So, what exactly is peace?

I’m not yet finished blogging about my dreams for what I’m going to so with the rest of my life, but I’m going to take a break from that blog series and start a new one.  Most of my blog posts over the next month will be about what I’m doing, experiencing, and thinking in El Salvador, but I wanted to start this new series now and hopefully post at least a couple posts on this series.  (I kind of like the idea of doing different themed series of blog posts- maybe I’ll keep thinking of new series, maybe I’ll even take requests.)

In this blog I’ve been writing about my search for peace, but I realized the other day that I never really defined what exactly I mean by “peace.”  So, I thought I should write a blog post about what I mean by “peace.”  But then I realized that I don’t really know exactly what I mean by “peace.”  Well, I think I know what I mean, but I can’t really explain or express what I mean. 

As the whole idea of coming up with a definition of peace was running around in my mind, I was reading the book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy by Eric Metaxas.  See my post from yesterday about the book and the man.  

In the book, there is a quote from Bonheoffer about peace which made me think that it would be a good idea to take a look at how other people have defined peace and while doing so I’ll try to put into words what I think I mean by “peace.”

At a conference in 1934, Bonhoeffer gave a speech about the role of the church in working for peace.  Here’s part of that speech:

“There is no way to peace along the way of safety.  For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe.  Peace is the opposite of security.  To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself.  Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes.  Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God.  They are won when the way leads to the cross.” 

The last words of Bonhoeffer’s speech that night were “What are we waiting for?  The time is late.”

I don’t even really know how to respond to these words from Bonhoeffer- his words are filled with so much truth and would challenge just about anyone.

Here’s what strikes me about Bonhoeffer’s words:

• Peace is something to be dared: working for peace is a risky business that requires surrendering safety and security.  It’s not a given that peace will just happen, peace is something that we must dare to pursue.
• Peace is possible only by giving oneself completely to God’s commandment (I’m not completely sure what commandment Bonhoeffer is referring to here…anyone have any guesses?)
• Peace will never be obtained with weapons or violence.  Only with and through God will true peace ever come about.
• There was a great sense of urgency for Bonhoeffer.  Surely the historical moment of the impending crisis in Germany brought about that sense of urgency, but Bonhoeffer had an incredible grasp of the necessity to work to bring about the Kingdom of God today.  For Bonhoeffer and for us today there is absolutely no reason to wait one second to begin and continue working for peace.  We have already waited far too long.

It’s hard to say if Bonhoeffer had any idea that more than 10 years after speaking these words he would forgo his own safety and security for peace.  In his work for peace, Bonhoeffer didn’t think about his own safety or security, but rather through faith he gave his life and fully obeyed God.  Even though Bonhoeffer was killed in a concentration camp and didn’t really achieve what he set out to do, I would argue that Bonhoeffer did find peace for himself and brought about more peace in the world.  He was completely in tune with God’s will and his journey for peace continually pointed toward and ended at the cross.

The world and situation we live in today is different from the world Bonhoeffer lived in.  However, that’s not to say that we can’t learn a lot from him, his life, and his words.

Bonhoeffer’s words make me ask a few questions of myself in my own search for peace: Am I truly willing to accept that my own safety and security are not the priority when it comes to working for peace?  Can if completely commit myself to God’s commandment and through faith put everything in God’s hands?  How can I move past wanting guarantees of my safety and guarantees that everything will work out how I think it should?  How can I ensure that my search for peace is not for selfish reasons?  What does it mean for me that battles of peace are won when the way leads to the cross?  What am I waiting for?

My new favorite theologian.

This may surprise some of you, it even surprised me a little, but I have a new favorite theologian.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I’ve known about Bonhoeffer for a few years and I even saw a play about him and read a collection of some of his letters.  I highly respected the man but didn’t know a whole lot about him, his life, and his theology beyond the basic details.  However, I just finished reading a most wonderful book about Bonhoeffer: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy by Eric Metaxas.  And now I want to read everything ever written by or about Bonhoeffer and he’s my new favorite theologian. 

This book is the perfect combination of biography, history, theology, spirituality, church drama, friendship, love story, and tragedy.  The book is a whopping 542 pages long (not including the notes and index), but it was 542 pages of fascinating and compelling information.  It’s not at all “dry” as many biographies can be.  Eric Metaxas did a great job writing this book, but with a person as interesting, inspiring, and incredible as Bonhoeffer, I think it would have been difficult to write a bad book about Bonhoeffer.

