A New BHAG

Well, it's really a new incarnation of an old BHAG. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term BHAG, it stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. It's a term often in use among a group of women I've known online for eight years.

Anyway, today I was goofing around on the computer, procrastinating beautifully and thus ignoring the dust cloth and the basket of bathroom cleaning solutions at my feet. The AOL mail page had a lovely red tab labeled "Online Degrees." Well, that's certainly something worth checking out. I followed the labyrinth of links to various universities and degrees, finding nothing to my liking whatsoever.

Then the idea popped into my head: why not check out the seminary where Johanna and my own pastor have attended? I'll bet THEY have some interesting courses available. And did I ever find one that spoke to my heart and soul! The course title is "Christian Classics," (right up my alley, to say the VERY least!) and the main textbook is the very book I'm reading a second time for Lent: Richard Foster's Devotional Classics. Now, the other two texts look extremely interesting as well: Christian History, Issue 37: "Worship in the Early Church" and 100 Christian Books That Changed the Century. I was salivating onto my beleagured laptop.

Wiping away the drool, I quickly printed a copy of the syllabus. Then I saw the date: begins April 30. Oh well, I'm arriving home from North Carolina that night, and it is a very intensive class, so it's probably beyond my strength just now. I still e-mailed Johanna immediately, and she assured me that the course was the first one she took at Bethel and it was tops. Sigh -- I wish I could enroll right this very minute, but it just doesn't seem possible at the present time.

So I'm adding taking this course to my list of BHAGs which currently include: creating an English country garden; learning to play the piano; living in Great Britain for an entire calendar year; learning to spin and weave; taking a literary tour through Boston, Concord, and Prince Edward Island; learning to sing well enough to blend into a choir; spending two weeks at a monastery in complete silence; learning Latin, and relearning German.

BHAGs keep me going when the going gets tough. When I am up to my eyeballs in home school math assignments and science experiments, when I am overwhelmed by a dirty house and impossible yard, when the kids are quarreling and being distinctly unkind to one another, and when I have no time to myself whatsoever, THEN I think of my BHAGs and think: SOME DAY. And I smile my secret smile to myself and go on to the next thing in my busy, crazy life.