What follows is the response to my brother Josh���s mini-meme: What are your short term goals? (Within 1 year) For my short-term goals, I���m going to cheat and refer to this post that I wrote recently. It���s kind of vague, so some specifics are: greater patience with my family, more cleaning around the house, daily [...]

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The following is an abridged and edited version of a review I wrote for Irreantum, a periodic review of Mormon literature. I purchased Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice after hearing author Heidi Hart speak about her interfaith marriage. Hart was raised a Mormon, was married in the temple, and converted to Quakerism [...]

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I try to avoid quizzes and web-memes, but I fell prey to this one, which I picked up from Veerle’s blog: Four jobs I’ve had in my life Maitr‚Äô D at an upscale Japanese restaurant Chick-fil-A crony Foreign missionary for the LDS Church (in Tokyo and around Mt. Fuji) ‚ÄúLead Design Technologist‚Äù for an international [...]

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Growing up in Japan, I had many encounters with the Bodhisattva Jiz?¥. Almost every day I passed little stone statues of Jiz?¥ next to flooded rice paddies, in cemeteries, off mountain paths, at crossroads. His bald head was often covered with moss or snow, but his serene smile always shone through his weather-beaten features. Sometimes [...]

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“Come for the Spirit, stay for the coffee” I could say that convenience dictated my choice of Mariner’s as the first station in The OC Pilgrimage. It is very close. On my pitifully short morning runs, I can look down behind UC Irvine and see the Mariner���s complex. It���s also within a 20-minute walk of [...]

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I dream of going on religious pilgrimages. Santiago de Compostela, Dharmasala, Canterbury, and the 88 temples of the island of Shikoku call out to me, and some day I will answer each of their quiet but persistent summons. To satisfy my need for immediate gratification however, I’ve devised a year-long pilgrimage here in Orange County, [...]

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