Today is a partial day off. I've only had a few partial days off over the past couple of weeks -- mostly because of emergency pastoral care needs. I have to be careful to take care of myself in this job that could consume every waking moment of every day. That's especially true with Lent beginning the day after tomorrow.

This morning I've been relaxed since waking to receive the gift of a new day. The coffee and homemade muffins were wonderful. I read and journaled over a chapter of a book I've been working through: Journeymen: A Spiritual Guide for Men, by Ira Kent Groff. (You know how you have a book on the shelf for months and months and even years, and for some reason you're moved to take it down and open it, and it turns out to be speaking precisely what you need to be hearing? That's what's been happening through this book over the past few weeks. Experiences like this almost makes a person believe in the activity of the Holy Spirit, huh?)

I've also done the final editing on my sermon for the Ash Wednesday worship. I need to do the commentary reading for this coming Sunday's sermon. And I need to lead the prayer study tonight. But the afternoon will be free. I'll get out on my bicycle!

What a surprising Super Bowl last night! It was surprising because it was a great game! Usually I'm disappointed with the Super Bowl. There's so much hype, for days and days -- and then what follows is just another bad football game that I turn off sometime in the third quarter. But what fun last night: a historic upset, not decided until the final seconds!

And I watched it on our new TV. It's a hand me down, actually, from Robin Hudson, our congregation's Director of Family Ministries. Robin inherited the 26 inch TV her mother used to watch, and she was going to give away her older 26 incher -- and I said, "I'll take it!" It's an upgrade over the 19 inch model we bought during the mid-1980s, and which has been the only TV in the house. We'll give that one away now.

Maybe someday I'll write a book -- on how to live in simplicity, as a Lutheran Franciscan!