Kind of a cliche among bloggers, I think, but I'll say it anyway: I have been lax in the blogging but hope to do better. Really.

And now for news: In the couple of weeks since I've posted, I served on a chapel team, which happens once a year for us VTS seminarians and for me involved being a chalice-bearer at a Eucharist with the new (female) suffragan bishop of Virginia, during which we temporarily ran out of wine, which was a little stressful; visited General Seminary for an Episcopal Evangelism Network conference, where I attended a very cool jazz morning prayer service and also a jazz Eucharist with the Theodicy Jazz Collective, a band you should Google; got news that I am a student body chaplain (there are lots of us--19 I think--and I am very happy that my fellow Mississippian Alex Allain is also in that group); had a bit of a melt-down after missing a chapel team meeting during a week that was jam-packed with stuff to read and write and be present for (it so happened that my melt down, a bit of crying in front of my very kind chapel team leader/professor and another member of my team corresponded with lots of other junior class melt-downs); had a really nice lunch in the Refectory with Bishop Gray, who surprised us all but mostly Alex, who discovered the Bishop was here as he (Alex) wandered into breakfast Wednesday morning; found a spiritual director; overslept for morning prayer after staying up way too late listening to a senior and a middler discuss the difficulties of transitioning into seminary life and how a lot of what happens here is "hazing," in their estimation.

And then there's the school work. I have lots of stuff to write in the next several days, though thankfully none of it has to be all that long. There's a church history essay and a log entry on my service learning site as well as a case study to write up and present to my TPM class. I also have to recite the Shema in Hebrew on Monday and then come up with some prayer to say in Hebrew on Thursday. And then in a few weeks are exams and then fall break and on to Old Testament and New Testament, where I believe the rubber will meet the road for me. I hear I will be reading pretty much nonstop. I am very thankful I actually like to read.