OK, what's going on...?

I just checked The Castor Oil Tree stats (which I can do and do sometimes) and saw that I'd had 151 pages views already today--which is a record for a day and it's only 6:16 p.m.!

So, what's going on? Advent IV is the day people just view random blogs? I said something worth reading (doubt that...)? Everyone I know thought today was a good day to look at my blog? Some problem with the stats do hickey? One person was drunk and signed onto my blog 151 times trying to get to UTube?

Well, whatever happened, thanks. I've said before I'd write this even if no one read it because it is therapy for me to write. (Lots cheaper than a real therapist too!) But thank you, whoever you are, for reading this junk I write.

Today I went to Rowena's first Eucharist. I did the 9 a.m. at St. James in Higganum and then drove to Northford and got there at the end of the Prayers of the People so I got absolved by Rowena, received the first bread and wine she ever consecrated and got her blessing at the end of the service. A trifecta (a word I'm pretty sure is a word...like when betting on horse races...but my spell-check neither acknowledges or gives me a reasonable option to) much to be desired.

I got all this advice about how to get from Higganum to Northford from people in both places. One involved Little City Road (though I assure you, there is not even a Tiny City anywhere near that road) and the other involved several roads whose names I don't remember, all of which, supposedly inexplicably end up in Durham from which Northford is about 7 miles on Rt 17. I even tried one of them once and got agoraphobic driving through such emptiness. So today I just got on RT 9 and drove 85 mph and got off at the 155/17 exit. Got there in just under 25 minutes, just at the end of the Prayers of the People when Rowena read the Proper Preface for Advent, which is lovely but not what you're supposed to read.

Hey, it was her first Eucharist, cut her a break! Besides which the Eucharist at St. James will be loosely referred to as "how many ways can Jim mess this up? Sunday". I even announced after the offering had come up and I'd somehow set the table, that if 'you give me a week off, I forget how to do this stuff...." All three Cluster churches cancelled last week because of weather, which was wise, so Rowena had to wait a week to celebrate her first Eucharist. And she was flawless except for the Advent Proper Preface thing and actually knows how to do the 'manual acts', which, in Episco-speak,
means the gestures and movements that go into celebrating the Eucharist.

I, on the other hand do only two manual acts--I cross myself at one point in the service and make the sign of the cross over the bread and wine...oh, and elevate them at the end of the Prayer of Consecration. I went to Virginia Seminary, the ultimate "low church" seminary where any 'fussiness' at all way discouraged. There was a professor at VTS that could celebrate Eucharist without moving  his hands at all. So, for Virginia Graduates I'm almost Anglo-Catholic.

I thought Rowena's manual acts were restrained, respectful and right on! Some priests I know turn the 'manual acts' into a form or calisthenics or pseudo-yoga. I close my eyes when they start wildly gesticulating and pounding their chests. Rowena has it right. If you have to involve yourself in such things, the way she does it is the way it should be done. God bless her. (I would say I'll start holding my arms out to the side humbly during much of the Eucharistic Prayer the way she does...but I probably won't.) But I liked the way she did it.

I need to hear her preach if she's going to get any value from me as a supervisor (I'll blog about how I supervise like a 'crabbing buddy' some day). She has a phone that can do anything short of delivering a baby or bringing world peace, so maybe I'll ask her to record sermons so we can listen to them together. But I'm pretty sure her sermons are just like everything else about her--restrained, respectful and right on.....