My next small woodworking project is making removable drawers to organize my dungeon tiles so that I can start using miniatures in our bi-weekly Dungeon World game. I currently have my tiles in various sized boxes on this very messy kallax shelving unit. Within a single cubby I will create dividers from 1/4″ MDF to accommodate five 2″ deep drawers. Because the drawers are not very big I am confident I can get away with a 1/4″ MDF bottom (floating in a dado 1/8″ from the bottom of the 2 3/8″ high sides, leaving 2″ of depth inside each drawer). I will make the sides from hardwood which I will mill to 3/8″ thickness from the birch or maple stock I have on hand. Really the deciding factor will be whatever species of wood I can get around 25′ out of. I should have enough leftover hardwood to mill 1/4″ thick lengths for the dividers inside each drawer. I’ll notch the front and back of each drawer for easy handling and I plan on making some jigs for all this so that if it works out I’ll do a similar hack for storing my miniatures.
Tonight I sketched out my idea roughly on several pieces of paper and made a cutting/material list. I am going to do box joints on the drawers so basically all my drawer side pieces need to be the full length. This will be my first try with box joints but they look simple enough and I can cut the majority of the material away with the table saw, in fact my dado stack has a pretty flat kerf so I might be able to do them completely on the table saw. I can use a hole saw with a sacrificial block to cut the notches and then router their edges round. That also should be quite simple although it would be better if I had an actual drill press, oh well jigs to the rescue.
For finishing I’ll try to match the brown-black of my kallax for all the MDF pieces, I will pre-paint them before I assemble anything. I’ll simply do a clear coat (rub on poly) on the hardwood. I figure I can attach the inner dividers with glue using pin nails to hold them in place, so I’ll be careful not to finish one edge and tape off the drawer bottoms where the dividers go so that the glue properly adheres . In fact I need to make a cardboard mock-up of the bottom of a drawer and work out how I will organize all the various tiles so that I know exactly where the dividers need to go. I also need to make sure that I can get my fingers into the drawers to easily pull the tiles out.
I plan to do a few build videos along the way. I’ve been itching to try out a video camera on a boom mic stand so that you can see what I’m doing this time. Much as I’d like these drawers in time for our next game night, I think it might take me a few weeks to get them completed. I’m eager though because I think this is going to be a good solution for my miniatures as well. I have a lot of miniatures!
Tonight I deliver the last full substance lecture for my course THO3162: Christian Faith: Encounter with the Self-revealing God (formerly Revelation and Faith). We have a review lecture next week, but I anticipate half of the class will be the end of my lecture from tonight (we are about a half class behind which means we’ve had some awesome conversations along the way.)
I find the semester moves along way too fast. We spend the majority of the course building a foundation to make possible a robust conversation about God’s revelations to humanity. Now that we have a framework, the final lectures look at how our understandings of God as the self-revealing One shape our worship, our sense of mission, and how we interact with non-Christians. I love how we go from highly philosophical/technical teaching to some very practical conversations. I also really enjoy that I can weave into the course understandings from a variety of Christian traditions even though the basic reflection is strongly rooted in a Roman Catholic approach by way of Dei Verbum and the work of Avery Dulles and Dermot Lane.
The core premise for the technical side is that revelation always has both an objective and a subjective side. Revelation is always rooted in something substantial (objective) like Scripture, tradition, or even experience. At the same time revelation is always received and interpreted in the human person, hopefully within the confidence of the community that is the Church. It is this idea that we always necessarily mediate revelation (subjective) through our own lives that allows for our experiences of God grow with us as our faith and understanding matures. I always try to communication that revelation has the capacity to become more meaningful, not less.
It is at this end point in the semester that I already start to miss the conversations of our class. I have the absolute pleasure of watching people grow in their understanding both of God and of themselves. For a teacher there is no greater pleasure than to see your students light up when they grok something new. This class has been quite rich in that regard.
The photo is from a student auditing my class who has a very mystical approach to learning. I’ve really enjoyed having a really diverse class this semester including a couple of evangelicals.
Sharon and I were invited to a leadership training event at our church over the weekend. The theme was emotionally healthy spirituality. When I read the topic I immediately thought of heart work, but then in the instructions there was a note to bring a pen and paper, which left me concerned that it was going to be head work. I do find that evangelicals conflate the two. Both are important but they rarely share the same pedagogical space. I was happy that the event was more heart work, even though this set the tone for a difficult weekend.
