These posts will reappear as classic posts at this site where I will share blogging with my wife Shannon and others.

Ocean air brings in scents, sounds, and sights that create memories, thoughts, and theories in my mind that reshape my soul.  Each thing we do aids in forming our inner workings, so a vacation should rejuvenate who we are, and relax our souls to create new connections.

My brain is tired right now.

How have vacations influenced your soul?

Do you need a vacation right now?

Travel Well Friends.

Playing in the sand is a lot of fun for the 6 year-old deep inside me. Building castles, moats, towers, and keeps fuels my

I find myself doing this a lot…playing in nature. The experiences are not important, its simply the will to play. it stimulates creativity. I hope you get the chance to play.

How do you play?

Do you ever play?

Travel Well Friends.

Two days into the trip, a large portion of my wife’s extended family joined us for a mother’s day celebration, so at any given time there were 20 people in this average size condo.  A bit overwhelming for a guy who goes to the beach probably every 4 years at most, mainly to escape.

Heavy laden with stress from the overwhelming number of loud people I found myself wanting to escape.  I went out onto the balcony later that night to journal, play with fire, and amateur photography.  While on the balcony I noticed a man carrying his small child out onto the beach in the night.  I can only imagine his intentions…but I assume they were of good paternal nature.  The desire to carry one’s child out into the night in the new place.  To show the child the possibilities of the ocean and the wonder of the night.

This night I found myself understanding my purpose more.

What are your experiences with vacations?

What do you take from my interpretations of the man’s actions?

Travel well friends.

Yet, on our trips to the beach we stopped at restaurants and gas stations galore in order to fill our tanks and our parents could not say no to filling our tummies. Even now, I act different on vacations. I suppose the change in attitude and atmosphere merits the change in action.

While vacations are different that pilgrimages as many writers explain, I think a change in attitude from our daily lives is still necessary. We seem so worn, so tired, so ragged from the toils of our labors. Why not…at least sometime, remember that our lives are pilgrimages, and get ice cream at the gas station. Yes…the journey is hard but little bursts of happiness along the way are what get us through it.

How do you act differently on road trips?

How would act differently if you lived all of your life as a pilgrimage?

Travel well friends.

Today is our first wedding anniversary. A year has flown by for us. I have changed jobs, gotten two dogs, worked on a large conference, and connected with a ton of new people.

With all these changes and developments, the most important change is the way my wife and I love each other. While everyone said that said that the first year is the hardest…I don’t think its been as hard as I anticipated. From the way it sounded everyone threw plates and chairs at each other as soon as the returned from their honeymoons.

Now I’m not saying we haven’t had our disagreements and arguments…it just seems less volatile than the disagreements we’ve had before. Soon after we started dating, Shannon and I had a Christian Ethics class together where we argued everything from abortion to land usage issues in Utah. So the belief systems and political standings displayed themselves and soon became much less volatile.

Our arguments now simply arise out of misunderstandings and failures to communicate, and the result of these arguments is an understanding and love that is deeper because it is a love of compromise, understanding, and the willingness to understand.

Now…most you who are married I am sure understand this and have felt this…but I’m new at this…now let let me eat my year old cake.

Travel Well Friends!

Since I finished school, I pretty much felt that I would stay in North Carolina for a few more years, getting some local church experience and writing…now…I am looking at houses, at a PhD. program locally, and would not mind staying at my local church for years.

Now…as I follow my new leading, I realize more and more my Shamrock Pilgrim faith.  Creativity, curiosity, and compassion in regards to myself allow me to revisit my plans and tweek what I am.  I know more of who I am and instead of hiding in an academic ivory tower…I want to be in the world.  While I deeply respect all those in academics and may one day become a professor, I now understand that working in the church I can use my creativity and embrace my passions.

In regards to my title and my picture I know that drinking the water of life does not simply nourish me it changes me.  Water causes metals to oxidizes…and while many say that the rust destroys the metal, I think it merely changes it…the same way fire changes wood.  If I live in the perfect ivory tower of academics I do not really know the churches I am serving.  But if I live in the real world of churches I may rust, I may corrode, but I am changed by my experiences.

Travel Well Friends.

Easter is here…finally.  Christ is risen, we are freed.  But for some reason…the sun does not shine as brightly, the flowers are not quite as pretty and the ground is wet and muddy.  Our vision is a little blurry.

Spring, following winter is a time for nature to recover from the long winter.  There is mud everywhere…and flowers blooming but often chopped to shreds by the lawnmower.

I do not intend to negate the glory Easter…we have triumphed over death, Christ lives.  Still, even though resurrection occurs…the memories of death, hurt, oppression, sin, and failure do not disappear.  We must recover from this trauma as a faith.  The sun is shining and hope is here, but yet, we have a ways to go until the harvest.

We must care for each other in this time of recovery to prevent more death and damage…we have the hope of Christ and now we must use it.  Let us feast today and be ready to til soil tomorrow.

Christ is Risen…Christ is Risen Indeed.

Your thoughts?

Feast Well Friends.

The atonement for our sins is one thing, but my dad lost his job because of the greed of others.  Jesus lost his life because of the greed of others as well.  The oppressive Pharisees and Roman dictators wanted Jesus dead because he threatened their power and way.

But still…just when spring was here! New life! Growth!  A new job, stability again.  Then a cold snap happens (it quite literally happened here yesterday), and what the light brought is lost or damaged.

So now what? Jesus is captured…Jesus is dead.  Like most “good” Christians you may want to remind me that Jesus rose again, triumphing over sin and death, showing us a new life to come.

But what good is that to the lady who came into the church today who needed clothes for her daughter?  She has her hope, but no clothes to wear.

I do not yet have an answer to this…however I do know that prior to his death Jesus took the bread and he cup, blessed it and said to those who loved him, take, eat and drink…this is my body and blood…a sign of the new covenant.  The man who is the light, gave us his body and blood, to become our body and blood…so even if the light leaves us, it still flows through us.

What are your thoughts on the death of Jesus?

What are your thoughts on the death of Jesus in a time such as this?

Travel Well in the Darkness Friends.