Sunday, September 9, 2007

Weekend

It has been a very full weekend with a board retreat for ECM yesterday and our Sunday School start up and a baptism this morning. The retreat was great. We did some great brainstorming and visioning and had a lot of fun in the process.

The baptism this morning was really wonderful too. I preached about the way in which Jesus challenged family relationships and created a new family of brothers and sisters in Christ. (In there I spoke about the women who were martyred in the early church for defying their fathers). I talked about how we made a commitment to be family to the people baptized in our church. I finished by saying that we don't just renew our baptismal vows today but we also renew the vows we made to our children to support them in their lives of faith. The only glitch was that I forgot to invite the kids back in for the baptism. Oy. Robbie is having another bad episode of congestive heart failure and I was up most of the night with him. I was so proud of myself for getting everything set up this morning and not forgetting anything and then I forgot that. Oh well. I had them come in afterwards and gather at the font. We talked about the significance of baptism and the kids blessed themselves with the water. People seemed to appreciate it and no one gave me a hard time about my memory lapse.

Robbie is doing a bit better and I had a great afternoon with some friends. They gave me a Chapters gift card for my birthday (Charles Taylor's A Catholic Modernity? is ordered and on its way already!) and one of my very creative friends made this wonderful collage for me. I can't get the light quite right so you miss some of it but trust me - it makes me smile!

6 comments:

Fr. Aaron Orear said...

Wow, what a day in the lectionary for baptism! Hate your mother and father? Drop all your possessions? Hey, what are you getting me INTO!? But really, a very good day for welcoming new members to the body. This isn't milquetoast stuff.

Unknown said...

aaron,

Agreed. We had a whole whack of new folks show up at church and they commented on what a "fantastic" service we had. Given the gospel reading, it can only be the work of the Holy Spirit.

kgp

Erin said...

To add to it the Dad is Mormon and I'm sure that my sermon was about as antithetical to LDS theology of family as you can get. They were very gracious though and they came which really impressed me. Nice folks.

Erin said...

Btw - check out Tim's sermon over at Tale Spin. I really liked it too.

Tim Chesterton said...

You're very kind, Erin!

Anonymous said...

Erin, the collage is wonderful! Are you familiar with the idea of altered books? Knowing your love of books and love of art, I'm not sure if you would appreciate what some people do to books or not, but it could give you one more thing to think about...

http://www.alteredbookartists.com/

Is it art, recycling, or defacing literature?


...Pam