As I read A Grief Observed, I was most impressed by the honesty and down-to-earth goodness of the relationship between CS Lewis and his wife Joy.  I loved that they could joke with each other, that they shared the same brilliant minds to analyze literature, and just that they fit so well together.

 He caught my attention when he mentioned that they were completely open with each other and had always known the less-than-glamorous parts of each other.  I love it because that's what a marriage is supposed to do.

We get together because we love each other.  That love eventually pushes and challenges us.  It gets us to grow.  And as both parties grow to become better they find themselves coming closer to the Lord and closer to each other.

Even after her death, as he struggled with intense grief, his love for her pushed him to grow through it - to push past his illusions, to rebuild his faith, and to bring him back to happiness.

I love the seasons and I'll probably write about them every time they inspire me.  There is something so spectacular about the first changing leaves and the first real coat of snow.  Today as I looked out around me I couldn't help but be grateful for the beauty of the place I live.  It snowed a lot last night.  In one evening the world was transformed.

 The last leaves clinging to the trees are now covered in a world of white.  The trees themselves have taken new shape.  Some of them have broken with the weight of their new decoration reminding me that snow is a mixed blessing.  It nourishes, beautifies, and hydrates.  But it also freezes, breaks, and kills.

There is a real deadly beauty to the snow.  I suppose that's why we find it so beautiful.  The things in Nature that impress us most are always the ones that scare us a little.  That's why we call it majestic.  This wondrous dichotomy has impressed others before me.  I think Rg Gregory effectively captured the beauty and danger of snow when he wrote his Images of Snow:

The most profound imagery for me in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the un-dragonning of Eustace.  After a brief conversation with Aslan, he realizes he has to remove his skin.  He does so only to discover another layer beneath.  This goes on and on until it seems almost hopeless.  Aslan then informs Eustace that he's going to have to let Aslan help him.  Aslan sinks his claws into Eustace's tough dragon skin and tears it from his body.  It's excruciating but exhilarating.  Eustace looks into the pool before him and realizes that he has been set free.  From then on out, Eustace is a changed boy who will come to play important roles in further Narnian stories.

Repentance is exactly the same.  Very often we realize that we need to change and begin to make efforts only to find further difficulties revealed.  It is only when we let the Lord take charge that real change actually begins.

     The magical world of Narnia exists as a place of ultimate freedom. Within it, there is a nature with an openness not found in our world.  Here fairy tales and imagination blossom in a more transparent yet more concrete way.  Right and wrong appear more distinct. The possibilities within Narnia appear endless.  The honesty and the other-worldliness in Narnia create the real growth the Pevinsies experience.  To truly embrace Narnia is to be un-fettered. This world holds us back.  Every day we are bombarded with messages that we are not good enough, smart enough, or attractive enough.  Before long, a chain of doubts, insecurities, and proprieties find the Gods within us crammed into neat little boxes.  Entering Narnia changes all that.  Narnia is a place where divine potential is unleashed.

I absolutely loved Perelandra.  The imagery and storytelling were entertaining but the most compelling part of me what the battle between the Un-Man and Ransom.

I'm not talking so much about the actual physical fight - which was pretty awesome - but the ongoing verbal struggle the two engage in.  I felt exactly as Ransom did as he tried his best to convince the Green Lady that the Un-Man was lying, that his half truths hid important facts from her, and felt as he did that nothing he could do would be enough.  He begins to wonder why Maleldil hasn't sent anybody to help him.  It was all so unfair.

The climax then is when Ransom realizes that he is who has been sent and that it is his responsibility to stop the Un-Man.  This is the most important moment any of us can have.  When we realize that each of us has been sent to Earth with a specific duty to improve it - in such a way that only we are capable of doing it - we realize the importance of our life, our choices, and our time.  From there every moment takes on new meaning and we find ourselves actively participating in the battle between good and evil.

As I read Surprised by Joy, the most striking thing for me was how extremely unique all of our conversions are.  Notwithstanding the unique qualities of each conversion, there are common threads that run through each of them.

I think this is where joy comes in.  That longing that causes us to search out for the truth and that surprises us and 'stabs' us with intense feeling when we stumble upon it.  That initial contact with the divine startles us and causes us to think beyond what is right before our eyes.

From there life becomes a search for that joy - for the fullness we all long for.  When this pursuit if pursued earnestly and honestly, joy begins to fill our lives and will bring us to true conversion.

Regardless of what background one is born into, when one follows the Light of Christ they will be brought as close to Him as their circumstances will allow, and when they are allowed more, that desire will be fulfilled and they will be welcomed into His presence.

I love Surprised by Joy simply because it follows Lewis's spiritual journey until his conversion.  While his slow intellectually based conversion may not be the typical route we take on our paths back to God, but it is nevertheless still a valid one.

