This past Sunday was our rector's last Sunday with us at my parish. He had served in this parish for 26 years, so there are very deep ties. Such longstanding ministry with a single parish is practically unheard of these days, and I feel fortunate to have been blessed with Peter's ministry since I joined the parish in 1983. The Episcopal Church seems to have a liturgy for everything, but I haven't seen a formal liturgy for the retirement or resignation of a rector. Instead, each parish comes up with its own way to recognize the event liturgically. It never fails to be moving. For me, it wasn't so much when Peter returned his keys to the wardens or preached his last sermon or celebrated the Eucharist with us for the last time, but when his son escorted him and his wife from the nave as we sang a blessing. I could tell from the voices of the people around me that I was not the only one choked up at this moment. I will miss Peter, but I am also looking forward to meeting someone new. My munchkins, who are the newest acolytes on the team, served as torch bearers for the service, and were very nervous about messing up in front of not just one bishop but two. I was very proud of them.

Next week is our annual beach Eucharist and picnic, and the following week, the Canon to the Ordinary will visit and preach and talk to us about what to expect over the next twelve to eighteen months or so. I'm looking forward to this because the Reverend Canon happens to be my confessor, and because I'm playing a kick-butt flute solo (two movements from Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio) as the prelude and offertory. I don't think he knows I play the flute, which I have for 25 years now, so it will be fun to hear what he has to say after the service.

After working the last four Saturdays in the library at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, Bear and I have a couple weeks off. He is required to accumulate 50 or more hours of community service during the school year for the program he is in. He worked through August to get a good head start on the year, and during the school year he plans to work two weekends a month to keep it up. After the librarian found several cards filed in the wrong place in the card catalog while helping her boss find a book (!), Bear and I have the tedious task of reading through the card catalog to make sure all the cards are in the proper order. We've found that someone in the past had a habit of filing author, title, and subject cards for a book all in the same place rather than in their proper separate places. Argh!

I am in my second week of MBA classes at Virginia Tech. One class is an online class, and I'm working at being disciplined in that class so that I don't get behind. The other class is a distance learning class, and I'm the only one at the Hampton Roads Center in that class. This is kind of nice, because I can stretch out and have my stuff all over the table, but it's also kind of lonely. Thankfully the professor is good at going to the various distance centers to ask questions and solicit feedback, so I don't feel so totally isolated. We are taking the Keirsey Temperament Sorter in this class, and I came out ISFJ. The I and J are no surprise whatsoever, but the middle two attributes seem to change each time I take a different inventory. I think I've gotten each of the four combinations at least once. I can tell I'm going to be working hard this semester. The work is definitely harder than the undergraduate accounting courses I took this spring and summer. But I think it's going to be fun, and the payoff will be good.