These Crack Me Up

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Seeking Tech Support

Ok blogosphere, I need your help. Google groups does not like me. I don't know what I did to offend it, but it has given me troubles in relation to two completely different groups this past week. I got one of them sorted out, but the other is a real doozy.

So, in order to facilitate and encourage participants in the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project staying in touch with each other and the project, they were put into private google groups. The original project assistant created and managed these groups. In the process of transitioning her out of this job and me into it, she added me to the groups and made me a manager. Somehow in that process, google groups also accidentally swapped my email in for hers, so I was allegedly in the group twice, as myself, and as Sally (both of us listed under my same email address). I could get into the group then, which we thought was me getting in as myself, but turns out, it must have been letting me in thinking I was Sally.

So Sally went back in and changed her email address back to what it should be, and then removed herself from the group, so now she can no longer get into it. The problem is, now neither can I. I can log in to google groups with this email, but I'm not part of the group, I can't even find the group, because it's a private one.

I have tried logging in with the password that worked when it thought I was Sally. That didn't work. I have tried changing my password to something different, thinking maybe it's still thinking I'm Sally, who's now removed from the group. That didn't work. I tried acting like I forgot my password, hoping it would try to reset for the me that's in the group. That didn't work. I tried digging out the emails telling me I'd been added to the group and clicking directly on the link to see the group - that didn't work, it tells me I have to petition the manager to be admitted. So I did that, and the email came to me! To the email address that supposedly isn't part of the group!

We've sent an email to Google, but they're not exactly quick on the tech support end of things. I'm not sure what else to do, outside of me reforming new groups with myself as the manager, and one of the professors in charge of the project (who still have access to the group but are not managers) going in to the existing groups to archive whatever info is already in there they don't want to lose.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Thanks,
C

Another Dialectic

One other thought that was different enough to deserve its own post.

So, next week begin entrance exams for the PhD students. Even though we have already been accepted to the program, we have to take these exams. I think, ultimately, it's about gauging what we know, and also about putting us back into an academic frame of mind over the summer so we can hit the ground running in September.

I have been freaking out about these exams. In part, this is because I am a perfectionist - I have to keep talking myself down, reminding myself that I don't have to ace them, just do respectably on them, and I don't have to have PhD level knowledge of this stuff yet, just an "MDiv proficiency."

I think part of my freaking out is also because the exam questions are worded in the language of the academy. And it's been six years since I've thought or spoken in that way.

I had a kind of "aha" moment (and moment of huge relief) today while studying - it's not that I don't know this stuff, because I do (well, maybe not all of it, but a pretty good chunk of it). I know it, it's just that I've spent the better part of the last five years trying to explain and translate it to people who don't have the benefit of advanced theological training, who live in a culture that is generally suspicious of the overly educated. I think over time I got to be fairly decent at that, but it was just a different way of thinking and talking about the same stuff. And now I have to switch gears and go back to thinking and talking about this stuff the way the academy wants me to.

Which, ok, fine - but part of me really wants to resist that. Because I don't want to lose what ability I do have, and in fact, I'd like to continue to develop the ability, to take what could otherwise be pretty dense, heady, mind-blowing theology and have it make sense and be relevant to the average person in the pew. And part of the whole point of this trip to PhD-land is because I feel called to help other pastors learn how to do this, and do it well. So, I'm a little afraid of getting sucked too deeply back into academia, and a little bit ponderous as to why academia thinks it needs to always talk and think like it does, anyway. It sort of reminds me of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, really, when he's like "That's great you can speak in tongues and all [or: have a huge vocabulary and all], but if nobody else can understand what the heck you're talking about, what's the point? How is that serving God or your neighbor in love?" (obviously, this is my own rough paraphrase, but you see what I'm saying?)

So, I've got a feeling that this will be an ongoing tension for me the next few years - finding the right balance between academicese and the koine English of the body of Christ. . .

The News, Officially

I came at this indirectly back in May, but here it is, officially: I am an incoming PhD candidate at Luther Seminary, in the Congregational Mission and Leadership program. To do this, I resigned my call in PA and moved back to MN. The blog has been pretty silent the past few months, both due to lack of time during the chaos of this transition, and due to a lack of desire - or sense of appropriateness - to process this transition in such a public way.

The blog will probably stay fairly silent the next month or so as well, again due to lack of time (trying to unpack, settle in, start a new job as a research assistant for the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project, and, oh yeah, study for entrance exams!), and pondering what function I want this to serve in this next chapter of my life and calling.

But for now, a few thoughts, mostly related to the swirliness of these days:

I am living in Minneapolis this time around. It is good, but it is weird to be a St. Paul girl living in Minneapolis.

For once, moving on to the next Big Thing did not involve moving to a place where I had to start completely over. I moved to a place I already knew and loved well, among many people I already know and love and am loved by in return. It is good - very good - to move back into a system of support that is already established, instead of having to build a new one. But it is also weird, in part because some of the folks here haven't necessarily been my primary support the past five years, but now will play a larger role in that way; and in part it's weird because others who have been more of my primary support have been so at a distance, and now are to be so up close and personal. That's a good thing, as I said - it just - it reminds me of something I learned in a pastoral care class long ago - that all systems (family, friends, church, etc) are kind of like a mobile. A mobile will always eventually find its sense of balance, but every time you add to or take away from it, it will be bouncing around and balance-less for a while, until it sorts itself out. I guess the weirdness I'm feeling is that bouncing around stage playing out.

Also weird: to have moved from a small town, where I was known as "Pastor Catrina" even by people I didn't particularly know or serve, to the relative anonymity of the big city, and back to the people who know me as just "Catrina." This is neither good or bad, it just is, and it's just a different way of being and moving in community than I've been used to for the past five years.

That's all on that for now.

Peace,
C