Our manager hired a friend from Church to provide us with live music. Nigel was playing the saxophone in the foyer, along with some friends he brought to make up a band. Inside this centenarian home, with the music and the candles and the neighbors, it was one of those moments that you feel nostalgic for even when you're in it, like you know you're going to miss it when it's gone. It was a little too loud, if we're being honest, but one must accept the forcefulness of the magic sometimes. That's what the evening was, a few hours of magic to help us remember why we love each other. All families need that kind of reminder once in a while, as we tend to forget all of the good stuff in the day week after week bumping in to one other. We'd made it through another year together, to the next Christmas party. We gained a few new neighbors, and lost one or two who had moved on for various reasons. For the most part, though, we were the same ragtag bunch from last year.
I live in a Christian co-housing community. It's called "The Ark," and I honestly don't know the story of the name, but I suppose it has to do with Noah's ark from the Old Testament. Most of us have come here looking for refuge from various storms. We're a diverse group, and that's not by accident, as diversity among any community does not come without a certain degree of intentionality. It's written into the bylaws, and as we interview potential new neighbors we prioritize based upon, among other things, what the community is lacking in age, gender, and ethnicity or cultural background. Some of us have graduate degrees, and some of us have GED's. Some of us grew up with all of our physical needs met, while some of us have spent time living on the streets. Sometimes it's complicated trying to see eye-to-eye when we all traveled here on such vastly different roads. We do have a few things in common, and that helps. We are all professing Christians (though our belief systems range from Catholic to Charismatic to wandering pilgrim), and we all share the same neighbors and the same courtyard. We are committed (albeit at varying levels) to this community and therefore to each other. We meet together once a month to spend time together, and almost all of us are in a text messaging group together, so that when one of us runs out of ketchup at dinner or needs some emergency ice cream at eleven pm, we can be there for each other in our time of need. Occasionally we have meetings to discuss business, but we don't like to talk about those, as they usually make us all forget how to behave like decent human beings. We also use our group text to coordinate care and keep each other updated in more serious emergencies, like health crises, though I feel we have a long way to go when it comes to supporting each other adequately in that way. We co-parent each other's pets, and I've been dubbed the "unofficial Ark pet sitter."
Speaking of co-parenting, some people who don't know me very well think I live with a bunch of hippies, and they probably think we all share kids and spouses and stuff. It's because I have dreadlocks and I'm a little strange. Also, not very many people are familiar with the concept of Christian cohousing communities or intentional communities. For those that have heard of them, there are still a lot of misconceptions surrounding the concept. This is because the terms can mean so many things, and each community is a unique organism, so they all look drastically different. I can only speak for the Ark, though I've visited a few other communities and studied the subject some, as it's a type of ministry that called out to Dennis and I long before we had the chance to experience it for ourselves.
The basic premise of our community is very simple on the surface, but gets more complicated as it fleshes itself out. We are an "intentionally diverse Christian cohousing community." This means that we all live in the same apartment complex and we prioritize diversity, as I said before. That's not so hard, right? One of the main requirements to being accepted into the community is a desire to participate in the community, which I recognize is a vague requirement. Some of are content to simply share a laundry room and live in the same building, and some of us would love to eat dinner as a community a few times a week, so I guess we are diverse in that way, too. We are constantly evolving, but we all know and are looking out for each other. We agree to a certain set of guidelines when we move in, which involves things like not doing illegal drugs and participating in community events. It's not too hard, except sometimes when it is. We are all humans here, and sometimes we have to see each other at our grumpiest and sometimes we get on each others' nerves. One of the most redemptive parts of living here has been the inability to run from each other without packing up and moving away, which is a lot of work. Instead, I'm forced to stick it out until whomever is driving me crazy that week redeems his or herself (or maybe I redeem myself for the person I have wronged, because that happens, too). This is a rare gift in our society that tends to be highly mobile, isolated, and conflict-phobic (except on social media). I get to practice grace and be on the receiving end of it, too. I get to see the strength of and be inspired by people I would likely overlook in any other situation.
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