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
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