a new day in the blog universe

Welcome back. I am renewing this blog and restoring its original name "koinonia 21c." Communities are formed in spaces like this now. Blogs are sites where relationships can happen. I hope that this site can bring together a community of friends who share a desire to live like Jesus, the bearer of God's power, the power of self-emptying service.  Koinonia is a Greek word used in the biblical narrative of the New testament to describe the way the first followers of Jesus lived a common, corporate, way of life. They shared.  They served one another. They helped one another navigate the forces that threaten to overwhelm and devour us.  They fed one another. They breathed together, conspiring to bring healing, reconciliation, and hope to a broken and suffering world.  They became a movement, a collective consciousness, a body of believers with a mission.  This mission was not coercive, militant, or colonialistic. It was a movement for peace, for love, for healing, for joy.  It was a spiritual movement to confront powers and systems of injustice with an alternative way. For more about this relational way of being together, read on...

 Koinonia means to share.  So what if we share our stories, God's stories, the worlds stories in an effort to make sense.  So much of what we see and hear and read about is non-sense.  Doesn't it make sense to make sense out of some of this?  I think I can do that best with you. We can make sense by telling the stories and sharing ourselves.  This is not therapy.  It is narration.  Narration brings clarity as we become observant, reflective participants in our own life stories.  
So, what has been going on in my little world? What have I been doing? The same old, same old. Serving the church. Parenting my three boys with my lovely wife. Demanding more of myself, in some ways. I have raised my own level of expectations about the life I am called to live. I am choosing to live more intentionally, more directly, more fully.
I've been running on a treadmill.
I've been drinking Fair trade coffee.
I've been making some new friends.
I've been building a new coalition to end hunger in Lancaster County.
I've been gardening. (Pictures are coming soon).
I've been teaching and learning.
I've been praying a little.
I read a few good books.
I've been observing things as they unfold around me. Sometimes it has seemed like I was a spectator to some things that were happening near me or to me, which were directly related to and affecting me.
I died a little more. Lent and winter tends to do that to a leader in a Christian community that is suffering through the end of an era.
I golfed twice.
I celebrated three birthdays; My sons turned 2, 6, and 4.
I spent five days in reflection in the Adirondack Mountains with my wife.
I ended a conversation that may have led to serious life changes for me and my family.
I began some conversations that will have serious implications for me and my family, if they continue to bear fruit.
I took control of our household economy because it was controlling us.
I embraced an invitation to know poverty.
I watched "The men who Stare at Goats".
I took some notes.
I ate Sri Lankan Chicken.
I drank wines.
I Facebooked. Is Facebook a noun or a verb? To be facebooked, as in "I facebooked you yesterday. Why didn't you Facebook me back?"
I built a website for a congregation that could care less about its "web presence".
I ate organic foods and composted waste.
I took a truck to Baltimore and brought back over $6,800 worth of household necessities to give away to help low income families.
But enough about me...What have you been doing? And even mroe important, what is God doing these days? is it enough to say, "The same old, same old".Is it possible for God to do something new? Is it possible for any of us to do something new?
Frederick Buechner wrote, "Using the same old materials of earth, air, fire, and water, every twenty-four hours God creates something new out of them. If you think you're seeing the same show all over again seven times a week, you're crazy. Every morning you wake up to something that in all eternity never was before and never will be again. And the you that wakes up was never the same before and will never be the same again." So, what are you doing?