Technical Difficulties

I couldn't edit or post this weekend because of a problem with cookies, but Gary's fixed that, so I'm back in business.

Not too much to report, though:

Mightly Hunter Bali chewed through the cord on Gary's mouse, permanently disabling it.

I sent out a story, something I wrote back in 2001 (!), but had been sitting on because I had big revision plans for it. I came across it while going through some files, reread it, and thought, hey, this is really pretty good even without big revisions! So I cleaned it up a tiny bit and sent it out. We'll see what happens.

Church yesterday was painful, as usual these days. We had a guest preacher from another parish who talked about -- you guessed it! -- the closure of the parish. A visitor sitting in front of me commented during the Peace, "I picked a great time to visit, huh?"

As usual these days, I cried through much of the service. It didn't help that the guest preacher also chaired the Commission on Ministry during my non-ordination fiasco, so just seeing him triggered painful memories.

These days I always seem to leave church feeling worse than when I got there, which isn't what going to church should do. I think I'm going to pick and choose my services very carefully from now on. There are three between now and November 21 that I know I want to go to: one's a visit from our bishop (a week before we close for good) and two others, including the very last service, will be my last chance -- at least for a while -- to hear two friends preach. So I'll definitely go to those. Otherwise, though, I suspect I'd be better off staying home, or going to another parish. There's only so much grief a body can handle.

Next Sunday our congregation's taking a field trip to another parish, one I already know I have no interest in attending because it's just too far away, the farthest of the parishes in town. So I suspect I'll skip that, too. The parish I'm currently most interested in joining has a spoken service (no music) at 5 PM on Sundays, and I may start checking that out. I certainly love the idea of sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

In the meantime, I wrote an article for our parish newsletter asking if anyone would be interested in a base community and/or book discussion group, which I'd be happy to host at my house. We'll see if I get any takers. Everyone's so tired and demoralized right now that I won't be surprised if there's no response.