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February: The month of rodents divining the weather and of pervasive reminders of one’s singleness.  AS IF I WASN’T AWARE!!!  Oh, February…with your semi-silent “R.”  I don’t even know how to pronounce you right…because every time I say you like you’re spelled, people look at me weird.  Goodbye, February.

March is looking more promising: leprechauns, drowning one’s shamrock, spring break, birthdays (wait…is that good?).  March is full of hope.  Spring starts, the snow melts, we’re on the downslope of the semester…with any luck, I’ll even get my life sorted out!

Sometimes life doesn’t go like I think it should.  Actually, that seems to happen most of the time.  But then I realize that I don’t even really know what I think it should go like.  And then I realize that in that case it’s probably better that it doesn’t go like the thought that I am not having…because that would lead me nowhere…like this paragraph.

Once I thought that life was easy.  Things fell into my lap.  I was good at everything I tried.  Things just plain worked out.  Then things stopped working out so easily.  Sometimes I think that means it’s all derailed…no hope…throw in the towel.  Other times, I look back at two or three or five years ago and think “Gee, I sure am better off now than I was back then…I sure am smarter and better prepared for life than I was back then…I sure am glad that things didn’t work out the way that I was hoping they would work out back then because I can see how, despite my current confusion, I’m growing and progressing toward something that I think is pretty good.”  And if I can see that trajectory from those two or three or five years ago, it gives me hope that two or three or five years from now, this period of life will seem to have had some sense to it.

Until then, I am open to any input from any of you, especially if you can help me get a satisfying job and especially if you happen to be omniscient.

Wow.  It’s the 31st.  Crazy.

It’s been another negligent blogging month.  But hey, I’ve been working hard.  Things are a little nuts up here in Alaska.  Teaching two classes from scratch has proved to be a good challenge.  I’m finally getting to the point where I have a little breathing room between my planning and my teaching.  But only a little.

In other news, it’s sunny!  I mean, there’s actually daylight!  Hours of it!  Yes, there is a drastic difference between mid-December in Alaska and end-of-January in Alaska.  I mean, it was getting light at 8:30 this morning.  And the other day, I was out skiing until almost 6pm…with no headlamp!

We could use some snow up here.  I have to say…I’m a little disappointed in Alaska.  I’m starting to believe that it doesn’t exist. I thought back in November that I was really in for it.  But things just haven’t panned out to be as intense as they initially seemed.  I mean, temperature usually sits around 20-25 during the day and then drops to around 5-10 at night.  But seriously, I thought Alaskans were supposed to be these Xtreme folks.  And the snow?  We’ve got about a foot and a half or so…Where’s the heaps and heaps and heaps of the stuff?  Fortunately it’s enough to ski on, although right now we really really need a fresh six inches or so because it’s basically like an ice rink out on the trails…and I’m only exaggerating a little bit.

But in exciting news, I signed up to do the Tour of Anchorage.  It’s a 50k ski marathon.  Should be fun.  It’s five weeks from today.  So I’m trying to get strong again.  The good news is that that’s more time than I gave myself back in September…and I have a better base now.

Well, that’s the exciting news.  Except that yesterday I came home and climbed out of my car and there was a mommy and baby moose standing in front of my door…blocking my entrance to my house.  But they moved.  So I don’t actually have an exciting story related to that occurrence.

Yes, as we have just rolled over not one but two numbers on the calendar, I thought maybe we should take a look back at the past ten years to see where we’ve gone.  I mean, a lot has happened.  Ten years ago at midnight, I was standing on the hill above Twisp waiting for the lights to go out…oh, Y2K, you really threw us for a loop.

So here’s a list of the top ten best things (or at least interesting things) that happened in the past decade:

10.  I graduated from high school!  And college!  And grad school!

9.  Ran the London Marathon and broke the 2:40 barrier (also ran three other marathons this decade…shooting for ten in the next decade!)

