You could say that I am the daughter of Grace. And it would be true--my mom's name is Grace Marie. But it's not the case that this website, or this Wicker Park project, is named after my mother. No, the grace we're talking about here is a much bigger, much more encompassing, and a more multi-faceted grace. This is the grace that everyone is related to: the grace of God.

And in that sense, too, I am a child of Grace. A child in that I am small in relation to a divine love so vast it is unfathomable. A child in that I am protected through a bond of love that is unbreakable. I am not a nameless child, but one given a name before I was created; called into existence by name, by a Being Beyond Names.

I have always been a seeker; seeking after God/spirit/relationship with the divine. I was raised Christian, but it was in what I call a hellfire and brimstone church. That didn't really work for me!

I "left" the church (if one can leave a concept), that is, I proclaimed, as a teenager, that I was not Christian. If what I saw around me was Christian, then I was not that!

Always the seeker, I took up meditation with an Indian meditation master and went to Harvard Divinity School where I received a Masters of Theological Studies in Comparative World Religions. Somehow, I tumbled into a small urban church in South Boston where I encountered a way of being Christian that changed my life.

It turns out they were Presbyterian there, and I came to know about "Reformed" theology, and the idea that the church needs to be "reformed and always reforming." This little church was based on a strong belief in God's love and graciousness, and they acted that out in the neighborhood! (It's Fourth Presbyterian Church in Boston -- I'm so proud of them.)

I came to Chicago in 1999 to attend a Presbyterian Seminary in Hyde Park (McCormick Theological Seminary) and got a Masters of Divinity degree in 2002. So, in a turn of events I would never have anticipated 10 years ago, I find myself an ordained minister.

It is a turn of events that I find wonderful because it brings me to Wicker Park and to this wonderful project to "explore grace-based faith" in community.

I was called to Wicker Park Grace (though it didn't have a name yet) in November of 2002, and we began in earnest with spirituality discussions and book groups in coffee shops and tea houses in 2003.

In January 2005, we received seed money from the national, regional, and local branches of the Presbyterian Church, (USA), to start an experimental new church, a "church without walls," so to speak. That year we began renting space in the art gallery where we are still located, at the intersections of Wicker Park, Bucktown, and Humboldt Park.

Read my blog: Perfectly Imperfect