Of Chaos and Order

Amie’s going on a Caribbean cruise!

Turns out all that digging as a child has paid off in adulthood.

Amie and I had an amazing lunch at Mexico Tipico for my birthday, then a special dinner at my favorite restaurant, Skogen Kitchen, for dinner.

Today I had a joyful time discussing Amie and I’s goals and desires for our boy’s spiritual formation with a couple leaders at Westminster.

Royal woke with croup at 11:00 last night.

Let’s talk about books shall we?

It’d been so long since I’d written anything on the log that I didn’t realize that my publishing system was broken.

Is it already almost April?!

Last Monday’s leader’s group was amazing.

Amie talked the boys out of the Christmas train this year ($180 is too much for something we only kinda enjoy) and instead offered to stay at a hotel with a pool.

A friend recently joked that we were in the process of planting a Vineyard church in Rapid City.

Let’s do a little recap.

Last night was our Leader’s Kickoff gathering.

There’s a big update about our Italy trip coming!

Tenth Wedding Celebration Reason Day 1 - Travel Day 1 - Travel Day 2 - Naples Tour

One reason I excel at most software projects is that I can handle so many parts of the development process.

Back in August our neighbors pulled out a gas-powered scooter their adult son had enjoyed as a kid.

I’ve had a downward swing in writing lately, but in the overarching spread of this website, one month of abscence in nearly four years ain’t bad.

Some of our more joyful Sabbath celebrations recently have been shared with friends.

The biggest event on our June calendar was our trip to Puerto Vallarta to celebrate Viktoria’s 18th birthday.

We’ve been steadily shaping the backyard since April.

So, Graham’s been wanting to ride his bike to school for a couple months, but we weren’t ready to let him cross the busy road to his school on his own.

Bible Project Intro Intro 5:3-16 How good is life for the powerless, because theirs is the kingdom of the skies.

The past month I’ve been wrestling with how to proceed after the OCL Postulancy.

Graham’s birthday occurred in two steps.

Amie, Jaynee (Grandma) and Graham went on a Mother’s Day weekend trip to Denver.

I don’t think of music as entertainment.

William Deresiewicz writes: “Having recently moved across the country, I thought that Facebook would help me feel more connected to the friends I’d left behind.

For the end of Spring Break and the beginning of April we received the most snow all winter!

Since Royal’s birthday we’ve gotten much more interested in dressing up.

I have been so tired this week.

In Hrishi Olickel’s LLM Hacker Guide he describes some of the ways his thoughts about the development process have changed since working closely with Large Language Models (LLMs).

Thanks to Simon Willison for the suggestion to watch Hrishi Olickel’s explanation of his use of LLMs to achieve rapid prototypes at a fraction of the cost.

Many hosts I work with seem to imagine that by refusing to exert any power in their gathering, they create a power-free gathering.

“Who am I to gather in this way?”

Mac says one of the reasons party guests often end up gravitating to the kitchen is that people instinctively seek out smaller spaces as the group dwindles in order to sustain the level of the density.

Stewart and Tsao’s big idea is that every meeting should be organized around a “desired outcome.”

If you want a lively but inclusive conversation as a core part of your gathering, eight to twelve people is the number you should consider.

The tea master there told me of a phrase the sixteenth-century Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyū taught his students to keep in the front of their minds as they conduct the ceremony: Ichi-go ichi-e.

exercising your authority once and early on in a gathering is as effective as exercising your body once and early on in your life.

A ubiquitous strain of twenty-first-century culture is infecting our gatherings: being chill.

With today’s #OCL cohort gathering, I’m just about halfway through #postulancy.

When one attempts to notice God’s voice, it’s rare to hear audible words.

When we gather, we often make the mistake of conflating category with purpose.

Over time, the form itself plays a role in shaping people’s sense of belonging to the group and their identity within that group: This is who we are.

Specificity is a crucial ingredient.

Most purposes for gatherings feel worthy and respectable but are also basic and bland: “We’re hosting a welcome dinner so that our new colleague feels comfortable in our tight-knit group,” or “I’m throwing a birthday party to look back on the year.”

Your sense of belonging within a community is affected by the interplay between identity, perception, and reciprocity.

Inspired by Ethan Mollick’s newsletter today (I Cyborg, Using Co-Intelligence), I attempted a co-intelligence writing test of my own.