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As I read Chapter 11 of Lewi's Miracles, I couldn't help but draw connections to the world around me.  A number of my friends have left the religions of their families.  They "believe" but no longer "practice".  They are all about "God" but not "religion".  In reality they are about neither.

I love how Lewis describes the journey mankind takes to arrive at this position.  It begins with a notion that God really isn't a personage.  We remove any human connection we see in Him.  As bit by bit of Him is unraveled, we begin to worship a Great Nothing.

We feel good about it because this Nothing requires nothing of us.  That's how we justify that we can be all about God but not about religion.  By reducing Him to a Great Nothing, we are not required to take action.  We don't have to obey because He doesn't require anything of us and we don't have to accept the evolutionary humanist explanation of reality either.  The problem is that this mindset is just fence sitting.  The worship of that Great Nothing leads to a lifetime of nothing and a world without meaning.

I hadn't set down the book for more than ten minutes when I came across this article.  This is a problem today just as much as it was in Lewis's time.  Come on people.  Wake up and make a decision.

Nature and its laws testify of God.  Muir was right.  Open your mind and feel what Nature offers you.

I just finished my first readings in Miracles and for quite a while I was a little bit upset at Lewis's assertions that God as a supernatural being was so outside of nature.  Nature and God go hand in hand for me.  I feel as the early conservationist John Muir did that Nature inspires and lifts us to nobler aspirations.  It is the very testimony that God lives.

Clearly this is not what Lewis was getting at though.  His argument was that people use nature as a means of discrediting God.  They believe that we are here by a chance that is so improbable the odds are simply astronomical.  They believe that some billions of years ago, a great explosion took place and randomly formed the precise elements in the precise combination at the precise distance from a sun of the precise age and size to form our lovely little planet that was hospitable to life.  Then they believe that evolution took its course and we are simply the by-products of a great deal of astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological chance.  Life and reason therefore is also a by-product and there is no real meaning.  And therefore that there is nothing outside of Nature.  Nature is the accumulation of all that chance throughout the entire universe.

I feel badly for those people.  I can't imagine going about my life thinking that my life is cosmologically insignificant.

Lewis does discuss that God made all the natural laws - that science and reason testify of Him.  It did take him some time to make the argument though.  The point of Miracles is that God does intervene in our lives. Lewis is trying to logically explain the Nature of Miracles and that they do exist. God's actions do obey His own Natural Laws.  What we have to realize is that they are His laws.  He is their creator and the only true master of them.  I love when Lewis talks about the subtler nature of poetic laws.  It is a perfect illustration of how to the lesser mind (which is all of humanity when compared to deity) a seeming violation of law is simply a misunderstanding of the subtler complexities of the very law we do not yet fully understand.

The more I understand about Nature the more I understand about God.  Nature is His canvas and His laboratory.  Any belief that depreciates the magnificence of Nature is simply ingratitude.

A consistent theme to Lewis's works is the idea of becoming like Christ rather than just doing Christian things.  The devils in The Screwtape Letters work to make sure any virtuous action is done for the wrong reasons.  If the right things are done for the wrong reasons, they are of little help to us.  Those who return to Hell in The Great Divorce do so because they refuse to become like God - that there is something about being themselves they won't give up.  The irony here is that by giving up those parts of ourselves that hold us back and choosing therefore to become more like God we become even more ourselves.  We are each divinely unique and when we focus on becoming like God we truly find who we are.

Lewis most clearly elaborates this concept of becoming in Mere Christianity.  He goes on to tell of various sins discussing why each one is important.  And then he gets to Pride - what he calls the worst of all the sins.  He describes Pride as the only Spiritual sin.  All our other sins come through some perversion or distortion of natural impulses and drives.  But Pride - that is the idea that we are better than others.  We get no satisfaction out of actually being smart, or good looking but in thinking smugly that we are better at those things than others.  This distinction is what makes Pride so dangerous.  It literally rips all our relationships to shreds.  We cannot feel Godlike love because we are too busy judging or disdaining others.  Once we let go of ourselves and focus on others and becoming like God, He takes the helm in our lives and the real journey really begins.

We are not the sum of our actions.  Certainly each choice is going to leave a mark.  But it is how we choose to look at each choice - whether we choose to grow, forgive and learn - that defines us in the end.  Christ invites us to come unto Him and become as He is.  That is the only thing that matters.

Reading through The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce, I find Lewis's ideas of time and eternity absolutely fascinating.  While I'm not sure if this is exactly how God works eternity out, Lewis's ideas ring true to me.