You really should read this book or at least look at the Wikipedia page about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

But here are some brief words about Bonhoeffer that I know won’t adequately describe the man and his life, but here it goes:

Born in 1906 in Germany, Bonhoeffer knew from a young age that he wanted to study theology.  Bonhoeffer excelled in his studies and was a prolific writer throughout his life.  He became a Lutheran pastor as soon as he was old enough to do so.  He spent time in Spain and London as a pastor to German people living there.  He studied for a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York.  Spent time as a pastor in Germany, led and taught at a seminary that was illegal back in Germany, worked closely with ecumenical leaders from Europe and the US, worked as a spy, and became involved in a conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler.  Throughout the 1930s, Bonhoeffer actively spoke out against Hitler and the Third Reich.  Furthermore, he encouraged the church to do the same and to stand up for those who did not have a voice under Hitler’s rule- the Jews, the sick, the disabled.  Eventually the Gestapo arrested Bonhoeffer and he spent 18 months in a prison in Berlin and spent the final months of his life imprisoned at concentration camps before he was executed for his involvement with the plots to kill Hitler.         

When things got bad in Germany in the 1930s Bonhoeffer was given the opportunity to live and work in the US where he would be safe, but he decided to return to Germany to be with his people, to work with others to end the atrocities led by Hitler, and to suffer the same fate of many of the Jews that he was trying to save.

Throughout his life, Bonhoeffer was fully in tune with God’s will.  His own safety and well-being meant little to him.  Bonhoeffer’s faith and devotion to God was incredibly strong (although, Bonhoeffer would probably have said that it was God’s devotion and love to him that made Bonhoeffer so strong).  Even while in prison, Bonhoeffer continued his daily Bible reading, prayer, and hymn singing.  He was always a source of comfort and strength for those around him.

I have been searching for a Lutheran leader/theologian to look up to- a Lutheran hero, and Bonhoeffer is definitely what I have been looking for.  Most of the Christian leaders and theologians that I looked up to are Catholic, which certainly isn’t a bad thing, but it’s nice to have someone from my own religious tradition to look to for inspiration and an example of how to live out life as a Christian.  It’s good to have this example of how one Lutheran lived his life and gave his life for community, peace, and justice. 

I’m so excited to read more of Bonhoeffer’s writings.  I think the thing that most impresses me about Bonhoeffer is that he loved the academic side of theology, but I doubt that he ever wrote or said anything about God, religion, or spirituality that he wasn’t fully prepared live out.  For Bonhoeffer, theology and Christianity are things to be acted out not just talked about.  We could really use more people like Bonhoeffer who are willing to be authentic Christians by taking a stand against injustice in the world.  We can all learn so much from people like Bonhoeffer along with so many others who have and continue to stand up to say that justice must prevail.   

I'm going to El Salvador (again!).

I think most of you know by now that I’m heading off to El Salvador.  I’m leaving Thursday and I’ll be gone for 4 weeks.  My friend Julie is already down there and she and I will go home together on August 3^rd.  I’ll meet another friend named Julie on my layover in Houston and we’ll fly to El Salvador together.  Then a few days after I get there another friend, Kira, will join us.  Then the four of us ladies will have about a week to get into trouble before a group from Julie and Kira’s church in Minnesota comes to El Salvador for 10 days.  So that’s who I’ll be hanging out with in addition to all the wonderful Salvadorans.  My trip this summer will be similar to my trip last summer.  I’ll visit church communities, spend time with some pastors, check out cultural and historical sites, eat pupusas, learn from the best mission trip leaders, practice my Spanish, and experience Salvadoran life.   

It took me forever to decide if I was going to go to El Salvador this summer.  It was my intention to bring a group of people from my church down to El Salvador this summer, but unfortunately there weren’t enough people who could or wanted to go on the trip to make it worth it.  This was a huge disappointment for me.    

Once I finally accepted that there wasn’t going to be a group of people from my church going with to El Salvador, I started to question if I should even go at all.  I won’t disclose all the issues that were a part of and a hindrance to my decision-making because I don’t want to bore you and because it still makes my brain hurt to think about it all.  I went back and forth about 37 million times in my head about if I should go or not.  I wrote down a list of “pros and cons” of going to El Salvador.  I prayed about it.  I journaled about it.  I tried pretending for a few hours that I was going to El Salvador to see how I felt and then I would pretend for a few hours that I wasn’t going to El Salvador to see if that felt “right.”  Then I went back and forth in my mind about 24 million more times. 

