It gives me great pleasure to formally launch this website, Still Forming, into the public sphere.

As you will be able to tell once you start poking around in some of the older posts, I began placing content on this site one full year ago, in the autumn and winter months of 2008. I worked hard on the content and architecture for several steady months and was almost ready to launch when some things happened that made me slow down and push the pause button.

Now, though much later than originally expected, I am thrilled to begin sharing this space with all of you and discovering new things God has in store as we move forward in these pages together.

If you’re curious to know what this site is all about, I encourage you to read the About page. There, you’ll find an explanation for the website’s name and a brief bio of myself.

If you take some time to explore what’s previously been published here, all of which was written during the fall and winter months of 2008, you’ll discover a lot of my earliest thoughts and questions about social justice and nonviolence. Some of those thoughts and questions are difficult to hold, and I don’t presume to have them figured out, but they’ve been important questions to my journey and formation process to ask.

The early posts on nonviolence, peacemaking, and social justice include:

• The Difference Between Charity and Social Justice (10/1/08)
• The Root of Injustice: Am I My Brother’s Keeper? (10/2/08)
• Are We Called to Love Al-Qaeda? (10/9/08)
• Lord, Why Did You Tell Me to Love? (10/15/08)
• Beyond Belief: Love that Conquers Hate (11/21/08)
• What About the Violent God of the Old Testament? (11/26/08)

I’m also enrolled full-time in a graduate program in spiritual formation, and I’ve been actively exploring the contemplative, inner life of faith for quite a long while. Consequently, you’ll discover in some of my early posts several of the fruitful things I was learning and practicing while enrolled in a spiritual disciplines course for my graduate program in late 2008.

These early posts on contemplative prayer, spiritual formation, and the spiritual disciplines include:

• The Principle of Indirection (11/5/08)
• Interiorities: “I Am With You” (11/11/08)
• What Does the Fast Reveal? (11/17/08)
• Interiorities: “I Receive From You Who I Really Am” (12/2/08)
• Interiorities: “I Am With You,” Part 2 (12/10/08)
• Eight Long Weeks: The Pepsi Fast (12/19/08)
• What is Contemplative Prayer? (12/21/08)

It’s interesting to me now, reading this older content, to see how much I’ve developed in some of these areas and in what ways I’m still holding similar questions and struggles. If you’ve been reading along in my previous blog, Lilies Have Dreams (which is now imported here under the Backstory link), you know that I took some extended time of solitude and study this summer to explore the questions of nonviolence and peace that I found myself unable to ignore. I look forward to sharing some of the fruits of that time here and continuing to explore more of these subjects in the coming days and months with you.

Welcome to the journey, where all of us are — and are meant to be — still forming.