Misty Morning Meeting

The humidity must have been at 100% this morning, judging by all the mist we encountered on the way to church. It seemed unusually high and left me in a bit of discomfort through the service and the Annual Parish Meeting.

This being the first Sunday of the month, we read the Litany even though it was not listed in the bulletin. I note that we're learning the responses by heart now; I was forced to recite same when, caught by surprise, I didn't have a prayer book ready.

There was a little difficulty in the Gospel procession with our young Crucifer and Lucifers, but Acolyte Master Ranjit will begin server training next Sunday, an hour before the service. It won't take long to get this sorted out, I think. But it'll be interesting for me to contrast with the last time we had server training, soon after Fr. David became Rector, and most of us servers were in our late 40s or beyond (I note that Drew's Acolyte Manual suggests that it's not a bad thing to have older servers). Mary Ellen is planning to show up to teach the acolytes how to extinguish the candles without getting wax all over the altar linens, probably a perennial problem and an annoyance to Altar Guilds everywhere.

Fr. Daniel mentioned Kathy's Kairos prison ministry project; in part, through the "'Gesima Sundays" she's enlisting help in baking 100 dozen cookies to be distributed to all the prisoners in the prison during the Kairos weekend. She has worked outside "base camp" before, but this time has submitted an application to be part of the "inside team."

After the service we had our pre-meeting potluck. If we keep growing, navigating the Parish Hall in these events is going to become difficult (I know, this is a "good" problem to have!); already the food requires a second table beyond the long fold-out to hold everything. Not to mention all the kids...

Towards the end of the potluck we were treated to some jazz on the piano by Josephine (and this not long after her postlude organ fireworks -- what a joy to hear!) and then Ruby, on cello, joined her. Maybe the order should have been reversed, after the food and music we were a bit sleepy.

With the dishes finally cleared away, it was on to the Annual Parish Meeting. Ours tend to be relatively short, with the only real difficulty being the budget discussions, as is usual every year. This year it was 35 minutes beginning to end, down from last year's hour and 20 minutes. Ending at 12:55, we had LOTS of time to get home to watch the Superbowl. (Though after seeing a touchdown in the first 14 seconds, I decided to go work on this blog.)

I was one of the two who rolled off the Vestry this year, ending last year's one-year extension and I forget how many "re-ups" over the years. I've been on so long that it felt really odd to be standing across the Parish Hall instead of seated at the table when Fr. Daniel called the new Vestry to order for the purpose of appointing and electing officers for the coming year. But as I've said before, others need to rotate through these positions also.

Ranjit insisted on a photo of the outgoing Vestry.

And it's not like I'm left without anything to do in the meantime -- I've joined the "Faculty" (dealing at a higher level with church property/grounds issues), and am volunteering to become St. Bartholomew's coordinator for the "First Annual Diocese of the Western States Campout" at Mount Lassen National Park this July.