Jealousy on Good Friday

It's Good Friday and I'm feeling a bit weary. I suppose that's the norm for religious types this time of the year as we prepare for the Big Day on Sunday while also preparing and conducting other worship services (for me: one last night and two today). I should also be thinking and reflecting about the cross and Jesus' sacrifice and what it means to me and the world (which I did do during our prayer vigil this afternoon), but right now, interestingly, I'm battling jealousy, aka that Deadly Sin, Envy.

I got back from our Maundy Thursday service last night and was doing dishes, listening to the sports radio show on WGN. The show is over at 9 p.m. and then a show called Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg is on. It's a public affairs kind of show that takes on all kinds of topics. I wasn't done with the dishes yet and was actually battling an ant problem we seem to have in our kitchen when Milt gave a preview of his show. It caught my attention: religion in the news.

For those of you who don't know, I was a burgeoning religion journalist in a former life. I was a part of a program at Northwestern U. for folks interested in this field and we got master's degrees from the Medill School of Journalism and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. I'm not sure if I was part of the very first group of people going into this, but I was probably pretty close. One of my classmates was Cathleen Falsani. We started out at Garrett together, went over to Medill together, and came back and finished at Garrett together, though by the time I came to Garrett, God was nudging me to consider another vocation, namely, the ordained ministry. Cathleen, however, has gone on to big and bright things. She's the religion writer/columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and just published a book called "The God Factor," a series of interviews with "culture shapers," celebrities in their respective fields (Bono, Hugh Hefner, Hakeem Olajuwon are just a few of the more than 25 in the book). I found out about the book because she was one of the guests on Extension 720.

I couldn't help but listen and fight all kinds of envy which, as you can tell, am still fighting. Rubbing elbows with the interesting and famous. A column in a major newspaper. A book. A book tour.

Could that have been me? I don't know. She was probably a better reporter than me so if I had stayed with this field, there's no telling where I might have ended up. But it causes me to stop and wonder nonetheless.