8.  Played with a crazy monkey while living in Ecuador for a year, working at Covenant Bible College.  Also went spelunking with a one-legged man.  Also climbed a 19k+ ft mountain: Cotopaxi.

7.  Travelled all around Europe…from Norway to Greece and everywhere in between!

6.  More and more running…running in high school, running in college, running aftercollege…lots of good times, good races, good people…in the Mountains in Winthrop, on the beach in Santa Barbara, on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, through the streets of London, through the hills of Thailand, getting chased by dogs in Ecuador, getting stress fractures in the summers…is it sad that I spend so much time at this activity?  I don’t think so.  It’s provided some pretty incredible moments.

5.  Went to Thailand for a four months and loved it…lived in a tribal village, ate great food, had crazy adventures.

4.  Spent a year in Scotland doing my masters degree.  Hung out with some great folks, explored higher theology, got started in professional coffee making.

3.  Worked on a llama ranch in Colorado for the summer after college.  Also fought forest fires for a couple of summers…hence my alter ego: Fuego.

2.  Spent a year with the Canby Community learning to live well.

1.  Learned a lot about life, about God, about people, about myself.

Goals for the next decade: 1.  Get a Ph.D., 2.  Run sub-2:30 in a marathon, 3. Spend another year living overseas, 4. Live well.

I was talking to a friend here at the Canby House (I’m still in Portland for my Christmas Break) the other day and he was commenting on how 2009 was an eventful year.  I proceeded to think to myself, “Wow.  2009 was a pretty boring year for me!”  I mean, it’s not that nothing happened, but it really was kind of just a normal year (whereas the last several have been quite eventful).  Moving to Alaska was kind of the only big momentous thing.  So here’s a list of the top ten small but meaningful things that happened to me this year.

10.  The Canby House community garden project was a success!  Though I wasn’t there to reap many of the fruits of my labor, it was a great experiment that taught me a lot and allowed for

some great time and conversations with great people and plus it felt good just to spend a lot of time outside and getting dirty.

9.  Spent a day with Cousin Shannon hiking around Multnomah Falls and having lunch at McMenamins Edgefield.

8.  I spent a lot of good time with Cousin Jesse and Now-Cousin-In-Law Jen…two people who are great and who I hadn’t seen a lot within the past decade/hadn’t really gotten to know well at all.

7.  I won a marathon.  Granted there were only about 25 people in the race.  Granted my time was twenty-seven minutes slower (that’s one minute per mile) than my previous slowest time…but I WON!

6.  I traveled into the Alaskan Bush to the village of Shaktoolik…a very eye opening experience.

5.  I took on a job that I actually enjoy!  Let’s hear it for jobs with intellectual stimulation!

4.  I got to spend several days with my whole family in the Methow back in April.  I hadn’t seen my brother Ben’s family in almost two years and it had been three years since we had all been together.

3.  East of Eden entered my list of the best books ever written.

2.  When I was driving up to Alaska with my cousin Jesse, somewhere near the Alaska/Canada border at about 3am, we pulled over to the side of the road to look at the northern lights.  It was pretty cool.  But then it got even better when meteors were shooting across them.  Spectacular.

1.  Lots of good time spent with great people doing nothing particularly special but just enjoying wonderful fellowship.  Thanks everybody!

12:13pm.  December 17.  Four days before the winter solstice.  I guess “high” is relative.

One of the interesting things about blogging is looking at the stats…how many views, which posts, which links people click on, etc.  But perhaps the most fun thing is the “search engine terms,” i.e. what did people search for on Google or Yahoo or whatever in order to find themselves at my blog.  I just took a look today and the most popular search terms by far have to do with baby seals. Apparently my theological musings are less interesting than bludgeoning cute, fuzzy animals.

