Year: 2025

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.

Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being

When I first entered into Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being, I realized almost immediately that I was not reading a standard metaphysical treatise. I was stepping into a conversation about how being itself becomes available to us, how the meaning of existence slowly discloses itself through experience, relation, and attunement. Stein calls the book “an ascent to the meaning of being” in her preface and describes it as written “by a beginner for beginners” (Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, Preface). Yet the scope is anything but beginner level. She begins from the finitude that shapes every human life, our embodied and time-bound existence, and traces the ways it naturally presses toward an origin and fullness of being that is not our own. What strikes me is how this ascent mirrors what I am trying to articulate in The Ecology of the Cross. I am trying to understand how cruciform life opens us to deeper belonging in the more-than-human world, and Stein provides a metaphysical grammar for that movement.

Continue reading Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being

Plasma, Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Cosmos: Relational Fields

Most of the visible universe is not solid, liquid, or gas. Instead, it is plasma, an electrified, dynamic, relational medium that shapes stars, nebulae, auroras, and the vast glowing threads between galaxies. Plasma is not a passive substance but a field that responds, organizes, circulates, and transforms, as far as we understand it, according to the classical model of physics (having been a Physics and AP Physics teacher for years). When physicists describe plasma, they speak of currents, waves, resonances, and instabilities with terms that sound far closer to phenomenology’s language of relations than to the inert mechanics of early modern science.

Continue reading Plasma, Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Cosmos: Relational Fields

Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross

I occasionally get asked about my PhD work and why Edith Stein‘s The Science of the Cross (good article here) is such a big factor in my own thinking and research. I wanted to put together a quick overview of this incredibly important but under-read work.

Edith Stein’s Science of the Cross has become essential for my own work on The Ecology of the Cross because Stein refuses to treat the Cross as a mere doctrinal moment or as raw suffering. Instead, she approaches it as a structure of perception, a way of knowing and inhabiting the real. When she calls it a science, she means that the Cross forms a disciplined way of seeing or something that takes root inside a person like a seed and slowly reshapes how they relate to the world (p. xxvi). Reading Stein in this way helped me name what I’ve been experiencing in my own project in that cruciform consciousness isn’t just theological; it’s ecological. It’s a way of perceiving the world that emerges from relationship, participation, and transformation rather than abstraction. Her work gave me language for something I had long sensed, that the Cross can reorient the self toward the world with deeper attentiveness, humility, and openness.

Continue reading Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross

Edith Stein’s Letter to Pope Pius XI in 1933

Edith Stein (later St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross as a Carmelite nun) would eventually be killed in a gas chamber by the Nazi’s because of her Jewish heritage. Her letter to Pope Pius XI remains relevant and fresh today, with many societal and spiritual ills and injustices, with government structures and religious organizations remaining either silent or complicit as we approach 2026 and almost 100 years since Stein’s imploring epistle…

EDITH STEIN: “Letter to Pope Pius XI” (1933):

Holy Father!

As a child of the Jewish people who, by the grace of God, for the past eleven years has also been a child of the Catholic Church, I dare to speak to the Father of Christianity about that which oppresses millions of Germans. For weeks we have seen deeds perpetrated in Germany which mock any sense of justice and humanity, not to mention love of neighbor. For years the leaders of National Socialism have been preaching hatred of the Jews. Now that they have seized the power of government and armed their followers, among them proven criminal elements, this seed of hatred has germinated. The government has only recently admitted that ex- cesses have occurred. To what extent, we cannot tell, because public opinion is being gagged. However, judging by what I have learned from personal relations, it is in no way a matter of singular exceptional cases. Under pressure from reactions abroad, the government has turned to “milder” methods. It has issued the watchword “no Jew shall have even one hair on his head harmed.” But through boycott measures–by robbing people of their livelihood, civic honor and fatherland–it drives many to desperation; within the last week, through private reports I was informed of five cases of suicide as a consequence of these hostilities. I am convinced that this is a general condition which will claim many more victims. One may regret that these unhappy people do not have greater inner strength to bear their misfortune. But the responsibility must fall, after all, on those who brought them to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in the face of such happenings.

Everything that happened and continues to happen on a daily basis originates with a government that calls itself “Christian.” For weeks not only Jews but also thousands of faithful Catholics in Germany, and, I believe, all over the world, have been waiting and hoping for the Church of Christ to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name. Is not this idolization of race and governmental power which is being pounded into the public consciousness by the radio open heresy? Isn’t the effort to destroy Jewish blood an abuse of the holiest humanity of our Savior, of the most blessed Virgin and the apostles? Is not all this diametrically opposed to the conduct of our Lord and Savior, who, even on the cross, still prayed for his persecutors? And isn’t this a black mark on the record of this Holy Year which was intended to be a year of peace and reconciliation.

We all, who are faithful children of the Church and who see the conditions in Germany with open eyes, fear the worst for the prestige of the Church, if the silence continues any longer. We are convinced that this silence will not be able in the long run to purchase peace with the present German government. For the time being, the fight against Catholicism will be conducted quietly and less brutally than against Jewry, but no less systematically. Before long no Catholic will be able to hold office in Germany unless he dedicates himself unconditionally to the new course of action.

At the feet of your Holiness, requesting your apostolic blessing,

(Signed) Dr. Edith Stein, Instructor at the German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy, Münster in Westphalia, Collegium Marianum.

Stargate Returns!

I’m very (very) excited about this news and can’t wait to see what the new series has in store for us… Stargate is one of those shows I’ve long clung to as a fan and loved the mythology since the original movie that I saw as a college kid way back in the ’90’s. Exciting times!

Stargate Returns! – Joseph Mallozzi’s Weblog:

Yes, it’s true.  14 years after the franchise aired its last episode (SGU’s “Gauntlet”), a new Stargate series has been greenlit by Amazon.  And it’s not a reboot or a wholesale reimagining that will wipe the slate clean on 17 seasons and some 350 hours of Stargate history.  It’s a new series that will be the perfect jumping-on point for first-time viewers while, at the same time, honoring the existing past.

Edith Stein and Laudato Si’: Recovering the Interior Life of Creation

Here’s a “study guide” and reflection to go along with these thoughts if you’re interested!

Most readers of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ approach it as an ecological document. It is that, of course. It gives us the vocabulary of “integral ecology,” names the Cry of the Earth Cry of the Poor (Leo Boff), and pushes Christians to confront the ecological devastation happening right in our backyards. But reading it alongside one of my favorite thinkers, Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), has helped me see the encyclical in a deeper light. It is not only a call for ecological reform. It is a call for a renewed way of perceiving the world.

Continue reading Edith Stein and Laudato Si’: Recovering the Interior Life of Creation