Both heart work and head work involve a confrontation or challenge. In heart work the challenge is on an existential level – who are you? who do you imagine yourself to be? what ways do you sabotage your identity? why do you feel the way you do? or even why do you choose not to feel anything? On the other hand, head work challenges or confronts ideas that we hold to be true. These kinds of work can actually have a lot of overlap, such as teaching on what Scripture reveals about your identity. Despite this overlap, the head work emphasis is on gaining a better understanding from the tradition. Whereas, in heart work the emphasis is on what prevents head knowledge (understanding) from getting deep into our hearts. I use getting deep into our hearts as a metaphor for incorporating the understanding into our very sense of self. (I have a dear Baptist friend who calls one you thinker and the other your knower.)
In heart work you are deliberately giving space for deep emotional formation. This can be quite painful if not handled well. I tend to do a fair bit of heart work and still I found Saturday’s sessions emotionally taxing. The session brought up lots of emotions that I need to ponder. A friend asked me if I liked the session, which is absolutely the wrong question: one rarely likes heart work. But if it bears fruit in the long run then heart work is worthwhile. As a result I felt raw all day Sunday and still feel much tenderness today.
The other thing about heart work is that it builds on head work. If you do not have a different understanding of how you could see yourself, participating in the vulnerability of heart work can be irresponsible. I believe this is why they gathered leaders and former leaders for this day of heart work. Most of those gathered had at least a good understanding in their heads of who they are as Christians. The speaker, 
Doug Sprunt, shared stories of his own heart work journey which included the ways that his own self-understanding has been challenged over the years, usually through the trials he has endured. It was good to hear his story, I’ve known Doug just well enough to say hello and his vulnerability with us was helpful in shepherding this kind of process. I didn’t always agree with the insights he was bringing from his own heart work, but I really find that heart work is unique to everyone who bravely undertakes it, so consensus is never the goal of heart work, personal maturity is the goal.
Head work is what academics are most often concerned with. It is not that we do not appreciate the application of understanding, but the engagement with knowledge at a head level does not require heart application. I think this is why I tend to appreciate pastor-theologians, they tend to find ways to apply their head work to their own hearts. But head work does not require that extra step. One of my pet peeves about the Protestant influence on liturgy is that we have made teaching primary and left little room for the heart work that teaching is meant to support. As an academic I great value head work, but I do not want to confuse it as heart work. As an academic I regularly give my students tools to sharpen their critical thinking skills. As a pastor-theologian I also find space to encourage heart reflection on the head work we do in class. I am encouraged by how often students take up that challenge and share how they have grown spiritually from courses that can be highly theoretical and philosophical.
So while I didn’t feel very triumphal this Palm Sunday, I did feel that the heart work from Saturday was still doing its work in me. It is still working.
The picture is from a baptismal service we held at Freedom Vineyard way, way back. I have fond memories of the day when I baptized two people who came to faith in our community. What I loved about Freedom was our passion for balancing head and heart.
Throwback Thursday it is! I thought it would be great to revisit my 2015 review of Dominion (Rio Grande). Dominion remains a household favourite. We recently purchased Nocturne although it will be a while before we integrate it into our set. I’ll give an update at the end of the review.
Dominion, including all of its many expansions, is probably the most played game in our house, and has been for years. This is the game that really set off the deck builder mechanic craze. It is such a simple mechanic too: use the coins in your hand to buy cards that give you more spending power or other game effects (like multiple buys or attacks that force your opponent to discard cards) or victory cards. The trick is knowing when to buy what – buy those victory cards too soon and you end up with a hand of green unable to act, effectively slowing down your progress. The game ends when the most valuable victory cards have been bought up (or any three piles of cards are depleted).
Although this game is so great, not all the expansions fit everybody. My oldest daughter does not like attack cards – for her she’d prefer a game of competitive solitaire. Also we have a few friends who don’t like the more complicated (wordy) cards of the later sets – so they are happiest with games from the basic set and maybe some simpler cards thrown in. Personally I like them all, but I’m less enamored with some of the more vicious attack cards in the Intrigue expansion. Also it is pretty much the consensus among my friends that Alchemy is their least favourite expansion (even though I quite enjoy it). With all the options and well themed expansions Dominion is sure to remain a staple of our gaming for years to come.
