I drove the 1,200 round-trip miles from Trenton, New Jersey to Richmond, Indiana earlier this month – all day Friday, and back on Sunday – to attend the annual Earlham School of Religion Writing Colloquium .  Not one to enjoy road trips, I braved the monotony of US Route 70 to immerse myself in a living library of writers.

I considered this effort risky business for me – not the drive, but the colloquium.  I want to write, and I believe I may have a story to tell, but I haven’t had much luck trusting my voice enough to passionately practice my writing, let alone make sure the wider world had access to my words.  This colloquium was an effort to push past doubt.  I also love the work of Barbara Brown Taylor, the keynote speaker, so the pilgrimage to Richmond was also a chance to live out a fan’s dream.

The result: the impetus I needed to get working and get writing.  And here I am, setting up shop on WordPress, finding my own blog site, and establishing a weekly practice of writing.

About the name of this blog, “A Publisher of Truth”.  Not long after returning from Earlham, I viewed one of the current QuakerSpeak videos, Quakers as “Publishers of Truth” .  The video essay, an interview with Earlham College history professor and archivist Tom Hamm, explains why early Friends took on this name (among many others).

Proclaiming (or publishing) Truth (yes, capital “T”) is the ministry I seek to undertake in this blog.  Truth seems in short supply in our current political culture.  Our religious culture is overrun with claims to The Truth.  I hope to write about Truth in all its facets: political, theological, emotional to name a few.  And not to claim the Truth, just to publish Truth as I seek it and apprehend it.

Welcome to this exploration and publication!