The decision-making-process was made more difficult because it was getting closer and closer to the day that I would leave if I was going to go.  I was under the pressure of knowing that I had to buy my plane ticket and do all the little things to get ready to go.  It came to be three weeks before the day I would leave and I still hadn’t made a decision.  At this point I was looking for help making the decision wherever I could find the help- I was really hoping for a clear, loud voice from Heaven.  But that didn’t happen (wouldn’t life be easier and much more exciting if God spoke to us like he spoke to Moses?  At least we would know exactly what God wanted us to do even if doing it was still incredibly difficult.).  What did happen was this: I was in the car driving around and listening to my favorite Christian radio station.  In between a couple of songs, the radio show hosts started talking about following God and going where God is.  They talked about trusting in God and going where God leads you- to follow God down the path and on the journey God leads you on.   

So, I thought about where God was leading me and about my path, especially as it related to going to El Salvador.  Where had God led me before?  Where and when do I feel God most present?  Is El Salvador a part of my journey with God?  Where is God and where is God calling me to be?

The place where I have seen, heard, and felt God most clearly has been in El Salvador.  I know that God is present everywhere, but I have felt and experienced God’s presence in El Salvador in a way that I have rarely experienced God at home.  It is so incredibly obvious to me that God is present in and among the Salvadoran people.  I thought about the incredible work God is doing in El Salvador.  At that moment it was clear that God was leading me to El Salvador.   

And then I knew.  I knew I had to go to El Salvador this summer.

It was such an agonizing decision-making process, but once I finally made the decision to go to El Salvador I felt immediate relief.  I felt a great sense of calm and consolation- a sense of peace.  I’m not sure if this sense of peace was because I didn’t have to worry about making the decision anymore or because I had made the right decision- perhaps both.

Going to El Salvador has become almost routine for me now- this will be the fourth time that I’m going.  It doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore.  I’ve got a highly refined packing list.  I have the comfort of knowing where I’m staying and with whom I’ll be staying.  I have a pretty good idea of what the “average” day is like in El Salvador (but really there isn’t any such thing as an “average” day in El Salvador- I guess what I mean is I have a pretty good idea of what to expect while expecting the unexpected).  I know I’ll be taken care of by some very wonderful Salvadorans.  I’m not sure if this sense of “routineness” about going to El Salvador is a good thing or a bad thing.

Despite the tough decision making process, I am so very excited to be going to El Salvador.  And I’m even more excited about sharing my experiences with all of my blog readers.  I’ll try my best to post here on my blog with some regularity- every 2 or 3 days or so- but no promises.    

I live in a two-worm-farm-home.

Remember when I said I was going to be writing some random blog posts? … Well, here is my first official random blog post.

We are now a two-worm-farm-home.  That is: we now have two worm farms that compost our fruit and vegetable scraps.  The worm bin started as a science project in my mom’s 3^rd grade classroom many years ago.  When they changed science curriculums they didn’t need the worms anymore, so my mom brought them home and we have had worms in our basement for many years.   Our worms in the one bin we have had for years weren’t able to keep up with all our vegetable and fruit scraps, so we decided to add another bin.  We set up the new bin and took some worms out of the old bin, and they are doing well- I haven’t heard any complaints.

worm bin #1

The worms still gross me out.  I do everything possible to avoid touching them directly, but I am sure glad to have them around.  They are pretty low maintenance pets and they are excellent composters.  We keep a plastic container in our fridge and fill it up with fruit and vegetable scraps as we create them.  When the container is full, I take it down to the basement, stir up the dirt a little, create a hole in the dirt for the food and then cover the food with dirt.  It’s hard to estimate how many little red wigglers there are in the bin- hundreds though.  All those little guys/gals go to work and break down the food.  They leave behind castings (worm poop).  There is also a liquid that collects in the bottom of the worm farm container that we call “worm tea”.  I get it out of the worm house via a spigot in the bottom of the container.  I put this liquid in my vegetable gardens as an excellent fertilizer.  The worm castings can also be used for fertilizer, but that requires separating the worms from the castings and that a lot of dirty work- I did that once, but probably won’t do it again for a while.

Inside the worm farm

worms chowing down on a banana peel

There are a lot of people out there who compost with a bin/pile outside, but there aren’t many people out there with worms (if you do have worms let me know- I’d love to exchange some worm stories with you!).  With worms we can compost all year round while outdoor composting really doesn’t work well during the cold winter.  The drawback of using worms to compost is that our composting is limited to mainly fruit and vegetable scraps- they couldn’t possibly compost our grass clippings or other yard waste.

