Year: 2025

Christmas Without Sentiment: Edith Stein and the God Who Enters Finitude

Every year, Christmas arrives already crowded.

Crowded with lights, crowded with music, crowded with Hallmark Channel movies, crowded with memory and expectation. Even those of us who love the feast time often feel a quiet pressure to feel something specific… joy, warmth, reassurance. Christmas often becomes a kind of emotional performance, even in the church.

As much as our modern nativity scenes of the incarnation of Jesus are a harmony of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke (an ancient practice going back to the beginnings of Christian writings, as we see in Tatian’s Diatessaron discovered at my beloved Dura Europos in modern-day Syria in the 1930s) with shepherds, angels, magi and timber all mixing together in a crowded space, our own performances and expectations are a harmony of these accumulated cultural projections and perceived normative truths.

Edith Stein helps me breathe differently around Christmas.

Not because she writes sweetly about the nativity… she doesn’t. And not because she offers seasonal reflections in the usual sense. What she gives instead is something far more demanding and, to my mind, far more faithful with a way of understanding Christmas as an event of ontological descent… God entering finitude without rescue clauses.

Incarnation as Entry, Not Appearance

In Finite and Eternal Being, Stein’s central concern is the relationship between eternal being and finite being. Creation itself is already a kind of gift, but the Incarnation intensifies that gift to the point of vulnerability. God does not merely touch finitude from above. God enters it from within, accepting its conditions rather than suspending them (Finite and Eternal Being, 352–360).

This matters for how I think about Christmas and how we should engage with this event, individually and culturally (rather than ceding our engagement to capitalist corporate control).

The child in the manger is not a divine exception to creaturely life. The Christ child is not insulated from time, hunger, exposure, or risk as the Gospels make abundantly clear. Christmas, in Stein’s metaphysical imagination, is the moment when eternal being consents to be shaped by the rhythms of finite existence.

God learns time from the inside. That alone should unsettle most of our Christmas instincts.

Christmas Already Contains the Cross

Stein never allows Christmas to float free from Good Friday. In The Science of the Cross, written during the final years of her life, she describes Christ’s entire existence as a single movement of self-giving love that begins with Incarnation and culminates in total surrender (The Science of the Cross, 20–28).

From this perspective, Christmas is not a pause before suffering begins. It is the first step of suffering and ultimately redemption.

The infant’s vulnerability in the Gospels is not symbolic. It is real. Exposure is not delayed until Calvary. It begins in Bethlehem much as it does today, with the birth of Palestinian children facing so many challenges that they are not responsible for nor should have to inherit.

This is why Stein’s Christmas feels so unsentimental to me. There is no divine safety net quietly waiting backstage. God does not visit human life. God commits to it. Instead of asking “Mary Did You Know?” we should be asking “God, Did You Know?”

Empathy Taken All the Way Down

Years earlier, in On the Problem of Empathy, Stein defines empathy as a way of entering another’s experience without collapsing the distinction between self and other (On the Problem of Empathy, 10–18). Empathy is not projection. It is not imagination alone. It is a disciplined openness to being affected by another while remaining oneself, which is often opposed to modern conceptions of empathy.

When Stein later reflects on the Incarnation, it becomes impossible not to see it as empathy radicalized beyond psychology and into ontology itself.

Christmas is not God observing human life with perfect knowledge. It is God living a human life from within finite consciousness. God allows Godself to be addressed by the world.

As someone working through ecological intentionality, I find Stein quietly indispensable here. Christmas is not just about human salvation. It is about divine responsiveness to material reality… to bodies, to limits, to history.

Hiddenness, Not Spectacle

In Stein’s letters from her Carmelite years, Christmas appears quietly, almost in passing. What she emphasizes is not celebration but hiddenness. God enters the world unnoticed and is recognized only by those keeping watch (the magi and the shepherds, in their respective accounts in Matthew and Luke). Recognition requires attentiveness and intentionality rather than announcement.

My own practices of slow noticing by sitting with a black walnut tree in winter and throughout 2025, attending to bark and leaf litter and time without spectacle, have quietly taught me the value of this sort of intentionality.

Christmas, for Stein, is not loud. There is no grand culmination of Handel’s Messiah. Incarnation happens when no one is watching carefully enough.

Christmas After Auschwitz

It is impossible to read Stein’s later work without knowing how her life ends. A Jewish philosopher, a teacher, a Catholic Carmelite, and murdered at Auschwitz with hundreds of others on August 9, 1942. Christmas, read backward through that history, becomes unbearable if we expect it to function as reassurance.

