What Hath Hogwarts to Do With Jerusalem?

In a recent Sojourners article, Julie Clawson talks about the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) and its attempts to end injustice, beginning with making sure that Harry Potter memorabilia is fairly traded and has no connection to injustice. They are doing many other things and suppoting many other good causes, but that's the one I want to focus on.

The HPA exists because of a common felt need by its members to respond to the story of Harry Potter and the values and messages articulated by the HP series. And they feel that unfairly traded chocolate is not commensurate with the values of the Harry Potter series, and therefore should not be used to make items that will be connected to the HP franchise.

I get into all of this to say: why don't Christians feel the same way about the Jesus "franchise"? Go into a Christian bookstore and look at all of the Jesus junk that they have: "Christian" mints, spinning tops, chocolates, rubber balls, and the like, all line the shelves of Christian bookstores. First I think we need to ask ourselves: do we need this stuff? It is my suspicion that we don't. But the second thing is if we look into the manufacture of these products, are they manufactured in a manner commensurate with the values of the one whose narrative inspired us to believe? I see in the Harry Potter Alliance a friendly challenge to the Christian community: try to live for Jesus in a way that is in keeping with the way Jesus lived.

The Importance of Narrative: Then and Now

“In the future when your descendants ask their fathers, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’" Josh 4:21b-22

"I love to tell the story of unseen things above/of Jesus and his glory/ of Jesus and his love."

"Let me tell you what he has done for me."

Narrative is important to the faithful. It was for the ancient Israelites. They erected monuments to their God, as reminders of divine intervention and revelation. Narrative perpetuated their faith, as God became identified as "The Lord, the God who delivered you from Egypt." YHWH the deliverer saved the community from destruction.

Narrative has been important for Baptists. Early on, Baptists began to focus on experiences of faith. A profession of faith was accompanied by the individual's answer to the question: "What has God done for you?" This remains in the testimonies of today, as Baptists will often stand up in front of the congregation and share their story. Very few have been delivered from Egypt, but a premium is often placed on a good, dramatic story.

We need to continue to tell the story. To tell what God has done for us. Not only to share the news with the world, but to remind ourselves. Raise your Ebenezer.

There's something about Asherah?

In 1 Kings Chapter 18, we have one of the most famous stories of the Elijah narrative. It's the famous Elijah vs. the Prophets of Baal showdown of the century. Anyway, Elijah goes up to Mount Carmel to meet the prophets of Baal and Asherah (v. 19), and he competes against them to see whose God is real and/or powerful, and needless to say, YHWH beats Baal. Like pretty handily. The Baal sacrifice just won't catch fire, while YHWH's waterlogged sacrifice burns so much that it dries the trench of water around it. But the curious thing is, Asherah's prophets aren't mentioned again in the story. So the question is: What happens to them? Unfortunately, we dunno. Some people interpret this as a contest not only over the legitimacy of the two major deities, but also a contest over whose gal Asherah is. This is admittedly reading waaaaaaay too much into the text, but it is an interesting counterargument to an equal argument from silence that her prophets were killed as well.

Jonathan Edwards intrigued me this morning.

This morning I was doing a little reading from Richard J. Foster's Devotional Classics, and today's reading was Jonathan Edwards. Well, I was a little wary, especially given that my only experience with the man's work was his most famous: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But today, my reading was about the need for us to reclaim the affections in our faith. Edwards basically argues that human beings do nothing, good or bad, without their affections inspiring them to do so. A life without affection is a meaningless, inactive life. And Deuteronomy 10 reminds us that our heart is crucial to the worship of God. This presumably intellectual seminarian was floored by this concept. I feel like our world is so focused on objectivity and calculating distance that we forget the need for affection. God desires that we come with a "circumcised heart" and not just a head full of dogma and scripture. It's about heart knowledge, and heart knowledge includes our affections and our experience.

Ambition

In Judges 9, Abimilech- Gideon's son- is trying to get people to make him the king. And that seems like a good idea until his brother Jotham hears about it. Now Jotham delivers a pretty good parable about how all of the trees are too busy bearing fruit to be made king, and the thornbush is the only one that has the time.

