Well, sort of anyway. The official school year does not begin until the 27th of September, but today was the planning meeting and retreat of the Worship Committee. I will be serving this year as the Minister of Ceremonies Coordinator, which means I will oversee all services that are designed and implemented by students. One of the unique and rather awesome parts of Seabury is that students are afforded the opportunity to design worship services and then put them into play as often as they feel led. As this is really great practice for our future careers and as the MC Coordinator, I will be encouraging students to really avail themselves of the opportunity. The meeting today was a good, if lengthy one. It was great to see familiar faces once again as these members of our middler class begin to take on the leadership of the student body. One colleague said to me, "Ryan I thought CPE would curb your blogging, but no. It absolutely didn't." Hahahaha. We were also led in the Holy Eucharist by our new Interim Dean, David C. Bowman, Bishop of Western New York, retired. It was good to meet him as well as our new interim director of music, Milner Seifert, of St. Augustine's (the church where I work as well). Tomorrow there will be a Eucharist on campus, so I'll attend that and then next week begins Orientation Week for the new juniors, so I'll be involved there to some extent.

I'm also getting excited about an upcoming trip. I've been given a full scholarship to attend the Episcopal Church's Interfaith Education Initiative Seminar at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.! Thursday, September 30 I depart until Saturday October 2 to a conference full of interesting speakers and exciting opportunities. Faithful followers of the blog will realize this area is where a large part of my ministerial interests lie. I'm looking forward to it as it will also give me a chance to hopefully catch up with some friends, two of whom are at Virginia Theological Seminary and one who is a teacher in the area. That will be great!

I'm in a good mood today if you couldn't tell.

-R