To Do Tada!

(I found this list posted on Facebook, credited to Julian Lennon, but my efforts to create a link to his Facebook page fail. Anyway, I didn't create the list, but find it hilarious).

Slowly, methodically, I am moving through my "To-Do" list. The one that contains all the things I need to do before I leave for a week of vacation and a week of General Convention for the Episcopal Church. The list includes:

1.Organize the massive amount of paper in my office. During certain busy times this past year I would literally pick up a pile of papers sitting on my desk and put them inside a cabinet. My office looked clean, but the behind the scenes piles grew. And then the pile on my desk grew. A big part of the issue was lack of file cabinets. We solved the problem by purchasing some mesh file holder that fit inside the built in cabinets in my office - thus enabling me to more effective use this space. I am about half way through the mess. It's unlikely I will get it all done before I leave, but I have made significant headway.

2. I had a numerous projects to complete for General Convention: a powerpoint presentation on the WordsMatter project for the Episcopal Women's Caucus breakfast on Sunday, July 8; prayer cards which will be used at the breakfast that contain the opening prayer written as part of the WordsMatter project. And prayer card book-marks that are WordsMatter (expansive language), which were written by me and two other EWC board members, and then translated into French, Haitian-Creole, and Spanish. These will be sold at the EWC booth at General Convention. AND I had to arrange for our local artist and glass blower to make the EWC award - the St. Mary Magdalene award and the St. Joseph award, each given to a woman or a man, who has been instrumental in social justice causese in the Episcopal Church.

3. All of the above needs to be packed up and shipped today to the hotel in Indianapolis, and arrive on Tuesday.

4. This on top of the other arrangements one must take care of before leaving: notes to supply clergy, arranging back up pastoral care should a clergy person be needed, and so forth; announcements and bulletin content for the next three Sundays; a draft of the funeral bulletin in case there is the need for a funeral while I am away (there is a real potential as one more parishioner is at the end of life). I do hope I am here for the funeral, but there is nothing I can do if I am at the wedding or at convention - I have made arrangements for a former priest, one who worked here in the 1980's to take care of it.

5. Today I have some more office work to do, a run to the post office to mail the prayer cards and awards, a hospital visit to the ailing parishioner, and a wedding rehearsal in Detroit. I'm overwhelmed already!

6. Tomorrow - baptism rehearsal for Sunday's baptism and then the wedding in Detroit. (It will be a combined Christian/Persian ceremony - the bride is from Iran, now a citizen of the US). Dealing with Imam's can be wonderfully gracious, or a little tricky....I have no idea how this will be - but since he has agreed to do this interfaith service in the first place I assume he will be fine to work with. He is afterall from Dearborn - and familiar with interfaith dynamics.

All I need to do is figure out my sermon for Sunday...and find time to write it. Then, come Sunday afternoon - vacation. WOW!  I am so blessed to have a job which enables me to take a vacation. I am also very ready for some time to rest and recharge.