Back. Winded.

I spent yesterday and this morning in the Windy City at the interview for the nonparochial position there.

I was welcomed with grace, had some very candid and wonderful conversations with staff, had some equally wonderful and candid conversations with Search Committee and Board. Saw the facilities, saw the neighborhood (in the past pretty rough, now starting to gentrify), saw some housing options. Met some of the residents, brave struggling folks whose lives make my daily complaints seem ridiculous.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. It's a great place with a mission that is the embodiment of Matthew 25. But it's also a place that has some particular challenges, many of which are financial. It's something I believe I could do. On another level, I wonder if I am truly equal to the task.

So I'm thinking and praying and wondering and trying to get a little distance from it all to discern, while I wait to go to visit another place with entirely different responsibilities, entirely different challenges, but similar joys. At the heart of it, the work is about the joy of transformation, however you get there.

And that's true for me as well as the people I may serve.

PS Thanks to C&J, who put me up at their lovely Swedish B&B ;>D, and P&L, for whom my presence meant an early morning breakfast on a day when they didn't even have school yet, and Ash, who tolerated my sleeping on his bed. I am blessed with the best in-laws in the world.