Well I made it back safe from Costa Rica, and you can check out some pictures here. Not the best pictures admittedly but there they are. In truth I don’t feel like giving my usual play-by-play of an international trip, but shall instead point you to my other weblog, where I wrote about my feelings upon arrival back in the States. That entry is here. Wait…I have another weblog?? Yes, I do! I am happy to announce that the web application I have been developing for almost a year at work is finally going live (beta, of course). I think it’s pretty cool, and it has a weblog system I wrote from scratch, so I’ve been writing entries in it for a while now to test it out. My weblog is here, and you can get to the main page here: e4:online. ...

I was thinking with Pavi and Kennedy this morning about doubt. Pavi brought up the question of, what are the real foundations / reasons / motivations for doubt? The question came out of a realization we shared, which was that, as much as we interact with atheistic philosophers and scientists and hear all these reasons that God does not exist or religion is a purely social construction or whatever, we’ve never really felt convinced by these things.

I’m experiencing a general sense of depression as normal life here in the states is starting to re-encroach on my soul. Our little community/house church retreat to Costa Rica was challenging and satisfying in so many deep ways it is sad to see it end.

Well, who would have guessed! My hotel here in Costa Rica has internet access! I made it here without mishap, though one of my friend’s flights was cancelled. Just wanted to drop a line and say hello–hope you folks get along well without me while I’m gone. Doubt I’ll have internet outside of San Jose here–we’re going to some remote (and awesome) hot springs and beaches starting tomorrow. So far Costa Rica is a cool place–very Centroamericano, and the country saying is–“Pura Vida”. I love it. ...

Well, in 5 hours of packing and maybe even some sleeping, I’ll be on my way to Costa Rica for 12 days with 9 of my closest friends for a bit of a retreat. We’re not really sure what will happen, and I won’t be in phone or e-mail contact (which will be, of course, sweet). Assuming we survive and make it back OK, I’m sure I’ll be posting stories and pictures here!

Don’t ask me how, but I recently received an as-yet-unreleased album of music from a very cool Icelandic band. If you know who I am talking about, good for you, and get excited for the official release! It is definitely going to be one of the most amazing albums of the year. Anyway, I just mention it because I listened to the album nonstop on repeat yesterday (imagine that I will today as well), and it is a perfect and moving example of the glorious beauty which, for me, causes sadness and even pain. ...

I am, on a relatively frequent basis, sad. It is not typically the result of anything in particular that has happened to me or anyone I know–anything bad, that is. Nor is it (as far as I can tell) because I am depressed or anything like that. On the contrary, in my life right now there is such an undercurrent of joy (and, though not related, an absence of real hardship) that I am certainly neither unhappy (unfortunate) nor depressed. The feeling or emotion I am describing is maybe then not best named “sadness”. But in any case, I’ll say what it is like, and you can call it what you will (it just occurred to me to call it “nostalgia”, and that is a pretty good capture except for the connotation of remembering things being involved). ...

A few days ago, our community here in Palo Alto had a conference call with Millard Fuller, whom you may remember from my entry a while back on Koinonia Farms. Millard founded Habitat for Humanity after being at Koinonia, but was recently fired from the company he started for “philosophical” reasons. The way he tells it, he was trying to put more money back into housing projects, whereas the rest of the board was trying to become a Big Corporation. Anyway, the conference call was the result of some chance interactions that several in our community had with Millard (which, incidentally, were the reason I heard about Koinonia, etc…), and the purpose of it was to see if there were any good ways for us to partner with Millard’s new organization, the Fuller Center for Housing. This new company aims to help people who are “too poor” for Habitat to work with.

Google just released a special add-on for their maps service today, in honor of the anniversary of the first moon landing. I was looking at all the different landing sites, and I was surprised to see, as I looked very close, that the moon is actually made of yellow cheese! Who would have thought? Thanks, Google, for this huge contribution to modern astronomy.

Ever since I was a child, up until about the time I left for college, one of the great loves of my life was reading. I proved this love in a very obvious way: I read all the time. Whether it was in the car on the way to school, sitting in class after I’d finished my work, during lunch time, waiting after school, in between classes, on an airplane… Wherever it might be, I had my nose stuck in a book. ...