This blog explores the patterns and processes we use to think and talk about God, about our world, and about our lives in this world.  This is an important endeavor in our current predicament.  I imagine that what I write may prove challenging to some readers because it promotes a shift in a couple common paradigms.  From personal experience I know that changing the way we think about important subjects can cause anxiety, and pushback, and defensiveness.

So as I begin to write this blog I’m afraid.  I’m afraid that people won’t like what I have to say (and in the process they won’t like me).  I’m afraid that readers will think that what I write is heretical (and that I must not be a Christian).  I’m afraid that you will reject as nonsense the two basic paradigm shifts I am proposing (and will dismiss me as a babbler).

Even so, I write.  I write knowing my own fears and imagining the fears that might arise in some readers. Rest assured that this blog seeks to challenge thought patterns, but not to challenge anyone’s faith.  If a renewing of the mind leads to a renewing of faith, all the better.

When I was growing up my mother did a lot of sewing for our family.  I was intrigued by how the various pieces fit together, like a three-dimensional puzzle.  But what I enjoyed most was watching her make the buttonholes, back and forth, and around, and back and forth, and around, until she had created this neat little reinforced rectangle.  Only then was it time to cut the hole.  To create each essential hole my mother first had to sew scores of stitches, protecting the fabric from tearing.

This blog seeks to create a hole in the fabric of christian theology and practice as it is often taught in church and in seminary.  Through it I hope to open up a new way to think and talk about God (theology) and a new way to live our lives, as individuals and as communities.  So this blog addresses the ingrown nature of much of our theology as well as the ingrown nature of many of our religious communities.  It invites light in, … and some fresh air.

To stretch the buttonhole metaphor further, this blog also seeks connections (putting a button in the buttonhole), connections between ancient scriptures and 21st Century culture, between faith and practice, between the church and the world, between religion and science, between our remembering/planning selves and our experiencing selves, as a few examples.

The paradigm shifts at the heart of this blog might threaten some deeply held beliefs.  So even as I prepare to open up a new way of thinking and living, I appreciate the need to reinforce the fabric of faith around each opening.  I do not want a fear that everything is unraveling to prevent readers from carefully examining the process I am advocating.  I desire that each reader’s knowledge of God will grow deeper as we wrestle with the scriptures and with our experience in new ways.  And I desire that the process of renewing our minds will allow more of God’s grace to work through our lives.