Stein does not let it.

Christmas does not promise escape from historical suffering. It places God inside it. Eternal being does not hover safely above violence and loss. It enters conditions in which love can be rejected, destroyed, or silenced. That is not comforting in any shallow sense. But it is faithful.

Why I Return to Stein at Christmas

I return to Edith Stein in December because she will not let me sentimentalize the Incarnation. She reminds me that Christmas is not about divine power softened for human consumption. It is about divine vulnerability embraced without reserve.

God becomes finite. God becomes dependent. God is exposed to the elements of Creation as well as human frailty, cruelty, joy, and love.

And in doing so, finitude itself is no longer something to be escaped by rapture or an afterlife of harp playing in the clouds. It becomes the place where meaning happens.

Christmas, then, is not a break from the world’s grief. It is God’s decision to dwell within it and to be directly addressed by that grief. That is a hard truth. But it is also, quietly, a hopeful one… if we are willing to sit still long enough to let it speak.

South Carolina’s Data Center Decision Time

I have grave concerns about the speed at which this is happening all over the state, with little regard to integral ecologies (City Council is debating two new data centers here in Spartanburg as well)…

9 new data centers proposed in Colleton County:

“I think South Carolina really is at a decision point: what do we want our state to look like 20 years from now, 30 years from now?” resident and Climate Campaign Associate Robby Maynor said. “Do we want a lot of gas plants and pipelines and data centers? Or do we want to protect the things that make South Carolina special and unique? The ACE Basin is at the very top of that list. This is the absolute wrong location for a complex of this size.”

In the application for the special zoning exception, the proposed data centers and the substations show the potential impact on this land, especially the wetlands, but some say the impact is even greater.

Exciting News on the Family Front

Exciting news for Merianna and our family… so proud of her ministry and devotion to the spiritual direction of people (young and old!)…

Announcing our New Director of Youth and Family Ministry:

Dear FPC Youth, Families, and Congregation,

The Youth Director Search Committee is overjoyed to announce that Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson has accepted the call to serve as our new Director of Youth and Family Ministry.

Merianna is a minister, teacher, spiritual director, and author with deep roots to Spartanburg. She was born and raised here and is a graduate of both the Spartanburg Day School and Furman University. After teaching overseas following college, she answered a call to ministry and received her Master of Divinity in Pastoral Studies from Gardner-Webb University.

What is Intelligence (and What “Superintelligence” Misses)?

Worth a read… sounds a good deal like what I’ve been saying out loud and thinking here in my posts on AI futures and the need for local imagination in steering technological innovation such as AI / AGI…

The Politics Of Superintelligence:

And beneath all of this, the environmental destruction accelerates as we continue to train large language models — a process that consumes enormous amounts of energy. When confronted with this ecological cost, AI companies point to hypothetical benefits, such as AGI solving climate change or optimizing energy systems. They use the future to justify the present, as though these speculative benefits should outweigh actual, ongoing damages. This temporal shell game, destroying the world to save it, would be comedic if the consequences weren’t so severe.

And just as it erodes the environment, AI also erodes democracy. Recommendation algorithms have long shaped political discourse, creating filter bubbles and amplifying extremism, but more recently, generative AI has flooded information spaces with synthetic content, making it impossible to distinguish truth from fabrication. The public sphere, the basis of democratic life, depends on people sharing enough common information to deliberate together….

What unites these diverse imaginaries — Indigenous data governance, worker-led data trusts, and Global South design projects — is a different understanding of intelligence itself. Rather than picturing intelligence as an abstract, disembodied capacity to optimize across all domains, they treat it as a relational and embodied capacity bound to specific contexts. They address real communities with real needs, not hypothetical humanity facing hypothetical machines. Precisely because they are grounded, they appear modest when set against the grandiosity of superintelligence, but existential risk makes every other concern look small by comparison. You can predict the ripostes: Why prioritize worker rights when work itself might soon disappear? Why consider environmental limits when AGI is imagined as capable of solving climate change on demand?

What If the Economy Was Modeled After Ecology?

I mean… this is pretty much what I do if they’d like to give me a call. 

What If the Economy Was Modeled After Ecology? – Longreads:

What if we thought of the American economy as an organism, rather than a machine? For Atmos, Christine Ro talks with John Fullerton, a former J.P. Morgan banker focused on regenerative economics—which, in simplest terms, is the idea that the economy is a living system. The founder of a paradigm-changing think tank, Fullerton tells Ro he’s not anti-capitalist, but instead wants to build an economy that’s resilient as a whole, optimizes different forms of capital beyond financial capital, and celebrates human creativity within a healthier and less monopolistic market. He also thinks financial institutions like banks could do a lot of good—but they won’t. Reading their conversation, I couldn’t help but think of everything I’ve learned in school over the decades—about Adam Smith, about GDP, about growth—and imagine a world where future generations begin their economic lessons under the guidance of ecology’s wisdom.