One other thing worth noting, there are some great digital tools for helping you shuffle up a great selection of Dominion cards from all the expansions you own.
Likes: Tremendous replay value, easy to teach, complexity can scale to players abilities and preferences quite easily.
Dislikes: With all the expansions this is a beast to lug around.
Fun: This game is always fun, even when you get a combination of cards that makes for a painfully long game, winning is just all that more satisfying.
Quality: We use our game constantly, and the cards show it. We’ve also taken the game with us to conferences where new players are less kind to components. But I have to say that the cards have held up very well. Also the other components, like metal tokens, are of amazing quality. Kudos to Rio Grande for production value.
(re)Playability: Every game of Dominion is different! This is probably the biggest reason that we keep playing this game over and over.
EDIT: Right after posting this I found out about Dominion Adventures. Picked it up and we’ve taken it out for a spin. Right off the bat we were disappointed with the quality of the cards. They are thinner. Some of the new mechanics are great though, not sold on the events, but the variation on duration cards is quite fun. But I’m still not happy with the component quality.
EDIT: Since this time we picked up Dominion Empires. I think this the best expansion to date. Card quality is back to the original. Events have grown on me. The debt mechanic actually adds something that feels new to the game. Also I am able to get all of the cards into the base box and the alchemy box (no room for more though) and I have a smaller box for the rule books, player mats, and tokens. Much easier to lug around.
dominion box
LATEST EDIT: Dominion is still our go to game as a couple. Some of the sets, like Adventures, have taken longer to get into. Sharon has decided she dislikes the Event and Landmark cards, even though I love them. Most of the digital tools we use for picking cards let us tweak card selection to get a set that fits the groups we are with. After unboxing Nocturne we decided to shelf it for now, but we’ll get into it at the cottage I’m sure. Also we purchased a custom Dominion box from Custom Game Bits which is fantastic!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cffpRjIUePA&w=560&h=315]
The more I record and edit video the more I realize I need to be more careful in how I speak for video. Specifically, I need to cultivate two new skills. First I need to better break up my sentencing. I notice this whenever I want to cut something out of the video. It takes a lot of effort to find just the right break point between words or sounds. It might help me to do multiple takes of each segment, but I also do not want to lose that natural sense to my speech patterns.
What is more important for me to address is some of the imprecision that shows up in my casual speaking style. For example, in this video I start to talk about two types of sermons. There are actually quite a few different types of sermons. What I should have said is that I tend to do two different types of sermons: topical and textual. I also should have defined textual clearly, it is the style I’m preparing for my message to EcclesiaX. My friend Robert commented that in my maker videos I play loose with the technical terms of carpentry. Perfectly understandable for a hobby carpenter, and I try to correct these mistakes with text in the video. What is less understandable is the imprecision in my talk about subjects for which I am highly trained.
In the classroom a large part of what makes lecturing so exhausting (much as I love it) is that you need to be very careful how you phrase everything you say, you cannot play loose with technical details. I call this being ‘on’ all the time. Often at the end of a lecture I just need to sit and rest, which is fine, it lets me know I’ve done good work giving my best to the students. In terms of my videos I want to have a similar level of ‘on’ness. I think the answer is to record shorter bursts of video, because it is when I go off on a rabbit trail that I get the most in trouble. I expect that video work is a craft like any other and that I’ll improve with each one I post.
I would love to hear your comments about my first maker video for preaching.
I’ve really been enjoying the One Shot Podcast. They often have interesting players and run some awesome indie role playing games(RPGs). One of my goals this year is to play more high concept RPGs so I’m currently on the look out for new games to try. Through One Shot I get to hear a real play through of some of these games. High concept RPGs differ from your traditional RPGs in that they have a looser structure and are mechanically non-tactical. Let me unpack those ideas for you and tell you about one gem I found through One Shot: Michael Sullivan’s Everyone is John.