If you want to learn more about worm composting or getting a worm farm of your own I would suggest reading this highly entertaining and informative review/essay/short book about a worm farm on amazon.com.  I came across this when I was looking for info about worm farms, and I was absolutely enthralled with the story and info about these worms.  I can’t necessarily recommend this particular worm bin from personal experience, but all the comments from Michelle R. and other people are fascinating.  Trust me, even if you don’t think you would ever want worms, after you read this you will at least consider getting some of your own.

Community and Coffee Shops

A couple of weeks ago, I read The Suburban Christian: Finding Spiritual Vitality in the Land of Plenty by Albert Y. Hsu.  It’s a great book- anyone who lives in the suburbs and cares about religion, Christianity, spirituality, or the Church should read this book.

What I found most compelling in the book was the author’s discussion of community (because I love community and because two of my dreams are about community).  Suburbia is marketed as the perfect “community.”  A peaceful, quite, safe place to raise your family.  A place where you can have a beautiful house, a yard where your dog and kids can play, exceptional schools, shopping malls and strip malls galore within a 10 minute drive, a million options for entertainment, and jobs so that you can buy just about everything you ever needed or wanted. 

But I think we all know that the suburbs are not the perfect communities they are promoted as.   The suburbs have been given a very bad reputation by many who are concerned (and rightfully so) that life in the suburbs creates self-centered, isolated people who are alienated from their neighbors, their family, and the rest of the world.  The suburbs might be portrayed as perfect “communities”, but in reality there really isn’t much true community around the suburbs (there are of course places in the burbs where community can be found, but these places are far too difficult to find).  Everyone is so busy, so scheduled, so consumed with consuming.  Many of us don’t even know our neighbors living next door.  We don’t form relationships beyond our close family and friends and we don’t love and care for our neighbors (our literal and non-literal neighbors). 

The author of The Suburban Christian, Hsu, was writing about how community participation has greatly decreased over the past few decades especially in suburbs.  Socializing has decreased.  People just don’t spend as much time with other people as they used to.  People are so busy, busy, busy.  A lot of the loss of community can be attributed to the loss of what Ray Oldenburg calls “third places” which he defines in his book The Great Good Place as “public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.”  Back in the day, people gathered in the town square, at church, or at the ice cream social, but we don’t have town squares, more and more people don’t go to church, and we don’t have many ice cream socials anymore. 

Then Hsu started writing about Starbucks.  Starbucks started out with one store in Seattle selling only coffee beans and coffee making equipment.  The founder, Howard Schultz, took a business trip to Italy and he noticed there were espresso bars all over the place.  Each espresso bar was slightly different, but each was filled with people who were drinking coffee and chatting with other people.  Schultz observed the espresso bars and saw people meeting up with friends they saw everyday but also meeting people for the first time.  He then had an “aha” moment realizing that he had been doing the coffee business all wrong.  Hsu, wrote Schultz, “had seen coffee merely as a product, a commodity to be sold, not something with the potential to build relationships and community.”  So Schultz changed his stores.  He set up tables and chairs and started serving coffee in his shops.  The stores became “a place where coffee became an experience, where people could meet and talk and linger, where people built relationships and community.”  He created “third places.”  People flocked to Starbucks around the country because these coffee shops filled the need for third places, for places where community can be built.

I was starting to get worried as I was reading this because in my mind Starbucks does not create authentic community- the sort of community that I want my coffee shop to create.  But then Hsu wrote this:  “Yet Starbucks’s success only goes so far.  While Starbucks may provide an inviting atmosphere and a context where people can connect, it’s not truly a public meeting place for civic interaction.  You might go there with your friends, but you don’t necessarily go to Starbucks to meet strangers and engage neighbors.  In the end, Starbucks is still a commercial enterprise, selling lattes and Frappuccinos.”  Starbucks customers are people who have a car to drive to there and drive through the drive through, people who can afford a $4 (or $5 or $6) cup of coffee, people who are educated enough to know and understand words needed to order a coffee drink.  I haven’t spent a lot of time at Starbucks, but I’ve only met up with good friends, I never met anyone new, I never even saw anyone outside my socioeconomic class, and most of the time I got a drink to go or I sat by myself and didn’t interact with anyone.  Perhaps Starbucks brings to the suburbs an opportunity to build community, but Starbucks is not that ideal “third place” where ALL people from a community can gather together and build community and build a better world.

