A few months ago I thought the thread feature was going to allow us to have the deeper conversations—I entitled our topics as “Kitchen Table Talks” and tried to get the ball rolling, but it didn’t really take.
Then the chat featured rolled around and I thought, “HEY! This will be the place where we can engage a bit more.” But that hasn’t really panned out for me either. It’s no fault of the feature, I think the problem is that on a totally public and unfiltered part of my Substack, I don’t quite feel free enough to ask the questions I really want to ask. I can’t quite write all that I want to write there either—as much as I adore the work that I do on The House of Rest, it isn’t always quite the right basket to carry all the pinballs that I find chaotically bouncing their way through my chest on a daily basis.
Then I realized that what I really need to create is a place that is perhaps a little safer for me to share those potentially more controversial, more nuanced, more theologically deep questions and musings. Someplace where not just ANYONE can stumble in off the street, but where I can perhaps voice some of the things that you and I have both been thinking about. I need a family place to share these thoughts with you. I need a kitchen table.
Introducing Table Talk
This realization actually serves two purposes. At the top of my list of goals for 2023, is that by the end of this year I would have a paid section on my Substack.
For the past 15 years I have been writing on the internet in some form, and even in a few print places, completely for free. And that’s been good and fine for the most part. But with some of this more tender stuff, I need a place free from trolls, that also allows me to explore some of the conversations with you about life in light of the Kingdom, in ways that I might not be able to otherwise. And the truth is that, for a few dollars a month, you can help fund my work. This is a big deal. Financial contributions coming through my Substack will not only help to fund the content you already love on The House of Rest, but will also help me finance my upcoming poetry book (and you know there’s more where that came from), the novel I’m writing (have I mentioned that yet?) as well as just generally help support a writer with a lot of little mouths to feed.
You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. I’ve always been super turned off by the “exclusive” pitches that demand you “level up” in order to get all the good stuff you had been getting for free, so I totally understand if this rubs you the wrong way. But I hope it doesn’t.
I hope you can see that this kitchen table will become a safe place of community and connection that we might not have in the outside internet. A place where we can pose our theories, and ask our questions—trusting that the God of Knowledge AND Mystery knows the answers, and will reveal what we need to know, as we need to know it. In time.
Maybe it’s not for you—but maybe it is?
If so, join me at the link below.
**For a limited time I am giving new Paid Subscribers a 25% discount FOR LIFE. This offer is good until the end of May.** CLICK HERE to redeem.