Five days. In five days, I set off for Lakewood, New York, for the first leg of my journey. I can hardly believe that the crazy fantasy of one year ago has turned into a concrete reality. In final preparation, I’m about to sell off all of my childhood belongings in a massive two-day yard sale. Hopefully I won’t have a breakdown over the Pokémon and Pogs… Continue reading
Tag Archives: faith
The Sound of Silence
“Tonight, we will be singing short musical responses, repeating them over and over. The repetition of a short phrase helps to quiet the chatter of our monkey brains so that we can go deeper into our hearts and souls. We encourage you to try the Latin texts, since the simple and clear vowels help to create beautiful and calm music, but if you want to sing the English translation, that will be just fine.”
That is the leader of the first Taizé service I have ever taken part in. Taizé (teh-ZAY) is a small ecumenical monastic order in Burgundy, France that reaches out to any Christian communities that want to provide a “less busy” worship service for Christians of a contemplative bent. Continue reading
In Defense of the Malfoys
Yes, yes, I gave in and saw the midnight showing of Harry Potter. In my defense, I had only seen three of the previous movies (none in theaters), and I was entirely peer pressured into it.
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want key plot points revealed, read this later!
I am writing because Dumbledore’s character troubles me. Continue reading
Journey to Love Hill
Today I committed murder. Mass murder – Nearly genocide, really. I’m talking about gnats. Little black carcasses strewn over the fatal terrain of my sweat-covered face, neck, and torso. Seriously, it was gross. I went for a long run in the smothering July humidity and came back with more blood on my hands than I care to think about.
It all started with a book called Born To Run that my 
friend Jeff recommended to me. Continue reading
Please Don’t Stop the Music
After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music. –Aldous Huxley
I have what some might call a “musical background.” I grew up playing piano, started playing guitar and bass sometime around middle school, and have suffered from the notion that I am a singer for quite some time now.
Because of its consistent and everlasting presence in my own life, the way I think about music has always contained spiritual undertones. It is healing, it centers me, and it provides an outlet for emotions that I honestly do not think I could express otherwise. One sexy chord pattern from John Mayer does more for my soul than a thousand kind words.
I know I’m not alone in this. Continue reading
We Are
In case it seems like my ADD has gotten me off track, I just want to – Oh, man look at that butterfly! Just kidding. I want to clarify that I am using this summer to raise the questions I hope to find some answers to over the next year of travel. It will not always seem to relate directly to the “year of exploration,” but I hope to tie it all back in over the next 12 months.
Today’s question: What does it take to be a family? It’s a valid question, and one that becomes harder to answer the more you think about it. It can be personal; it can be political; it can be spiritual. No matter how you think about it, family is a complex thing to tackle. Continue reading
Songs Without Words
If anyone could be accused of embodying the rebellious son struggling to become anything but his parents…it’s me. Try as I might, though, one legacy my mother has passed on to me is the Saturday morning thirst for public radio. Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, Car Talk, and This American Life characterized my childhood car rides, and I now find myself returning to them in my adult life (via the more generational-appropriate medium of the Podcast). As the aforementioned maternal unit said upon learning that I now know who Carl Kasell is: “Thank goodness, I have succeeded as a parent!”
While running today, I exercised this new-found hobby and flipped the iPod to one of my favorite NPR shows, On Being. The show aims to “explore meaning, faith, and ethics amidst the political, economic, cultural and technological shifts that define 21st century life.” In other words, right up my alley. Continue reading
Life Reconciling 