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Transitions

Our lives are filled with light — a thousand points of light, to borrow the line. Each point represents something good and positive that’s unique to us: family members, friends, pets, special occurrences, traditions, treasured memories. The lights that shine upon us define us. They nourish our souls as the sun to a leaf and dispel the darkness that occasionally clouds our hearts and minds. No…

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Ho! Ho! Ho! &c.

Merry Christmas! Apparently I owe you distinguished readers an update covering the last six months. A lot has happened, so pray thee cinch thy pantaloons and let’s get jiggy with it, or something. We’ll proceed in chronological order. Summer of, Uh, Stuff Holy Moses, the summer of ’23 was something else. As spring gave way to summer, I expected a relatively sedate mid-year that didn’t pick up…

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Anniversaries

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Annual Birthday Reflection, Part XLVI

Annual Birthday Reflection, Part XLVI

By the time I posted this, I had clicked over the commemoration of yet one more successful orbit ’round this pale blue marble. And in the six months since my last posting, much has happened and much has been learned. Thus I offer my usual annual birthday reflection, all ~3800 words of it this year. (Buckle up and grab a cup of coffee; you’ll be here a hot second.) My big take-away: Time is short.…

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A Covid-ing We Will Go

Several close friends have asked me a handful of questions about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the Covid-19 disease. So I’m sweeping around with another post, focused mostly on the pandemic and wrapping up with miscellaneous personal updates, current as of April 19, 2020.

Sections in this post include:

The Problem of Relevant Knowledge

The Political Response to the Coronavirus Crisis

Re-Opening the…

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Bonaire: A Deep Dive

Bonaire: A Deep Dive

I spent last week in sunny Bonaire, an island of the Caribbean Netherlands about 50 miles off the coast of Venezuela. This trip offered a series of fun firsts for me:

First actual passport stamps

First time I’ve ever passed through U.S. Customs with literally no-fuss/no-muss efficiency

First visit to the Caribbean Sea

First visit to (geologic) South America

First visit to (political) Europe

I…

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2019: A Year of Investment and Divestment

2019: A Year of Investment and Divestment

As themes go, 2019 presented a big one: Purposeful investment in new things and thoughtful divestment of old things. We’ll explore that idea in more detail after a quick wrap-up of the year gone by.

2019 in Review

January started on the right foot — literally and metaphorically — with a brisk hike with the FBET team at Yankee Springs on the morning of New Year’s Day, followed a few days later by…

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A Thought About the Decline of Religious Participation

A Thought About the Decline of Religious Participation

In a story released two months ago, the Pew Research Center noted an acceleration in the trendof Americans declining to participate in any form of religion. Since 2009, the percent of people identifying as Protestant declined from 51 percent to 43 percent of the population, while Catholics declined from 23 percent to 20 percent. The “nones” — atheists, agnostics and the indifferent — rose from 17…

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Sabbath

Yesterday was intertesting.

After many months of thinking about it, and now that my “de-cluttering of the calendar” has opened the door to it, I took my first official, honest-to-goodness, no-compromises Sabbath day yesterday in the first time in — well, more than a decade.

Here’s what I did:

Woke up around 8 a.m., made coffee, attended to the cats.

Recited Lauds I from the Breviarium Romanum,…

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A Descent into Silence

A Descent into Silence

Today marks the first day of October. Superficially, nothing’s significant about today. Climatologically, October ranks sixth in terms of overall warmth in West Michigan, barely edging its closest rival, April. The decline of high temperatures, which peak mid-July, accelerates. Already, signs of the color turn dot the trees. A few days ago, a cool spell—daily highs dipped into the mid-to-upper…

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A Grand Excursion

Had a great opportunity today to take some mental-health time with my friend Scott. He and I kayaked 15 miles on the Grand River. We put in at Veteran’s Boat Launch in Grandville and pulled out at Eastmanville Bayou. Basically, almost half-way between Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan.

Perfect day for it. No bugs, nice temps, and not many others on the river. The water is very high and muddy given…

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Mister Personality

Applied metrology, when directed at human behavior, offers an endless fount of insight. I recently took the Understanding Myself personality test — a well-validated, methodologically rigorous instrument that offers 10 clusters of 10 questions and then generates a report about how one ranks on the Big Five Aspects of personality.

I reviewed my report. Then I said to myself, “Self, this is…

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Birthday Reflection, Part XLIII

A week ago today, I inaugurated my 43rd spin ’round the sun as a tiny fleshy dot upon this big blue marble. Using a process I call “math,” I discovered that such a number is smack-dab between the ages of 18 and 68. Which means I’m at the midpoint between the transition into adulthood from childhood, and the transition from adulthood into that second childhood known as retirement.

Well, then.

Casu…

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2018: A Most Extraordinary Year

2018: A Most Extraordinary Year

As we prepare to kiss A.D. MMXVIII goodbye, I am astonished at where I am today versus the last time I wrote my annual end-of-year reflection. Without a doubt, three major life lessons loomed large.

Resiliency illuminates the upside of any major change. Much of what transpired in 2018 could be perceived as being risky or harmful or scary — indeed, on more than one occasion, friends and family…

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Las Vegas Trip Report

Las Vegas Trip Report

The period between returning from Quebec and hoofin’ it to The Happiest Place on Earth™ stretched three long weeks—and by long, I mean “lots to do.” Holy moly. You’d think that not having a corporate 9-to-5 day job would free up copious amounts of time, but I learned that (a) accumulated catch-up takes a long time to process when the list is as long as an elephant’s trunk, and (b) that I need to

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Author Updates: "Christ's Body, Christ's Wounds" & Division by Zero

I’m pleased to share, on this lovely Thanksgiving day, a pair of personal literary updates worth celebrating. First, I received the soft proofs of Christ’s Body, Christ’s Wounds: Staying Catholic When You’ve Been Hurt in the Church. This volume, edited by Eve Tushnet and with a forward by Elizabeth Scalia, consists of 12 essays (plus and foreword and an introduction) by contributors solicited by…

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Bidding a (Fond) Farewell to July 2017

July is about to bow its sayonara. Interesting month. Got a lot accomplished. Moving into August on an upbeat note. Let me talk a bit about photography, then I’ll segue into professional and then personal updates. Photography I perambulated yesterday around Kent Trails, near Millennium Park, along a 4.1-mile loop. I brought my trusty Nikon D3100 camera (I know, I know—antique body at this point)…