Welcome!

Greetings to all who stop by! Allow me to welcome you to my new blog, and explain who I am, what this blog is for, and how you, the reader, are invited to participate!

About the Author
I myself am nobody too special. I'm not a prophet or a priest or any sort of official. At best, right now, I'm an arm-chair theologian with a knack for explaining tricky concepts (so I've been told), who loves Jesus and the Catholic Church which He founded. I write the apologetics blog Barque of Peter, which is a bit more of a systematic, structured, and scholarly place than I hope Contemplare will end up being. I converted to the Church from Pentecostalism in 2004, and a year and a half later married my wonderful wife, Melissa. I'm currently feeling drawn towards the Lay Dominicans, and, once I'm old enough (funny phrase from a 29 year old), I plan to enter formation for the Permanent Diaconate.

Why This Blog
I'm starting this blog at the urging of a friend, Sean, who was directed to me by another friend, because Sean had some deep spiritual questions that he just couldn't seem to find answers for, no matter who he talked to. Our mutual friend thought, for some odd reason, that I might be able to help Sean out--and apparently he was right. The other day, Sean remarked to me that he keeps running into other people who have many of the same questions, or the same types of questions, that he had, and that I seem to be good at answering, and he wanted to send them my way. Lucky me! My darling wife, that same day, in a completely unrelated event, thought, "Hey, you should blog your answers to your friend's questions. They might be able to help other people too." So, as a result, welcome to Contemplare.

What You'll Find
The Dominican motto, after which I named the blog (See? I told you I was drawn to the Dominicans), basically provides the purpose and source of what will happen here. That is, I intend to use Contemplare as an outlet for the "fruits of [my] contemplation", to reflect on the mysteries of God, of life, of faith, so that my prayerful contemplations can be passed on and hopefully of some use to anyone who stops by. As an artist, these "fruits" won't be in word, only, but also in image--and all the images that you'll see on this blog (unless otherwise noted) will be my own (and, y'know, copyrighted and all that).

How You Participate
As I mentioned, though, this blog is, hopefully, about answering questions. As such, apart from just writing personal spiritual reflections and commentaries on things, I'll be putting up "Q&A Forums", where you're encouraged to ask any and all sincere questions that you might have. I say sincere, because I've found that a lot of the time, people ask questions more to pick fights or to "troll", rather than because they're sincerely seeking the Truth. As such, I've enabled comment moderation, so that I can minimise harmful and destructive comments (and spam). Likely, though, the vast majority of the comments I receive will be posted.

Of course, you're more than welcome to comment on any other article, too--but please, for the sake of my sanity, stay on the specific topic of that article.

God bless,
Gregory