Recent content on Of Chaos and Order
For those curious, here’s how I answer existential questions. The Meaning of Life All that is was brought into existence and given order by God (Gen. 1:1-5), through the collaboration of the three persons of God (John 1:1-5; Gen. 1:2), and it was called “good” (Gen. 1:31). Humans were given authority as image-bearers to represent and enact God’s kingdom on the earth (Gen. 1:26-28). But a…
Our family climbed to the top of the Crazy Horse Memorial for the 40th anniversary of the Volksmarch! We’d wanted to since we first moved to the Black Hills, but this was the first year we thought the boys could finish the 10km roundtrip.
I’ve launched the professional face of my website! With the invaluable use of Codex and ChatGPT 5.5, I built it from scratch in three hours. I’ve refined the writing with ChatGPT, but the ideas originate from this site.
The decline motif has been a powerful tool in the rise of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. We observe both the insular, tribal response to globalization in the rhetoric of its leaders and the appeal to a semi-ancient state of perfection to which we must return. Fear of decline and zeal for renewal have such a grip on the imagination of Americans that most overlook the discrepancies…
Our family visited my grandparents last week. We managed the travel by splitting it into two five-hour drives with hotel pool swimming in-between. Our first full day we drove down from Meeker to Glenwood Springs and spent three hours swimming in the hot springs. The second day, after seeing how enthralled the boys were with exploring my grandparent’s 10-acre property, playing with my childhood…
We remain grateful for the Evanston Vineyard, though we live far away. Our I WILL from this sermon was to invite folks over for dinner. Dr. Josh Sermon 31-May-2026
I’ve begun two theology courses in preparation for starting a PhD cohort this fall. One is Missiological Theology (study of God’s mission), and the other is Movemental Ecclesiology (study of the church’s movement). I’d been waiting so long to start that I jumped right in, but I probably should have waited until after our Colorado trip. Between birthdays, graduations, and trip preparation there…
My involvement with AI has been exponentially growing. It’s dizzying how fast this technology is evolving. In just one week you’ve got three new things with which to experiment. While my work transforms underneath me because of AI, I’m also working out how to use it for day-to-day use. In two minutes I can get it to analyze feedback from one-hundred Westminster congregants or design a board-ready…
I’ve been fasting from caffeine and Valheim during Lent. It’s the first time I’ve ever participated in Lent. Graham was the instigator; after he learned about it, he wanted to do it. Comically, he never did settle on something. He only roped Amie and I into it! We’re breaking our fast on Saturday’s, which has made our day of rest even more special. Coffee day!!! Yesterday’s rest day we went to the…
We’ve been sick since last week (though it feels like it’s been several weeks). That’s annoying. Also, we’ve hit a big milestone–the first full read-through of The Chronicles of Narnia! We’re starting Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series next, woohoo :)
In the past week I’ve had the joy of reading the Bible with three people! First, last Saturday, Mark and I read the first half of Genesis 9. We had a fulfilling conversation about how much God loves humans and wants them to multiply. We reflected how our hearts expand to love all the children we have, and how more children means more love! Second, during the week Courtney and I read the end of…
Unless I can’t get an enrollment exemption, it’s looking likely that I’ll begin a DMM PhD program this Fall! I’m going to take a couple self-paced courses to gear up before I begin; I’m so excited! It’s a good day for a campfire!
I’ve heard from Dr. Blair about PhD next steps! He found Dr. Hutchcraft and learned what he needed about my MBA program. While I’ll need an exception to start a PhD program (no surprise), I can move to the next step: discovering if I can find a sponsor with Ephesiology. I’m stoked that the road continues!
We signed Graham for violin practice this year. He’s expected to practice for at least six minutes five nights a week. Most of those nights we endure an half-hour or more of anger and tears before we can even consider practicing. It breaks Amie’s heart, but she wisely gives Graham and I space to suffer through the feelings. For example, tonight Graham went straight to anger. He said that he hated…
I’ve been exploring what it will take to start a PhD since last Fall. Since reading Umberto Ecco’s How to Write a Thesis over five years ago, I’ve kept in the back of my mind a curiosity. In what subject would I want to add a brick to the tower of human understanding? It needs to be a subject I can research exhaustively for six plus years without giving up or losing interest.
For Matrix of Leadership time tonight, we each performed a lip sync of a favorite song. Hilarious!
