A long but good day

Wednesdays are usually my busiest day of the week outside of Sunday. I get to the office by about 8:00 a.m. on most Wednesdays and begin working on the Weekly Bulletin and my weekly epistle. almost every week several people drop in to visit or to ask for prayer or to go over something that needs to be done at church. The mornings seem to fly by. My deadline for the Norwich Bulletin is usually noon on Wednesday. When I have an extremely busy day, I drop them a note and tell them it will be coming in later.

My weekly epistles arise out of the every day stuff that happens in my life and at church. I began writing the epistles eight or nine years ago, if not more. They started as occasional letters. Every few weeks I would send one out with some thought or reflection I had. By 2003 they were coming more regularly. Then in the fall of 2004, the Editor of the Norwich Bulletin, Jim Kevlin, asked me if he could use some of them in the Norwich Bulletin. At the same time Rabbi Gary Atkins was approaching the religion editor at the paper about getting a local clergy column inserted. He wondered why they had to take something off the line when we had local people who could do the same thing.

In the Fall of 2004 I joined a rotation of religion page writers for the Bulletin. The plan was for us to take turns. We began with six of us and by the end of November I was the only regular contributor. I think early in 2005 the bulletin made a decision to use me as their regular Saturday religion writer. I never really talked to them directly after that. I just emailed in my piece. A couple times I asked about format or timing and I got an email back saying just keep doing what you are doing.

Jim left and he was replaced and I've continued to have a good relationship with Jim Konrad and the folks I've met over there. The one one thing that has changed is that now I am on a deadline. They want it by noon on Wednesday.

That works out well for me because I head off to the Norwich Rotary Club for noon most Wednesdays. Then I come back and get ready for mid-week worship. This week I had to head up to Pierce Baptist Home in Brooklyn, CT for a meeting. The marketing man for Creamery Brook wanted to talk about outreach efforts to fill the beautiful facility we have up there. It was a good meeting. We are probably going to host an information seminar here at church this spring.

Yesterday I returned from that meeting and did some work to try and finish up the February newsletter. Then I polished up my sermon for the evening service. Sixteen people stayed for the service and we talked about prejudice, judgement and God's love for the poor. It was a good day.

Cal