Some Up and Some Down on Friday

I had a good meeting with my marvelous and slightly scary thesis advisor this morning. The first five minutes, like all meetings at Big Old Seminary now, was a discussion of the state of our little world on the Holy Hill, and the angst around the restructuring. Once we got past the requisite pastoral check in ("How are you doing with all this? Do you need to talk?") we got down to the business at hand, and she very much liked what I had done thus far, so I am grateful. I was braced for some comment about how little I've actually written thus far, but there was none of that, thanks be to God. I know, however, that I've got to turn out at least fifteen pages a week for the next couple of weeks to make the deadline, and that's a scary number. I am happier now that I am out of the Matthean context stuff and into exegetical work. I can rock on that. My study carrel looks like a bookmobile projectile-vomited into it, what with the various books and journals with thousands of post-it notes and such. Remarkably, I know where everything is. Chance favors a disorganized mind?

BTW, this picture is NOT my study carrel. I have a laptop...

In the category of "God has a sense of humor", I had written to an old friend who, I was told, had a job opening. He had emailed back, saying he had already extended an offer to someone, but would be happy to talk to me about opportunities in his area. When we finally got around to talking yesterday, he said that it now seemed likely that the person to whom he had extended the offer was going to take another job, and he might be reopening the search. He, of course, saw the Holy Spirit in all this, and so do I, but until I know that a) the other person tells him the other offer is the choice and b) my friend is reopening the search and is interested in me, I'm simply going to keep on praying for patience and not assign it to anything except the world turning on its axis. It was, however, a nice counterbalance to another job for which I had applied and from which I had received a "no thanks" today. I've got a meeting with someone on Monday afternoon. We shall see where this all goes. My Diocesan Deployment Officer is away at a meeting of the Transition Ministry Network, and that may bear fruit. Oh, this is a slow and less than rewarding process - there must be a better way.

I'm getting some good work done in a number of other areas that require my attention, some of which even pay me. On the non-income side, I may actually be preaching on Easter, a prospect that scares the {insert metaphor of your choice} out of me. I'm preaching this Sunday and the sermon isn't done yet. My poor folks at Saint Middle School - they deserve better than this, but I'm too swamped to do more.

Tomorrow morning is another field work morning. I've got a couple of other hours of fieldwork this coming week (mostly evenings) - it turns out writing up the field notes is extraordinarily time-consuming. On the other hand, it is paying better than anything else I'm doing right now, and money is tight, so it seems worth the effort.

Ancora imparo.