I really appreciate opportunities like starting a new year or beginning Lent which invite me to take a look at my life and see how I would like to live a little bit differently. Starting this new year, I have been thinking about my goals for the year ahead much as some of you may have taken on a new year’s resolution. I find that this process of coming up with goals each year helps me learn about myself and dig deeper into who I am and who I am called to be.
And so this year, I first looked at each of the areas of my life that I am accustomed to setting goals in these areas – human, spiritual, ministerial, intellectual, and communal — thanks to my time in seminary formation. I had a goal in mind for each of these areas, but then I thought: what if this year I commit to an overarching idea, something that draws a common thread through each of these goals?
Instead of having a handful of goals for my year ahead, I would instead have one overarching goal that I would try to implement in each of these areas of my life. The theme I had in mind for myself was about spending more time creating than consuming. It didn’t fit each of the areas perfectly, but it highlighted my goal to become more active in creating our local community, in creating particular experiences in ministry, and in using my free time to be creative. I thought that this unifying theme could help me interpret and move through different parts of my life in response to my goals.
But as I thought about it during my days off before the offices reopened at King’s, I realized that creating requires space. I realized that to create – to write, to think of new approaches and ideas, to notice what is lacking – I need to have space. I need space in my mind for thinking fresh thoughts. I need space in my day to allow for inspiration. I need space that isn’t filled with consuming. One of the places I find that space each year is on my annual 8-day retreat. I find the time during and after those retreats very interiorly productive for me.
And I experience that space as boredom.
Looking at the original goals I had set for myself, I realized that really committing to all of them would leave me with no space. I already have a full life. A life with almost no place for boredom. Between community, ministry commitments, my hobbies, and other parts of my life, I have no time to be bored. While my desire for the year is to spend more time creating than consuming, focusing on my goals would actual only remove the seedbed of creating – boredom.
God created out of nothing. So too, I need the space, the vacuum, out of which to create. This year, I am committing myself to making a little more space for boredom.
I’m not entirely sure what that will look like yet. There’s not a lot of space available to be carved out. Maybe it will mean sacrificing some time from my hobbies, or better learning the good of sometimes saying ‘no.’ But I hope and believe that this attempt at intentionally creating space will be more fruitful for my spiritual life, my ministry, and my brotherhood in the long term.
And so, I am making the very strange commitment to try to be a little bit more bored this year.
Br. Jimmy Henke, C.S.C.
Published January 7, 2026
Photo provided by Br. Jimmy Henke, C.S.C.
