Like and Love, Ramblings of a Theologian in Progress

Dear Internet- Being a PhD student means a variety of things. In particular, it means that I spend a lot of time reading . Sadly (or happily on some days) it means I read a lot on a very, very narrow topic. And as much fun as reading about theology and the Holocaust and politics is (sarcasm loosely applied- some of it is actually fascinating, albeit maybe not fun ), it means that in my scant free time I've stopped reading much else. Instead I spend a majority of my free time either on the computer or watching TV, neither of which is good to do before bed for an insomniac. So here's my new plan for 2016: In the hour and a half before I go to sleep, I'm going to be "screen" free, relatively speaking. In this time I'm working on journaling and reading through the Bible via a 365 Day reading plan. But I also just want to read- and I have a plan. What if I read 10% of a different book every night for 10 weeks? I can read about 20-30 pages per hour, but have a

When I was 8 or 9 years old I received a boombox, in all its mid 90's glory. My first CDs were Billy Joel (I loved "Only the Good Die Young"), Mariah Carey, Amy Grant, and Ace of Base's  The Bridge.  Before that purchase I had a Sony Walkman and a cassette player. This was followed by many Discmans and various iterations of iPods. As a Christmas gift one year I asked for a car stereo that was compatible with my iPod. Which is all to say that I can't remember a point in my life when music wasn't intrinsically part of it. More often than not you'll see me with my headphones in. I run to music, I work to music, I meander in the rain to music. Spotify will be acknowledged in my thesis, somewhere before Jack, but near the end. So when my colleagues in the TheoLab issued an invitation to anyone capable of reading Kevin Hardagen's blog to compile a "Best of" music for 2016, I decided it would be a good exercise in looking at the past y