He asserts that The Present is really the only thing that we truly experience and that it is the closest we will ever come to experiencing eternity while we are bound by time in this life.  It makes sense.  Our ideas of Past and Future are really just that.  We obviously have experienced the Past, but our experiencing of it occurred in the what-was-then-Present just as our reminiscing of it occurs in the current Present.  Likewise, we will experience the Future, but it will then be our then-Present and any of the worries, hopes, or dreams of the Future that we entertain now are being experienced now.  Any energy wasted in anxiety of a Future that in a large degree is quite unpredictable is lost Present.

The most interesting application of this is that there is no such thing as a small decision.  Because Eternity is the ever-present Present, every choice that we make is the choice.  Which means that any failure on our part to do the right at any given moment is changing our course for Eternity.  We're all going to make honest mistakes.  It's part of our growth and just a part of life on Earth.  But we all know that not every mistake is unintentional.  Each of us have our own foibles, challenges, weaknesses, and guilty pleasures.  If we look at each choice as the important one it is, it can help us to choose correctly.  Viewing the Present as Eternity helps us to see that there really isn't any repenting to be done later.  The time for that is now.  Hopefully we'll have grown and changed by the time the future comes, but there really isn't any undoing what we've done now.  Of course we could delay our repentance and that repentance is always available.  We have that agency and that gift.  But any delay is going to retard the growing and changing we were looking forward to.

Now is the time to act.  Now is the time to choose.  Now is the time to declare whose side you are on.  Any dwelling on the past or delaying or worrying about the future is lost Present.  Just live life, choose wisely, and be happy.  It's meant to be that way.

I'm taking a C.S. Lewis literature course this semester and I am LOVING it.  I will admit that, being a Biology major, I was a little intimidated about the quantity of reading required every day, but once I dove into it, I've loved it.  The pages seem to fly by as Lewis fills my minds with different worlds and profound truths.

This week we've read The Problem with X, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce.   If you haven't read them, check them out.  As I've read these beautifully written works I have been impressed with the importance of clearly seeing ourselves and others in God's Light.

I love the way these three works teach this.  The very complaining that we all relate to at the beginning of The Problem with X can very well be on of those vices Screwtape advises Wormwood to use against his patient.  That very focus on the sins of others can be the thing that keeps us from entering Heaven.  Just as the employer in The Great Divorce refused to go on to Heaven because his inferior, murderer employee and found his peace there.

But the other side of the coin is equally enlightening.  When we see ourselves clearly - with both our faults and our own divine potential - we can see others that way.  We begin to change and become one of Screwtapes enemies.  We can see the spark within each soul no matter how clouded it may be.  We can become one of those solid spirits in The Great Divorce while here on earth.  As we grow more like Christ, we can see others with that clarity of spirit that He sees them with.  We truly can become saviors on Mount Zion.

The choice is ours.  Our focus can become critical, offended, and increasingly inwardly imprisoning.  Or we can change, grow, and find ourselves liberated, uplifted, and ready to lift others.  Every road has its forks, and every fork its choice.

I know I've been spectacularly awful at keeping this thing up to date.  Life happens sometimes.  And I also discovered it's significantly harder to write when I'm not being assigned to do it.  But I've been thinking about this post for a little bit and so I decided it's time to write it.


I love water.  I always have.  When I was born the doctors told my parents that those were football shoulders.  Yeah I tried that, but it was not for me.  Shoulders this big give you wings and that's exactly how I used them.  I tried all sorts of sports and I was decently good at some of them.  But what I really loved was swimming lessons.  When I found out that you could swim competitively, I was in heaven.  From that moment on it was hard to get me out of the pool.  And though I'm not on a team right now and only swim sporadically, it's hard to get the pool out of me.

The United State Olympic Swimming Trials were last week.  And they were on NBC.  Not NBC Sports.  NBC.  My favorite sport has been on regular TV a lot the last couple years.  We're getting more limelight than just at the Olympics.  I loved it.  People I had met were swimming in that meet and people I hadn't were too.  But no matter who they were, I was proud of them.  I cheered and screamed and laughed and cried and fist-pumped with all of them.  This is the pinnacle of our sport - the best swimmers in the world vying to make the best Olympic Team in the world.  It's incredible.


I'll be cheering my heart out come this July.  But while I am looking forward to the Olympics and I'm trying to get back into the sport via triathlons or masters swimming, my love of water goes even deeper.

My parents took me to SeaWorld when I was five.  Since then it has been one of my favorite places to go in this world.  I've been there just by myself taking in everything I could.

When I was twelve or so, my family went on a cruise in the Caribbean.  I swam with sting-rays and snorkeled with some of the most brightly colored fish I had ever seen.  My ability to hold my breath and swim underwater for long periods of time took me far beyond the boats making the captain and my parents nervous.  But there was so much to see and feel and experience.  It was beautiful under there.