Now that I’m reassured that Starbucks really does not create the sort of community that I want my coffee shop to create, I have to figure out how my coffee shop will have to be different from Starbucks in order to create authentic community?

Here’s some ideas:

The coffee shop will have to be physically accessible to the community (including those people who don’t have cars or can’t afford to use gas to go anywhere that’s not absolutely necessary).  Ideally people would be able to walk or bike to my coffee shop.  Otherwise maybe I could find a location near one of the few bus routes in the ‘burbs.

The cost of coffee, other drinks, and food cannot prevent people from coming to the coffee shop.  Perhaps there will need to be some sort of a sliding flexible price for coffee and food.   Those who can afford to pay more for their coffee and food can pay more while those who can only afford to pay a few cents for their coffee and food can do so.  A few Panera Bread stores have tried out the “pay-what-you-want” model and it has worked well for business and for the customers.  Check out this article.

The food and drinks being served have to appeal to the people that I want to be a part of the community.  I will have to get the know who is living in the area around my coffee shop and then cater my menu so people will be comfortable with the food being served.  Food has brought people together for thousands of years and I hope this will be a strong part of my coffee shop.

It would be awesome if community spontaneously happened in my coffee shop (picture the grand opening where people of all races and ethnicities and socioeconomic statuses gather and instantly become best friends and then leave the shop, go home picking up litter along the way and serve their neighbors, come back the next day with a hundred more best friends of all different backgrounds, etc.).  But as we see with Starbucks, “community” doesn’t spontaneously happen.  Building community takes a conscious effort.  I’m not exactly sure what this might look like but I will have to figure out ways to get people to actively engage with each other and get to know new people who are different from them.  It will be simple things like me encouraging regular customers to say “hi” to a new customer and perhaps more formal things like a night of people sharing their life stories.

The focus and purpose of the shop (especially for me) cannot be selling coffee or other products.  Just because the coffee shop aims to be socially and environmentally responsible doesn’t mean that it’s ok to allow consumption or profit to take over.   The ultimate focus must be creating community and making life better for the Salvadoran coffee farmers.  Of course selling coffee will be a part of this and it will be a business, but it must be more of a ministry than a business- people must come first.  I don’t know exactly how to find this balance, but this is vital.

Dream #4

The Dream: to be a farmer.

Now when I say I want to be a farmer, don’t picture me on thousands of acres of cornfields in a ginormous air-conditioned John Deer tractor harvesting the unnaturally perfect rows of genetically-engineered-pesticide-and-herbicide-and-fertilizer-contaminated-corn.

When I say I want to be a farmer I mean I want to be an environmentally conscious, self-sustainable, small-scale, organic farmer of a variety of veggies, legumes, fruits, and grains.  I would also like to have some hens so I can have their eggs, cows so I can have their milk, some bees for their honey, sheep for their wool, and llamas and alpacas for their fur (and just because they are really cool animals).

I haven’t really decided if I just want to farm to have enough for my family or whomever else I’m living with, or if I would want to produce more food so I could sell it to other people.  Probably the latter.

Where this dream came from:

I’ve had my own little vegetable garden in my backyard for the past few years.  I have two raised beds that are each about 3 by 6 feet.  I cram as many plants in there as I can (which I know I’m not supposed to do, but I do it anyways).  I’ve grown tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, red and green peppers, jalapeño peppers, cucumbers, and cabbage.  I love watching the plants grow.  It’s so cool to see vegetable grow from the tiny plants- it’s almost like a miracle to go out to the garden and one day see things that resemble real live vegetables.  And there is nothing better than going into your backyard, picking some broccoli, cutting it up, and then eating it within 2 minutes- doesn’t get any fresher than that.

This year I’m growing my plants from seed (in previous years I bought little plants from a store).  I ordered seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange which is an organization located in Decorah, Iowa that is dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.  I planned poorly and ordered my seeds too late and thus got the seeds started too late, but the baby plants are doing pretty well (they don’t look as perfect as the plants you buy at the store though).  I planted them in my little garden a couple weekends ago.  I feel like a mother to my baby plants.  Don’t judge me, but I’ve been talking to the little plants and encouraging them to grow.

This year my church started a community garden, which I am SO very excited about.  We planted a whole bunch of different vegetables, fruits, and herbs.   All the produce is going to be donated to local food pantries and to PADS (an organization that works to end homelessness in our area).  I volunteered to plan the planting of the garden and I thoroughly enjoyed planning it all out, learning about the different kinds of plants that we planted, and I am so excited to watch the garden grow over the summer.  (If you want to see the progress of the community garden over the summer, check out this blog.)

