WLSU: No Self Improvement

But the other question I get asked the most is if I will be using the time to pursue any degrees, do any professional development, or write anything to be published. It’s a good question and a reasonable one, and I’m going to tell you what I tell anyone who asks me this: I have no intention of improving myself in any way during this sabbatical.

That’s right, my goal is not to become a better person at all during those four months. No self-improvement, no self-betterment, no career building, no work on my status or reputation. Again, the question is a good one. In academic circles, sabbaticals are almost universally used for some kind of professional development. And I suppose some clergy do that too. But I am passionate in my desire not to be better.

I should probably be careful how I say that. After all, a fantastic philanthropic organization gave me considerable grant money for this sabbatical. I had to create a comprehensive and detailed proposal for my sabbatical plans. And in fact, the first time I applied, I got rejected. So obviously I didn’t just write, “I plan to do nothing. Pay me.”

The good news is that the express purpose of this particular sabbatical grant is rest and renewal. And, friends, that is exactly what I need. I’m seven and a half years into my work at Redeemer, and this week marks the 4 year anniversary of the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Like many clergy I know, the pandemic was unquestionably the worst time in my career. I am proud of the work we did as a church during that time, and also it was, for about two straight years, consistently disappointing at best and devastating at its worst. And always always depressing. In many ways I believe our church emerged from the whole ordeal stronger than we were before, but it took a chunk out of us as well.

There’s a moment in The Lord of the Rings where a character stops to consider how he feels, and then describes himself as “stretched thin – like butter scraped over too much bread.” That’s it. That’s what I feel like. It’s not quite burnout. I’m not looking out the window for something else to do. Rather, my body and spirit are tired, and have been and keep being, and I am looking for rest and renewal.

One thing I can tell you about being butter scraped over too much bread is that sometimes when everything is going well, you’re not able to feel the joy and excitement of it. You can intellectually recognize that things are great, but not have the capacity to appreciate that reality.

Another thing that happens is a bandwidth problem. During the height (or depth) of the pandemic, there was a point when both my wife and I were working from home, and all three kids were home with us. The oldest two were attending school remotely on their computers, and the youngest was too young even for school and spent a lot of time on a screen. I’m not going to bother trying to explain or defend that. Anyway, when we were all online at the same time, we would sometimes have a bandwidth issue – our internet would be overloaded and everything would slow down. Since the pandemic, I have noticed myself having bandwidth issues. My internal processing is overwhelmed and everything slows down. If you’ve been around me, maybe you’ve noticed that and maybe you haven’t. I notice it. Butter over too much bread.

I sometimes have difficulty admitting that I feel this way. First, it’s never fun to acknowledge you’re not operating at 100%. We’re programmed to think of that as weakness, and to think of weakness as bad. But also, I worry that the people in my church community – the people with whom I share much of my life – will think I’m saying I’m not happy doing the work. And I’m definitely not saying that.

There’s another reason it’s difficult to admit all this, and it’s a simple one: Who the hell am I to feel this way? I live a pretty privileged life and came out the other end of the pandemic with my life and job and health and home and family intact. A lot of people had it much worse than me, and they’re not getting a big break. They’re not getting rest and renewal. On one hand I need to rest and breathe. On the other hand so do a l lot of other people who won’t get to. I don’t really have a clever thing to say about that. I just want to acknowledge it. It’s one of the things that surrounds all this talk of sabbatical.

There is something about taking care of myself that makes me feel guilty. I imagine you know what I mean. How tempted we all are to make excuses for doing something just for us, for being kind to ourselves – to apologize for it even, or try to explain why it’s necessary – much like I’ve done here. The joke in the Midwest is that if someone compliments you on something you own – your home, your car, an article of clothing – you have to explain how you got it for a deal, how it was on sale at Target, how it was almost a fluke that you ended up with it. That’s how I can be about this time I’m taking off. I can feel apologetic.

But indeed I need some time, and I’m taking some time, and I am very much looking forward to it. I will have some time for solo travel, as well as some travel with my family. I will be taking some cooking and breadmaking classes – which sounds dangerously close to self-improvement, but I promise not to get any certificates or parlay any of it into a second career.

It's not lost on me that the very word sabbatical comes from the word sabbath. And sabbath was of course the day God commanded people to rest. That’s right, God commanded it! And on that day, the people were supposed to do nothing useful! You’ve heard of the Ten Commandments – well alongside don’t murder people and don’t steal, and don’t cheat or lie, right there was the command to rest regularly, to remember what it’s like not to be useful, not to be always improving, always moving forward, always trying to advance yourself.

Well I have to admit, I have forgotten what it’s like, and I’m ready to find out again. There will be many beautiful, meaningful, significant things that happen to me while I’m away. But one of the things to which I’m most looking forward is taking a break from trying to improve myself.

The thing God knows about sabbath is that the decision to engage in intentional rest is itself a profound transformation. The plain matter of the fact is that taking four intentional months away from the community that occupies so much of my waking life is going to do something to me. It’s going to transform me. It’s going to renew me. I don’t know exactly what that is going to look like, but I’m ready to find out.