A big part of me wishes that I could explain this blog as something literary or scholarly or, short of that, as a thought experiment or even as my philosophical / theological autobiography.  Any of these would be normal, understandable, and—whether you thought them interesting or relevant—easy enough to relate to.

But at best they would be inaccurate.  At worst, downright misleading.

This blog has two functions.

At its most basic, it is an outlet for my greatest passion and my deepest desire.  This is a place where the fullness of my fullest relationship spills out of me.  It is a place where my joy and peace and love and hope find, if not satiation, then room to run.

Second, in the course of this “running” I hope to offer to others some of the goodness—the love and the truth—that has transformed my life.  In this way the blog is like art studio, where my passion takes shape and, I hope, resonates with and impacts others (and where they can share their responses and ideas with me).  Yet the second function takes its bearings from the first.

And that is because my whole reason for writing is that I have encountered and fallen in love with God and now, over 15 years later, the truth of this love relationship has become more vibrant and more viable.

Corny, excessive, unbelievable: it may appear to be all of these things.  But frankly, I have stopped caring how impossible such a statement appears.  I am a Christian who least should be one.  I have suffered profound familial abuse, experienced the effects of multiple-manslaughter verging on murder, witnessed powermongering and sexual / spiritual abuse by church leaders and, as a result, had forsworn the Christian God as one of the most heinous (or at least the most stupid) ideas to be created by humankind (my “About Gregg” page explains this further).

Yet more recently I also experienced things that would simply be intellectually obtuse and morally reprobate not to see as powerful indicators of something more than chance, co-incidence, or “the goodness of the universe.”  Within these experiences was a sense of something being present in my life and present to the central details of my identity in such a way that this thing bore the unmistakable characteristics of understanding and love.  More specifically, of knowing me more truly than I know myself, and loving me more deeply than I love myself.

So despite hating God and Christianity, I have become a Christian.  And I did so for two reasons:

First, because of the truth that is central to this “more” that I encountered.  Truth evoked through a profound and powerful interrelation of my (hi)story and the biblical (hi)story.  Truth experienced within various situations and circumstances as passionate invitations on the order of the “kairological”–moments of propitious timing–whereby my greatest truth (call it ‘truth-for-me’) was both recognized and radicalized through a Truth that truly heals, accepts, forgives, and knows me: a truth that does not simply call but names me: son and beloved.

Second, because I have fallen in love.  Because in these new understandings and experiences I feel that I have been give a taste, a glimpse of the really real—my true home and my true parent and father, as creator.  And the result?  My heart is captured yet is now more at home than ever it was when it remained with me.  And I wish this love to continue, to abound.  I wish to be in and near my beloved and my beloved’s love for me.  I wish always, always to find myself acquainted with and collaborating on its projects, endeavouring for its goals, seeking its best and highest.

This is what I am about, and this is why I write.