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Fifteen and a half years ago, a wide-eyed, goofy fifth-grader (in conjunction with his older sister) talked his father into shelling out twenty bucks for a funny-looking and equally goofy little mutt.  Today, that still funny-looking old dog went to sleep.

I think it’s safe to claim that Bailey was mine from the start.  Yeah, it was a team effort with my sister to convince our parents that a dog would be a good addition to the family (our previous experience had yielded a giant of a beast that might have come from Greek mythology), but being a fifth-grader, I had lots of spare time with which to play with a new puppy…we both became attached.

Bailey and I (in my shaggier days) go sledding

She became my alarm clock…my mom used to bring her in and set her on my bed when she woke me up for school.  A little later, she started sleeping next to my bed, my arm dangling down to pet her in the night.  When I left for college, my parents told me that she would sit at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me to come down.  I used to say (partly joking) that I missed my dog more than I missed my mother (sorry Mom).

At fifteen and a half years, Bailey was a part of our family for more than half of my life, but even more, she was that quintessential “boyhood dog.”  She lived a good long life, filled with adventures, fetching sticks, catching frisbees, and eating dead carcasses…everything a dog could want.  I’ll miss you, Bailey.  Good dog.

Dear Loyal Readers,

I apologize for forgetting about this blog for far too long.  But never fear, I am back with a short update.

Last time I posted, I was gasping toward the finish of my first year at ACC.  Well, I made it.  And as we went through graduation weekend, reflecting back upon the school year, I made the decision to return to ACC for another year.  After months of deliberation and looking for other jobs, I finally decided that I simply didn’t feel that my time at ACC was complete.  And so I will be returning to Soldotna in August to teach Ethics (again), Biblical Interpretation, and College Survival, and also to take on the role of Campus Pastor at ACC.  This basically means that I am somewhat in charge of spiritual life on campus.  It will most definitely be a challenge and push me in some significant ways, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to continue helping to shape and mold the lives of our students.

Until August, I am down “south.”  I will be mostly in Portland for the summer, trying to raise support, doing some backpacking, seeing friends and family, and other exciting things like that.

Well, that pretty much sums up where life has been and is going for the next few months.  I will now make a promise which probably won’t be fulfilled about how I am going to be better about leaving updates and posts on this blog.  Let’s just face it…I’m a mediocre communicator.  Until next time…

Luke

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.

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!

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.

I woke up this morning to the first traces of snow that we’ve had so far.  It wasn’t much and it melted away through the day…but maybe winter actually will come someday.  It’s been a really warm and mild fall (so they tell me).  I’m hoping that we’ll hurry up and get some so I can start skiing…and playing hockey.

To start off…This is a shout out to everybody who came to cheer and give me high-fives: Erin, Carolyn, Ian, Scott and his kids, Jaber, Jaala, Justin, John and Kristin and Lydia and Justice, Sean and Shannon, and the whole crowd of students who showed up at the finish line (albeit after I had crossed the line…it’s the thought that counts)…and a GIANT shout out, thank you, and tip o’ the hat to John and Kristin for half an apple and to the nice lady who’s name I didn’t get for giving me half her granola bar!  Thanks folks!

Well, I ran the Kenai River Marathon yesterday…and I finished.  But not much more.  Ok, ok, so I actually won the race by about twenty minutes which sounds pretty amazing until you hear that I finished in about 3 hours 12 minutes and that there were about twenty people running the race…not exactly London 2008.  But I did make the front page of the Kenai Peninsula newspaper! (That headline to the left is not about me…yet…)

Yeah so anyway, it was a rather cold day…about 45 degrees for the high.  I was in long sleeves and gloves for the whole race which normally would drive me nuts, but I eventually reached some equilibrium and it worked.  I took the lead in the race at about the third step away from the starting line and after about a mile and a half I never saw anyone again.  So it was a rather lonely race…really more of just a long run.

The strange thing was that this was the first distance race I’ve been in (I mean of a significant distance) that did not have Gatorade or some sort of sugar/electrolyte replacement/energy at the aid stations.  So, after about 20 miles, my legs started to feel quite depleted and I for the first time in my life had to actually stop and walk for part of the race…I actually physically could not continue running.  Crazy.

Fortunately, John (and his family) came to my rescue.  John is my boss…the Academic Vice President at ACC and he and his family were nice enough to come out and cheer me on at about 21 miles.  So when I came stumbling past him and frantically asked if he had any food at all, he managed to produce an apple…SAVED!   It (along with the half a granola bar from the above mentioned nice lady) gave me the sugars I needed to make it the last few miles.  After a few minutes, it started to kick in and I was able to pick it up to a slightly faster than jog pace to get in to the finish line in about 3:12.

Not my fastest race ever, but it’ll do.  I’ve got 2009 under my belt.  I estimate I now have eight years left to break 2:30 before I hit my peak.  Time to start training.

Well folks.  It all begins in two days…Monday at 8:45am.  I’ve spent most of the past couple of weeks sitting in my office (That’s right.  I have an office.  I’m official.) reading books about ethics and trying to figure out how to teach such a subject.  But I think I’ve got it.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be pretty easy given my foolproof, step-by-step method:

1. Tell the students that they have to give “presentations” on ethical issues.  This basically makes them do all the work of preparing for the class.

2. Sit in the back with a notepad and occasionally jot something down (doesn’t actually have to mean anything because you never allow the student to see what it says…could just say “I’m bored.  Bored, bored, bored.”).

3. Scowl a lot as they are speaking.

4. Come up with one or two questions per person that are solely for the purpose of establishing my intellectual superiority over the students.  Good questions cite a supreme court case, refer to obscure historical events on specific dates, or talk about a country that may or may not actually exist.

5. Ta-da!  Sit back and enjoy yourself all semester long.

But seriously though, I’m pretty excited.  It took me a while, as I was starting from scratch, but I think that I’ve finally got a plan for the class that will hopefully work pretty well.  I’ve been able to construct it so that at the beginning we will be looking at what the Bible has to say about ethics, trying to get a broad theological perspective, and then using that as a basis for thinking about some ethical issues, including some that are of particular relevance today (i.e. health care, war, food, immigration, etc.).  And yes, I actually am having them doing presentations…but I’ll try not to use that as an excuse to slack off.

Yep.  I saw ‘em.  Two.  On campus.  This morning.

Next up on the Alaska wildlife checklist: walrus.