This passage reminds us of the old truism that the best people suited for the job- be it king or president or, as Dr. Reid told us, the bishop- are the people who want it the least. There are remarkably few like Cincinattus, who gave up power after he saved the empire; like Gideon who did the same. In fact, most are like Saul or Augustus, who at least pretend to have no interest in power until they have it, and then are driven mad by the drug that it is. Power, it seems, corrupts; therefore it ought never go to those who are already corrupt. Be suspicious of those who grab for power.

Of Conformity, Holiness, and Getting What we Need

In 1 Samuel Chapter 8, the people of Israel demand a king, because "Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (v. 20, NIV).

This can be perceived as a rejection of God, or a rejection of holiness in favor of conformity, all of which make for great sermon points. But what strikes me most this Christmas season is that it follows the mentality of the claim we always make: If I can have this one thing, just this one, then I'll be happy, then I'll have enough. And we so often see this thing in the world around us; keeping up with the Joneses is a real temptation. We see a thing someone has, and we covet. Ironically, just like the Israelites with their desire for a king, we often also only see the positive aspects. And we forget that its not all roses.

My Sacrifice

In 2 Samuel 24, David is going to make a sacrifice to prevent God's judgment on the people for his sin in taking the census. A lot of people have already died in the plague, and God agrees to relent as long as David builds an altar and makes a sacrifice on a specific location. One problem: David doesn't own the land. So David's all like: "okay, Auranah, I'll buy your land and some livestock so I can burn them." And Auranah says: "here, just take this stuff, I'm all for you sacrificing to stop this terrible plague." And David shares his best piece of wisdom yet: "I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing”(2 Sam 24:24, NIV).



This gets us into an interesting point about sacrifices; in order for them to mean something, our sacrifice has to be ours. It reminds me of the story (yes, I've been in church a bit, and I've picked up some of the common illustrations, and this one holds weight) about this little boy who gets two dollars from his grandma every week before he goes to church. One is for the offering (50% TITHE!!!) and the other is for ice cream after worship. Well, one week, he's walking to church, and he drops one of his dollars, and it goes into the sewer. Naturally, the boy begins to pray: "dear God, so sorry I dropped your dollar."



Telling, isn't it? When calamity strikes and we find ourselves in financial straits, the money we've lost tends to come out of our tithe before it comes out of our personal expenses. Furthermore, the boy's gift was always a sacrifice that cost him nothing. And when his ability to meet his desires was threatened, his gift was oh-so-quick to go. I'm not against giving kids money to put into the plate on Sundays (they can be super funny to watch and it teaches about giving), I'm just saying maybe we should spend a little more time teaching about the value of sacrificial giving, and trying to make that gift mean something.



And maybe we should learn that lesson as well. Our giving should be sacrificial, and it should be representative of our willingness to do without if we're forced to make a choice. And this is one of the few occaisions where I'm going to encourage my readers to be like David. So that's a bonus.

The Loss of a Forgotten Lover

I bring our attention now to a character mentioned only twice in the Samuel narrative: Paltiel the Son of Laish. Paltiel married Michal (1 Sam 25:44) after David left her when he escaped (1 Sam 19) from Saul's wrath after his wedding to Michal. David's subsequent relations (or lack thereof) toward his wife demonstrate that theirs was, unsurprisingly, a loveless marriage; though early on in the story Michal shows deep affection for David. But when David sends for his wife (apparently to shore up his claim to the throne- he wasn't exactly lacking for wives at that moment) we see Paltiel, in misery, following his wife weeping all the way to Bahurim (2 Sam 3:15-16). In this moment, we feel for a secondary character, and we hate David. In this moment, we see that love was alive and well in Biblical Israel, and that it did not always conquer all. We mourn for and with Paltiel, even as most of his story remains untold. And without a careful reading of the text, he remains largely forgotten and unknown.
An interesting play on his name also happens in the story. When Paltiel is introduced, he as called Phalti, which according to Young's Analytical Concordance means "Jah causes to escape." This conjures up the memory that the only reason Paltiel is marrying Michal is because David escaped from Saul's assassination attempt six chapters earlier.
But in the second story, he has the name Paltiel, meaning "Jahweh delivers." This can be seen as him delivering Michal back to David, or a reminder of David's original deliverance that led to this character. But I can imagine that the character may have prayed for God's deliverance all this time. He followed his beloved wife, weeping, to a husband who despised her. This was a situation beyond his control. He could only pray for deliverance. And David took Michal, and despised her. And Paltiel was left to return home. Alone.

