Life after Christmas...

Greetings! I hope the new year finds you well. Things in Norwich are about to return to normal. We've had a nice break these first two weeks of January, but we'll pay for that starting next week. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but the Methodist Church here in England has been participating in a year of Prayer Without Ceasing. Throughout this 14-month year, the churches across the Connexion took part in what amounts to a really long prayer vigil. Each District takes responsibility for a fortnight (two weeks) and assigns a certain length of time to each circuit. Well, the East Anglia district took over the vigil from December 31 until January 13 and the Norwich Circuit took 18 hours on January 4. Three out of my four churches took shifts between midnight and 9:30am (the fourth one copped out and took a 3-6pm shift). Anyways, in the spirit of this time of prayer, our circuit put a moratorium on business meetings for these first two weeks of the year. A brilliant idea, really. Until next week. Now we run full steam ahead for the next six weeks until Lent starts! I miss academia. Work for a few weeks...get a few weeks off...work for a few weeks...get a few weeks off. The real world sucks! ;)

This week I started going to Morning Prayer at the Anglican Church in Drayton. I wish I'd been doing that all along! Morning Prayer, for those of the free church persuasion, is a fairly structured time of prayer taken from the Book of Common Prayer. Most, if not all, of the prayers are written out. We say the same prayers each day according to the season of the church calendar. Right now we're in epiphany, so the prayers deal with the revelation of God in Christ, Jesus' baptism, and the like. We also read the prescribed Scripture of the day and spend time in silent prayer. There's usually only two of us--myself and the Anglican vicar. I started going out of my own personal desire to be more disciplined in my prayer time and in getting up each day (having somewhere to go at 9am gets me going more quickly in the morning than having a morning to myself in the house...too many distractions!). Throughout the week, though, I've decided that it's even more important than that. It's exciting to be in prayer with one of my colleagues. I think it almost essential that we pray together. We look after the people of Drayton...what could be more appropriate and more effective than praying together? I'm loving morning prayer, so far.

And now for something completely different...

Duke basketball is in full swing, and despite being thousands of miles away and several hours ahead, I'm doing very well at keeping tabs on the team. I'm absolutely addicted to Duke Basketball Report and have subscribed to a service so I can listen to the games online. During the games, a bunch of folks who also visit DBR get together to chat about the game. Some of them chat while they watch the game on TV while others are listening to it on the radio/online like I am and others follow it on gametracker. This past week, during the Wake Forest game, I ran across somebody I'd heard of but never met. While I worked at Raleigh Wesley Foundation as a Duke Intern, I knew of previous interns who participated in the same British programme as I'm doing now. In fact, the past three interns have gone from RWF to Britain. The first one to come over stayed longer than the one year and has now been ordained by the British Methodist Church. I knew she was here somewhere, but hadn't contacted her nor did I know where she was stationed. Well, I met her in the chat room during the Wake game! She mentioned in another conversation that she was in England, so I asked her where she was. Then, as our conversation progressed, she asked me what I was doing in England. So, I told her I was a Methodist minister and she said, "Me, too!" I had a hunch she was the girl from RWF and she had a similar hunch about me. She isn't exactly close by, but we've already chatted on IM and are planning to meet up in the near future. I thought that was hilarious! Anyways, Go Duke!

Peace out.