About

I am an Orthodox Christian, a South African, a bookbinder and editor, a former Cistercian, and – in an increasingly distant past – a one-time western would-be theologian. Since then my life has undergone some major changes. This blog has witnessed some of them, but its main purpose is to provide (not always successfully) a certain discipline in helping me to process – or sometimes simply to record – what I read.

I recently moved to Pietermaritizburg in KwaZulu-Natal. If you need to contact me, you can do so here.

In case you wonder about the name, it is an allusion Thomas Merton’s journal extracts published in 1988. “A vow of conversation” is a play on words, for “conversation” refers both to the discussion that the blogosphere enables, but it also refers to the monastic vow of “conversatio morum” which is really nothing other than a commitment to the ongoing transformation to which the Gospel calls us.