Dear Reader,

In an essay regarding her novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood says:

"That is the 'real' reader, the Dear Reader for whom every writer writes. And many Dear Readers will become writers in their turn. That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us."

That is how the idea for this outlet began. By first being the 'Dear Reader' of not only Scripture, but also numerous stories, biographies, blogs, video games, and deep friendship-based dialogues in which we witness the real, human stories of ourselves and others. We all iron out our beliefs and views of the world through these works of literature, conversation pieces and individual experiences. It has and is a journey that everyone is inevitably on and our world views are being constantly shaped by what we consume, who we associate with, and what we do with the information gleaned. It goes without saying that this is true even more critically so during these, as we all so often hear, "unprecedented times".

You are a 'Dear Reader', the one whom we are writing for.

You may find yourself thinking this is "..like the third blog you've come across this week" and wondering what could possibly set it apart from the next. Well, fortunately, this little blog isn't trying to reinvent wheels, but rather manifests as us hoping to speak plainly about the various human experiences we all find ourselves experiencing - and many others, merely surviving - every day. We hope that one can find some originality nestled among the reeds of familiarity.

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." - Lewis

We hope also to feature stories from our Dear Readers that have had different experiences than our own. As the wise King Solomon once wrote: "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." We'll reach out, we'll put you on the spot and we'll get honest about our dealings with our particular, imperfect, messy lives.

That is the depth of the human experience that we hope to type about truthfully, and that is the depth of the human experience that ultimately, when all is said and done, when the chips are down, lends itself to One more powerful than ourselves- that the Infinite was pleased to build Himself into the finite.

We think it'll be edifying, challenging, and cathartic to experience life together.

Because, as we all know, it's easier to be honest with a keyboard.

"It's always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer that we ever could imagine, that in fact we already know what it is, and that the step is simple, more radical than we thought: just picking up the pen or the wood chisel, just picking up the instrument or the phone, which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities to be safely clouded by fear, why we want the horizon to remain always in the distance, the promise never fully and simply made, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility." - Whyte