Unfortunately, I think I'm now an adult

Ahh, General Convention. That triennial behemoth of Episco-nerds gathered together, mostly to argue (lol jkjkjkjk...but only kinda). The Young Adult Festival meets with Presiding Bishop Curry (Photo cred: Episcopal Young Adult Ministries ) Let me start by saying I had a great time, overall, despite some serious pain due to fibromyalgia and migraines. I got to catch up with some absolutely excellent folks that I love and adore.  I was able to meet a whole bunch of new people who have now been added to that list for the next time.  And I count myself as lucky that recovery time for this ended up being a 1:1 endeavor (i.e. a one week event, and it took 1 week home before I was functional again. If this seems ridiculous to you...welcome to life with Fibro, because that's actually a 50% improvement from my average). All in all, I enjoyed it enough to go back. Which is good, because there were enough things that frustrated me that signifies I'm probably going to HAVE to go b...

So, in my parish here in Brazil this morning, the reading was on the parable of the sower, the version from Matthew: 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.” 10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” 11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundan...

Today, I woke up after a full night's rest, but my body doesn't seem to believe that. My hands and arms are week and shaky, and it takes nearly all the strength in them to move my 2 pound laptop.  Not all days are like this, though, and sometimes I wake up hours before my alarm with so much energy that my to-do list gets to die a swift death that day.  I just never know which kind of day it will be until it shows up.  So, today, with the recent release of Finding Dory back in the states (it's not in Brazil yet), I channeled my inner little blue fish to "just keep swimming".  I made it to work to teach.  I got here 30 minutes after the students arrive, but I got here (and I originally designed it so that I wouldn't normally take students until then anyways, in case I ran into trouble getting all the computer units up and going--which has already happened twice, so it was a good plan). This week, I'm working with the older groups to finish a lesson I had o...

Hello there, everyone! I'm sorry that the title is a little bit click-bait-y (where articles on social media use titles that nearly force you to open them to read more, even for really simple things). It is both true and also misleading, but I'm not actually going to directly continue to answer the obvious questions that you might be thinking right away. This is, in part, because the answer required a bit of set up to explain, and, primarily, because I really don't have too many ways to try and keep you interested except to try things like this and hold the resolve until the end. But I will tell you right now, I'll also be putting stuff at the end just so you can't immediately skip down to get an easy answer.  *insert evil laugh here* mwahahahaha Back in the middle of May I was in the midst of my health struggle, but had been asked to attend the Global Episcopal Mission Network (GEMN) conference held in Ponce, Puerto Rico.  I had accepted many weeks prior, before ...