Ministry Day

Today is the 20th day of April and I'm sitting in my office looking outside at SNOW....what the? Yesterday I attended the Diocese of Olympia's Ministry Day Workshops held at Highline Community College with Ginny, our Sr. Warden. The weather was iffy but it wasn't until the late afternoon when she dropped me at my car and I headed up the hill towards Sequim that I realized I was in trouble. I am not a good driver to begin with due to vertigo issues and eventually had to pull over, call home and have the boys come to rescue me. You see I panicked big time when I passed a pick-up truck sitting on it's roof....If that could happen to that driver, what was going to happen to me? (I know this would have been the perfect opportunity to ask the 4 questions and do the turnarounds on this but I opted to just stop driving)...I was never so glad to see that enormous, deisel guzzling Dodge pull up and hear my son say "Need a lift lady?"

So here are the highlights of yesterday!
I finally met Karen Ward - Abbess of the Fremont Abby - I've read her blog and visited the one she recently started - www.aglimergent.org. She spoke on the Anglimergent movement & showed a clip of their Easter Vigil service, plus clips of other Anglican Emergent churches in England...I particularly enjoyed the clip on Messy Church in which kids and adults create their own artistic (and yes quite messy) liturgies.

The Bishop spoke to me! I passed him (Bishop Greg Rickel) on my way to my small group and he turned and asked me where I found the book I was carrying. "Living from the Center - Spirituality in an Age of Consumerism" by Jay McDaniel. I told me I had just picked it up at the Resource Center Booth and he said that Jay was a friend of his and that it was a good read! So, yes, the Bishop approves of my reading!!!!

The workshop on "Preaching, teaching & singing the many meanings of the Eucharist" was led by Samuel Torvend and it was so good that when it ended I did not pass go but went straight to the bookseller's table & purchased his book, "Daily Bread Holy Meal - Opening the Gifts of Holy Communion". In the front of the room he had placed a print of one of the earliest representations of a Eucharistic meal found in the ancient catacombs. Various people were seated around a small table on which sat a fish,wine,and bread and our presenter interpreted the words that rested above them -"Peace brings the food" and "Love for others brings the cup". Isn't that profound?

All in all a good day!