There’s ain’t nothing new about peace or shalom; that’s for sure. Neither is our innate desire to live in it. Rewind four decades and we’ll find Americans desperate to finally end destructive intervention in a foreign land. Rewind three more centuries and we’ll find a small group of Germantown residents petitioning to live in right relationship with their brothers and sisters instead of leaving them brutalized by enslavement. And if we really want, we can go back to the early, early days, when God revealed a way for us to live with each other that was holy and good.

I bring this simple fact up because when I think about the newness of an endeavor like Shalom House—the excitement, sense of abandon, and yes, even the uncertainty of it all—it’s the tradition and tried-and-true comforts that offer up that much-needed sense of “home.” My new friends and roommates (Mimi Copp, Adam Malliet, and Brian Shingledecker) and I have gotten to know each other by doing what people have always done: telling our personal stories over food prepared together, making the first of many practical decisions necessary for a unified household to thrive. We have done something similar with the SH Guidance Team—Rod and Gwen White, Jane Clinton, Randy Nyce, and Missy Stoner—having dinner at the Whites or meeting in the Germantown Meetinghouse, a historic landmark located 30 feet from our abode.

Four new friends have begun a new life and a new mission, which is to provide community for committed peacemakers to spend two-years deepening and applying their calling in Philadelphia and learning about and connecting to God’s worldwide community of peacebuilders. Embedded in that statement are things that are surely not new: the call to humility, discipleship, community life, and joining in that continuous and universal groaning for shalom—peace, well-being, fulfillment, harmony, you name it.