What really grinds my gears.

One of the things that really bothers be about 1 Samuel is that the Israelites once again show how short their memory is. Typically, this loss of memory is attributed to a generation coming along who haven't experienced God's providence in this way or that way. But in 1 Samuel 8, the people want a king. Why?

1. To be like other nations; okay, fair enough.
2. They really really wanted one, man.
3. Samuel's sons were pretty wicked.

This third reason sounds like a really good reason, until we consider that there was little or no precedent for a Judge's kids getting power after the Judge dies. Gideon resisted being made king, and his son tried to get some of his power handed down, but c'mon, we all know how that turned out (see Judges 9). And more recently, Eli's sons had been awful, and that's what led to Samuel's rise.

The lesson here is a pretty simple one: we need to remember what God has done for us, or we'll ask for things we really don't need as protection. If the Israelites had remembered that God has protected them from the sons of Eli, maybe they would have counted on God to choose the next Judge over them as well.

Beyond Criticism

A few days ago, after our class discussion of the presentations by people who are reading the commentaries, I posted on my tumblr. You can read that post by clicking the link provided. It will give meaningful context to what I am about to say.

In all of our discussion, along with some of my discussions with Dr. Reid after class the other day, I was intrigued by the way contextual readings of Scripture conflict with the ideals we purport to follow, with our critical methodologies, our "modern sensibilities," our alleged-enlightenment; all of which seek objectivity, the removal of context and cultural biases. And yet here is a group worth reading, who admit- up front- that they are reading from a context. They have biases. The liberationists even go so far as to speak of God's "preferential option" for the poor.

I think what I love about contextual reading and contextual theology is this willingness to admit that they don't read "objectively"- as if that were even possible. And so with all honesty we have to admit that we all read from our context; just as any theology is by nature contextual, so any reading of scripture is done from context. I believe that this is okay, because it recognizes the limits of criticism. We should not, and indeed cannot afford to completely dismiss critical method, however criticism's insistence on "authorial intent" and what the "original audience" would have "heard" seems to presuppose that the only meaning we can derive from the text is a meaning that has little bearing on our lives today. It means that the text has nothing to say to us today. It means the text is dead.

This is why we must take what criticism can give us, and then move beyond it.

The Power of Words

Words are powerful. Since we were kids, we have been told that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never hurt us. As we grew up, we learned that that was untrue, and words could indeed cut us deeper than the sharpest sticks, and bludgeon us worse than stones. However, the analogy carries further: words can, like sticks and stones, be used to build or destroy.

Words are formative. Words define a society. Words are necessary to communicate meaningful ideas and expectations between people. Thus, Deuteronomy begins, "these are the words..." Moses spends almost all of the book speaking, reviewing, and outlining the expectations God has for the people of Israel. As Dr. Reid mentioned in class, the words in Deuteronomy defined and effectively created the society of Israel.

This reminded me that Deuteronomy began much the same way that Genesis did: someone speaks, and things are changed forever. In Genesis, God speaks, and the experiment that is creation came into being. Words are of tremendous importance.

In the Gospel of John, the logos, or Word, puts on flesh and redefines society. More generally, all of the gospels utilize language and the teachings of Jesus Christ, framed by his messianic life, to redefine or clarify the expectations of hopes of God for his people.

There is power in words. More power than sticks and stones.

A Bridge of Biblical Proportions

In the first chapter of Deuteronomy, the LORD speaks, permitting the people to "Resume their journey" (v. 6), finally entering the promised land. This connects the book to all that is to follow. But God also reaffirms the promises he had made "to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob" (v. 8), which connects the book to all that has proceeded it. This is reflective of the dual status of Deuteronomy as the last book of the Torah/Pentateuch and the prologue to the Deuteronomic History of Josh.-2 Kings. But it can also be seen as a reinforcement of a profound theological point: this God, the same God who delivered the people of Israel from persecution and would deliver the land to them, this is the very God who made the promises of old to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. This speech is a bridge between Torah and Deuteronomic History, it is also a bridge between the God of a people and the God of a nation. It is a profound piece of salvation history.

