I finished with school this past semester, in December, a semester short of the four-year norm. In short order, I will be going up to my beloved city of Seattle to start work in the post-college world. So, what have I learned over the past semester; and from what I know about my own past, what can I know about my future?

I didn’t share this with very many people, but since the past summer I’ve been on a dating ‘freeze.’ I dated very casually (and very briefly) about ten months ago – and nothing since that. My reason was this: I needed to figure out myself and my beliefs a bit more before getting into a relationship with someone else. Otherwise, it would be grossly unfair to him. This is not so much, as my roommate criticized me for, ‘waiting to figure out the mysteries of the universe before dating,’ but rather waiting to figure out what I am comfortable with concerning the mysteries of the universe before dating. Well, maybe he was right, but only by a little bit. In any case, as a result of the past semester I’ve tentatively lifted the ban on dating. Not that I think I’ll find anyone quick: a combination of my moral and religious views makes it virtually certain that there won’t be a very long waiting list.

I don’t think I’ve solved the mysteries of the universe. I’ve ruled out several answers and several bad heuristics to solving them. I’ve discovered what my own priorities are – I am, for example, much more dedicated to truth than to my own comfort, which is an easy and trite thing to say until the truth hurts you like a knife (but that’s when it stops being trite). I’ve also learned a great deal about psychological conditioning – the hard way. The good news is that as I’ve begun to sort all this out, and become more comfortable with sorting all this out, I’ve noticed significant – though gradual – improvements to my overall health (all stress-related issues). And even though I haven’t figured out ‘the mysteries of the universe,’ I think I’ve learned a lot about the process of figuring them out, and what is and is not reasonable, and the gulf between what is reasonable and what is possible. What a wide gulf it is. The details, I suppose, my close friends know.

I’m rather startled how arrogant some believers are (Albert Mohler, or even your typical evangelical), and astonishingly even some nonbelievers (hello, Richard Dawkins). Dawkins, if you’re unfamiliar with him, is a nonbeliever and damned proud of it you ignorant swine! I’m quite happy to let pride and certainty be the territory of the flagrantly religious (not that all religious people necessarily are prideful), and wouldn’t it be nice if instead humility and openness were elevated among the irreligious? Dawkins and his ilk don’t much help with that.

A lot of atheists have given atheists a bad rap. There are some atheists who say ‘There is no god or gods’ and others who say ‘There is no reason to believe in any known human system of god or gods.’ There is a world of difference – and hubris – between statements one and two. One is stating something that can never be actually proven and is therefore unreasonable; two is stating something that can be substantiated with good reasons, and is therefore reasonable. I actually have a half-baked ‘proof’ for the intractability of position one over two in my head. If it ever gets fully baked, I’ll post it. For the reasonable form of atheist, I’d suggest someone like Guy P. Harrison over against someone like Dawkins.

Similarly, a lot of Christians have given Christianity a bad rap. There are Christians who pretend that the (unobserved, unobservable) metaphysical realm is ‘obvious’ and the literary mess of the Bible is ‘clear.’ The interesting thing to me is that those who promote a ‘clear’ way of reading the Bible are generally the furthest away from the beliefs of the early Christians. They believe in things like penal substitutionary atonement and a tortured eschatology that includes the fabrication of the Rapture. I could even go on about original sin, which I can find no trace of in the New Testament, nor in the early church until Augustine invented it. As an alternative to some of the religious crazies (and, like the irreligious, no religious person is perfect), I’d suggest James Alison (my respect for whom has only grown) or even the blogger ‘Poser or Prophet’, or better yet a short list of personal acquaintances – I know, I need more literary points of reference here.

The rest of my life is not all that interesting – although one or another thing may have been exciting to me. I have been weightlifting with a vengeance. I did not meet my goal of putting on 20 lbs by the start of January. Rather, I had to settle for 13 lbs, but that is still much more than I’ve managed in the past. I’m pretty excited about it! I’m trying to figure out what my next goal should be, as I want to push a little beyond what I’ve been able to achieve so far – I just haven’t set a time-table because I’m in that uncertain time in-between college and post-college, and continuous access to a gym is a bit hard to have when you’re trying to live in two places at once, all while getting ready for the next big thing. But step one is to bulk up, and then somewhere around step four or five is summit Mount Rainier. Then step seven or so is hike Annapurna. I’ve realized that one big life goal of mine is to become some sort of cross between Bear Grylls and Ansel Adams: I don’t want to eat all the gross stuff Bear does, but I want to get off-trail more than Adams. But you will know when I am nearing perfection, because I will look more and more like Bear Grylls and my pictures will look more and more like Ansel Adams’s.

I have thought about this blog and what I want it to be. I have some writings I still want to put up – but more prose and story than out-and-out philosophy, as it’s such a pleasanter and more engaging read. The upside of moving to Seattle is all the hiking (and I am extremely happy about this), and there certainly will be lots of pictures. I have been eying a new camera and will almost immediately in the spring start looking at what gear additions I will need. But it’s come to my attention that when writing for this blog, there are three people I typically think of – one of whom I text my entire life to on an almost daily basis (and who I had the good pleasure of recently spending the weekend with); one of whom I don’t think really reads this (probably because he has a life), but I’ll be co-habiting the Emerald City with him; and one of whom I have managed to make myself a terribly infrequent pen-pal to (I promise to resume when I have an address again). All of these people (along with other friends who are not blog readers) I talk to and share a whole hell of a lot more heart with than I would ever put up here. So what is this place, if not for those pieces that I like and would like to share beyond a circle of good friends, and for photography? So I’d expect more of that, along with the typical infrequency, going forward.

Peace out, folks.