Why read this blog?
As is often the case when people I don’t know well see me around campus and exclaim, “I read you!”, my first inclination is to ask them the above. It always surprises me, but that’s how these things go, I know. So a handful of thoughts, perhaps, as to the why …
I’m not afraid to be brutally honest about myself. Well, I am afraid. The blog helps me move into light.
I’ve committed to being exactly who God made me to be, even if at some points I’m not so thrilled by it. Even if some posts are awful or some of them are great.
I write short stories and poetry for Mondays; the midweek is a grab-bag of possibilities; and then I throw it all to links and tidbits on Fridays. Weekends I recover.
What you’ll find here is a lot of honesty. Sometimes so much so that I have to go back, edit posts, and add a tidy little disclaimer at the start. (Fortunately, that happens less now.)
It’s a blog about the struggles and the joys.
I write about art, reflect on faith, offer a rant or two, and try to use these feeble words to bring worth inklings of the One I am learning to love.
Oh, and I also write stories. And sometimes I marvel at beautiful things … and want them.
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What about me, corporeal me?
The highlights:
- I enter the University of St. Andrews (’13) this coming autumn to earn a Master of Letters in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts.
- I shall graduated from Baylor University (’12) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Great Texts of the Western Tradition with a focus in medieval theology and literature. However, my research interests are largely concerned with the dialogue between faith and art. Check out my academic page to see some of the nitty-gritty of what I’ve been up to and am doing currently.
- (I shall also earn a happenstance minor in Political Science, with a focus in foreign and domestic policy in East Asia.)
- I serve as the chief research assistant under the direction of Project Investigator Dr. Sarah-Jane Murray for the first English translation of the Ovide moralisé, a fourteenth-century Christian moralization of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities by a sizable research grant awarded Fall 2011 to Spring 2014 (All opinions on this blog are my own and do not reflect those of the NEH)
- Concurrently, I am completing a manuscript-length thesis under the direction of Dr. David Lyle Jeffrey about the importance of recovering the language and poetics of Story in the Gospels and in the Faith, with particular focus on six parables of Christ in conversation with the commentary tradition.
- I’m a weird, complicated Christian who attends two churches every Sunday: one Anglican, one Southern Baptist. Well, not quite. I would prefer Anglican. When I’m in Waco it’s Episcopal, when in Conroe it’s Anglican, and when elsewhere it depends on where the sun sits in the heavens. I’m in tensioned peace with the journey. I’m rejoicing. It’s less a journey from one thing to another, but a journey into and through.
- I know and am best friends with some of the most amazing people that God was good enough to fashion with such miraculous care. Read them here and here.
- I laugh when I’m not supposed to. A lot. Accordingly, 30 Rock is perhaps my favorite series of all time.
- I cry when no one else seems to. Less often, but still.
- I run on a diet of caffeine and God’s grace.
So stick around if you fancy, and pull up a chair at this table, see what I dribble out. I promise, in the least, to feed you. On occasion there’s a beacon of light …
