This Christmas season, I’m giving myself what I’ve always wanted: a spirituality/religion blog. Actually I haven’t always wanted a spirituality/religion blog but now I do. Lately, I’ve been devoting a lot of study and thought to Christianity after taking a five-year hiatus from the religion, faith, whatever you want to call it. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find so many progressive Christian blogs, but I was, and happily so — once again, the magic of the internets creates a discursive community that could not have existed without the world wide web. I hope to add my voice to the discussion

I called this blog Steeples and People because that’s the crux of what’s drawing me back to Christianity — community, one that just happens to gather under one roof (it’s got a sort of pointy top with a cross on it, does that count as a steeple?). Also, given that I was raised Christian, with a clergyman for a father no less, that name recalls some of the things that formed my early path. The stories and songs and games that filled the Sunday school classrooms where I sat on miniature wooden chairs in itchy white tights and lacy dresses, folding my hands into for prayer and to make the shape of a steepled chuch, fingers for people, wiggling like we kids did during the service, back when kids had to sit through the service and didn’t get whisked away for exciting children’s programs in the basement. This is the church, these is the steeple, open the doors, here’s all the people.