God is on our side, but not Always...

"Do not go up, for the Lord is not with you; do not let yourselves be struck down by your enemies." Numbers 14:42

The implications of this passage for the people of Israel must have been almost palpable: God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob- the God who brought them out of Egypt, with whom they had a covenant, was not bound to protect them in their sin. They had tried God's last nerve, and he had sentenced them to forty years wandering in the wilderness. They decided they liked the previous promise of God better- you know, the one they had chickened out of seizing on?- and were going to invade the land and take it. But the time for that had passed, and Moses was warning them. Going up against the prevailing call of "God bless Israel!" Moses spoke up and said: "No, the Lord is not with you!"

This passage also has implications for any country or people that presumes to have God's blessing: there is no carte blanche. God will not back you up no matter what. God only backs you up when God wills to back you up. As Senator Carl Schurz famously said: "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." May we always have the courage of Moses and the good senator, to try to set our country right.

Memory Lane

In Numbers 14, the people finally get on God's last nerve with their complaining and their selective memories of "the good old days" back in Egypt. And like so many parents on extended road trips, God decides to turn the car around. In 14:25, God tells Moses, "Turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Re[e]d Sea." The textual notes in the NOAB suggest, and rightly so, that God is allowing them to turn back toward Egypt indeed, but I think there is more to it than that. God is taking the people back to the scene of one of the most dramatic divine acts, and reminding the people of what the Lord has done for them. Remember back to Exodus 15, and the songs they sang? I like to think that became a prototypical hymn for the people of Israel, and that they had been so inculcated with it by then that a return to the Reed Sea would shame them. They had turned against a faithful God; a God who had not held back deliverance from them.

On the Importance of Following Directions

Sometimes, we think we know what's best.

The classic example of failing to follow directions is the story of a teacher giving a test and explaining to the students that they need to read each of the fifty questions before answering any of them. Of course, most students fill in the answers or complete instructions as they go along, and get to the fiftieth question and read "don't complete any of the above, write your name and turn it in." I've never experienced this test, but I have friends who have, and they assure me it is frustrating for those who shirked the teacher's early instructions.

In Leviticus 10, not following directions has far more serious consequences for Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu. They offer unapproved incense, probably with the best of intentions, and experience- for lack of a better term- the heat of God's wrath. The two are burned up on the spot. Priests, we learn, are to follow the Lord's instructions to the letter.

This little narrative piece brought the book, which I've always considered to be a bit (a lot) dry and dense, back to life for me. When the stakes are life and death, it seams you'd better study study study. And know 'em like the back of your hand.

And you sure as heck better read ahead.

God of Process, God of Systems

I had a professor in college who was very quotable. Actually, I had a few professors in college who were very quotable. But especially this one. I still have many of his proverbs and truisms etched on the walls of my memory. One in particular came to my mind as I was reading God's promises regarding the conquest of Canaan in Ex. 23. My professor would say, "God brought about the Bible the same way he brought about the nation of Israel: through a historical process." Isn't that how God works! Our God is a God of Process. See in Ex. 23:29, "I will not drive [the "Ites" (Canaanites, etc.)] out of the land in one year, or the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply against you." God was preparing the Israelites for a long and trying campaign against the Ites. He anticipated that the people would grow weary (which they always seem to do) and was explaining why he didn't step in with one definite and dramatic miraculous action, the way he had with the red sea. If he merely wiped out the people of Canaan, the animals would overrun the land since the top of the food chain was removed.

Doesn't that remind you of Environmental Science class?

Anyway, I think this is where William P. Young is onto something in his book, The Shack. When Mack, the protagonist, confronts God about why his daughter was allowed to die, God talks about the consequences of interfering in the natural order (which God created). In the case of Israel, if God had merely wiped out the people of Canaan to make way for Israel, God would have had to interfere continually to keep animal populations down, and to keep the farmland from growing over with weeds.

