Although it was an interesting taste day (fat CostCo hotdog on pleasantly soggy bun with churros for lunch before helping R pick out glasses, poached salmon and new potatoes tossed with dill for dinner), I’m just not in the mood.

• I am very, very, very tired. I had a hard time sleeping last night, and M woke up at 5 this morning. I am going to be gone all weekend for a session retreat, so I told R I’d get up with her every morning until then—since he’ll be flying solo while I’m gone, and I have a private room on Saturday night (o frabjous day!), it’s the least I can do. (C will have a sleepover with MaDear Saturday, so that will make things a little easier for him.)
• Then I have a meeting every night next week. Every fireplacin’ night.
• Then I preach over the weekend, and it’s also C’s 4th birthday. Four! Geez! She’s a quarter of the way to driving!
• After the preaching/birthday weekend I go to Big Downtown Cathedral for Woo-woo Guru Deep Breathing Angels on Pinheads Retreat. I am actually staying at the Cathedral for the first time—I normally commute to con ed events. Don’t tell R, but I cannot wait. Oh yeah, he reads this. R, I hereby urge you to find your own version of WWGDBADPR. It’s good for you.
• What this all means is, tomorrow and next Friday are the only evenings I have free in the next three weeks. I’m thrilled about the Cathedral retreat, but gah.
• I am finishing up the planning for a very exciting event at the church. Our Lent Series normally runs for five Tuesdays, and we have a variety of speakers come in on various topics. This year it is an exploration of the creative and liturgical arts. We will have speakers and presenters on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings doing storytelling, leading dance workshops, talking about art in the reformed tradition, discussing the emergent church and the idea of the “church as art,” and a host of other things. It will be a fun blend of outside speakers while drawing on resources within the congregation. We will also have a video or two, including a viewing of Babette’s Feast (which I watched in seminary, did you?) and discussion about the sacred ordinary.

  We are also having an arts and crafts exhibition during Lent, during which we will display quilts, knitting and other fiber arts, watercolors, pottery, sculpture, etc. I even told some scrapbookers that I want to show some of their pages, because truly those can be works of art. And on our Tuesday Quiet Day during Holy Week we will close with an “open mike” where people can bring and share readings from treasured books, and I hope, writings from the writing as spiritual practice workshop. I haven’t quite worked out the logistics but if the church finds the event half as fulfilling as I did just from the planning of it, I’ll be thrilled.

Well, that’s all she wrote.