Wow. It’s been quite an interesting few days.

Friday I left work early. Our parish recently had a major building project and Friday afternoon there was a special reception for the biggest donors. Clarification: I’m not a big donor -- I was just one of the parishioners that worked the party. Something rather disturbing happened there, but I’m still trying to find out more details about it before I blog about it.

Saturday morning was perfect for a walk in the park. The best and worst of this time of the year combined. ‘Twas nice that, after the sun had been in a cloudless sky for about three hours, it wasn’t any too hot. Of course the downside to that is that there are so few minutes of daylight between the late sunrise and the horribly early sunset. Saw quite the variety of trees in the park – some still green, some part green and part changed, some all changed, some in varying degrees of bareness and a few evergreens. Seemed like a good, if obvious, analogy for the Church.

Happened by the house I grew up in, which I sold on Dad’s behalf in 2001. The new owners have already put it up for sale! They’re a retired couple from a small town in the Midwest who had planned to have their daughter and granddaughter move in with them. The daughter thought better of living there with her parents and the parents can’t afford to live there without some other source of income. They were having a garage sale with rather delusional prices. I saw an electric drill for $10 and asked where the bits were. There weren’t any. There was a used wheelchair for which they were asking $250! If they price the house like they priced the stuff in the garage sale, it could be a long time before they sell it. Was sad to see how much junk they had in the house after I had spent so many months getting junk out of the house. I guess that house makes its residents become packrats!

Sunday I got to go to the high Mass at Holy Ghost. Put me in mind of Brahms’ “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place”. I miss going to high Mass. It seems more worshipful than other Masses. This particular Mass is a mostly Latin Novus Ordo with many of the principle parts (Gloria, Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) sung by the choir, the Creed said in English by everyone and the Lord’s Prayer sung in Latin by all. I didn’t recognize the setting used and forgot to check the signboard in the narthex. If I had to guess, I’d say it was from the 1870s, most probably from France.

In the afternoon we went to the Bronco game. Was way too hot in the sun, but was still good to be there. (Am hoarse today as a result.) Spent the evening at my friend’s house looking at old pictures in preparation for this morning.

Took off in the middle of the day today for the funeral. The (Lutheran) pastor ignored the deceased’s request to have the text of the sermon be “Faith without works is dead . . . “. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows much about Lutheran history and theology. I was actually a bit shocked at the request. It seems just a bit self-congratulatory, eh? They did print the passage on the program, though in a particularly opaque and clumsy translation. The funeral was about what I would have expected. There weren’t that many people there, but at age 97 the deceased had survived most of her acquaintances and many of the children of her contemporaries. Amazingly she started teaching school in the 1920s and kept at it, if only as a part-time preschool teacher, well into the 1990s.

My friend, the grandson of the deceased, has two sons himself – the older just turned 8 and the younger is about to turn 5. After the service I complimented the older boy on his good behavior during the service. The younger boy (who didn’t seem to be listening to me at the time) immediately protested, “Hey, I was a good boy too!” May God grant me the grace that I can honestly say the same thing some day.