This is a message we need to hear today: God works in process. We might want things to happen quicker, but God knows the best way. God is a systems theorist, understanding that within the created universe every point of intervention will result in a push back from some other part of the system. We humans are always seeking radical change. Maybe we need to step back and conquer one step at a time.

Carry Me Back to Old Virginny

A couple of days ago in class we were discussing the implications of Israel coming out of slavery in Egypt and continuing to own slaves themselves. We focused on Ex. 1:13: "The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites." We observed that in this case, the Israelites are distinguishing the distance between their slavery and Egyptian slavery: namely, that Israelites were not ruthless. The implication here is that their slavery was "better."

This reminded me about the controversy toward the end of the 1990s over the Virginia State Song.
The previous state song, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" linked above, was written by an African American, named James Bland, and describes Virginia nostalgically from the perspective of a slave who was sold to the deep south. While as a native Virginian I can sympathize and long nostalgically for "the state where I was born," I would argue that the point of where slavery is better is moot because slavery is slavery. It's bad in Alabama, it's bad in Virginia.

It's bad in Egypt, it's bad in Israel.

-Wyatt

My God and My Brother

In Genesis 32, Jacob is on his way home to meet his brother Esau, from whom he has been estranged for some time. Remember that the last time Jacob saw Esau, things were a bit tense. Jacob had received Isaac's blessing instead of his (barely) older, (perhaps) more manly brother. As most of us know, sibling reunions can be a bit rough. Especially when there's something like this in the backgound.

So anyway, Jacob decides to spend the night alone and gets an unexpected visitor (v. 24). Jacob and this mysterious man wrestle until morning, and does pretty well. He later finds out that this man was God. Jacob earns himslef a new name for all of his effort: Israel.

Well anyway, that much is familiar. But lets look into the text and see what Jacob was feeling. Shall we? Okay!

So Jacob is going home to the nemisis in all of his childhood dreams, his bully big brother. Jacob was his mamma's favorite; Esau loved to hunt and won his father's favor. Esau was the woodsman. Jacob is terrified that his brother is still holding a grudge, and that his life is on the line. Jacob is -in short- afraid to face his brother. Imagine the fear that gripped him as he got closer to home. And yet for all his fear he is able to outwrestle the divine. It was this striving with God which made Jacob able to face his fear, and face his brother.

When Jacob sees his brother, he tells him: "truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God" (Gen. 33:10). It's one of those things we read in a story and have a better idea of what Jacob means than what Esau realizes. "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God." In both situations, Jacob is thankful to be alive after his encounters. "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God." Truly, Esau, like you have no idea.


-Wyatt

Of Humans and Humus

Genesis 2:7 (NRSV) reads "the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground." Poking around, one finds that in Hebrew, the two words are "adam" for humankind (from whence we get "Adam", the first man and representative of all humanity) and "adamah" for dust. This leads to, or is representative of, a link between humanity and the soil. As the story continues, humanity's relationship with the soil intensifies as the soil becomes the object of mankind's labors and out of it come the vegetation that humans are to eat. This relationship, furthermore, like all relationships, is complicated by the Fall:

"cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:17b-19)

Notice the word choice in verse 17: "toil." The word is not work. I think humankind was intended to work and have relationship with the soil since the beginning, but in the Fall that work was corrupted to become toil and meaningless labor. Thus humankind's relationship to the soil and the earth realizes its first estrangement. Obviously one who sees their work as toil will come to resent the land, the scene of their vain efforts.

But this separation continues, as we notice throughout the Genesis account, every time "civilization" makes a progressive step "forward," relationships experience a further strain. In the Genesis 11 account of the Tower of Babel, languages are established. This can be seen as a further step of progress toward world civilization, and yet it also creates factional tensions and brokenness in relationships.

My argument here is that over time, our relationship with the land has been repeatedly estranged almost to the point of severance by the "progress" of civilization. Writer and agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry makes this point throughout his poems, essays, and novels. Berry looks at the shift of American values away from sustenance off of the land and toward "more noble pursuits" in the city, and argues that it is fundamentally backward. He also points out that whenever small farmers and their families lose land as a result of policy or economic conditions, the voice of society sees it as a liberation from toil. Unfortunately, liberation is in the eye of the beholder, and the rural poor often see it as the loss of a fundamental piece of their identity.

