One of the first times I got on a plane, I remember being mesmerized less by the crazy notion that I was several thousand feet above the earth and more by the notion that in a matter of hours I had gone from point A to point B and found myself plopped into an entirely […]
Category: Updates
Updates to my life, where I currently am, what I’m currently doing, and what I’m currently thinking. Sometimes, the line between “essay” and “update” is a bit blurry.
Peace Corps on Shelter Island?
At the risk of sounding like I’m boasting, I’ll avoid any overuse of the words “idyllic” or “bucolic” or “precious” to describe the little island I recently moved to on the East End of Long Island. But it’s hard not to have this strange overwhelming sense of awe when I drive around Shelter Island – […]
Cultivating Change from Then to Now
My family’s house in Jackson – the home I was raised in – sits on a wooded hill that’s made mostly out of a reddish mud-clay mixed with brown top-soil. I’ve no idea if those are the correct geological terms for what the stuff is; I just know that’s what it looks and acts like. […]
St. Simons and Seashells by the Seashore
On the coast of St. Simons Island in the Golden Isles of southern Georgia, you’ll find Spanish moss dangling off the branches of the old oak trees, dolphins and manatees gliding about in the waters as the sun rises, and a rich history tied to John and Charles Wesley, two brothers who both spent time […]
Chasing Home, or a trip to Cahokia Mounds
Just outside of St. Louis, due east of the Mississippi, if you’re willing to escape the concrete towers and smoking sewers for Illinois farmland, there’s a set of 13th century tribal mounds known as “Cahokia” on a plot of 2000 acres here. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, at one point Cahokia was the largest […]
The Curious Case of the Toilet Seat Picture Frame
A few years ago, when I was working at a church near Nashville, I took my youth group on a trip to do service work in the Appalachian Mountains at a summer camp there. It was a week filled with hack saws, lots of paint, and conversation with poor or elderly folks of the Grundy […]
Gateway to the Somewhere
Walking around St. Louis lately, I’ve noticed how the city changes for me the more I get to know it. It’s like when you walk down an unfamiliar street, and the first few times you do it, the color of the pavement blends just enough with the dull tone of the concrete buildings to almost […]
Following the Followers on a Trip Down Memory Lane, or My Week at Camp
Sometimes, I can be a really nostalgic person. I think the side of me that loves telling stories is that person. But I love remembering the past not to get stuck there but to help understand the present. Suffice to say, I spent a week last week helping out at a camp I had worked […]
A Trip through Shiloh National Military Park
I’ve taken lately to trying to carve time away from the computer as a means of retreat – a time where I can just recollect myself before I get back to everyday grunt work. A few weeks ago, that came in the form of a trip to camp. Sometimes, it’s a trip to my grandfather’s […]
A Trip to Camp, or Surveying the Remnants of Eubanks Bank
Yesterday, as I was driving to visit the church camp I used to work at, I had a moment where I decided that if there’s a hell (and if I go there), I will probably spend eternity in a continuous loop of being forced to drive Highway 641 North between the interstate and Camden on […]
