The Sublime Roundabout

This traditional Christmas Carol has got me thinking this year. My grandfather loves this one, and I have really started to think about it's message to me. This world is big. It's a scary place. People are killing each other. People are polluting the world. People are keeping other people in ignorance. And it's all so big - it happens all the time and almost constantly. Why? Why would God, our Heavenly Father, allow this kind of thing to happen? Surely it is within His power to do all things. Surely if He wanted, He could send His legions of angels who are ready to come down and thrash the earth. Then again, maybe he already has... All I really know is I struggle. I keep struggling. I will write more about struggling later. And often. It's a theme with which I have become very familiar. But I find that in the struggle I sometimes am able to win a little bit. That I am refined in the process. I am not the same man I was before - I am better, more kind, more patient, more...

I don't know why people feel obligated to write Christmas letters. We are all pretty much in touch with each other through blogs and Facebook and email anyway, right? Maybe it's just another ploy to prop up a broken postal system. Regardless of the reason, here we are. I finished my first year with the City of Mont Belvieu on October 1. Yes, I am a Texan, now. My neighbor told me that since I have been through a hurricane - the EYE, no less - I was fast-tracked in. Yee -HAW! I love Texas. It's a very much come as you are state. I really appreciate that fact. What else about me? I turned 34 on October 29. Yep. Old man territory. I am the 2 nd counselor in the ward bishopric (which still blows me away - I mean, really... ME?!?) and I really like the chance to learn from Bishop Carraway and Bro. Gage and everyone else in the bishopric and ward. We really have a great ward - one of the best I have been in. That is due in no small part to our bishop - great man that he is. I...

Do you think there's such thing as pure altruism? Has there ever been a completely selfless act? What motivates people to do the things they do? On Wednesday, I was at the post office and noticed someone had dropped a significant number of stamps. The number of stamps is germane to the question at hand, because I wonder if I would have felt as strongly about this if there were only two or three. Regardless, it was enough that I was concerned and compelled into action. I stopped and picked up the stamps. It ended up being 4 books of 20 forever stamps (see pic above). That's about $35 or so. So not an insignificant investment. So I waited in line to turn them back over to the harried and busy postal employee, thinking I was doing my part to save the world. But a couple of thoughts occurred to me that make me question my motivation for doing this act: what if no one claimed the stamps? What if they thought they were gone forever? What if the postal employee put them back into th...

I am a little concerned about my sister this morning. She underwent surgery yesterday to remove a growth from one of her kidneys. No one is 100% sure what the growth is or what it means at this point. So it's the not-knowing that is making me nervous. My sister is one of my heroes. She always has been - so talented, intelligent. She and I would talk for a long time when we were younger. She would give me advice on how to treat girls I was interested in, on how to handle our mercurial band director, and basically good advice on how to navigate teenage years in general. She was wise and she helped me become who I am. She has lead a rocky life. I will not get into all of the details of her various conditions, but suffice it to say that she has been at death's door several times and has only persisted due to our Father's blessing and her own sheer grit. She's tough as nails. She has been through the valley of the shadow of death and has come through again. I am confident sh...

I like to read. I inhale books. When I read books, I am in the story like watching a movie, but it's real in ways that no movie could ever be. I struggle with heroes across barren wastelands and heaving seas. I fight dragons and Nazis and fires. I win women and have children, earn awards and degrees. I visit different planets and worlds and eras, swimming alongside single-celled organisms and whales and icthyosaurs , flying with seed pods as they scuttle across the sky, boiling in the fiery caverns of volcanoes... I have baked pastries, escaped gangsters, fought lawsuits, travelled to the furthest reaches of Rio Negro in the Amazon, rocketed to the moon, and been present at the very beginning and end of the universe itself. I have struggled against crushing poverty and ignorance, felt the lash of the taskmaster's whip, experienced the crushing lack of humanity in a Russian GULAG camp, stoked the fires at Auschwitz. I have felt my soul expand mightily with the great philosophers...

In ancient Greece, people were given the right to participate in their government in a very direct way. They had kings, but these kings were elected. All major decisions were made by election. People would meet in the agora and discuss and debate various and sundry issues and the final resolution would be determined by the casting of stones - white if you were in favor, black if you were not. Majority rules. Now we have a representative system of government. Elected officials exercise authority and power to make decisions and legislate new laws. They are advised by professional bureaucrats (like myself) and use that advice to pass laws and approve new regulations. Thus, these elected officials become very powerful. But the great thing about the process is that those elected are ultimately responsible to their constituents. And the power may also rely in the people who show up and participate. If there is no one who participates, there may be no way for the elected to know what the min...

This is Dr. Forster. I had a beginning statistics class from Dr. Forster and he was clever, helpful, and fair. He was killed this past Friday while hiking in Zion National Park. Dr. Forster will be missed - he was a great force for good and sustainability, not only at the U but in the lives of people he taught and inspired. Life is very short. Dr. Forster I am sure could have looked forward to many more years of productive life, reaching out to people and influencing the world in positive ways. But now he is gone. And the world is a little darker today. So what? What is the purpose of a life anyway? Why are we here on this cold, impersonal world? We are here for only a few short years and then we're gone... 30,000 days... I hope that the time I am allotted is as productive and meaningful as Dr. Forster's was. He left a legacy in my life.