A Look Back: 2025

I've been thinking about my approach to the new year; I have been keeping a blog since 2008, so I also have a fairly easy way to see what I do each year.  Some years, I set intentions or adopt resolutions.  Some years I have a word/phrase.  Most years in the waning days of December, I look back.  So, for today's blog post, let's look back.

My Intentions for 2025

On January 1, 2025, I wrote a blog post where I had three specific intentions for 2025.  Up until the moment that I wrote that post, I had no plans to adopt these intentions.  Let's start with these intentions, as I look back on 2025:

--"I want to do strength training 20 days out of every month, 10 minutes over an exercise session."  Most weeks, I did a day or two of strength training, either with weights, or with the weigh of my body.  That means that most months, I did 6 days of strength training, not 20.  

--"I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems. They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished."  I did much better with this goal during the first three months of 2025.  I did end up with somewhere between 15 and 25 finished poems, which is more than I would have had without that intention.

For both of the above intentions, the good thing about those intentions is that I remembered that I had the intention, and throughout the year, the intention called me back, tugged me back to the behavior I wanted to cultivate.

--"I want to concentrate on faces (both from the front and profile) and hands, and not in isolation, but as part of the figures that I draw."  Here, too, I did much better with this intention in the first months of the year than in the last 9 months of the year.  I drew much better faces, when I was concentrating.  I still have trouble drawing hands if they're connected to the rest of the body.

Other Aspects of 2025

--I continue to enjoy teaching.  It was great to teach literature survey classes again.  I revisited some classic texts, which is always interesting, especially as I revisit them at very different times of my life.

--I finished my MDiv degree at Wesley Theological Seminary.  I find it interesting that when I thought about the high points of 2025, the teaching was what came to mind before finishing the MDiv degree.  I'm not reading too much into that.  I finished the MDiv in May and my brain tends to work back in chronology--so since I've been teaching more recently than finishing the MDiv, that's what came to mind first.  It's also because I had such a good fall semester teaching such great students and classes.

--When I went back and counted my non-drinking days, I've been very successful.  I still drink, but I did have a long stretch in the summer where I drank no alcohol.  Stay tuned for my 2026 intention in terms of health.

--I haven't read as many books this year (only 50, if my list can be believed), but at the end of the year, I've been on a reading binge, and I'm always happy to find my powers of concentration still allow me to read a book from beginning to end.

--I finished a quilt top, which I used with an old quilt that I created twenty years ago to create something new.  The old quilt had a back that was in good shape, so I quilted the new top to the old quilt and created a binding/border.  I've continued to put fabric together in ways that delight me.

--My job as a Synod Appointed Minister continues at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  They like me, and I like them, and although they've tried to find a full-time pastor, those attempts haven't led them to a viable candidate.  Periodically, I remind us all that if the congregation finds a great candidate and decides to offer them a job, I'll understand.  Similarly, we don't know what my Candidacy Committee will decide at various stages.

--In terms of candidacy, I have made some progress on the road to ordination.  I finished my MDiv which some people might think would mean I should be ordained by now.  But I went to a Methodist seminary, so that's not the way that ordination works at this point in the ELCA, the more progressive expression of Lutheran churches in the US.  Over the summer, I did the required CPE training at the Asheville VA Hospital, but I have had to wait until Spring 2026 semester to take the Lutheran Foundations course that I need.  Will I need more classes?  Will I also have to do an internship?  Stay tuned.