Welcome/Welcome Back/Welcome Forward

Moon over the Loire River, Saint-Satur, France. August 2015

This is a sort of welcome to new subscribers (over 100 of you!) and maybe a recap for those who’ve been around for a while, who might be asking, “Uh…remind me again what we’re doing here?”

I have a lot of questions. I mean, in general. I’ve always been the kid in the back row with her hand up, twinkling her fingers to get the teacher’s attention, pestering my poor parents with “How come?” Even the things we (allegedly) just accept as part of the human journey, like love and suffering and death, I can’t let alone but apparently must worry and gnaw at them like a terrier with an old piece of leather.

Frustratingly, it’s just how I’m made, and I’ve finally accepted that. I’m deeply curious about the world, about us and our time here together, and I’m frequently outraged or knocked back with joy or moved to sloppy weeping, because it is all so amazing and wondrous and terrifying and often heartachingly beautiful and sometimes so broken.

Okay, so I come at all of this from several different directions:

• through a lens of faith questions, like is there a God and if so what kind of God and what does all that mean for us? What are the implications?

• through the wide window onto the world of science and nature and the mysteries that have been unraveled and the ones that still elude us.

• through art — writing, poetry, painting, sculpture, music — any and all of the stuff that pries us open and lets all our feels out to run wild.

Because of these different lenses, I’ve sorted my mental meanderings here into sections that appear as drop-downs:

• Essays, which is me pondering a whole lot of different things, current and past and, I guess, future.

• The Treehouse: Conversations About God (paid subscribers to keep our conversations focused and civil) wherein I’m attempting to build a new constructive theology using some of the foundation from my old construct (written in seminary in 1993) and some brand new material, wondering along with you what to believe now and why.

• Dead Ringer, my serialized mystery novel with the main character Chaplain Blainey Blair who gets to do stuff I’d never have the guts to do, and honestly I’m a little envious. You’ll see this graphic with each posted chapter.

• Interesting Stuff — updates on friends’ books and other successes, guest posts, news about my publications, upcoming workshops, speaking engagements, etc.

In the future I may be adding more sections. For sure, one about food will be forthcoming in the next six months or so. I like to cook, I like to eat, and I love, love, love the stories about what happens when people gather in kitchens, around tables, over meals, and so on.

By the way, you will see one of the sections is “Notes,” and that is a sort of sidebar social media comment section Substack has come up with. You can start a thread in Notes, or you make comments directly on a post’s page.

Thank you all so much for reading, for subscribing and for hopping onto this “vehicle” for the ride. Please know how much I appreciate each and every one of you. This work is my livelihood, and I literally could not do it without you.

Have a lovely weekend, all.