That Mel Gibson's Got Passion

I recently realized that I don't really have a passion. Now don't get me wrong, I'm passionate about many things, but I just don't have a passion, something I feel completely and utterly dedicated to as a single issue. Like Bob Barker and neutering pets or Mel Gibson and Jesus (or being crazy depending on how you look at it.)

The way I arrived at this realization was that someone asked me what my passion was and I just stared goofily at them and had nothing to say. (Note: This is something that happens frequently in the ministry. People will ask you what your passion is. This usually confuses me as I thought being a minister was my passion but apparently not. I've often thought that I should develop some witty and sarcastic response such as "Saving the World" after which all other passions listed by those present will seem silly and trivial. Either that or I'll look idealistic and vague.) Anyhow, the long and the short of it is, I don't have a passion.

The tough thing is that many of the people around me have passions. For instance, my co-w0rker RM has a passion: ecology. He lives and breathes and preaches and thinks about and reads about and travels to conferences on the earth. It informs who he is and what he's doing, and it is one of the things I admire the most about him. (Though I often tease him about some of his more over-the-top ideas about how to save the environment....No, RM, we're still not going to use the wood from the old pew backs to build bookshelves and garden boxes.)

But I've realized that I'm just not that good at having passions. I am more of a passion polygamist. Or maybe we can call it serial monogamy. I like to have one thing at a time that I am worked up about and then move onto the next thing before long. At different points in my life, I have been fixated on:Water Polo
Civic Education and Political Participation among young people in the US
Kickboxing
Health Care Access in Latin America
Pi Beta Phi International Fraternity
Spanish Literature
Dave Matthews Band
The Oregon State Legislature
Evolutionary BiologyDog Agility Competition
Canning
Djembe Drumming
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Localvorism/Food Culture

Unfortunately for our small living space and limited storage capabilities, each one of these passions has come with a variety of "must-have" items that the Beloved has sometimes provided sometimes tolerated, such as about 500 books, a djembe drum, and the following "energy-saving" purchase from the Cambridge Antique mall that came during a bout of passion about eco-stewardship:

What is it, you ask? It's a hand-operated coffee-grinder from West Germany. So I can grind my own coffee without having to waste precious coal-powered electricity. It took searching about 25 antique shops to find it. Now you see.......this is the problem. This is the silliness that happens when I have a passion. (By the way, to LW and AH whose response to this was "You know you only buzz the coffee grinder for, like, 3 seconds, right?" I say: "I'm doing the best I can.")

Do you think I should leave the passion to Christ?