Against Nothingness

A Beautiful Mind  was released in December of 2001. I did not see it in theaters. I saw it at some point during my studies as an undergraduate student. It's a great movie and you won't find any spoilers here.  A Beautiful Mind is a biographical film based on the life of American mathematician John Nash who, among other things, made some important contributions to game theory. Prior to watching I had never heard of game theory. There is no reason I should have; I was a religious studies student. But it fascinated me. Being a university student with easy access to large libraries and a deep-set joy in learning I headed to the stacks and looked up game theory.  Four of five books later I decided that most of what was written on game theory was far too abstract and involved mathematics I did not care to learn. But all was not lost. Some game theory books are shelved very near economics, business, and leadership books. And, if you are like me, you do indeed find yourself judgi...

There are iconic questions. "Whom shall I send?" "Will you marry me?" "Can you hear me now?"  I started out in ministry as a youth and young adults pastor and one of those iconic questions was "How do I know he/she is the one?"  Concerned with being a good and wise pastor I tried to ask some good questions, listen carefully, and offer sage advice. But what floated in the back of my mind, tongue-in-cheek, was: "Has he/she read The Dark Night of the Soul over the phone with you?"  Kristina and I met during the summer of 2001. I recounted parts of that story in this post . We started dating, long distance, late in the fall of that same year. We dated for 1 year before we got engaged and were engaged for 1.5 years before we were married. All of this was long distance. People have often asked us about this. Our response is that there were certainly difficult things about having a long distance relationship - you miss one another, you don...