On the second to last class day of my doctoral intensive week at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in June, every student was given a blue Post-It note. The assignment was for us to list three things about ourselves without including our names, and then to stick them on a large writing pad set on an easel. The following morning, we would take turns peeling one off and trying to guess which person had written each one.
By this point in the week, I had shared conversations with classmates about a variety of interests and experiences, including Michigan (both the state and its most prominent university’s sports teams), St. Louis, tattoos, Doctor Who, Dave Matthews, the books I’ve written, my podcast, and my bivocational life in northeast Ohio.
While this was far from an exhaustive list of what makes up my life and passions, it did nevertheless make my Post-It facts more difficult to conceive. If people already knew all of that about me, what would be three more things that I would want to share?
Finally, I decided on the following:
- I went to the same high school as legendary/controversial basketball coach Bob Knight
- I enjoy pro wrestling
- I do martial arts
These things hadn’t come up on conversation over the course of the week or during the various opportunities to meet one another online in the preceding months, so I figured they’d be good enough. Nobody guessed when the time came, and I had to reveal myself.
While it wasn’t the most significant moment, it did nevertheless come at the tail end of a full week of lectures, discussions, and assignments. It also came at the tail end of, as mentioned, many hours spent getting to know one another over meals and in other small-group opportunities. And if we zoom out even more, it was more appropriately one of the final activities of a period that began back in the winter with the aforementioned online meetings, the reception of our syllabus, and the four assignments that we would need to complete before setting foot on campus, based on the seven books that we would need to read in order to write them.
When I rescheduled my two-month sabbatical, purposely having it include my on-site week at the seminary, I didn’t yet realize how much the rhythm and flow of this time would be determined by those assignments and books. I hadn’t anticipated the preparatory work, let alone its volume and scope, and once I did I decided that it would be more than enough to occupy me during what was supposed to be a few months of rest and renewal.
There was plenty of rest and renewal as well. It’s just that I had to be strategic and intentional about reading or writing at least a little every day so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed the closer those due dates became. It also made my decision to step away from blogging and podcasting seem all the smarter of a move as well.
Because of that, I regularly wondered if I might classify this time more as “study leave.” It may take more time and distance to figure that out.
Apart from my classwork, here’s a rundown of other notable things that I did:
- Wrote my sermon every Friday morning at my favorite coffeehouse, which I hadn’t visited in a long time;
- Read and enjoyed several non-school books from my reading list: Devotions by Mary Oliver, Everyone on This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson, and Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker;
- Celebrated our oldest child graduating from high school;
- Attended a talk by author/creator Austin Kleon about his new book Don’t Call It Art and got a signed copy;
- Took our annual trip to Florida to spend a week at the beach;
- Took a nap almost every day.
I truly did get the rest and renewal that I desired through these activities, so this time was far from being two straight months of reading and writing. Those things did determine some structure, but not all of it. So in that sense, whether study leave or sabbatical, I’d call this time a success.
Jeffrey A. Nelson 