A couple years ago I read a book by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.  In the book, Barbara writes about the year she, her husband, and two daughters committed to eating only locally grown food which involved growing most of their own food.  I loved reading about their adventures, the creativity they had to use to eat locally, and the difficulties and blessings of living off the land.  Just reading the book made me want to have my own farm so I could do what they did- to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Our globalized world is becoming more and more dependent on oil, ever-advancing technologies and machines, and enormous multi-national corporations.  Perhaps not everything about this globalized world is bad, but it has come to the point where we have next to no idea where our food comes from, who grew it, what’s in/on our food, what resources were used to get the food into my grocery cart, etc.  And it shouldn’t be this way.  The less knowledge we have about our food, the less we are able to make good decisions about the environmental and social costs of the food we eat.  I want to be able to make good decisions about what I put into my mouth.  After all, you are what you eat.  If I produced my own food then I would know almost every single detail about the food I was eating and I would be able to ensure that the food was produced in an environmentally and socially conscientious way.

What I would need to do to make the dream a reality:

• Learn more about farming
• Have land to farm on
• Obtain some farming equipment
• Find other people with farming knowledge and experience to help me 

Obstacles to making the dream a reality:

• There’s not much land for farming left in the suburbs so I might have to leave the burbs or make do with less land
• Actually surviving on what I grow
• Finding other people to help and join in my farming

Dream #3

The dream: To live in or start a Christian intentional community.

For those who may not be sure what intentional community is, according to Wikipedia intentional community is “a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities.  The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle.  They typically also share responsibilities and resources.”

Every intentional community is different.  Depending on the people and place, intentional communities can take various shapes.  Some only have a few people while others may have dozens of people.  The age of the community and the ages of the people in the community vary.  Some communities share common religious or spiritual practices.  Some grow their own food, some are activists, some try to remove themselves from Western culture, and many communities do everything possible to make a positive changes in their larger communities. The key of an intentional community is people living together in a meaningful way.

I know some incredible people who are living in intentional communities in Chicago and I know there are many intentional communities in large cities and rural areas across the county.  However, I live here in the suburbs.  After two years of being back home after my undergraduate years at Augustana, I finally feel that I am connected to the area around my house.  My family is here, I have friends here, and my church is here.  I would like to continue living in this area and I think the suburbs can use some (more) people living in intentional community who are invested in the well being of the larger community.  I haven’t been able to find people living in intentional community in the suburbs (I haven’t been looking too hard for too long though).   I’m sure there are suburbanites out there living in intentional community… I just need to find them (if any of you have any leads on this, please let me know!).

Where this dream came from:

There is something very beautiful and idealistic and practical about the idea of living in an intentional community.  Ever since I first started learning about intentional communities some years back, I have wanted to be a part of one.

Some of my awesome classmates at Loyola are living in intentional community and from what I have heard and seen it appears to be very meaningful for those in the intentional community and for people in the greater community.

I’m almost done reading a book by Shane Claiborne called The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.  (I’ll tell you more about Shane and his great book in another post because he and the book deserve an entire blog post all their own.)  Among other things, Shane wrote about some of his experiences living in intentional community and about community in general.  Through community, Shane and his fellow community members have been able to bring some incredible change and transformation.

I learned about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement a few years ago.  Since then I have been in awe of the work that Dorothy Day started and the work that continues on with the many Catholic Worker houses still in existence where people from all walks of life live together in community. 

I want to live with other similar-minded people who want to make the world a better place and I want to live with people who will challenge me to be a better Christian and a better person in general.  I want to live with people who are conscious of how the way we live affects the world and who strive to live every single minute of their lives in a way that announces the coming of the Reign of God.

Basically I want to live in an intentional community because I want to be a part of the incredible work that is being done by other people who are living in intentional community.  Living in intentional community certainly isn’t necessary to bring about change and social transformation, but it very much facilitates the process.

What I would need to do to make this dream a reality

• Find an intentional community to join
• Start a new intentional community: find people to be in community with (is anyone out there interested?), find a place to live, lay out what we want our intentional community to be

Obstacles to making this dream a reality

• Finding an intentional community to live in
• Finding people to live with if I start a new intentional community
• From what I hear, living in community is hard work (although it certainly comes with many blessings)