I am spending this week at the seminary in northern Illinois where I am a student. A few times a year I am required to be on campus, interacting with other students and professors.

This week's preassignments included preparing for a debate, the side given to us to research and then present to the class. I have spent hours upon hours researching this argument. We were to contact our 'opponent' weekly for updates on what resources we were using to develop our main points. My 'opponent' lives in Manhattan, KS and we have, as required, emailed back and forth. I knew I was obsessing over this assignment. An incident with my husband convinced me that this was so.

One evening last week I fell asleep with the TV on. Jim came in and turned it off, whereas I sat up and, talking in my sleep, said, "Don't turn that off, I'm watching my debate." The program running? Wrestling.

On another note entirely, today when I left to drive to the seminary from my hotel there were five inches of snow on the car, the roads and on everything else. Used to a parking in a garage, cleaning off the snow took me back to apartment living several decades ago when I couldn't afford a garage. Now I could afford and had one but it was five hours away, yet the Rav4 started right up. I love that car...and its seat warmers.

The professor for this week is very well known within academia. He is widely published and maintains an active teaching and speaking schedule. People rely on him for wisdom and rational understanding of complex leadership problems. He is brilliant. He is also humble and very soft spoken. He is also dying. For five years he has been battling cancer and may be in the final stages of the disease process. When he was first diagnosed, he was given five years, give or take. He is weak and needs rest breaks during the day.

We may be the last class who have be honor of sitting under him. He has been an icon in the Christian church arena for decades. He will be sorely missed. Having written that, I am reminded that he is scheduled to lead an all-day seminar on church leadership this summer so speaking of him in the past tense is highly speculative.

Since non of us know when we will draw our last breath but each of knows that last breath will come, it seems wise to invest our time in passionate pursuit. In the case of our professor he feels some urgency because of his disease. Yet he felt this same urgency before diagnosis when he was healthy and active. There has been little waste in his life.

Surely, the wise among us will find something to ponder here.

And that's what I think about it.