About

About Me

I’m Elliot, and this is my blog. In case you don’t know me (and I have heard that there are people who look at the blogs of people they don’t know), here is some info: I’m a white male U.S. citizen. It seems that that is not a popular thing to be in some circles these days, but I had no control over the matter. I am also an evangelical (sometimes I use “orthodox,” and other times “committed”) Christian. Sometimes I wonder whether the word “evangelical” is worth using, because it has recently become a slippery word that to many people has political and fundamentalist overtones. But despite the word’s recent slippage, I still like what it has meant historically. I mastered divinity on April 28, 2008, when I graduated with an M.Div from Regent College. Now I work part-time at an Evangelical Covenant church and also drive a school bus. I have an older brother, a sister-in-law and two nephews. I have an amazing fiancee who can probably drive a bus better than you.

About the Blog

I’ve had blogs before, but they were very newsy – they mostly consisted of me telling my faraway friends and family what was going on in my life, because it was too expensive (or the time difference was too difficult to figure out) to call them. If you would like to see previous iterations of my internet persona, here they are:

Site Number One: created in 2002 to keep people up-to-date while I was teaching English as a second language in Prague

Site Number Two: created in 2003 to keep people up-to-date while I was teaching English as a second language in Budapest

Site Number Three: created in 2004 to keep people up-to-date while I was learning (specifically, getting an M.Div at Regent College) in Vancouver

I also have a Facebook page.

So, rather than writing exclusively about events in my life (though there will be some of that, and pictures, as well), I plan on putting into words my thoughts about a variety of subjects – whether the thoughts come from something I read, or from a conversation or a class. Sometimes in conversation I find myself unable to articulate my thoughts in a coherent manner, and I feel that a blog will help me toward the goal of being able to express thoughts better. I also plan on using the blog as a sort of notebook; someplace to deposit ideas that I would like to hang on to, but that don’t seem to fit well anywhere else.

Also, writing has long been one of my passions, dating back a very long time (I’m not sure how long, but it came somewhere after speaking and reading). I have been told by those who have more experience than I do that writing a little bit every day helps to hone the skill of putting words together. For too long, I have taken the gift and predilection for writing for granted. It is time I began to use it in a more disciplined (and hopefully, productive) manner.

This blog is not intended to fill a niche on the Internet, and it is not intended to stay limited to a single topic. I happen to be interested in theology, politics, sports and literature, among other things, but I’m not consciously trying to limit my posts to those things in order to gain an audience. But if you’re here because of your interest in those things, or anything else that I write about – welcome. Feel free to talk back.

About the Name

“All is Grist” comes from the saying, “All is grist that comes to the mill,” which means that everything that is received or obtained is put to use. What I do on this blog, which is I suppose what happens on most blogs, is that I write my thoughts about what I see, read or experience. Things go in, and the blog comes out. It seemed appropriate.

Also, G.K. Chesterton is one of my favorite authors, and he wrote a collection of essays with the title All is Grist. I’ve never read that particular essay collection, but it sure seems like a good title for an essay collection, and a good name for a blog. It also doesn’t seem to be a blog name that is overused, like many clever blog names.

For a little while I thought about trying to sound educated by putting my blog title in Latin. After looking at Wikipedia’s list of Latin phrases, nothing really jumped out at me aside from “surdo oppedere” – “to belch before the deaf.” That could just as easily sum up what this blog is about.