Amie turned me on to the Warriors album. I’ve never watched the movie; just learning the story through Lin-Manuel Miranda, Eisa Davis, Ms. Lauryn Hill and others’ eyes has been richly rewarding. There are so many memorable moments, but one I’ve been appreciating is the reaction by the Riffs after their leader, Cyrus, is shot in the song Still Breathin’. “What do you do when they kill everything…
Our next Wii game, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, came in yesterday. The boys were so excited. They had no idea you could do more than play Wii Sports.
I’ve been so proud of Graham for persisting in his violin practice. Whether he continues after this year or not, he’s exercising the right internal locus muscles. Practicing even when it’s boring, or when mastery feels unattainable, or when you’re not ready to perform before your peers and the test is tomorrow: all of these are bring up strong emotions that he’s experiencing, processing, and…
The boys and I had President’s Day off together. We decided to take a road trip to Devil’s Tower National Monument. The trip was smooth, and it was the most perfect weather, and I’m grateful we were able to do something beyond the ordinary together.
It was in 1913 that a prominent southern educator, Thomas Pearce Bailey, took it upon himself to assemble what he called the racial creed of the South. It amounted to the central tenets of the caste system. One of the tenets was “Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest negro.”
The creation of a caste system was a process of testing the bounds of human categories and not the result of a single edict. It was a decades-long sharpening of lines whenever the colonists had a decision to make. When Africans began converting to Christianity, they posed a challenge to a religion-based hierarchy. Their efforts to claim full participation in the colonies was in direct opposition…
Somewhere in the journey [immigration], Europeans became something they had never been or needed to be before… “No one was white before he/she came to America,” James Baldwin once said. Their geographic origin was their passport to the dominant caste. “The European immigrant’s experience was decisively shaped by their entering an arena where Europeanness–that is to…
Slavery made the enslavers among the richest people in the world, granting them “the ability to turn a person into cash at the shortest possible notice.” But from the time of enslavement, southerners minimized the horrors they inflicted and to which they had grown accustomed, “No one was willing,” Baptist wrote, “to admit that they lived in an economy whose bottom…
Caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. The can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the…
Before the modern era, one of the earliest Americans to take up the idea of caste was the antebellum abolitionist and U.S. senator Charles Sumner as he fought against segregation in the North. “The separation of children in the Public Schools of Boston, on account of color or race,” he wrote, “is in the nature of Caste, and on this account is a violation of Equality.” He…
Slavery in [the United States] was not merely an unfortunate thing that happened to black people. It was an American innovation, an American institution created by and for the benefit of the elites of the dominant caste and enforced by poorer members of the dominant caste who tied their lot to the caste system rather than to their consciences. It made lords of everyone in the dominant caste, as…
I’ve been in Chicago this week at the Performance Trust Fall event. The IT department has been running a hackathon. My contribution on the team was developing a trial MCP server to integrate database access into potential LLM agents. It’s pretty cool when it works. I’ve also discovered that Anthropic, the makers of Claude, have defined a bunch of MCP servers which can be run on…
My reading for this Chicago trip has been Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents. Not only ought the subject matter be required reading for any American or American-to-be; her writing is exceptional. She addresses some of the most horrific elements of American history with candor while developing empathy for both ends of the caste system. It’s taken me a few months to…
LLM chats are replacing my web search usage. When I’m solving a software problem a succinct chat response, complete with an example custom to my situation, is exactly what I used to look for in my search queue. When I’m looking for general information, my browser (Arc) will search 10+ sites and aggregate the answers. That’s how I discovered tickets to The Sound of Music two…
Graham is loving school. So much he can’t sleep at night because he’s so excited to be at school again the next day. He’s making new friends, is over-the-moon about his new writing journal, and has begun violin lessons. Royal’s confidence at school has been growing. Like Graham before him, his 5 1/2 year old year switched something in his brain. Whereas last year he didn’t care to do lessons, now…
Graham caught an enormous rainbow trout fishing off the bridge at Paktola reservoir yesterday morning. It was beyond his fishing pole’s ability to reel in, but we drew the fish over to the bank and I was able to get it into our bucket from there. Graham and Royal are both definitively catch-and-release, so we returned it right after the photo.
