I love the turning of the year.  The passing of a year allows us to put the past 12 months behind us and look forward to what’s ahead.  The freshness of a new year begs us to shake the excuses and the fears that have kept us from doing the things we should be doing.  The new year is a blank slate full of the unknown.  What will we look like in the fresh space of a new year?  Will we push forward, becoming more of what we were intended to be and better play the role we were intended to play? I love the new-year-hope that leads us to answer these questions positively and confidently.

For communitasPHX, we too feel the excitement of new possibilities.  The end of 2009 was a busy one for us, starting with the success of the PHX BrewParty and ending with the opening of fractal (a collaborative artspace we’ve opened).  In 2010, we’ll continue this momentum with the launch of the Open Abbey (an initiative exploring contemplative spirituality in the city) and the kickoff a monthly art installation merging art & spirituality.  In the Fall, we hope to invite a new class of folks into our Symbol Collective, offering recent college graduates the chance to flesh out their faith through community, social action, and creativity before entering the “rat race”.

And all these events and initiatives overshadow the real life of communitasPHX, the people and relationships that make the movement what it is.  Both those who help and those being helped together will in 2010 better understand who they are and the role their meant to play.  Through the touch of relationship, they will get a glimpse of the heart and compassion of God.  Through the extension of grace and the sharing of laughter, they will experience the radical beauty that is the Kingdom of God.  Above all else, we do what we do because of the people we share this movement with.

So, as we move into this fresh decade, we hope that you too find yourself staring into the future with excitement.  We pray for you what we pray for ourselves, for an awareness and presence to see what God is up to, in our lives, in the lives around us, and in the city we live.

This article was originally posted on the communitasPHX blog