door.  Don't ask how because she cannot tell you, but she did.  A not so simple surgical procedure - general anesthetic, skin grafts, recovery, all day - just on a pointer finger, has put her on the road to recovery.  The interest and concerns expressed by many have meant a great deal to both of us, and we are grateful, indeed, for that.  One happy, and surprising outcome in this, is that she has felt very little discomfort, read that pain.  She is inconvenienced to be sure with a rather bulky bandage that should not get wet, but that's a temporary necessity.  Someone wondered if it would affect her ability to write, and I had to repeat twice that it won't because she writes with her left hand.

Denis Baum, Interim Rector   

Thursday - January 13, 2011

 9:00 AM  Respite Care

10:00 AM  TGIT 

7:00 PM  Community Group - Adult Classroom

PRAYER LIST
Christi Blain, Kay Gay, Annette Gerace, Teddy Brehm, Penny Jenkins, Louis Jenkins, David, Maynard Gonterman, Anne Gonterman, Carolyn Ford, Fr. Lawson Anderson,  Lance Lockridge,  Austin Edwards, Corey Moses, Antoinette & Quincy Mims, Ella Edwards, Suzi Martinka and family, Mindy Wertz, Naedean Mayland, Sophie Papi, Mildred Ford, Jim Howell, Tabitha Murphy, Katherine & Rhonda Herring, Joseph & Marion Murphy, Cynthia, Niles Moffat, Sally Lumpp, Search Committee.