I had one of those weeks. You know the ones. Three night meetings, plus spending my Friday "day off" writing a sermon because I had a churchy thing on Saturday:

The time: a beautiful Saturday in early autumn. The place: a Lutheran retreat center in southern Snow Belt State, about an hour away from my house. The crowd: the usual suspects in my Presbytery. The ones who *always* go to things like this. The subject: the denomination's taks force report on the "peace, unity and purity of the church" aka, PUP report.

All in all, not a bad retreat. I only wish the folks who are in the theological minority in our neck of the woods could have shown up. We could have maybe spent the day in honest dialogue that would have been a little different. I'm afraid their not being there makes it easier for them to feel unheard. (coulda, woulda, shoulda)

Saturday night, I went to the opening show of OEH's second season with Really Cool Big Town Co-ed Chorus. (Celebrating 75 Years!) The WG would rather have her eyes poked out than attend a cultural event with me these days, so a clergy friend of mine took the extra ticket off my hands. It's lovely once in a while to have a polite young gentleman show up at the door and take me to a night of beautiful music, even if I was singularly concentrating on OEH and he was scoping out the other singers for potential new friends. (He's new in town. He will not want to squire me to hear my spouse sing forever!)

Sunday was the usual. The sermon I had to deliver was a difficult one, and one I may have fallout for for days to come. We baptized a beautiful baby girl--one who looked me in the eye for the whole liturgy, and smiled at me during our little stroll through the sanctuary When her hair had dried, after worship, it had dried 'funny', and she had a head full of honey colored curls! Priceless! There were three other babies in worship today, so I got to watch the mommies walking them in the back of the sanctuary. This I would do for free. I'm so blessed.

Ah, but Sunday evening...OEH and I had a 'date' we had planned earlier in the week, when it became increasingly apparent that we would not see each other until Sunday. A fire in the fireplace--our first this year, a very simple dinner with minimal cleanup, a glass of wine, a little soft music. A great way to end this week, or begin next week, depending how you see it. I warned WG that we would be on the couch in front of the fire together, and that while she was welcome to join us there, we might 'make out' (I'm so bad!), she came back with "Can't you take that kind of thing upstairs?" So after a nice long interlude, we did!

That'll teach her.