When I was in high school and college, I wrote poetry and a few songs. I was the guy who was asked by other guys to write poems for them to give to their girlfriends (Cyrano lives!). Somehow, after marriage and children entered the picture, I stopped writing except for academic writing and a few children's songs I wrote for various curricula. In 2005, I began my involvement with Richmond Civic Theatre. While rehearsing a scene, the director of my first play was not satisfied with the anger I was conveying. Not surprising since in real life I had not conveyed anger in public in over 30 years. We did the scene over and over until, from somewhere, the anger came out and with it every other emotion I'd kept inside for decades. During tech week and through the performances of that play, I wrote a song parody about the play or the cast every night and sang it to the cast. Within two weeks of the play's closing I was writing original songs again, the first being "Cloud of Dust" for my daughter. Since then I have cried, laughed, been happier and sadder than I have been since the 70s. I've also written nearly 50 songs, recorded some, and regularly perform at local venues on a piano I have never learned to play. I'd have to say that the fall of 2005 marked a new beginning, or maybe a restart, of my life.

Milestones have a before and after aspect to them. I recently asked a young woman who had just turned eighteen if she felt any difference before and after. She is still thinking on her answer. Perhaps I'll ask again after she graduates from high school this spring.

The question about new beginnings and meeting our expectations-or exceeding them-had flashed on my sixty-something brain as I approached my 2007 graduation from PSU with a MS in Writing/Publishing. Frankly, after my orals I was too tired and stressed/stretched to even consider much other than did I want to "walk" the aisle with the others to get my diploma. I did not anticipate feeling any different. I was wrong.

At Commencement, when the college president leaned forward to shake my hand he asked (with a twinkle in his eye)"How are you holding up?" At that point I was in the middle of that profoundly transformational experience and with the flash of the photographer's camera, my smile was fixed on film and the print is framed and hangs on my bedroom wall.

It shows. The change. On the walk between buses downtown and on the bus ride home, strangers congratulated this still be-robed old lady and told of how they too wanted to go back to school one day (or were planning to encourage a parent to do so). There is a longing for learning abroad in the land.

Publishers can be an avenue, a channel, for the words seekers need. Thanks to Barclay Press for their faithfulness in being such a channel.

This is more of a story of a renewed beginning, than of a completely new beginning.

After 12 years of pastoral ministry in various congregations, I was without a church to minister in. I had been planting a new church that didn't work out. As a back up plan, I began working at Home Depot. While there, I was pretty sure that I was done with pastoral ministry. Along with feelings of self-doubt, there was some doubt about my sense of calling. I was also a bit upset that God wasn't a bit more clear about my future - especially my immediate future and how I was supposed to make a living.

At Home Depot, I had to fall back on my old skills of landscaping, painting, and wall papering. One day while helping a customer with a purchase of lawn and garden edging, she looked at me and said, "you don't really work here, do you?" It would be hard to imagine why I would wear the Home Depot orange bib with my name on it otherwise. While working at Home Depot, we never had the case of an impostor sneaking in the store dressed like us.

So I addressed this woman and said, "Of course I work here." To which she responded not only with a challenge, but a guess.

"No she said, you're really a teacher." Then she paused, "No, you're...you're a preacher."

Now I have no way of knowing how my description of plastic lawn edging and its appropriate installation could manage to communicate that. But I was a bit speechless. All I could say, was, "how did you know?"

With a smile the customer just said, "there's just something about you."

That exchange did two things, most obviously it came across as something of a confirmation, that although I may have been working at Home Depot, that was not the entirety of God's plane for me. Secondly, implicit in my response, was a deep awareness that she was right. I was a preacher, minister, a person with a vocation from God. That resonated deep within me, not as a "job," since it was quite obviously the case that wasn't. But deeply resonated as a calling and a sense of being. My identity had been crafted by God over the years and regardless of present employment, I would always be a minister.

This was not a "new" beginning, but it was a renewed beginning. Many of the questions I had at the time about God and what God wanted me to do were answered in that exchange between me and a stranger in the aisle with the lawn edging.

That

Is there an "old" beginning?

I would say of "new" beginnings - they happen every time I awake each morning!

My life in Christ Jesus is an un-ending chain of glistening new beginnings. Oh some are more important and bigger than others but each day has its milestone to be cherished and as a writer I must confess the need to save them for a day when I cannot see the sun for the dragons which are assailing my joy. It was not ao apparent to me at first (They new beginnings that is) but Jesus has been patient and pointed out to me the beauty in being me on a sometimes perilous journey home.

It is amazing to me to realize that according to God's perspective, each day for the Child of God is a new beginning. That is exciting, because as I walk with the Lord each day, He makes my walk new in Him. I sometimes forget that God makes my walk with Him new and exciting, and that comforts me because when I get down, I can think about the newness I have in Him, as I fellowship with Him and other believers.