Though it (allegedly) occupies material space in the actual city of Prague, Sir Toby’s became a portal to an alternate reality. If I’d been more attuned, however, I’d have recognized that the portal is multivalent. Though Peter and I walked in through the same front door, though our alter-egos shared pints together around the same table in the same great room, we weren’t quite occupying the same reality.

There’s another blog I frequent, devoted to new explorations in continental philosophy, named “Speculative Heresy.” This term I find particularly apt for the Sir Toby’s I came to occupy. OST provides a forum for serious discussion and debate about theological issues that the participants take seriously. The presumption, I believe, is that through informed and thoughtful dialogue some sort of closer approximation to the truth will emerge. Being an agnostic veering toward atheism, I confess that I regard many of these conversations with a sort of bemused detachment. At the same time, I find myself drawn to ideas around which theological debate once raged but which long ago lapsed into antiquarian irrelevance. Transubstatiation is one such idea: can something retain its material “accidents” while being transformed into some other substance? The nature of the trinity is another: can a single sentient being be comprised of two or more “persons”? I don’t think these questions are obsolete, nor do I believe they have been answered definitively. For me, Sir Toby’s provided a forum for taking on these topics in a sort of playful way, where discussants’ alter-egos could stake out presumably heretical postmodern positions on premodern theological concerns without fear of being burned at the stake. And so I introduced one such topic in my first comment as occupant of the Sir Toby’s alternate reality: instead of God being a figment of human collective imagination, what if we humans are figments of God’s imagination? I would subsequently explore other speculative heresies in the air of bemused detachment that Sir Toby’s afforded — or at least the version of Sir Toby’s that I had entered.

I’ve not spoken to Peter about the Sir Toby’s reality he came to occupy. However, based on his posts I’ve drawn certain inferences. I believe that, as I did, Peter found in Sir Toby’s a playful alternative to the serious theological discourse of OST. However, I think that for Peter the alternative constituted an escape from theologizing. We see in his initial contribution the beginning of an adventure story in which two Kafkaesque functionaries come to the inn with the intention of taking Peter’s alter-ego into legal custody. By the end of this initial installment his release is assured before the inn and its occupants dissolve into Peter’s imagination. In later episodes Peter would repeat this theme of capture and escape, of dissolution and rematerialization. In these adventures theological discussion too seemed to dissolve as the melodrama unfolded. Perhaps because Peter is a Christian who takes OST debate seriously, and perhaps also because Peter’s bio presents him as a sort of “professional” Christian, he relishes the opportunity for perpetrating imaginary escapes from his serious theological responsibilities.

Because Peter and I entered through the Sir Toby’s portal into somewhat different alternate realities, the potential for achieving a truly interactive narrative wasn’t, in my view, fully realized. Rather than building on one another’s stories and ideas in the , we often found ourselves talking around each other, even competing for control over the same threads. I’d be pulling one oar toward speculative heresy, while Peter would pull the other oar toward wild adventures. I’d occupy the inn and join the company of the imaginary theologians; Peter would escape the inn in dire peril and flee headlong into the larger world. Eventually the adventurous version of Sir Toby’s came to dominate while the speculative heresy version receded. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been entertained by Peter’s flights of fancy, as I suspect have many other readers, and I’m sure the edited compilation is delightful. Still, I can’t help catching glimpses of this other Sir Toby’s from time to time, now receded into the nostalgic legendary past from which it once emerged… (Cue orchestra for the Brigadoon-Camelot medley and fade to grey.)

Are further installments in this imaginary Preface needed? Probably not. Still, I expect to write one more, thereby keeping this thread alive awhile longer and drawing readers’ attention back to Peter’s book, even though this post never made it onto the OST “front page” where the important and serious posts are given the prominence they deserve.