Most story games have some sort of structure to them which is how they keep the story going. RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons or Numenera use story modules that are prepared in advance by the Dungeon Master. Commercial and homemade story modules allow the Dungeon Master to unfold the story in a measured and manageable way. We often call this way of running a story game ‘riding the plot train’, because if the players stay relatively close to the prepared material even an inexperienced Dungeon Master(DM) can easily facilitate an awesome gaming session. The drawback to traditional RPGs is that players rarely stay on the plot train which requires a bit more DMing skill to make work. Even when players do stick to the train they can move through the material much faster than a DM can prepare it. Playing a few high concept games can help a DM develop the improvisational skills needed to deal with any challenges that the players might throw at them. A high concept RPG has very little preparation, maybe just a few story seeds that can help spark the imaginations of everyone playing. The big difference is that in a traditional RPG the players are exploring the Game Master’s (GM) story and in a high concept game you are all together creating a brand new story.
Traditional RPGs came from wargaming which places a strong emphasis on tactics. In Dungeons and Dragons, for example, you have a specific set of skills and moves all of which can be optimized to make your character as effective as possible. We call this approach to character building power gaming and it is often a GM’s frustration. Any over emphasis on tactics can turn a story game into a murder fest. This capacity of tactical games is the reason why groups of Dungeons and Dragons characters are called murder hobos. My friend Richard muses that this tactical nature of traditional RPGs is what makes these games competitive, you compete to have the most effective character even at the expense of the story. (Personally I loved concept over effectiveness which often drove the power gamers at our tables nuts.) Everyone is John is a bit of a cheeky poke at the true competitive nature of role playing, but more on that shorty. In a high concept game there are very few tactical mechanics and resolution is not about efficiently dispatching enemies but always about advancing the story in interesting ways.
Everyone is John is definitely a high concept role playing game. There is no preparation other than simple character creation and maybe a sense of where John should start out his story. The premise of the game is that John has many voices in his head, voices that tell him what he should do and how he should do it. Sometimes John follows along with those voices, but more often John is confused and puts up resistance. As a result John is a bit of a bumbler, fumbling through an adventure not of his own making. In Everyone is John the players all play the different voices in John’s head. Each has a few skills and a set of goals they are trying to get John to accomplish. The goals are kept secret because that is how the game is competitive – each player gets points for how often they get John to do the things that voice wants John to do. The GM plays John and all the other characters. She will choose how John reacts to each voice and provide some improvisational narrative to the game. The GM will also tell the players when it is time to make a roll. One other feature of the game is that each player has a certain amount of will power, they bid with this willpower to control John at just the right time to make sure their goals are met.
I’ve played Everyone is John a few times now and it is so much fun. I usually get the players to introduce their personalities by telling a story from John’s past that explains, at least in part, how they came to be a voice in John’s head. There are often clues about their individual goals in these stories. The real value of this exercise is that it allows the group to define who John is and how John will respond to the various voices that are about to tell John what to do. I suggest that the GM should let the players determine the order that they introduce themselves, this will allow the players who have less improvisational experience to have something to build on in terms of John’s story. Once the players have all introduced themselves the GM describes John becoming aware of where he is and the players all bid for control. After that the game will start as John strikes up a conversation in his head with the controlling player, leading John who knows where with imagination being your only limitation. This is a game I highly recommend.
In the picture I am actually running another high concept indie RPG – Sage LaTorra’s Powers for Good. I try to play story games at least every other week.
Last night I was honoured to participate in a pre-show panel for the 9th Hour Theatre Company‘s production of GodSpell. 9th Hour uses theatrical presentations to “explore, examine, and express questions, ideas, and stories relating to faith.” (from their website) They steward this exploration through panels and discussions of the themes that emerge within the play which is how I became involved. Alexandra Bender reached out to see if I was interested in helping out as a local theologian. When I looked that the topics they were exploring through these panels (Poverty, Good News, and Loving your Enemies) I was excited about each of them, however my schedule fit best with the two panels on poverty: “Give to the poor! But will the poor always be among us?” I am back again this coming Friday evening to talk about this once again if you would like to join us.
First a word about the play. I found the play really moving. It opens up contemporary questions about who is the other and what kind of person the gospel (godspell) encourages us to be. The base text is the Gospel of Matthew but it is punctuated with “headlines” that bring the gospel account right into the present. There is also a real interaction with the gospel text that is refreshing, we witness this as an ongoing wrestling and dialogue (back and forth between Matthew’s readings and the characters responses). This is a great contrast to the usual passive reception of text that we find in liturgy. I do not want to spoil the story, it is not your typical passion narrative, but right from the beginning the play unsettles you and provokes you. A couple of things that might not have been intentional but moved me greatly were the diversity of actors and the gradual and subtle emergence of a cross through the props, on Friday I’ll have to ask George Dutch if this was deliberate. I loved that the cross didn’t dominate the narrative because it is rightfully part of a much larger narrative, and I think us evangelicals sometimes forget that. I highly recommend the play even if you are not a Christian. If you are a Christian take the opportunity to let the story make you uncomfortable – a good telling of the gospel should always make us a bit uncomfortable.
