Notebook of Sand

• Recent Publications
• Recent Projects
• Conferences & Speaking
"Comparing Spatial Hypertext Collections"
  ACM Hypertext '09
"Archiving and Sharing Your Tinderbox"
  Tinderbox Weekend London '09
"The Electronic Nature of Future Literatures"
  Literary Studies Now, Apr '09
"The World University Project"
  St. John's Col. Cambridge, Feb '09
"Ethical Explanations,"
  The New Knowledge Forge, Jun '08
Lecture, Cambridge University
  Tragedy in E-Lit, Nov '07
Hypertext '07: Tragedy in E-Lit
Host for Tinderbox Cambridge '07
Keynote: Dickinson State Uni Conf
Upper Midwest NCHC'07: Speaker
eNarrative 6: Creative Nonfiction
HT'05: "Philadelphia Fullerine"
  Nelson award winning paper
NCHC '05:
 Nurturing Independent Scholarship
Riddick Practicum:
  Building Meeting Good Will
NCHC '04:
  Philadelphia Fullerine
  Lecture on American Studies
WWW@10: Nonfiction on the Web
NCHC '03: Parliamentary Procedure
ELL '03 -- Gawain Superstar
• (a)Musing (ad)Dictions:

Ideas. Tools. Art. Build --not buy. What works, what doesn't. Enjoy new media and software aesthetics at Tekka.

Theodore Gray (The Magic Black Box)

Faith, Life, Art, Academics. Sermons from my family away from home: Eden Chapel!

My other home: The Cambridge Union Society (in 2007, I designed our [Fresher's Guide])

The Economist daily news analysis

Global Higher Ed blog

• Hypertext/Writing

Writing the Living Web

Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, hypertext expert Mark Bernstein. (Electronic) Literature, cooking, art, etc.

Fabulous game reviews at playthisthing.

• Stats

Chapter I: Born. Lived. Died.

There is a Chapter II.

Locale: Lancaster County Pa, USA

Lineage: Guatemala

Religion: My faith is the primary focus of my life, influencing each part of me. I have been forgiven, cleansed, and empowered by Jesus Christ. Without him, I am a very thoughtful, competent idiot. With him, I am all I need to be, all I could ever hope for. I oppose institutional religious stagnation, but getting together with others is a good idea. God is real. Jesus Christ is his Son, and the Bible is true. Faith is not human effort. It's human choice. I try to be the most listening, understanding, and generous person I can.

Interests: Anything I can learn. Training and experience in new media, computer science, anglophone literature, education, parliamentary debate, democratic procedure, sculpture, and trumpet performance. Next: applied & computational linguistics, probably.

Education: Private school K-3. Home educated 4-12. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Elizabethtown College in Jan 2006. As the 2006 Davies-Jackson Scholar, I studied English at St. John's College, Cambridge University from 2006 - 2008.

Memberships: Eden Baptist, Cambridge Union Society, ACM, AIP, GPA.

Alum of the Elizabethtown College Honors Program, sponsored by the Hershey Company.

Seeking Honor
Thursday, 6 Jan 2005 :-:

Roman Jurist
Photo by Jose Warletta
While at the National Collegiate Honors Conference, I discussed the topic of honor with the director of my college's honors program, Dr. Conrad Kanagy. A kind man, he is also the pastor of a Mennonite church. That morning at the conference, he had discussed the topic of seeking honor with other religious leaders who are involved in honors. They discussed the difficulty of even calling such a program an "honors" program, since it's not our place to seek honor.

When we talked, I was struck by (what seemed to me) the difference between the idea of seeking honor and doing honorable things. Our conversation got pushed to my mind's back burner but didn't disappear.

** * **

I was reading from the book of Romans the other day and ran across an interesting passage in the second chapter...

1You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? 4Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?

5But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6God “will give to each person according to what he has done.”[a] 7To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8But for those who are selfseeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11For God does not show favoritism.

So here, we see how we can seek glory, honor, immortality, and peace for ourselves and be perfectly just in doing so.

In fact, the only righteous thing to do is to seek glory, honor, immortality, and peace. The nice thing? Righteousness is the only way to actually gain these things. For glory, honor, immortality, and peace from God are much better than the versions that humans give. And yet this passage clearly lists them in the context of humility and a realization of human failure. Because the other point of this passage flow is to show how such things are unattainable through human effort.

In chapter 3, we read:

Where , then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? on that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

We then learn that in fact, blessing doesn't come as a result of living an honorable life, but rather that an honorable life comes as a result of free blessing through the grace of Christ. Later, we learn that our aspiration to righteousness dooms us as much as any aspiration to sin, but that the Spirit is our only hope to living a good life.

The same grace that make a righteous life possible secures the glory, honor, and peace we might have otherwise sought by running the futile hamster wheel of personal righteousness. This is the beautiful mystery of grace.

Although I have not expressed it in such terms, this is the sort of honor that I have associated with the honors program at Etown. I think it is fitting and laudable to honor, aid, and encourage those who are willing to seek honor from God. What is better than to align our praise and endowment of honor to those who God Himself would honor? No doubt, there are difficulties, since E-Town is no longer a primarily religious college (was it ever? I cannot say). But it should not be a difficulty for us to honor the righteous. It should be a pleasure.

For those who join an honors program as a Christian, this biblical honor must be our orienting goal.