When I stood in the CTS Commons in Chicago in my rented robe with three burgundy stripes on each shoulder and received my doctoral hood and diploma, I was a few weeks shy of my 25th birthday. I was proud of my academic achievements. I was proud of the single paper I had written that was published in a scholarly journal, and the poem I had written that was translated into several different languages, including braille. I was proud of my doctoral paper and defense before three of the seminary’s most learned and strident professors.

On that day, I didn’t realize how much I had yet to learn.

Through the grace of God and a beginner’s luck, I shared a call to two small-town congregations in Southwestern North Dakota with my wife, Susan. After a break and an opportunity to travel, we began our work in a place where people were not judged by their academic CVs or the references in their professional profiles. It was a place where I did not need titles, including the newly earned Dr. in front of my name. It was a place where my years of working as a deliverer of farm equipment and a summer farm laborer counted as much as my academic credentials. The two congregations gave me the gift of honest, supportive people who were gentle as they began to teach me much-needed lessons in humility.

Sometimes, now that I am older and retired, I tell people that I reached the height of my intellectual power at the age of 25. I was really smart at that age, and I knew I was smart. From there, it has been a continual downhill slide to where I am now. I can still occasionally form a coherent sentence, and with the help of my wife, I can usually recall a person’s name, just not when I need it. That usually gains me a laugh, partly because both my listener and I know that while there may be some truth in my words, it isn’t entirely true.

A mentor had warned me that I lacked experience when he advised me to seek placement in the pastoral ministry for a few years before returning to my intended goal of health care ministry. He was right, but I didn’t realize then that gaining 3 or 4 years of experience would take me 44 years. I didn’t know how much I would fall in love with pastoral ministry. I didn’t realize that my vocation did not lie in health care ministry, nor administrative ministry, but in the parish where I participated in baptisms and weddings and funerals, visited people in homes and care centers, planned and led worship every week, taught classes for people of all ages, administered a small institution with a small budget, occasionally supervised other staff members, and relished the varied tasks of my job. I didn’t realize that the title “Pastor” would become more valuable and meaningful to me than “Doctor” or “Reverend.”

I hope that over the years, I have gained more than experience. I hope that I have also gained a modicum of wisdom. Sometimes, when I remember to hold my tongue and keep silent while listening, I am at least on the edge of wisdom. Sometimes, I have learned the lessons of humility that faithful congregations have taught me over the years.

And yet, here I am, writing another entry into my journal and preparing to upload it to my website. For someone who aspires to be humble, it approaches the height of hubris to assume that I might be capable of writing words that others would want to read daily. I remember struggling with sermons and finding just the right words for the occasion. I still try to be careful with my choice of words, but I have since realized that I have delivered a lot of sermons filled with words that were not memorable.

I write a lot of words. It is presumptuous to assume that the ones I publish online are worth reading. To be sure, some of them are. But I am also sure that many of them are not. It is essential that I continually remind myself that the reason I write is because I need to write, not because my readers need me to write. There are plenty of other words, and many of them are more important than the ones in my journal. The day will come when it will not make sense to maintain my website, and when that day occurs, the archive of my journal will only exist on my computer and its backup drives. One of those backups is Internet-based, so each day’s journal exists in two online places. Both of those places are maintained because fees are paid to use them. When the costs are no longer paid, the files will be overwritten, and space will be made for new files.

If humans fail to respond to the climate crisis and continue our patterns of overconsumption, we may create conditions that lead to human extinction on this planet. If that were to occur, our words would come to naught. With that knowledge in mind, I remind myself that I do not write to create a legacy or to be remembered. Again, I write because I need to write. Writing is how I teach myself to write. Writing is how I process the experiences of my life.

I do not judge whether my words express wisdom. Unlike the degrees I earned, I do not have a certificate of wisdom to display on my study wall. If there were such a certificate, it would be of no use. Whether or not I think I have wisdom doesn’t matter. Wisdom has value only when shared.

I may not yet have learned the lessons in humility I desire. I may not have gained sufficient wisdom to discern my level of humility. I may never know my levels of humility or wisdom. Fortunately, I can leave those judgments to others.