The panelists were moderated by Alexandra Bender and included George Dutch (9th Hour Theatre Company), Moira Davis (Ottawa Innercity Ministries), and myself. It was interesting to see the themes emerge as we explored the subject through Alexanrda’s guiding questions. George served as the dramaturge for this play which meant he worked with the director on how the themes were consistently expressed through the whole of the play. It was apparent from the conversation that he saw the gospel as having implications for the whole of life by orienting us towards being good news for the whole world. He also challenged some of the ways that we see success in our current social context, and how those views serve to twist our understanding of who we see as the poor. Moira used her own wealth of experience working with marginalized and homeless youth to draw us into questions of who are the excluded in society and how we might see a wisdom of inclusion emerging in the lives of those who have experienced marginalization first hand.
I tried to build on the conversation my colleagues started by highlighting how we get caught up in narratives that often reinforce the status quo. I looked briefly at the times in the gospels where Jesus says “the poor will always be among you” highlighting that in each case something very uncomfortable was happening and the statement was akin to calling out our tendency to deflect. We should have sold that perfume, for example, and used the money to feed the poor. John’s gospel is the most obvious about what Jesus is doing because the narrator tells us that Judas really had no intention of using the money for the poor. When Jesus responds with “the poor you will always have with you” he is being very provocative, that phrase comes from a passage in Deuteronomy that is all about actively lending to the poor and forgiving debt every seven years. My point is that we read those stories of Jesus in ways that do not always challenge our personal comfort – but if we dare to scratch the surface of the gospel texts we often find something that challenges us to our cores. My invitation to the people was to let the Godspell unsettle us, to challenge us. My hope is that this will help us be good news to the whole world.
The picture of the panel discussion was captured by my lovely wife Sharon. I was grateful that we could turn this event into a date night.
I will be at Augustine College this afternoon to guest lecture on the topic of Pentecostal and Charismatic Theologies. This is an introduction of sorts which is part of a much larger History of Christian Thought course that is taught by Dr. Brian Butcher. I was quite happy to be invited as a few years back I developed a full course on the topic of Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements which I ended up shelving. I regularly use the Pentecostals as an example of the immanence of the transcendent God in my Trends in Western Thought course at Saint Paul University (HTP1101). In that course each lecture looks at two different ways that movements or theologians take up the tension between immanence and transcendence. But that is about the only place in my current teaching load that I get to speak so directly on Pentecostal and Charismatic theologies.
One of the reasons I think it is important to talk about Pentecostal and Charismatic theologies is that they are a growing influence on global Christian theologies and one that is so often misrepresented and misunderstood. When I started out studies at Saint Paul University I stumbled upon Stephen Land’s Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom in our library. It was a beautiful moment for this neo-pentecostal trying to find resources that did academic theological work from the Pentecostal context that formed my own spirituality. Land gave me hope that there was a real alternative to the anti-intellectualism that was so much a part of my early Pentecostal experience. (I highly recommend Rick Nañez’ Full Gospel, Fractured Minds?: A Call to Use God’s Gift of Intellect if you are interested in the shifting that is happening today as Pentecostal and Charismatic movements mature into their insights.) It is with great joy that I found other academic Pentecostal, neo-pentecostal, and charismatic dialogue partners along the way: Wolfgang Vondey, Jamie Smith, Doug Erickson, Derek Morphew, Shane Clifton, and others. The list continues to grow as does my library!
I’ll let you all know how it went.
EDIT: What a keen group of students, the lecture seemed to go very well. Thank you Dr. Butcher for the invite!
I started blogging way back in 2005 and was fairly consistent until I completed my PhD in 2014. My main blog was Freedom Log: the musings of a pastor swimming in the deep waters of political theology. That was a fairly apt description for me at that time. A lot has changed, I am no longer serving as a pastor and while I do consider myself a political theologian, I think I’m somewhat more than just a political theologian. I thought it would be a great exercise to look back at my blogging career and comment on how things have changed. Freedom Log still exists, although I no longer post any new content there. (I will simply use links for those interested in the old posts.)
