A slave to free time

Well, let me be the first of the four bloggers to wish you all a happy 2007. Not to mention a very belated "Merry Christmas."

Although I can't speak for the other "Life at Luther" contributors, I'll explain for you why it has taken so long for me to finally post a new entry. I chalk it up to too much free time. That's right, too much free time.

As Sarah detailed in her last entry, there was a time, right up until around Dec. 21, that most Luther Seminary students were frantically writing final papers and studying for final exams. That was my excuse for a while. But after I turned in my last paper and at last had my freedom — the freedom, which I had awaited with so much longing, to focus on Christmas and relaxation rather than the seemingly insurmountable barrage of course work — I became wholly unproductive.

Let me first say that Christmas 2006 was one of the best Christmases I've ever had. The freedom from course work, not to mention freedom from the real-world work to which I became accustomed in the last few Christmas seasons while working as a newspaper reporter, gave me a great opportunity to focus more than ever on my family and enjoy our celebration of Christmas together. (I'm enjoying that while I can, considering that in a few years, I'll have to lead worship services every Christmas.) I got some really great gifts, including a new computer from my folks (a combination birthday/Christmas/schooling gift) and a fantastic toy diorama of the hatch from my favorite TV show, "Lost" (that's the thing I'm holding in the goofy photo above — I really felt like this entry needed a picture, and the word "LOST" next to my head seems to fit the theme, if nothing else). That gift was from my wife, whose biggest gift from me this year was a Build-A-Bear Hello Kitty dressed in a Milwaukee Brewers uniform, combining two of her favorite things (we're really a mature couple, don't you think?). After we returned to Minnesota, my folks visited for a couple days, as did some friends from the Milwaukee area for New Year's.

But aside from the well-worthwhile celebration, I feel like I've been pretty useless since the semester ended. All this free time has allowed me to succumb to selfishness. I dove into seminary and my pursuit of ordained ministry largely as a means to better help people, and along with that, whittle away at the selfishness that plagues me as a typical human being. And in my first semester, through my studies and dealings with my contextual leadership church, I had been doing pretty well with that. In general, when I'm busy, I have less time to think about myself and can focus on what's best for the world and what God wants me to do. But once I finally cleared all the final-paper hurdles, I really fell back a notch.

Not only have I slipped with my focus on God and my general religious sharpness (I accidentally referred to the Episcopalians as the Presbyterians in a conversation on New Year's Day), but I've also overcompensated for all the work I was doing at the end of the semester by letting fun and my own obsessions get in the way of important stuff. The worst point was when I forgot to arrange for someone else to pick up an elderly woman whom I give a ride to church on alternating Sundays — I determined not to go to church this week since our friends were visiting, and I guess I was just so focused on silly problems with my new computer that I forgot to arrange a ride for her with someone else. When I finally realized my mistake and called her to apologize, she was very forgiving, but the fact that she had been standing at the door waiting to no avail on Sunday morning really stung me.

And then there's the blog. I guess that was the point of this little guilt session. The blog was one of my only obligations in the past couple weeks, and one simple entry just suddenly seemed so arduous that I kept putting it off.

At any rate, I can say with a strange sense of happiness that my free time will be minimized in the next couple weeks. Starting tomorrow, I'm taking part in Luther's cross-cultural experience focusing on the Hmong community here in St. Paul. That should help me keep my mind set on things more important and more fulfilling than my personal enjoyment. And it should be all the more reason for a more timely blog — maybe even with a more relevant photo.