How I Use Obsidian at CIIS: A Relational Workflow for Reading, Reflection, and Writing

Obsidian has become my living archive since I first dove in back in 2021 as a classroom teacher where I organized teaching notes, conversations, and todos as a Dean of Students… and now it has become the place where course readings, dissertation ideas, phenomenological field notes, theological insights, Canvas posts, and draft papers all meet in a shared relational space. It’s less a filing cabinet and more a garden. What I’m really doing in Obsidian is tending connections by letting ideas compost, cross-pollinate, and eventually grow into papers or long-form reflections. Here’s the core workflow I’m sharing with you.

Two places where I’d start before you dive in to Obsidian:

1. Book Notes as Living Conversations

When I read, whether it’s Merleau-Ponty, Edith Stein, Whitehead, or a text for PCC/ESR, I take notes into a Book Notes template that pulls in metadata automatically:

  • Author / Title / Year / Course
  • Core quotes (copied directly, tagged with #quote and citation)
  • My reflections in first person
  • Connections to other thinkers or my ongoing concepts: [[Ecological Intentionality]], [[Cruciform Consciousness]], [[Empathy (Stein)]], [[Flesh of the World]], etc.

Each book note ends with a section called “Where does this want to go?”

Sometimes the answer is a future paper, a blog post, or a concept node. That question keeps the note alive instead of archived.

2. Canvas Posts → Permanent Notes

I write most of my Canvas responses in Obsidian first. This lets me:

  1. Draft freely
  2. Link concepts as I’m thinking
  3. Keep a permanent, searchable archive of every class discussion

Each module prompt gets its own note in my Canvas/ folder. After posting, I create 1–3 “permanent notes” distilled from the response—short, atomic ideas written in my own voice.

For example, a Canvas post on the chiasm leads to permanent notes like:

  • Perception as reciprocal touch
  • The ecological thickness of the visible
  • Relational openness in the phenomenology of nature

These then link outward into ongoing clusters such as [[Phenomenology]], [[Embodiment]], [[Nature as Intertwining]].

3. Writing Papers Through Connected Notes

When a paper is due, ecological theology, phenomenology, ESR or PCC research, I never begin with a blank page. I begin with a map of notes already in conversation.

The workflow:

  1. Create a Paper Hub note as a central node for the project:
    • thesis draft
    • reading list
    • list of relevant permanent notes
  2. Pull in linked notes Using Dataview or simple backlinks, I gather every relevant piece of thinking I’ve already stored.
  3. Assemble the argument The writing becomes an act of weaving connections rather than inventing from scratch.
  4. Export to Word/PDF Once the draft is complete, I move into Word for Chicago-style citations and final formatting.

This lets my academic work grow organically out of months of lived reflection rather than rushed, isolated writing.

4. Daily Notes as Phenomenological and Ecological Anchors

Every morning’s Daily Note includes:

  • weather + sunrise/sunset
  • tracking notes on the black walnut
  • dreams, moods, or somatic impressions
  • any quote or insight from my reading

These small entries, over time, become a longitudinal phenomenological dataset—especially helpful for my ecological intentionality and process-relational work.

5. The Vault as an Ecology

Obsidian mirrors how I’m thinking about the world in my CIIS work:

everything is connected, everything participates, and meaning emerges through relation rather than isolation.

My vault has three organizing principles:

  • Maps of content (big conceptual hubs)
  • Atomic permanent notes (ideas per note tagged well)
  • Ephemeral notes (daily, in-class, or quick captures)

The magic is not in perfect organization… it’s in the interplay.

6. Why This Works for Me

This workflow keeps my scholarship:

  • Ecological: ideas grow from interaction
  • Phenomenological: grounded in lived experience
  • Process-relational: always evolving
  • Practical: every note has a future use

It’s become the backbone not only of my life and coursework, but of my dissertation path, Tree Sit Journals, Carolina Ecology posts, and even sermon writing.

Do Not Be Afraid

I first read Heaney as an undergrad at Wofford College in a literature class from Prof. Dooley… I was immediately transfixed by his writing (and his story as a linguist that comes through in all that he wrote). I was fortunate enough to attend a reading he did at Yale’s Battell Chapel while I was studying in my first year at Yale Div in October of 2000.