Let’s start from the beginning. My first post was called “Starting Out…” and gave a brief introduction to myself as a (then) new blogger. I had previously published articles on my personal website (I was an early adopter), but the site no longer exists except maybe in a way back machine.
In my first Freedom Log post I start by describing my role as senior pastor for Freedom Vineyard. Freedom was the second official Vineyard in Ottawa, Ontario and my wife and I currently attend the third official Ottawa Vineyard. Our own church closed a few years back after a good run of 10-11 years (depending on how you measure it). On the whole there is a lot I celebrate about our pastoral work, but there are also a lot of things I would do differently today. Pastoring is not for the faint of heart. I still love encouraging other ministers and do a bit of relief preaching around the city. But we have moved on from traditional pastoral ministry and my main focus these days is my teaching career.
When I talked about my theological interests of course I mentioned my favourite theologian Jürgen Moltmann. That is still true, I am definitely a Moltmann fanboy. My doctoral work put Moltmann in dialogue with evangelical eschatological theologies. I was tickled to see that 2005 is when I first read The Crucified God. I am reading this text again as my Lenten devotion and am amazed at how many ideas in my own theology owe themselves to this text. Some things don’t really change much.
Then in the post I try to sum up a bit about my diverse interests:
I am also a gaming buff – fantasy role playing, miniatures, etc. A philatelist – even though having little kids makes it hard to pull out my albums to work on that. A book collector with something like 500+ titles in my growing theology library. I am also a bit of a hack musician playing guitar, harmonica and a bit of keyboards. I sing also, but really should take some lessons. I have done a bit of song writing but nothing published – another area I still need to work on.
I am still a huge tabletop gaming nerd. In fact, I run the same biweekly D&D (now using Dungeon World) group that I ran in 2005 and now I have another regular group that meets up to play boardgames almost every week. Additionally, I regularly run games at local conventions and most recently have been exploring the educational use of games. I recently did a short presentation on using ethical role playing games in theology which I’ll have to post about here.
I am still a philatelist, but I find that I have a lot less time for stamps these days. Stamps are a great activity for when you want to think deeply about something. Personally I need to do something to occupy a certain part of my brain to be free to ponder, this is simply how I am wired. For example, I read best while I am pacing. When I do pull down my albums it is because I’m doing some thinking work. However, the hobby I spend more time on these days is carpentry.
Carpentry is something I’ve been interested in for a long time but had no easy way to get into. In our old house I had a small workshop, but it wasn’t really a well planned out space, and my workshop was so small that I could not work on an large projects or work with large material. One year I did build an easel for Freedom Vineyard using pre-milled lumber from the Home Depot and treating my friend’s drill press like a router (sorry Tom). The easel turned out quite well all things considered. I remember buying my first table saw although it sat barely used until we bought a house up the street and decided to spend the summer renovating our old home. That was when I got to know my friend Robert Sykes who is still a student at Saint Paul University. Robert is a real carpenter (master carpenter actually) who offered to help with our renos. I learned tonnes and have since gone on to help him with some of the historical restoration projects that he does for a living. I’m on my second (better) table saw and longing for a real shop saw. I have inherited and bought a lot of tools and am learning how to maintain them. I’ve even started to do some maker videos. Carpentry is now my go to hobby when I want to do some serious thinking.
My book collection has continued to grow, by about a 1000 titles. I do try to keep the collection under control, purging out the books that no longer serve me. It is not an easy task though as I think of my books as old friends, many of whom have advised me well through the years.
Finally in terms of music I am still most competent on guitar. Additionally I play hand drums at church (with harmonica when it fits). I did not have regular access to my keyboards for a few years, but now that I am in my new office a keyboard is set up all the time and I’m slowly getting my chops back. I’d love to get a keyboard with weighted keys, but it is hard to justify that kind of expense (my tastes in keyboards are unfortunately a bit pricey). I still haven’t published any of my own music, nor have I taken any singing lessons.
So somethings change, but much of it stays the same. This is what I expected. I do imagine that much of my thinking on specific subjects has changed so this thread of posts will be a great chance for me to see just how much my thinking has changed.