Saturday 22 September

The big event of today has been Tim Sean's Ordination to the Priesthood.   He has been a very effective youth leader at Emmanuel, the number of young people coming to the church has grown enormously under his leadership, and his successor Beth took over about a month ago.  She was already a scout leader, so comes with a great deal of experience, she also has a lovely, warm, friendly personality, and I am sure the youth at Emmanuel will continue to flourish under her leadership. 

Normally, in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, the bishop would have put Tim Sean in charge of a parish in another part of the diocese but Karen, his wife, is a professor at OBU and understandably doesn't want to give up her career, and over here they don't have parish churches every hundred yards apart like we do, so it has been a bit of a dilemma for them and the bishop.   However he has been appointed chaplain of a school in Oklahoma City, which is a bit of a commute for him but a compromise for the time being.

 As we filed up for Communion Karen and two other members of his family sang Baptist hymns.   Hymns I know well, my favourites, 'There is a Fountain filled with Blood'  'Lily of the Valley'  I play them all the time at home, but this is the first time I have ever heard them in Emmanuel.

 I didn't go to the evening shindig.  This particular casino is about 12 miles outside Shawnee on the interstate, and I don't drive in the dark outside town, and although transport was offered I don't like being dependent on someone for a ride, I like to feel free to go home when I want to.   But I am sure they all had a great time.

One final item...

 I think Tim Sean must have quite an affection for Julian of Norwich, she seemed to feature quite a lot in his Ordination.  She was a 14th century English mystic.   Also the first woman published author.

And to the weather....

 The week ahead is looking quite hot......sigh

But up in the northern Plains it is positively chilly, in the 40s.  Right Now was about 10.30 this evening.

On the Election campaign Mitt Romney - after a great deal of pressure - finally released his tax returns.  I told Fr Clark that to my British mindset that seems a gross invasion of privacy, everyone knows he is wealthy, why does he have to lay it out.

This was his response....

I can certainly understand your train of thought as to Romney's tax forms.  For whatever reason, demanding the returns is a longstanding tradition in America.  Perhaps it is a way of publicly demonstrating that one's wealth was not gotten by illegal or immoral means.  In the event, Romney's gains are from immoral sources, the deconstruction of companies and massive redundancies when he was the president of Bain Capital.