Mid Iuly

Then came hot Iuly boyling like to fire,
That all his garments he had cast away:
Vpon a Lyon raging yet with ire
He boldly rode and made him to obay:
— Spenser

The weather has settled into a warm, wet pattern that has the grass growing like crazy and the daily coin toss of another afternoon thunderstorm. Not quite boyling like to fire but we have plenty of runway left for hot weather.

I don’t mind it too much, but now that we’ve passed the Fourth of July, all eyes reluctantly begin turning towards the return to school. My wife is itching to get back into her classroom and set some furniture up. Kids are stocking up on supplies, and we’re preparing to move on of our daughters to the northeast for graduate studies. Beyond that, deeper into the fall, one of our sons is getting married. Another is moving out to be closer to campus. Our total headcount in the household will drop pretty dramatically by year-end. As close to empty-nest as we’ll be for a while. But not too fast, my Lord, not too fast.

In other words, we’re slowly cresting the hill of the 2026 roller-coaster and are about to be full-speed ahead. I have found myself juggling three separate calendars: home, work, and parish. I can combine home and parish into a single view, but can’t include work because of security policies. It still means I have to look in two different places to account for my time, which has been short lately: our pastor has been on vacation and I’ve been filling in all over the place. I’ll be grateful for a return to the normal cadence of things.

In the meanwhile, I’m “off” from parish work today. Tomorrow I will expose The Blessed Sacrament for holy hour and follow it up with Liturgy of the Word + Communion. Several people have asked me to bless and invest them with the Brown Scapular. I wasn’t sure if I could, but apparently I can, so I’ll add that to the list for tomorrow. I’m also preaching this weekend and - mirabilis dictu - my homily is more or less done, though I’m still mulling over some of the phrases and sentences I’ll need in Spanish.

Proust has hit a pause for the moment; I haven’t had much evening time for reading since I’ve been prepping for the near-daily liturgical stuff instead. I’m still in the early section of Sodom and Gomorrah and taking tiny bites when I can. I’ve got some travel next week for work and can probably make some headway during the flights.