Amie and I finished “Catcher in the Rye” last night. I never would have made it through to the end without Amie’s encouragement! For most of the book I thought, “wow, I guess this is a classic because it’s colloquial? Definitely not because it’s interesting!” I wouldn’t have caught the twist on the last page if Amie hadn’t pointed it out. And just like that, a terrible book becomes a…
I have big news. I’m applying for a doctoral program at Denver Seminary! To be more specific, I’ve applied for a Doctor of Ministry in New Missional Movements. I have three reasons to go this route. First, I’ve known for a few years I have the acumen and motivation for doctoral research. I’d read Umberto Eco’s seminal work on the topic, How To Write a Thesis, a few years ago and have been…
Amie and I took a blitz trip to Denver for a Regina Spektor concert. What happened in Denver far exceeds the swift turnaround, however. We visited Matthew, Michelle, Tommy, Jaq and Hezekiah. We didn’t drive back to our hotel until 0200! Besides abundant laughter and catching up, we also discovered that Matthew and Michelle are facilitating a DBS group and actively starting more. It was a surreal…
Since my last log we’ve all been to Chicago for a week and to Rimrock Family Camp. It’s not felt overly hectic, and somehow we’ve avoided obvious illness (astounding!), but full enough that I’ve only just began to look past the next three days. We have one more trip next weekend - a Regina Spektor concert - and then the summer activities are, I think, wrapped up.
While we live in the Black Hills, I can’t get enough of sights like these!
We’re in prep mode for our trip to De Smet and Sioux Falls. We still need sufficient snacks and meals for the first two days, and there’s some packing to do, but our general itinerary is set. I’m not feeling particularly eager about the trip at the moment; mostly because we’ve just begun that time of year when my allergies ambush me mercilessly.
Ours is a journey towards maturity, towards wholeness. As we become more whole our sense of identity steadies. How much anguish is caused by insecurity! Yet the anguish of insecurity prods us to seek validating relationship. Perhaps validation in relationship with humans or animals. A Christian learns to seek it in prayer to the Father. One who moves towards wholeness craves validation less and…
Graham, Royal and I visited a local bike shop to explore buying a new bike for Graham. I’d thought to just explore and purchase later, but Graham took so well to this Specialized bike that we walked away with it. I’ve been so proud of Graham’s persistence in practicing gear shifting and handlebar brakes and his generous spirit and encouragement for Royal, and proud of Royal’s lack of jealousy…
I’ve agreed to join a summer DnD campaign with my neighbor Dominic Cossi and his family! I’ve been surprised how much I’ve enjoyed thinking up a backstory for my character (modeled after an amalgamation of characters in Stormlight Archives). I’m thinking this’ll be a good outlet for my budding interest in amateur acting, he he.
I’ve been reading the Silverlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson. I’m on his latest, Wind & Truth. While working on our garden this evening while the boys were with Amie doing “quiet time” before bed, I finally put language to one of my favorite parts of Sanderson’s writing. His characters experience immense external stress and even greater internal anguish from…
Jerome Berryman illuminates the creative process in his book, “Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious Education”. There are so many parallels to a good DBS group and the creative process (see discovery stories. The Creative Process (pg. 94) Opening: the disruption of one’s circle of meaning A disruption may be caused by a hard or soft opening. A hard opening might be a…
I’ve been so intimidated at the prospect of teaching my children about Jesus and the Bible. There are so many facets to consider: age-relevant methods, following their interests, not overloading them with instruction, choosing a topic, where to learn together, etc. One of the resources I’ve borrowed from a friend (thanks Natalie!) called Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious…
My mom (or Memaw to the boys) stayed with us over Spring Break! Between my work schedule and Amie’s, my mom spent most of the first three days just with Graham and Royal. It’s hard even to remember in the whirlwind, although there was lots of laughter on the other side of my office door. Thursday we set out for the Badlands. Although it was chilly (and later snowed), we were glad that…
Royal didn’t want to leave my office, so he kept his fingers inside in protest 🙄
My mom’s visiting over the boy’s Sprung Break. She flew in Monday morning and returns to Kansas Friday afternoon. The first half of the visit is a whirlwind. I have the last two days off of work, but these first three are full days. Amie will be working Thursday, so that’s the first time that I’ll be 100% around. We’re considering a trip to the Bad Lands.
Amie’s going on a Caribbean cruise! We were hoping to set up a girl’s trip with Laura Doo this summer. They tossed ideas back-and-forth for a few weeks, narrowing down their requirements, until it became clear that three points were crucial: 1) it must be cost-effective, and 2) it must be all-inclusive, 3) it must be less than a week. Turns out there’s not much that fits all…
I’ve done something terrible today. Tragic. I accidentally deleted Graham’s most populated Minecraft world 😬. He’s probably going to kill me. So long real world…
I’ve been reading Jerome Berryman’s “Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious Education.” It was lent to me by Natalie as a resource for figuring out how to teach our boys about the Bible. I’m going to need to transfer my notes to a plant page at some point; there’s so much here to think about. My two favorite parts about this recommendation is that it…