Matriculation!

Hello all - Well, it's official... I've been matriculated. On Thursday evening we had a huge matriculation ceremony for all the new students during the evensong service. Each one of the new students signed their names in the matriculation book that has been used since 1822. It's pretty awesome to look through that book and see all the names of GTS alumni. It was an honor to put my name in that book. It was also an honor to listen to David Hurd improvise on St. Patrick's Breastplate for 20 minutes while all us new students, one at a time, signed the book. Following the service we had a large dinner banquet followed by a party on top of Sherril Hall. It was great (of course, Friday AM was a bit difficult for most of us).

I continue to enjoy all my classes. (I'm sure that theme will remain the same for some time.) I was thinking today about how different this is from work for so many reasons. As an example, at work, it was easy to leave work in the office and not think about it until 8:00 AM the next day. Here, there is no office to leave it in. All the work comes with me and I'm thinking about it all the time. The good news is I enjoy this material much more than the work I used to do. I continue to work out an appropriate balance between school work and personal time. Hopefully I'll find it soon. (I'm not sure though, with the baseball post season at hand... I'm a bit distracted - even more so if those Padres can make it to the playoffs.)

Now, for the church update. I visited St. Bart's on 51st and Park today.  St Bart's is a huge church with its current building completed in 1918. They have a substantial music program and the congregation was quite large. It seems like a pretty dynamic place but I understand they continue to work through financial difficulties and restoration issues. I especially like what they put at the bottom of the Sunday Bulletin:

"The worship is over. The service begins."

 

I'm expecting my mother on Tuesday, 2 October. She'll be here for a week and I hope we can get out and see some of the city (hopefully I'll have some time away from my studies). We have the Paddock lectures next week, an organ concert, and fall break starts Friday, October 5 through Tuesday, October 9. Next weekend a group of us will travel to Virginia to play football against VTS. I suspect we'll get pummeled but we'll have fun! I'll be sure to update you on those events.

Peace.