All Posts

AI as Support and Creative Catalyst

A personal reflection on using AI for emotional support and creative collaboration, exploring how artificial intelligence serves as both mental health companion and creative catalyst in an increasingly isolated modern world. The post examines the debate around AI support systems while sharing firsthand experiences of AI as teacher, mentor, and creative partner.

Posted: 2025-Aug-18

AI serves as the teacher, tutor, or mentor that we would all wish we had in our lives but have simply never encountered, been able to access, or been able to afford.

Universal Divine Revelation: A Quantum Approach to World Religions

An exploration of how quantum mechanics principles might apply to divine revelation, examining commonalities across world religions and questioning traditional frameworks of exclusive religious truth.

Posted: 2025-Aug-11

What if, as in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, there exists a spiritual parallel? What if God reveals whatever we seek to find when we look for the divine? If we seek God as spirit, we find spirit. If we seek God in nature, we find that animating force.

European Exploration and the Cultural Origins of Exploitation

A philosophical exploration of how early European migration patterns and survival pressures may have shaped cultural norms that later influenced colonial expansion and exploitation of other peoples worldwide.

Posted: 2025-Aug-07

The thought occurred to me that if small groups left Africa and began to populate Europe, the culture that would arise in Europe would result from the culture of those small groups. And if those small groups had particular traits, both biological and social, then those would get passed along.

Race, God, and Moral Justification: An Addendum

This addendum examines the theological concept of arbitrary divine grace and challenges the biblical justifications for the Israelite displacement of the Canaanites. The post explores how those in power consistently create moral frameworks that position themselves as divinely favored while justifying horrific treatment of others, connecting ancient religious narratives to contemporary geopolitical conflicts.

Posted: 2025-Aug-04

The pattern is consistent: those in power create theological or moral frameworks that position themselves as favored by God or history, then use these frameworks to justify horrific treatment of others.

God is No Respecter of Persons: Reconciling Faith and Racial Justice

A reflection on the fundamental Christian principle that God is no respecter of persons, examining how white Christianity has historically contradicted this doctrine through racial hierarchy, and exploring the tension between scriptural truth and cultural practice.

Posted: 2025-Jul-31

If God is variable, rewarding some while rejecting others for no valid reason other than His own will and pleasure, then you can never have confidence that God will accept you.

Winter Storm Reflections: Following in Pioneer Footsteps

A trucker's reflection on pioneer courage while driving through a Nebraska snowstorm, drawing parallels between modern travel challenges and the historic Willie and Martin handcart company tragedies.

Posted: 2025-Jul-24

Sunday afternoon around 1:15 PM Central Time, I find myself driving through a late winter snowstorm on I-80 in Nebraska. The road is covered in snow, and something about this moment has brought the Willie and Martin handcart companies vividly to my mind.

Geometric Epiphanies

A road trip contemplation about prime numbers leads to a family mathematical discovery—complete with teenage fact-checking and a triumphant 'Eureka!' moment at the dinner table

Posted: 2025-Jul-21

When I reached home the next evening, I was rather excitedly sharing this insight with my two teenagers. To my consternation, when describing and illustrating the epiphany, the older teenager pointed out that my formula for exponents did not work for a base of 3, i.e. 3^3 (27) does NOT equal 3^2 (9) + 3^2 (9). Working together, we corrected the algorithm, tested it, and loudly celebrated our triumph, to the dismay of the others in the house who were settling in for the night's rest.

Christiana's Life Narrative

The remarkable story of Christiana Long, born in England in 1832 to a Kanuri woman from Africa and an impoverished English sawyer, whose descendants concealed their African heritage for over a century until DNA testing in 2002 revealed their connection to the Kanuri people of Lake Chad.

Posted: 2025-Jul-17

In early 1853, one year after their marriage, Luke and Christiana set sail from England; however, rather than sailing west across the Atlantic with the other Saints going to Utah, Luke and Christiana sailed south around Africa bound for Australia. It appears, that Luke and Christiana had decided they would conceal Christiana's African heritage, and they apparently decided to sail the long way around the world to Utah rather than travel in the company of any English members of the Church who might know Christiana's true heritage.

