graduation...

is less than 3 weeks away! I can hardly believe it... :-)

A challenge to Americans...

I would like to challenge every American who reads this blog, and encourage you to spread the challenge to everyone you know, to do the following:

Take your "tax rebate check" and donate it to a reputable charity helping those in places like Myanmar, Haiti, Sudan, and other countries that are experiencing extreme suffering. Imagine the message it would send if thousands of Christians in the U.S. actually did this... spread the word.

Here are some charities worth considering:

http://www.worldvision.org/
http://www.mercycorps.org/
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
http://www.wr.org/
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/
http://community.ob.org/site/PageServer
http://www.redcross.org/

Thanks.

Live from the PNW-AAR...

Hooray! I presented a paper today and it didn't suck! :-) I'm here on the campus of George Fox University, where the Pacific NW regional conference of the American Academy of Religion is being held this year. I'll be hanging out, listening to papers, and enjoying conversation with other scholars of religion, etc. But the best news is, I was accepted to present a paper today, and I made it through! I was really nervous prior to presenting the paper, but it wasn't nearly as frightening once I got going. Everyone seemed to enjoy the presentation and overall the feedback was fairly positive, even those who disagreed with some of my ideas were gracious and said I'd done a good job. So, I'm going to take them all at their word. :-) Anyway, the paper was titled "From finitude to fallibility: Viewing anthropological evil though a Ricoeurian lens." If you're interested in reading it, just give me your email and I'll forward a copy to you. It would be too much to post on here. Anyway, that's also the reason I've been a bit quiet in the blog-world lately... between working on this paper, and doing my homework, I have little free time! But, I just wanted to let everyone who reads this know that my presentation was a success. Ok, that's all for now.