Lost Theologian

Today I had a moment of nostalgia that I hadn't felt for some time. For the first time since I was a child, I suppose I'm on Summer break. For the last several years, Summer carried with it a certain nostalgic element, but one that was still different. Much like the days of my youth, Summer meant finding some body of water to float around on or swim in. Summer meant much less time spent in my home and much more time out and about. Summer meant staying up late, spontaneity, and that peculiar sense of invigoration that's found during the cool of a Summer's day. The world bursts into shades of green, and that really stirs something up inside of me. The similarities end right about there.  When I think about what my Summer's were truly like, I think about the raw potential that every day carried. By and large, each day was characterized because of a complete lack of an agenda. I never was involved in any camps, clubs, or extra-curriculars. Most days were simply ...

For the past few weeks I've been playing along with an eco-sensitive life challenge. The game is simply enough, I'm attempting to avoid wasting any food products for the Summer semester, and indeed, it will likely become a habit that would be beneficial to continue for the rest of my life. It must be noted, however, that I am in many ways setting myself up for failure. I've seen numerous listings suggesting maybe trying to do a zero-waste meal once or twice a week. However, I'm trying to make that happen for all of my meals, every week. Will I fall short of the mark? Most assuredly, I already have on a few occasions. Am I licking all of the pasta sauce out of my bowl after every meal? Certainly not, though I'm attempting to do so with all solid food material. Maybe I should take a step back.  The Genesis of this concept of a highly disciplined eco-challenge began, for me, in August of 2015. Prior to beginning my schooling at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, I had ...

Sometimes I'm amazed to log onto Blogger after months of forgetting that I own a blog to find that some how, people are tripping across this thing. But I'm glad it is happening. Although the number of my readers is nowhere near where many blog owners would ever want their count to be, this place has served as a grounds of recording adventures, contemplation, and one ancient article about a Chromebook, back when "Chromebook" wasn't a word on just about anyone's radar (that article actually vastly outperforms my other articles in hits by well over a thousand.) If I hadn't purged this blog of articles so many times, it would likely present a very unique, and somewhat embarrassing portrait of a young, Chicago born college student slowly beginning to discover himself, his interests, and his motivations. But alas, the best we might gather now is the progression from my first backpacking experience, to computer commentator, to devotional thought writer, to hitc...

My day had begun with much more luck . I had woken up under the impression that I would have to postpone the whole idea of hitchhiking. My GPS tracker wasn't cooperating, and without that, my folks would be worried sick about me while I was out. But, to my surprise, when I had checked my phone, I had found a message from my father telling me to leave without the GPS, to have fun, and to check in regularly. My sister drove me to the intersection of US rt. 45 and I-80, as she questioned what exactly I was doing and why. " Where will you sleep? ", " What if you get hurt? ", " What if you don't come back? ". All questions I had asked myself several times in the week before. I told her I would camp outdoors, and that where there is a road, there is a hospital. As for the last question, I didn't really know what to say. What if  I didn't come back? What if I became a statistic? What if I became another story on the news? These were questi...

Stranded. I knew I shouldn't have taken that last ride from Iowa 80, the world's largest truck stop. I made the terrible mistake of getting too sick of standing on-ramp way too quickly. So when my fourth and final ride of the day came around, I was eager to go wherever it was that she was going. The woman I ended up taking a ride from was going some 60 miles to Iowa City, which I figured would be populated enough to keep me going on my merry way. But in hindsight, I know now that if I had waited outside Iowa 80 until I could catch that one golden ride, I probably could have been in Oregon by now... And well, now here I am in the middle of nowhere, Oxford Iowa. Although I had ought to count my blessings, traveling 221 miles in one day, all while only spending two bucks on lunch is not too shabby for a first-time hitchhiker. Her name was Jen. She was a nurse from Iowa who lived just outside of Iowa City who decided to give me a life because I looked like her son-in-law ...

I've been reading a book lately called "The Me I Want to Be" by John Ortberg. Honestly, I'm not even sure how I came across the book. If I'm not mistaken, someone on Google Plus mentioned free books in the Google Play store, and recommended this book in particular. Free just so happens to be my favorite flavor, so how could I pass up the opportunity? Simply put, I couldn't pass it up. But I digress, in this book, Ortberg recalls a story of when his son was three years old. One particular day his son was consumed with a desire to pour his own glass of milk. Knowing full well that small child + gallon of milk = disaster, Ortberg's wife tells him "no". But the three year old persists, how could a mother deny such determination? Ortberg describes how the child's small hands clench the large gallon carton of milk, and milk comes gushing forth. By some miracle, every last drop falls into the glass. This cup is filled to the brim, but the child had...

It has been months since I was last found meticulously studying the Google Chromebook, trying to find out if it would be a sufficient computer for not only my leisurely recreational computing, but as well as capable of standing up to my collegiate workload. In my searching I had noticed how there were very few articles or blog posts that I could find from an actual college student who had been using a Chromebook in his or her college setting for some time. In fact, a good majority of the web pages I had dug up were from people like me, trying to find out if the Chromebook could support their educational needs. Ultimately I ended up going in blind, buying the Chromebook anyways, hoping that it would fare well in my collegiate environment, knowing that if need be, I could always head to the library to use one of the more traditional operating systems to get work done. Luckily, I've found over the past few weeks that the Chromebook seems to be not only satisfying my computing needs,...

It's been a long two months of almost zero contact with the outside world, but I'm finally back and ready to begin writing about my experience over the next several blog posts. As for right now, I'm going to focus in on what a solid chunk of my previous blog posts have been centered around, the backpacking trip I had gone on, and all that had transpired over those three days. Perhaps now is the time for me to reiterate that I had never done something like this before. I haven't even gone camping in a tent over night, prior to this experience. Surprisingly, despite the paradigm shift of going from  an upper middle class citizen of suburbia to becoming a tent dweller in the wilderness who made the world his bathroom, I feel as though I made the adjustment fairly well. I don't think there was a single moment where I even did so much as to think "I wish I had my laptop right now" or "I really could use my phone right now" (with the exception of k...