Making All Things New

Resurrection Day.  New life is upon us.  It's a great day for a beginning.

I was seven years old on an Easter Sunday when I leaned up to my mother who was standing beside me in the worship service, singing better than I ever could the hymn of invitation, Just as I Am, or something like that.  She bent her perfumed head down, my hand touched her flowing skirt as I said into her ear, "I would like to make that decision. I think that Easter Sunday would be a good day to do it."   Of course, that decision was to begin to formally follow Jesus.

So in that way my greatest journey began on this day.

And more insignificantly, for certain, it begins my new adventure here.  I'm seven years into blogging and it feels like I finally have truer words.  A new place to put them seemed fitting.

Because where I've been has shaped me, rough edges still clinging fast though, all of the old posts from my first blog, Emergent Homeschool, are still here too.   If you followed Emergent Homeschool feel free to follow This Common Life.  Or not.  It will be different, more crafted and intentional, truer to what I value now in this second half of life.

It begins anew in 2013.  You might want to go back to February and read forward.  There you'll encounter with me the progression of our Lenten fast.  This year we determined to engage more deeply in humility, detachment and generosity.  The application of this was to live on seventy-five percent of our income and give away twenty-five percent.  We chose to give our twenty-five percent to alleviate someone's poverty in India, because our feet remember it so well.

As a way of practicing humility we chose not to speak of our fast in process. Not to compare sufferings with other fasters.  Not to quip lightly on social networking.  Not to illustrate sermon points with the work God invited us into for these 40+ days.  This Common Life, made public today, begins with my reflections as we've tumbled around the fast.  In retrospect it feels fine to share, but know that the work is continuing on in me.

The next things will be about commonality.  The shared alike.  Quotidian.  Prevalent.  I'm looking forward to it all and invite you in.  Come in.