Currently I am in Pennsylvania, the where the internet connectivity is as slow as the dairy products are fabulous.

Tomorrow I will meet with the Church Committee, the Committee Who Thinks God Does Not Want Me As Methodist Clergy, the Committee of White Men.  I have copied my psychological profile, gotten a credit check and have practiced prefacing every sentence with “I feel God is calling me towards” because if I am going down, I am going down fighting, thank you very much.  If they throw me out of the ordination process, security will have to be called, and I will be dragged out singing hymns by Charles Wesley. 

Meanwhile, the Other Committee, the Committee of Smart People Who Need Women and Minorities To Be Represented Because They Couldn’t Sleep Otherwise, hath ordained news of my dissertation prospectus upon me.  The verdict is . . . “Pass with Revisions.” This is a good thing, great even, because it means that I don’t have to resubmit and now may frolic wildly in fields of Narrative Theology texts, pretending I have any idea how to compose a 200 page academic paper. 

On the other hand, it wasn’t just a “pass.” It was more of an, “Eh, okay.  We guess it’s good enough.” And they were a little fussy in their comments, I think.  Some examples of revisions I need to make (verbatim, from my Committee report):

* the preposition “into” appears as “in to” in two places
* on page 5, books are listed without authors
* on page 7, authors are listed without book titles
* on page 7, there is a superfluous apostrophe in “god’s”

Being the mature, confident academic I am, I immediately had the cerebral impulse to respond, “Oh, who used ‘into’ as ‘in to’ and put a superfluous apostrophe in god’s? Oh, that’s right, YOUR MOM!!!”

I decided instead just to start a band called the Superfluou’s apostrophe’’s.  We cover heavy metal ballads.  Our lead singer is named, of course, Ba’al.

So I’m cool.  One Committee down, one to go.  And I am content if all of these people think me “just good enough.” Because one day I will say to my detractors, “That’s the Reverend Doctor Just Good Enough to you, sir.” (Or, well, maybe, “You know who’s just good enough?  YOUR MOM!!!” But you get my point.)

And it all will have been worth it.