Speeeed it up a little!

Dear People, Neighbours, and Friends of St. Thomas’s,

To paraphrase Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before a fall.” And I must confess to you that shortly after Easter, I was so proud of myself for catching up with the pile of thank-you notes I had put off writing due to Holy Week that I did something foolish.

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Before I make my confession, though, you should know the context: Heather Gibson kindly places a pre-addressed envelope in my mailbox in the workroom every time we receive a new Cornerstone Campaign gift or pledge, and I do my utmost to dash off a little something to every donor, avoiding being formulaic at all costs.

But my post-Easter pride went too far. I was feeling so good about my thank-you note prowess that I offered to take several pastoral care cards off of Fr. Micah’s monthly pile. He and I usually split those notes between us every month, which Ronwen Guest kindly prepares for us. Because Fr. Micah is still relatively new to the community, he and I sit down and go through the names and exchange what information we know about each intended recipient. And I used the Cornerstone Campaign as a convenient excuse to assign all of the pastoral care cards to him whilst I handled the steady stream of campaign thank-you notes. I rationalized this by telling him it was an excellent way for him to introduce himself to parishioners and offer to get to know them better. (And it is. I also didn’t want a huge pile of notes to tackle. What good is having an assistant if one can’t pull rank from time to time?)

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Well, the Lord was watching me, just waiting to teach me a lesson. In a fit of Easter generosity, I took seven of the thirty-odd notes off his hands and put them on my desk…where they still sit, waiting to be written.

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In the meantime, Heather has been depositing a steady stream of campaign thank-you note envelopes in my workroom mailbox, and I have faithfully deposited them on top of the pastoral care notes on my desk.

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I just counted, and there are now twenty-six of these campaign envelopes on top of those seven pastoral care cards, all awaiting my purple prose, thirty-three in all.

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What happened? Two things. In the past four weeks alone, a flurry of pastoral and liturgical and logistical matters billowed up like a sandstorm around me, taking me completely by surprise. And unlike a sandstorm, they did not gather up the envelopes on my desk and scatter them to the four corners of the earth.

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That’s no excuse, of course. But that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it. (Check out the 1990s high tech flashed at 2:20 on that link for a chuckle.)

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So, if you have made a pledge to the campaign since Easter but haven’t been properly thanked yet, blame me. I promise: You will get your card before I go on vacation on July 6th, and probably before then, because the envelopes keep coming, and I’m beginning to feel like Lucy working the conveyor belt at the chocolate factory. (Would that make Fr. Micah my Ethel? I feel like he’s much more competent at these sorts of things than I am.)

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Let’s hope the conveyor belt doesn’t speed up. But then that would mean that pledges to the Cornerstone Campaign would need to slow down, and we can’t have that. So with the factory supervisor, I say: “Speeeed it up a little!” I might not be the fastest thank-you note writer in town, but at least you may be assured every word I write is sincere and reflects my profoundest gratitude to you in your role as one of the many people working together to make the vision of accessibility at St. Thomas’s a reality.

Yours in Christ’s service,

Nathan J.A. Humphrey+

VIII Rector

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