Lost Theologian

Hello, you few and faithful followers. In my last few blog posts, I had addresses how I would begin to challenge myself to generate no food waste for the duration of my Summer semester. During the entire stint, I would record what I ate, how long it took, what went to waste (if anything) as well as notes on said waste. One issue I ran into rather quickly was "what can be considered "food waste?" After eating a banana, could the peel be considered "waste"? Or what about the packaging? Residual sauce left on the sides of bowls and pans? I found it beneficial to seek out further clarification from other measures of food waste. Feeding America  had reported that, as it pertains to food waste, 25 to 40% of food grown, processed, and transported in the United States will never be consumed. It is this same food, that when disposed of in a landfill to rot, produces large amounts of the methane gas that we find ravaging the atmosphere. This means a total of about 70 ...

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...

Tuesday, May 20th was an awesome day of hitchhiking. The day started right off the bat with a ride back towards Iowa City. It turns out that the man I had met the night before in the laundry room of the campground  worked in construction, and was currently working in Iowa City. He was one of the most generous people I would meet on the road, I only wish I had caught his name. When he began his load of laundry the night before, I had noticed that he seemed a little wary of the weary little bum setting up camp in the laundry room, but later that night he came back to get his things. When he saw me on the floor, he told me that he had something for me and went out back to his truck. He returned with a pound of smoked deer sticks and some blankets. I accepted the deer sticks, not really knowing what they were and told him that I'd be alright with just my sleeping bag. I thanked him, and we spoke for a bit before he went back to his camp site. On his way out he offered to take me to ...

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 ...

"Maybe we should just wait here."  My dad and I had just finished our small weekend hike of twenty-something miles on the Appalachian trail between West Virginia and Maryland. What we had expected to be a two day trip through about 26 miles or mountain ridge hiking ended up being a one say trip with some time to spare. So we stayed at our destination to take a break, then later doubled back some 5 miles to find a nice place to set up camp before it got dark, only to return to our destination in the morning. We stood around for some time weighing out the pros and cons of waiting. We had arranged for one of the locals nicknamed "Strings" to take us back to Harper's Ferry for a small fee. But we were way ahead of schedule, and Strings wasn't answering his phone this morning. To be honest, I was against the idea of waiting around and hoping Strings would pick up the phone, but I suppose my Dad has a lot more confidence in people named "Strings". ...