My favorite Christmas present was a 45 gallon marine aquarium. I fell in love with it.  I got this big Marine Aquaria book and I must have read it like a hundred times.  I worked and loved that aquarium.  And it was pretty dang good.  As soon as I have the means to do it, I am resurrecting that tank.

When I got back from my mission, I was hired at BYU's Evolutionary Ecology Laboratory taking care of hundreds of freshwater fish.  I was given the opportunity to travel to Panama and Costa Rica and play in the beautiful streams of tropical rainforests bringing hundreds of small Poeciliids back to our lab.  I've worked on research projects and even have one of my own.


I took a Scuba Diving Class and reveled in the freedom from the surface it brought me.

I've volunteered at The Living Planet Aquarium and landed the most wonderful internship ever at Aquarium of the Pacific.  There my love of veterinary medicine met my love of the watery world we live in.

You may be thinking, who really cares?  What's so cool about water or the things that live in it anyway?  I'll tell you.


Water has a way of moving things.  Its power to carve canyons and tumble down cliffs is breathtaking.  But it is full of lessons as well.  When water moves it is full of life.  Raging rivers and roaring seas are some of the most abundant ecosystems on earth.  Life came from those waters.  But water also pools.  It fills and stagnates.  Oxygen depletes and life struggles to survive.

Our lives aren't much different.  At times we are tossed about in the rapids, fearing that one wrong move might send us overboard and land us in treacherous water we know we can't handle.  Other times our lives get comfortable.  We stagnate.  We stop growing.  Life chokes and almost dies.

I think that life is a delicate balance.  We need the cool tumbling waters full of life and choice and growth.  We seek those waters.  When we are in the rapids of our lives we pray we'll find the gentle flowing streams and scream thanksgiving when we reach them.  When we land in the eddies we long for a way out and do our best to paddle and struggle to our freedom and breathe a sigh of relief when again life flows along its way.

I love water.  And I don't think I'll ever stop loving it.  Swimming is still the only workout I absolutely love.  Whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sharks, fish, and penguins are still my favorite animals.  Aquatic veterinary medicine is a growing and exciting field that I can't wait to get into.

Water is beautiful.  It's full of life and meaning. And I think that is exactly why the Savior taught that He and His Gospel are the living waters that bring us that life and meaning.  It's such a perfect symbol.  And as far as symbols go, I really love this one.

This blog started out as the Nature Journal for my Environmental Humanities class, and while it has expanded to encompass the other aspects of my life, that is always going to be an important part of what I write about here.  I know I haven't written in a while, but a lot has happened.  I've had a lot of time to think about how wonderful this planet is, how blessed we are to be here, and how important it is to be connected to it.

I had the opportunity to visit a turkey processing plant for my Animal Husbandry class and it was an eye-opening experience.  All too often we remove ourselves from what we are eating.  We use words like pork or beef to avoid using the name of the animal that gave its life for our use.  In a way it was kind of a spiritual experience for me.  I've found myself much more grateful for what I'm eating since then.

But we often remove ourselves from other aspects of our use of the planet.  The Lord has decreed that this planet was created for us, that it was for our use.  It's important that we take care of it though.  Now I'm not an advocate of extreme environmentalism.  I think it's as dangerous and disconnected from reality as is the extreme abuse of the land - but I think it's important that we find ways to use what's been given us in a healthy and sustainable manner.

And we're doing well!  It makes me proud that 80% of Fortune 500 Companies have sustainability departments.  Because in all honesty - they are the ones that are going to make the difference.  They are the keystone species for this planet.  These companies and groups like The Nature Conservancy are working together to find solutions that not only meet the companies needs but protect wildlife, limit pollution, and provide access to something as simple as fresh water to the residents of dozens of nations.

People all over are embracing the green movement and it's making a difference.  So keep it up.  There's still so much you can do.  Plant something!  Take a hike!  Participate in a cleanup!  Or just go see Chimpanzee!  Something as simple as watching a movie this week can make a difference in the world.  Find what works for you and do it.

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

You know...I love Biology. So much. I spent today in the streams, gulfs, and coasts of Costa Rica. I was with two of the most knowledgeable men I know - Dr Jerry Johnson and his PhD student Spencer Ingley. We collected a variety of fish, talked about the trees, about the intricacies of ecology and evolution, and even did a little bird watching. I love Biology because every bit of information you glean changes your life. You walk outside and appreciate the call of a bird, the colors of a fish, or the behavior of a reptile. Trees and flowers burst into life for you. Everything is exciting.  That's how God has got to see this world and it's got to be great. Today I got to see a Magnificent Frigatebird in the wild and I just about lost it. So next time you step out your door, open your eyes and let in the beauties of the world. There's no telling just what you might see.