1. Sunrise was at 10am this morning.  Certainly, dawn arrived much earlier, but I still tend to get this feeling that I’m in some sort of ethereal time-warp.
2. Yesterday was the winter’s first ski.  It felt good.  I’m about to head out for the winter’s second ski.
3. Healing takes time.  One of the advantages of being up here at ACC is that I get to take advantage of professional counseling from the counseling center.  So I’ve been going.  And I’ve been realizing that some scars still run pretty deep.  But I’m also starting to see that maybe the point isn’t to get rid of them but to be shaped by them.  After I got a stress fracture in college from overtraining, I had to learn how to run again, how to train again…I couldn’t go about things in the same way and expect to not get hurt again…and even now, when I start training hard, that same spot, the left tibia, sometimes acts up and I have to be careful.  Maybe emotional injuries work the same way.  Be careful, learn from it, be shaped by it, but never forget it, never act as though it isn’t still a deep part of me.
4. My application to Duke’s Ph.D. program is all submitted.  Now I get to wait around for a couple of months to see if I’m even in the running.
5. N.T. Wright is a phenomenal thinker.  I’m getting close to finishing Justification and though it’s a pretty heady book, I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to believe that maybe the message of Jesus is better than even we imagined.  I never used to like Paul much…but Wright is convincing me that I need to give him a new, better, more informed reading.
6. Somehow I’ve found myself “in charge” of organizing worship at the new The River Covenant Church plant here in Soldotna.  Challenging.
7. The semester is coming to an end.  Ethics was discussing food last week.  I ended on this topic because it ties together a lot of the other issues and shows how they are connected.  We are going to watch a documentary tomorrow, Food, Inc. I recommend that you all see it.  It will change the way that you think about what you eat and it demonstrates those connections to many other ethical issues.  Final exams next week.
8. I’m headed home in less than two weeks.  And by home I mean Portland and then Winthrop for a little while and then back to Portland to fly back here to Alaska.  Hope to see many of you then.

Well here we are…in the middle of Black Friday/Buy Nothing Day?  Are you fighting the man?  Well, in case you just couldn’t resist the low, low prices, don’t worry…I’m not judging you.  It’s about a lifestyle, not just a day.  So I continue to encourage you to join with me in the pursuit of a lifestyle of simplicity.

I wanted to follow up my last post with a few more ideas for you.  It’s easy to say “We should all give away money”…but the problem is how to do that in a constructive way.  I just wanted to highlight a few places that you could contribute:

1. I mentioned Advent Conspiracy in my last post.  Go to their website, see what they are doing in your area and get on board with it!

2. Clean Water For Haiti is an organization that my housemates in Portland and I contributed to last year.  They work on providing clean water wells to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

3. Kiva is an organization that provides micro-loans to people around the world, helping them to get on their feet and to be able to provide a living for themselves and their families.  One of the cool things is that most of the time the money is paid back as these entrepreneurs start to make money.  It goes back into your Kiva account and you can redistribute it to help out another person.  Sounds to me like a better use for my extra money than to have it sitting in a bank.

4. Finally, I’d just like to pass on an opportunity that was presented to me.  I went to Thailand for a semester during college and the program that I was part of goes back every year and revisits many of the same areas and people and villages, building ongoing relationships.  Well, as we get to know these people pretty well, Ajarn Mike (the guy who leads the trip…Ajarn is Thai for “professor”) looks for ways that we can help out with development and education among the Thai people and especially among the Hilltribes and so he will occasionally (and especially around Christmas) pass on these needs and opportunities to those of us who have participated in his program and built these relationships with the Thai people.  A couple of days ago, I received one of these emails from Ajarn Mike, outlining a couple of projects for which he is collecting donations this year:

The first is a school that will serve five Lahu and Akha villages, to be established in one of the villages that students have visited several times in recent years.  About $9000 more is needed to complete that project.

The second project is to help fund an orphanage.  It only costs about $25 dollars to feed a child for a year or about $1500 for the entire orphanage for the year (not much!).

If you would like to contribute to either of these projects, let me know and I will give you the information.  The great thing about these is that all the money is going directly to the people who need it!

