Reverend Ref +

SMOKE ON THE WATER,
FIRE IN THE SKY

Yesterday was a long one in VC. It was vestry night, so I went into the office late. Worked on some sermon ideas for Sunday, met with my treasurer who wants to spend a bunch of memoriall money on altar hangings, and got ready for the meeting.

We are looking at doing an Advent Lessons & Carols service on Advent 4 in conjunction with VC's Christmas program. I know, I know. But if we do the Advent thing, we can do some instruction as well as getting ready for Christmas the following Saturday. I've got a meeting tomorrow with the coordinator of the whole city program, so hopefully this will work out.

The big news for the vestry is that the diocese is working to correct past errors. Like I said in my last sermon, it's a new day. One of the things they discovered was that many of our parishes do not have articles of incorporation or bylaws on file with either the diocese or the state. So we need to draft and approve some of those. Nobody told me about this in seminary.

The good news is that the diocesan chancellor drafted a set of articles and bylaws for parishes to use and modify as needed. I gave copies of everything to the vestry and told them to come back next month with modifications and thoughts. I'm going to do the same thing at CC at next week's meeting.

Left the office at 8:40 and headed home. Mrs. Ref had a stamping party that night, and the women were still there when I got home shortly after 9. I walked in the front door and was overpowered with really bad smell. First thought, "Oh oh, she burned the brownies." Turns out it was a little more serious than that. Something to do with a hotpad, a teapot, and the wrong burner. Be checking her blog and see if she fesses up to this little event. If it wasn't so darned cold now we'd open the doors. But, no such luck. And we can't open the windows because we still don't have our new ones, which means that the existing ones are painted shut and can't open, and the ones that can open you don't want to because we don't have screens, and we live in cattle country and the flies number in the thousands (just in my living room). So, we've got every scented candle we own burning at the moment.

Today I'm busy planning a couple of services for the bishop's visitation in February. A baptism for sure, and maybe an installation -- celebration of a new ministry. We'll see how that goes. And I still need to figure out what's going on with the ordination in December.

And finally -- how 'bout them Red Sox! That come back is utterly amazing. And now I'm hoping against hope that they'll pull off the most amazing comeback in sports history and beat those Damn Yankees.