I have done little with this site for the past few months. I have been in a transition process and finally launched the new site today. There are a few reasons for the transition and none have to do with being bored with the subject matter. The structure I set up for this site has begun to be limiting. I have ideas for taking things up a few levels and I am limited with this present site. In any event, I decided it was time to take the plunge.

Newsletter subscription options will be available on the new site shortly. These will be monthly (or so) e-mail newsletters that will review the highlights of the past month. This should be a service to those that do not use feed readers and to those who were subscribed to my Feedburner e-mail digest here. Drop me an e-mail or comment below if you would like to be added to the newsletter list. I will let you know when it is ready. You can also just keep an eye on the site for an announcement.

Take a few minutes to check out the new site when you have a chance. The URI is www.robertwitham.com . The site contains a small portfolio of my writing, some biographical information about me, news updates about lots of stuff, and a growing collection of articles. I ditched the blog categories in favor of Channels.

This site will be left online for as long as people continue to browse the site. I will migrate some of the better content to the new site over the next few weeks. Thanks to those of you who have been faithful readers and subscribers for the past two years. I hope you enjoy the new site as much or more.

Peace and Blessings

As I noted in a post earlier this week, whether your church tradition participates in Ash Wednesday or not, there is still benefit to remembering what this is supposed to be all about.

Consider a few thoughts:

• Pausing to repent of sin, purify our lives, and seek God is always a good thing
• Most Christians find it all too easy to let weeks and months go by between periods of serious repentance and confession
• Most Christians find it all too easy to let months and years go by between observing a fast before God - something we are commanded to practice

Whether you participate in Ash Wednesday observances or not this is a good time to reflect on your spiritual state, pray, and consider fasting.

I realize that, while Catholic and many liturgical Protestant denominations celebrate Lent and the liturgical calendar, there are also many Christians, particularly from conservative evangelical backgrounds, who do not observe the liturgical calendar. Regardless of your persuasion concerning the liturgical calendar (read Romans 14), I think there is something here for all of us.

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I will be posting again this week with articles on the upcoming Lent and Easter season. I will also be launching a series (nearly 100 parts long) considering Athanasius’ Life of St. Antony. This book, written between 356 and 362 AD, was authored by Athanasius of Alexandria. The Life of St. Antony offers some highly interesting reading along with very useful application. 1,650 years later there is much that has not changed; There is nothing new under the sun (as one wise man said).

I hope you will follow along for the series. You may wish to subscribe to the site in your feedreader or by email so you don’t miss an article in the St. Antony series.

• Feedburner (subscribe in a reader)
• E-mail Updates (once daily e-mail updates from the site)

My new site can be viewed at http://www.robertwitham.com . The new site will serve as a portal to link to my various projects and interests.

Compartmentalization is a trademark trait of our culture. The extent to which certain phrases have crept into our language proves this:

• Personal Life
• Work Life
• Social Life
• Spiritual Life

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AJ Jacobs, editor at Esquire Magazine, enjoys conducting radical lifestyle experiments and subsequently writing about his experiments. Jacobs’s previous lifestyle experiments include:

• Radical Honesty - Jacobs practiced only telling the truth and candidly recounts his experiences afterward
• Reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica - Jacobs read all 33,000 pages of the encyclopedia and published a book on the experience afterward

Jacobs’s most recent radical lifestyle experiment is detailed in a book titled, The Year of Living Biblically. During this year-long experiment Jacobs, an agnostic Jew, attempted to follow every rule in the Bible literally.

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Too often we end up acting the same way - only without the joy. We spend far too much time and effort attempting to placate and please those around us rather than the One we should be concerned with pleasing.

Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

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My waking thoughts this morning centered around a parallel between changing seasons in nature and in life. I’m not sure whether the Spirit was moving or if I ate too much of my homemade salsa sauce last night. (OK, we won’t go there. Some things are better left alone!) In any event, I awoke to thoughts of seasons and rhythms in life.

We westerners have a habit of largely ignoring things like seasons and rhythms. We are so accustomed to an industrialized, mechanized, always-on lifestyle that we don’t even notice when the winds of change are blowing around us.

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I just took the quiz and discovered that my closest theological match is with Anselm, the famous twelfth century theologian/scholar/archbishop. Anselm is perhaps best-known for his ontological argument for the existence of God. He is also the archbishop who opposed the crusades.

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