At home today

Ellen went to Marlboro today but I stayed home. She heard a beautiful performance of Beethoven's song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98, by tenor Dan McGrew and pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and also a repeat of a cycle we heard yesterday of Ravel's Chansons Medécasses by Norwegian mezzo-soprano Eira Huse and pianist Ariel Lanyi, Marina Piccinini, flute, and Oliver Herbert, cello. She was thrilled by what she heard.

Mezzo-soprano, Eira Huse.

Tenor, Daniel McGrew. ************************************************* I stayed home to work on my sermon for July 31st at Guilford. At first, my mind was simply not working. I was reminded of a time in graduate school when I was under a lot of stress and my mind turned into cement and I had to take a leave of absence from my work - something that my academic advisor and teachers actually approved, which is sort of amazing. Today is not that serious, but for a while this morning, I could not function. But I managed to write an opening paragraph to my satisfaction, and that seemed to prime the pump, so to speak, and things began to flow. I ended up with a draft that is actually at or even under the recommended length of time for a sermon at Guilford - fifteen minutes. Yes, they do recommend that. Here is what is stated in the "instructions" given a guest preacher: "Please time your sermon to be no longer than 15 minutes. This translates to about six pages in Word using 14-point type, or approximately 1000 words. In reviewing our archived recordings, we have noticed that some guest worship leaders, while having strong messages, have delivered sermons of 20 and sometimes 30 minutes. Our congregation appreciates a succinct message." I am one of those guests in the past who is guilty of preaching for 30 minutes! I was sort of infamous for long sermons even back when I was a regular preacher along with Shirley (she preached three-four Sundays a month and I always took the last Sunday of the month). When I preach, I like to unpack a biblical passage, refer to the Greek or Hebrew text, and in the case of a Gospel passage, develop the original context and setting both in Jesus' teaching and in the gospel narrative in which it is imbedded, etc., and you just can't do that in fifteen minutes. But this time, I am going to get my act together, which means leaving out most of that. My draft is not quite 5 pages, although it is 1300 words. I will read it out loud and time myself. I have from now until the 31st to put the sermon into final form. The Gospel text I am using is the Parable of the Talents, which is a notoriously difficult, disturbing and complicated text. It would take literally hours to do it any kind of justice. So I won't even try. But I do allude to the possibility of starting up a Bible Study Group in the Fall, when we could actually unpack a text like that. That would be fun for me - the question is, are there others who would like to spend the time doing that? I think so, and hope so. Well, actually, there is another question I have to answer - do I still have the physical and mental stamina to do that and still have it be "fun?"