My point is that we as a culture have come to disdain the land and those who work on it. Even many of the so-called "environmentalists" look down on small farmers and see them as backward and part of the problem. The Genesis account, with its reminder that humanity and the soil are fundamentally linked, points to the error in the thinking of the supposedly wise in society. We cannot live without the soil. And so we must protect it from erosion, contamination, overuse, and most importantly ourselves.

Unity in the Face of Destruction

One of the things that has really begun to strike me is that, by-and-large, early Christian writings (both canonical and non-canonical) seem to focus more on ethics and the proper relationship of Christians to one another than they do on developing any comprehensive, dogmatic, specific theology. I mean obviously there's the whole Resurrection thing. Paul (1 Cor. 5:13) and Clement (1 Clement 24-27), both writing to the church at Corinth, argue for the necessity of resurrection faith. But that is sort of fundamental and you don't find many Christians who deny the resurrection outright (there are some, but they really aren't close to being mainstream. But it seems to me that other than a few major theological points where a broad consensus could be gathered, early Christian writers really focused on the "so-what" of our faith. Namely ethics ("how shall we then live?"-of course I'm borrowing Francis Schaeffer's title now) and eschatology ("what happens next?"). And even the eschatology was kind of vague; after all, it's kind of hard to describe something we have no concept of...

But anyway, back to the point. It seems that in the face of the threat of destruction, Christians were able to maintain unity by not riding their theological hobby-horses into gladiatorial battles over whose doctrine was the purest. Clement even warned the Corinthian community: "Ye are fond of contention, brethren, and full of zeal about things which do not pertain to salvation" (1 Clement 45). Oh how Clement's words speak to the church today! How we bicker and fight over our hymnology to the point that our church is split is beyond me. How we allow our petty differences over the trivialities of faith, to the point that not only will we not worship together, we don't even consider each other to be "brethren," to borrow Clement's term. I'm not arguing for a build-your-own Christianity out of some postmodern fantasy, but an approach to our faith which calls us to have, in the words of Penrose St. Amant, "an open Bible and an open mind." The open Bible will anchor us, the open mind will allow us to see the place from whence our fellow Christian comes.

Blessings and Unity,
Wyatt

Beginning Anew

Well,

This is a new blog I am creating to highlight my experiences with seminary, and help me to process and think through the knowledge I receive in this context.

As far as introductions go, I should say that I am a theology nerd and a natural pastor. I say natural because I think in metaphors, analogies, and parables. Thus, much of my communication and teaching takes the form of making connections between texts, both biblical and non-biblical.

Aside from theology, I read a lot of poetry (Walt Whitman, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Charles Bukowski, and others), Science fiction (Frank Herbert and Orson Scott Card mostly).

As far as this whole seminary thing goes, I should say this:

I have been tremendously excited to begin this adventure for the past three years. In contrast to my experience with looking for college, I knew very early in my seminary search where I wanted to go. I shouldn't hesitate to say that I felt the hand of God in this decision in a very real way, and I was also influenced by my professors and my desire to go to a school with moderate theology ((there are a lot of crazies out there-- on both sides)).

My hope is that this blog will help me tie together my learning from classes and other sources of knowledge, including, but not limited to:

The Bible- obviously needs to be the central document for anything faith-related (my apologies to anyone who thinks we need another document at the center of the Christian faith).

EthicsDaily- the Baptist Center for Ethics' news site. This site is not without its biases, but I read it to get a faith perspective I can stomach on the headlines of the day. I reccomend it to anyone who has ever asked the question, "What should Christians think/do about (insert world event or popular headline)?" Also, it provides a perspective within Christianity that largely gets overlooked in favor of the more conservative elements of the faith.

Whatever else I happen to be reading- this can kind of run the gamut from nothing at all to pretty heavy classics. Usually I'm reading three or four things at a time, from fiction to poetry to history books.

With pretty lofty goals, I realize that I may fall short of some of them, but I'll try to keep my updates frequent, or at least regular, whether I have anything profound and drawn out or not.

May the peace of Christ be with you,

Wyatt