Wednesday, August 12, 2009

More Waiting

I think I wrote a post with a similar title a couple of months ago. Oh well. It seemed apropos to the moment, so I'm going with it again.

Right now feels like a period of waiting for me-for those of you who know me well, you will know that I hate waiting. I'm not usually (at least I don't think I am) overly vocal about not wanting to wait, but there it is. I don't know if impatience is the right word-it's not that I want whatever's coming to hurry up and get here, it's just that I don't like sitting around feeling that I have nothing to do.

So that's where I'm at. It's not that I don't have anything to do. The house needs organizing, I still have thank you's to write, and I want to get started on my Greek. These are important things but they're not...steady, I guess. It's hard to clean the house when my other half isn't here to help figure out where things are supposed to go. Thank you's don't take forever (although it seems like it sometimes) and the Greek will be a steady discipline, but that's admittedly hard to get into when there's no other steady routine in my life.

I think part of it is also that I don't really know what to expect as of September 1. To be honest, I really really want to be going back to school. That's where I feel called to be; but I know something good will come of this year (and hopefully it's only a year!) off. I've started making some inquiries about PhD stuff so I can get that underway.

But back to September 1st...the rector is out of town for another week at the very least. I'll hopefully start moving into my office next week, but I don't know who to contact to get started with Christian Ed and youth stuff or what to expect even. I'm basically taking over this entire Christian Ed set up and getting a youth group really underway (they've had something but I'm not sure how steady it's been) and I don't know how many kids they have or what the commitment level is like. I've started looking at some Sunday School and youth group ideas, but without any familiarity with this place I have NO IDEA if any of it is going to work. It's not exactly anxiety producing, it's just more of a WTF? reaction. I think I've got two weeks once I start to get everything organized for the big program kickoff on September 15.

I think what's hardest about this particular situation is that I can't sit around and start planning in my head what I'm going to do. And in case you hadn't figured it out already, I'm a planner at heart. I like to have some idea of a trajectory in mind whenever I start out on something. This helps me keep big pictures in my view while at the same time allows me to deal with the details. Without a big picture, though, I'm having a hard time with details.

Oh well. I'm sure it will all work out in some way or another. I have, like I said, been looking at youth stuff. J2A is my first inclination, although I'm told that this parish isn't very excited about prepackaged things (which is odd as the Sunday School is a prepackaged thing and has been hugely successful). I may still push for it though; I never went through J2A but it's been successful at every parish I've seen, so it has potential. Slightly different but yet equally exciting, though, is a program through the United Methodist Church called "Synago" (Greek for "coming together"). It's a small group set-up that is led by the students with adult "encouragers" or something of that sort to kind of guide but not really lead. I think this has some really great potential and would be interested in exploring it more. If anyone out there has done Synago or knows someone who has, let me know!

That's about all for me. I'm going to go read now.

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