Being at Yale, of all places (for a country bumpkin from rural South Carolina), hearing one of the great poets read his own work on a cold and snowy October evening was something like a theophany. I certainly understood then the concept of “do not be afraid” and it has sat with me ever since when I read Heaney, which I try to do often (as should you)…

Noli Timere: Seamus Heaney, Translation, and a Wall in Dublin | MultiLingual:

Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet and playwright, passed away in Dublin on 30 August, 2013, after a short illness. His last words, sent by text message to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died, were Noli timere (Latin for Do not be afraid). I took the photograph below in Dublin, a short walk from my home, capturing his last words in tribute.

Sugars, ‘Gum,’ and Stardust Found in Asteroid Bennu Samples

Pointing us more and more in the direction that life on Earth is cosmic in origin, but also connected to a living universe filled with both organic molecules as well as possibilities on the metaphysical side of things (consciousness, even?… I think so)… 

Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples – NASA:

Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient “space gum” consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger life on Earth, and finding them in the pristine samples from Bennu is important for scientists studying how life began and whether it exists beyond our planet.

Quantum–Plasma Consciousness and the Ecology of the Cross

I’ve been thinking a good deal about plasma, physics, artificial intelligence, consciousness, and my ongoing work on The Ecology of the Cross, as all of those areas of my own interest are connected. After teaching AP Physics, Physics, Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and AP Environmental Science for the last 20 years or so, this feels like one of those frameworks that I’ve been building to for the last few decades.

So, here’s a longer paper exploring some of that, with a bibliography of recent scientific research and philosophical and theological insights that I’m pretty proud of (thanks, Zotero and Obsidian!).

Abstract

This paper develops a relational cosmology, quantum–plasma consciousness, that integrates recent insights from plasma astrophysics, quantum foundations, quantum biology, consciousness studies, and ecological theology. Across these disciplines, a shared picture is emerging: the universe is not composed of isolated substances but of dynamic, interdependent processes. Plasma research reveals that galaxy clusters and cosmic filaments are shaped by magnetized turbulence, feedback, and self-organization. Relational interpretations of quantum mechanics show that physical properties arise only through specific interactions, while quantum biology demonstrates how coherence and entanglement can be sustained in living systems. Together, these fields suggest that relationality and interiority are fundamental features of reality. The paper brings this scientific picture into dialogue with ecological theology through what I call The Ecology of the Cross. This cruciform cosmology interprets openness, rupture, and transformation, from quantum interactions to plasma reconnection and ecological succession, as intrinsic to creation’s unfolding. The Cross becomes a symbol of divine participation in the world’s vulnerable and continually renewing relational processes. By reframing consciousness as an intensified, self-reflexive mode of relational integration, and by situating ecological crisis and AI energy consumption within this relational ontology, the paper argues for an ethic of repairing relations and cultivating spiritual attunement to the interiorities of the Earth community.

PDF download below…

Quantum–Plasma Consciousness and the Ecology of the CrossDownload

AI Data Centers in Space

Solar energy is indeed everything (and perhaps the root of consciousness?)… this is a good step and we should be moving more of our energy grids into these types of frameworks (with local-focused receivers and transmitters here on the surface)… not just AI datacenters. I suspect we will in the coming decades with the push from AI (if the power brokers that have made and continue to make trillions from energy generation aren’t calling the shots)… 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we’re just a decade away from a new normal of extraterrestrial data centers:

CEO Sundar Pichai said in a Fox News interview on Sunday that Google will soon begin construction of AI data centers in space. The tech giant announced Project Suncatcher earlier this month, with the goal of finding more efficient ways to power energy-guzzling centers, in this case with solar power.

“One of our moonshots is to, how do we one day have data centers in space so that we can better harness the energy from the sun that is 100 trillion times more energy than what we produce on all of Earth today?” Pichai said.

Dispersal of Domestic Cats to Europe

Cat lovers in Britain have the Roman Army to thank for their feline friends, evidently… interesting study!

