Beginning a New Journey

Dear Friends,

This is, as you may well notice, my first post on my new blog. For this, I simply want to introduce you to myself, ever so briefly, and what you can look forward to on this blog.

I am a twenty-five year old, Christian, husband (and someday father), student who likes to pretend to be a poet, writer, and theologian. I’ve been married to my wife for four years, and have been a disciple of Jesus for twelve. I’ve now been a student at the University of Nottingham for one academic year and am doing a PhD in theology. I like to smoke pipes, read, and write stories, as well as the occasional (typically awful) poem. I’m most interested in what it means to live a life of faithful obedience, a life of virtue, for Jesus. I’m also a bit of a self-abnegating ne0-Luddite. I love to use pens and journals, write real letters, etc., but I blog, have a Mac and an iPhone. In short, I am a contradiction, even unto myself.

On this blog you can expect to find me writing about how my doctoral thesis and other papers are going, as well as my thoughts on books and theology. Occasionally, I may even post about my anti-digital tendencies and how I think they’re useful. I don’t claim to be an expert in anything, so I welcome comments, remonstrance, and questions about anything I post.

I hope you and I can benefit from this journey together.

I leave you with a few lines on reading from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden:

‘To read well––that is, to read true books in a true spirit––is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.