Beloved in God and Thomas the Apostle:
Our Deacon, Anna, and I were talking about Our House in Milford last week before the vestry retreat. Along with other deacons of the diocese she had spent some time there during their annual diocesan deacon’s retreat. When she told me that the porch had lots of rocking chairs where, if the weather was good, rocking and resting would be easy to do, I decided to get to Milford early enough Friday to do some serious rocking and resting. It pays to know people who have been places. I gathered up Pam Spruiell, our retreat facilitator, early Friday afternoon and the two of us arrived in Milford and spent a goodly amount of time rocking, resting and catching up with each other’s lives. Pam has been our retreat facilitator ten or eleven times now. I am grateful to her for her willingness to continue to work with us as each vestry begins anew its work. She is both structured and flexible in how she leads us which has to be easy for her since she “knows” us fairly well by now. Pam and I enjoyed our chance to catch up with each other before the members of the vestry began to arrive and join us on the front porch at Our House in Milford.
Save for the parish chancellor, Denise Webb Glass, who could not make it this year, everyone made it in time for the 7 p.m. dinner Friday evening. Following dinner we worked on the part of the retreat in which we spend focused time finding out about one another and retaking our Gregorc Style Delineator which is a self-assessment instrument for adults. Some of us are Concrete Sequential folk. Some are Concrete Random. A few are Abstract Sequential. I am Abstract Random. “The Style Delineator is a research-based self-analysis instrument. It is designed to help reveal a special set of mental qualities and mediation channels available to you for handling the immediate demands of life. The in-depth study of style can aid you to understand aspects of your Self and the environment. Serious study will reduce naiveté, increase personal responsibility for thoughts and actions, and improve your relationships.” Or at least, that’s what we all hope it will do! Mainly, it helps us understand how other members of the vestry order things and make decisions…why this person takes longer to respond than another and why we need to listen closely to the quieter folk among us.
After that was done and we did some more playful “getting to know you” activities, we stopped and visited with each other for as long as people wanted to stay up and chat.Saturday we spent the entire morning after breakfast working very hard on three areas of our common life here at the parish: 1) the plans for the north end of the property; 2) understanding and talking about how best to utilize the endowment fund of the parish; 3) resurrecting a method of communicating with and hearing from the parish at large by setting aside four (quarterly) Sundays at 9 a.m. for what we call Vestry Forums. The first two Forums will be focused on the North End of the Property (February) and the Endowment Fund (May). For your calendars, the dates for all four Vestry Forums are: February 12, May 20, August 12 and November 11. We understand these events as a chance to share and hear from members of the parish about our common life and look forward to your lively participation.
After lunch, we gathered for our first vestry meeting of 2012 and organized ourselves by electing Jerry Knight as Clerk, Denise Webb Glass as Chancellor, Paul DesRochers as Treasurer, Sam Mettauer as Assistant Treasurer and Randy Hering as Junior Warden. We also approved the Minutes with a few corrections and the reports of the Treasurer for November and December. All of those items will be posted soon on the Bulletin Board. We thank you for your prayerful support over the weekend and covet those prayers for the work before us. It is a joy to serve you as your vestry. Thanks for your trust.
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