On White Privilege

An examination of the mechanisms by which white privilege was created and is maintained today, the advantages of which redound to every white person.

Posted: 2025-Jul-14

While working at a large corporation in Los Angeles between university and law school, I witnessed a colleague who was responsible for the hiring process mock an eminently qualified applicant—whom he assumed to be African American on the basis of the applicant's name and biographical data—and theatrically throw the resume in the trash. (The fairness of my complexion often leads whites to act in ways they wouldn't in an obviously diverse group).

Calabar and the Weight of Chains (pt 2)

A raw account of visiting Calabar’s colonial-era museum—where the brutal history of the Middle Passage becomes personal, and a beautiful city transforms into a site of sorrow.

Posted: 2025-Jul-10

Calabar was the slave port through which the largest number of all African slaves were shipped. . . .Our FAMILY passed through that same spot where I was so revolted last night. . . .Unfortunately, what until last night was a beautiful place has now become something to despise.

Calabar’s Ghosts: Tracing My Family Through a Slave Port (pt 1)

A reflection on visiting Calabar’s slave museum—where grief, ancestral connection, and an unexpected conversation with a historian bridge past and present.

Posted: 2025-Jul-07

As we entered the museum, I had a sudden revulsion, as it dawned on me that this was likely the port from which the slaves from Kanuri land would have been shipped. . . .Tonight, for the first time, I felt a gulf between me and the Africans. The gulf was simply that we were looking at the same exhibits but our experiences were from opposite ends: my family left as slaves while theirs stayed behind.

Returning Home to Borno

Nearly 200 years after my family was carried out as slave, I returned home to the Kanem-Borno empire.

Posted: 2025-Jul-03

I have finally made it to Maiduguri, Borno State, which is the main city in Kanuri-land here in northeast Nigeria. This is the area to which we likely trace through Christiana's line. I am rather at a loss of words to describe Maiduguri or what it means to be here.

Discovering My African Ancestry: A DNA Journey

A personal account of uncovering African heritage through DNA testing and oral family history, and exploring the historical and social implications of mixed ancestry.

Posted: 2025-Jun-30

In my case, the mitochondrial DNA test revealed a match with the DNA samples taken from the Kanuri tribe of northern Nigeria. This DNA marker is a maternal marker, and it is passed from mother to daughter. This means that somewhere back on my direct matrilineal lineage, I have an African (Kanuri) grandmother and a European grandfather.

Harmonizing Quantum Mechanics and Theology (part 2)

A meditation on quantum physics, theology, and the harmony between them—exploring how energy, the Higgs field, and divine creation might intertwine.

Posted: 2025-Jun-26

If God is energy, then God is the source of the energy for the Big Bang. That energy has always existed. . . .It’s from that infusion of energy and the organizing of it—the constraint of it, the limitations on movement of the particles that come into existence in the quantum fields—that we get creation. . . .To me, this is seamless. Quantum physics and theological explanations of creation are one and the same.

Quantum Theology (part 1)

Reflections on the theological implications of quantum energy.

Posted: 2025-Jun-23

As I look backwards through the eons, infinitely backwards, and realize that whatever I am now, whatever evolutions I've gone through—from intelligence to spirit being to physical form—I've realized that the best way of thinking about what I used to be, what I originated from, is energy. . . .With a proper understanding of Einstein's equation and the nature of physical reality—that the building blocks of physical reality are energy—we are co-eternal with God. We are energy. God is energy. Everything is energy. Energy is existence.

Me, Briefly

A personal introduction and statement of intention for publishing these writings.

Posted: 2025-Jun-19

I was born in the last year of the Baby Boom into an essentially all-white, all-Mormon, farming community in Southern Utah. My progenitors migrated to Southern Utah and Nevada from various European countries in the mid-1800s after joining the Mormon church. They came seeking eternal salvation and to establish a Zion society on earth.

Six decades later, I am no longer Mormon, no longer white . . .