that's the very rev, thank you very much

so a couple of weeks ago i was named a dean by the bishop. all very fancy. means i'm now the VERY rev. caffeinated priest. AND, for extra liturgical goodness, my cassock gets to be decked out in red piping. the deans meet with the bishop four times a year and act as a sort of liaison between the bishop and the area they serve. i'm excited. i love our bishop and getting to work a bit more closely with him is a treat. and i like the other deans. funny people. and they served us lunch from potbelly, so what more could you ask for?

but here's the story that goes with WHY i'm a dean....

last year, one of the longest members of the congregation died. she was one of, if not, the church martiarch. and so, having been there for all of 5 months, i called the former rector and invited him to come and preside over the funeral. and he did. it was a cold day and the snow was falling. as we prepared to go to the cemetery, i asked him what he wore over his cassock. and he told me that he simply wore the cassock. "my dear," he said, " a good wool cassock will keep you warm even in this weather!" "but," i protested, "my cassock IS wool." "my dear," he replied, "yours is not the true, pure wool cassock. it won't keep you warm." i was distraught. my $300 custom made almy cassock was wool. but he was right. it is lightweight and not at all warm. a good weight wool one would be...well...a lot more.

we went to the cemetery and buried this women, my knees literally knocking. he tried to get me to wear a coat, but i refused, wanting to at least give this woman the good anglo-catholic looking send off she would've wanted. and it was, i must say, a gorgeous tableu. a young and a not-so-young cleric, dressed in black, white surplice overlying, and stole rounding the outfit out, standing as snow covers the granite of the surronding tombstones. it was the movie picture of a what a funeral looks like.

but i was freezing. and so the former rector said "my dear" (yeah, he begins a lot of sentences with "my dear."), "when you become dean, i shall buy you a new cassock, a proper cassock, with red piping" (which indicates that one is a dean). i laughed and said "then i'm going to call rev. dean and ask her to resign so i can run for dean!" my knees were still knocking.

jokingly, i tell this story to the dean. her eyes light up. sparkle a bit, even. and, 11 months later, the phone call comes. i've been asked to be dean. i accept, in a sarah palin fashion of not really knowing what a dean does. thankfully, yesterday at the meeting, i got an actual job description, which has me pretty excited about the work that's coming.

and the cassock...well, i've been measured. and it's being handmade in england. pictures when it arrives (in about 9 months...).