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Today, 10 April 2009, is the one-year anniversary of the beginning of this blog.
I began blogging by posting an essay I had written about marbles glued to my ceiling. For a long time, this was a blog about “everything”, which is basically the same as a blog about nothing. Just in that first month, I wrote about Bush, about “the coolest commercial in the history of the universe”, and about vitamins.
The months since have seen a lot of changes in the blog. I narrowed the focus of Twice Infinity to “the interactions between religion, politics, and science”; after the summer, I didn’t post a whole lot until December. Then I started focusing almost exclusively on theology, ethics, and the political positions that result. My blog finally found its true purpose. I got plugged into Crossleft, making a lot of new friends and connections with whom I’ve been working closely since (more on that in the weeks to come, incidentally). The blog got accepted into the CCBlogs network, and I really started to feel like I’d found my footing.
As for me, well, I’ve changed a lot too. At the beginning of the year I was a supporter of McCain. In the middle of the year, I went to YTI. By the end of the year, I had become a pacifist.
To those of you who’ve been reading and commenting pretty much the whole way (*cough* Joey, Erin *cough*), thank you. To those who’ve drifted in and out, thank you. To those who took one look and ran screaming, thank you, too. I think.
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So, what’s in store for the future?
Well, there’s a good chance I’ll be moving the blog to a new domain at some point, largely because I don’t like the name “Twice Infinity” anymore and don’t think it’s relevant to what I write..at all. But I might change my mind on that. Don’t hold me to it.
I’ll keep writing, and hopefully you guys will keep reading and commenting. I’ve also been working on a project with some good guys over at Crossleft that we’ll be ready to unveil soon. I’ll write about that when it’s appropriate.
As for me personally, I’ve got more exciting changes ahead. I’ll graduate from high school on May 31. Some changes in my college plans that I may have neglected to mention have taken place over the past couple weeks, and this autumn I’ll be entering Yale University as a member of the class of 2013. I’m pretty pumped about that. (Go Bulldogs!)
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One last thing. Given today’s milestone, I’d like to recognize three people whose influence has significantly impacted the way I look at the world (and thus, with varying degrees of directness, what I write here).
1. Trevor Terris: A friend of mine in high school (he graduated last year), Trevor always challenged me to look at the world in fresh ways. He was one of the people who pushed my political ideology past conservatism during my junior year, at the beginning of which I was a proud member of the Religious Right. Trevor, a libertarian, provided a thoughtful critique of my ideas, helping me to develop my views in new ways. Though I’ve largely moved past most of the libertarian views I held for a while, without that stage in the development of my philosophy, I would not be where I am today. (Indeed, libertarianism got me interested in anarchism, and this was my first introduction to the Christian anarchist movement, which has had a fair degree of influence upon my theology.)
2. Samantha Nasser: I met Samantha at a Constitutional Law summer camp in between my sophomore and junior years. This was a stage when I mostly still identified with conservatism and much of the Religious Right, but I was also beginning to question many of the assumptions I held dear. The camp was at the ultra-conservative-religious Patrick Henry College (a great place, despite my differences with it), and at the camp Samantha and I were anomalies due to our concerns for environmental issues, opposition to capital punishment, and a few other things. We thus become good friends, and though I was much more conservative than she, her ideas began to influence mine. She was the person who caused me to take seriously the possibility of pacifism as a natural part of Christianity, and though it would be a long time before I would adopt that position definitively, it would have been a lot longer without her. Along with Trevor, she was instrumental in forcing me to reconsider my essentially Republican political views.
3. Michael Kochenash: The influence of my cousin Mike goes back long before the two people mentioned above. He has always been one of the cousins I’ve been closest to, and we’ve had long discussions about all kinds of stuff. When he started taking courses in theology and Bible as an undergrad (eventually majoring in such), our conversations naturally shifted to that subject. We’ve talked for hours on end about the Bible, about theology, about how to read Scripture…you name it. Mike remains firmly in the evangelical tradition (in which I myself am grounded), but his influence led me to challenge many ampeacts of my theology. Because of my talks with him, I began to understand the difference between scriptural infallibality and inerrancy (eventually rejecting the latter in favor of the former), reconsidered my belief in the necessity of a literal Genesis, and in general began to become very interested in theology. Without Mike, I would not be as theologically-oriented as I am; I would not have challenged certain aspects of my beliefs that very much needed to be challenged; and I would not be as strong in my faith as I am today. (There’s a good chance I wouldn’t even have gone to YTI!). I owe him a lot. He’s now at Yale Divinity School finishing up his Master’s, incidentally.
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So. It’s been a good year. Let’s hope this next year will be better still.