The dispersal of domestic cats from North Africa to Europe around 2000 years ago | Science:

European samples that cluster with domestic cats only appear in the 1st century CE, suggesting a later dispersal of domestic cats than previously thought. Although broader sampling is needed, this study shows the complexity of population dynamics that is often revealed when looking beyond mitochondrial DNA

Artificial Intelligence at the Crossroads of Science, Ethics, and Spirituality

I’ve been interested in seeing how corporate development of AI data centers (and their philosophies and ethical considerations) has dominated the conversation, rather than inviting in other local and metaphysical voices to help shape this important human endeavor. This paper explores some of those possibilities (PDF download available here…)

Artificial Intelligence at the Crossroads of ScienceDownload

Ancient Greeks and Romans on Environmental Harm

Interesting readings from ancient voices and the connection between ecological intentionality and human health / wellbeing…

Ancient Greeks and Romans knew harming the environment could change the climate:

Since at least the fourth century BC, the ancient Greeks and Romans recognised that the climate changes over time and that human activity can cause it.

Oldest Known Figurine to Depict an Encounter Between a Human and a More-Than-Human

Fascinating find!

A clay figurine unveils a storytelling shift from 12,000 years ago (Science News):

A roughly 12,000-year-old clay figurine unearthed in northern Israel has unveiled a surprisingly ancient turning point in storytelling and artistic techniques.

This tiny item, which fits in the palm of an adult’s hand, represents the oldest known figurine to depict an encounter between a human and a nonhuman animal, say archaeologist Laurent Davin of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and colleagues. Meticulous sculpting captured a mythological scene involving a goose and a woman, the scientists report November 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

On Bibliomania

I suffer from this affliction and blessing (sometimes to the chagrin of my beloved partner, but she does share my love of reading despite our stacks of books around our home and in our basement)… wonderful article here… I don’t understand people who consume books on a Kindle or just return them when they are “finished” as the book is a living organism with flesh, a spine, organs, veins, and neurons as well:

Literary Hub » Nothing Better Than a Whole Lot of Books: In Praise of Bibliomania:

Books are possessed and possessing, they exist to fortify, to preserve, to radiate their own charged auras. Owning them isn’t the same as possessing the knowledge within, but it’s the second-best thing. There is a sense that I’m keeping these books for when I need them, what Eco compares to having a stocked medicine cabinet for when a certain ailment might strike. Sometimes, like a monk eyeing the encroaching vandals, I feel like I’m fortifying myself as I pile them up on windowsills, leaving the ever more-prevalent censors on the other side. Their very physicality is central to this, because unlike an e-book or text entombed in the cloud, my books don’t rely on the good will of algorithms or tech billionaires; they’ll still be readable long after the lights have gone out (at least by daylight).

The Problem of AI Water Cooling for Communities

It’s no coincidence that most of these AI mega centers are being built in areas here in the United States Southeast where regulations are more lax and tax incentives are generous…

AI’s water problem is worse than we thought:

Here’s the gist: At its data centers in Morrow County, Amazon is using water that’s already contaminated with industrial agriculture fertilizer runoff to cool down its ultra-hot servers. When that contaminated water hits Amazon’s sizzling equipment, it partially evaporates—but all the nitrate pollution stays behind. That means the water leaving Amazon’s data centers is even more concentrated with pollutants than what went in.

After that extra-contaminated water leaves Amazon’s data center, it then gets dumped and sprayed across local farmland in Oregon. From there, the contaminated water soaks straight into the aquifer that 45,000 people drink from.

The result is that people in Morrow County are now drinking from taps loaded with nitrates, with some testing at 40, 50, even 70 parts per million. (For context: the federal safety limit is 10 ppm. Anything above that is linked to miscarriages, kidney failure, cancers, and “blue baby syndrome.”)

The Solution to Being Locked In

Seth describes his situation with LinkedIn posts here, but the refrain is something I’ve been saying for 20 years now… own your own work and have a canonical place for it. Don’t rely on Facebook/YouTube/LinkedIn/X/Etsy, etc., because of the allure of cheap eyeballs and “traffic”… it’s never been easier to have your own domain on your own server and control of your online expressions.

The Hotel California (and subscriptions) | Seth’s Blog:

The alternative is to own your own stuff. To build an asset you control, and to guard your attention and trust carefully.

The best way to read blogs hasn’t changed in twenty years. RSS. It’s free and easy and it just works. It’s the most efficient way to get the information you’re looking for, and it’s under your control. There’s a quick explainer video at that link along with a reader that’s easy to use.

Who Says Blogging is Dead?

My site is having its biggest month in almost 20 years (and its best year since 2007, when I was selling sponsorships and made a decent income from them). I’ve not done much to promote things here besides writing, but I do appreciate the tens of thousands of visitors (not bots) that have stopped by.

We’re about to enter a new age of personal and professional blogging that will swing the pendulum back from the horribleness of social media coalesced around a few corporate platforms. These types of surprising numbers (for me) help convince me that my thoughts are accurate.