SACRED HEART OPPORTUNITIES AND PERSONAL FRIENDSHIPS LESSEN THE ABNORMALITY............

The weekly RCIA ministry session in the Sacred Heart Parish O'Hara Hall last night, the workshop this Saturday Rita Spillane and I will conduct together at Our Lady of Grace Parish in West Sacramento, and the personal friendship sharing and socializing Joe Gibson, Ruth Rosenberg, and the Pennington Family, continue to provide me, help me to make this abnormal, fish out of water, existence of involuntary exile, more tolerable, and less mundane, as well as lessens the increasing frustration of being disvalued and marginalized in not carrying out the active, priestly ministry I am capable of doing, even now.  Thanks to the opportunities to assist with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and other facets of ongoing Faith Formation for adults, as well as with the Sacrament of Reconciliation / Confessions, Monsignor Robert Walton and Rita Spillane have invited me to do, these long and otherwise underwhelming eight and a half months would be even more frustrating.  Building on last night's wonderful discussion on the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance / Reconciliation led by Rita; I continued today my review of the five part DVD series produced by RCL Benziger, for the 50th Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, "Faithful Revolution : Vatican II", she and I will be presenting at Sacred Heart during Lent.  Joe Gibson has justv phoned and invited me to join him in taking advantage of the stoppage in today's rain, to go down to Peet's Coffee and Tea shop, before dinner for a cuppa and a chat; a most welcome breakaway from within these walls of separation from normal activity.  To capture the spirit of the holiday season in the abnormality of being here and not in a parish, I will tune in to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on NBC TV............Fr.  Troy