We've just moved house. We liked our old place, but we like where we are now too - but it's a different world, having moved. We're a different household, with one more member than before, and there's some settling in to do, not just in terms of finding our way about the premises, and getting to know the neighbours, but also in finding a sustainable and enjoyable - and ultimately fruitful - way of living together.
Years ago I remember reading Bonhoeffer's little book on community life. This morning I was listening to an interesting radio interview on renunciation. Living together (the title, if I recall it correctly, of Bonhoeffer's book, which I no longer have to hand) requires some measure of renunciation. I can't do everything I want to, I have other people's welfare and happiness to consider too. But one of the wise things said this morning was that it is as we renounce our selves that we find our selves. There are those who are called to a genuinely solo, and perhaps eremetical, existence, but for most of us the self is formed and re-formed in the various patterns of relationship and community through which we travel, or so it seems to me.
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