I’m planning on giving away a significant chunk this year.  I don’t say that to be self-righteous, but just to let you know that I’m practicing what I’m preaching.  I have been blessed through support from many people for my time up here in Alaska and I feel that I should pass on that blessing to others.

Have a wonderful Christmas season as we reflect and stand in awe of the miracle of the incarnation of our God.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

And happy Black Friday Buy Nothing Day!

Well, we’re back to that time of year…the time when I start to feel a little bit anxious and uncomfortable and start blurting out things that are a little more barbed or more sarcastic than I intend…the time of joy and giving and celebration…and stress and over-spending and over-eating and (for some) too much family time.  Ah, the Holidays!

Last year, I perhaps crossed the line with my barbs and sarcasm.  So I am trying not to do that this year.  But as we come up on this pseudo-holiday that we call Black Friday, a day when we are encouraged to begin indulging ourselves beyond all that is reasonable, I would like to encourage us all to resist our impulses, take a deep breath, and think…

In my ethics class, I am currently talking about poverty.  On Monday, we discussed that currently, about half of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars per day.  Additionally, it so happens that in the U.S. we use approximately 30% of the world’s resources (for about 5% of the world’s population).  This seems a little bit disproportionate to me.

Last week in ethics, we talked about the environment.  Specifically, we talked about how our consumption rates are far, far above sustainable levels.  Now, sustainability is a hot word these days and it’s basically losing its meaning because it’s so overused.  But here’s the thing: we live in a world with finite resources.  Some of these resources are renewable but many are not renewable.  It’s easy to see that someday we will run out of those non-renewable ones.  But what is a little less clear is that we are using the renewable ones at rates far exceeding their ability to renew themselves.  This is especially a reality in here Alaska where many of the people live subsistence lifestyles and where their food resources are dwindling.

We’re also talking about economics.  Besides the poverty side, there is the simple fact that we as a culture are being told that our stuff is inadequate…our houses are inadequate…our lives are inadequate…we are inadequate.  And of course the only fix for these inadequacies is to buy things, to spend money on ourselves…then we’ll be happy!  Or will we…

I want to invite you all to join me in trying to see through this lie.  Join me this month in trying to live a simpler lifestyle, in celebrating Christmas as the time of the incarnation of our God who seeks restoration and justice and redemption and transformation, in reflecting upon the problems of poverty and the destruction of creation and doing something about it.

Here’s two ways to start:

1. Buy Nothing Day this Friday!:  Instead of falling into the temptation to go buy a bunch of junk on Friday, stay at home and read a book or bake some cookies or enjoy family or play some cards…just take a fast from the compulsion to buy, to want, to need, to consume.

2. Join the Advent Conspiracy: Get your church involved!  This is group trying to encourage each other to spend their Christmas money on local projects that help those in need…and also to just spend less!  Last year, my church in Portland was a part of this and a large chunk of money was donated to the city to help with projects for the homeless and for low-income neighborhoods.  Good ministry, yes?  Another thing that they focus on is clean water projects around the world.  Bad water kills about 1.8 million people every year.  And it’s such a easy and inexpensive problem to fix.  Advent Conspiracy estimates that it would take about $10 billion to fix this world problem.  How much did Americans spend on Christmas last year?   About $450 billion. That means that if we just diverted a little over two percent…2%!!!!!!…of our Christmas budget to clean water projects, we could basically solve this problem!

I don’t say all this to sound self-righteous.  As one dude once said, “I haven’t attained perfection and in fact I am the worst of sinners”…or something like that.  I’m not claiming that I spend my money well or that I don’t get caught up in consumerism.  But I am trying to see my materialistic compulsions for what they are and to do better.  I can’t solve poverty and hunger…but if I can give a cup of water or a piece of bread to “the least of these”…well, it’s something.

(This one’s for you Candice!)

Why is there a line going across the banner at the top of this site?  I don’t know.  I can’t figure out how to get rid of it.  Does anybody read .php?  Please help me.  It’s driving me nuts.