Last week I solicited readers of The Edge of the Inside to suggest a title for a regular column I have been asked to write for the Tuttle Times on religion/spirituality. Those of you who left a suggestion let me say, “Thank you.” And, you offered some excellent suggestions. Some were especially tempting to use. In the end I stayed with the same title I selected for my blog/website. Here is the back story.

About ten years ago I spent ten months with a small group on what was described as a learning journey. We interacted with some leading Christian writers and thinkers along the way. We offered responses to a few pre-publication manuscripts that became best sellers. We learned from each other.

Spencer, our learning guide, suggested a spiritual exercise over lunch at our final meeting. He asked us to choose a life metaphor.  My spiritual habits comprised of the staples from my childhood and youth – read the Scriptures, pray, and engage in the life of a local church participating in its mission. Choose a life metaphor? Only Jesus did that. Bread. Water. Way. Truth. Life. Good Shepherd. Door. Vine.

I confess to stumbling over both the thought of this exercise as a spiritual one and with choosing a metaphor. I do not even remember what I selected. Impressionable I know.

Not long after this experience I read an article by Richard Rhor. We had met a few times. While visiting the Center for Action and Contemplation prior to a road trip, I picked up a publication, Radical Grace, in which Richard had written about, “the edge of the inside.”  I read and re-read the article. It became the inspiration for the title for this blog/website.

When I began to think about a title, the event in the pier came to my mind. Maybe I had chosen a life metaphor – the edge of the inside. I thought about the perspective from which I often write and there was not a better way to self-identify. It only made sense to choose my life metaphor as the title for the column.

Here are a few posts where I relate the process of my own understanding of the “edge of the inside.”

The Edge of the Inside Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.