A Quaker center for community

Dear Friends,  For those who haven’t met me yet, I’ve been living at the House for the past 8 weeks holding some of the aspects of Jen’s work while she’s been on sabbatical. Coming to the end of my (relatively short) time on staff here, I’m reminded of the value of living in community. I’ve lived in an intentional community in Lebanon, NH for the last 6 years (a home I’ll return to shortly). In that time, I’ve become accustomed to the style and rhythm of my home. Here at the Friends house, I’ve had the opportunity to experience being a newcomer to a home again—the soft struggle of learning a new place, taking the wrong stairs, feeling out unwritten rules, and navigating the awkwardness of living near strangers. It conjures some empathy for the many people over the years who have told me that communal living isn’t for them—that the work of being vulnerable alongside so many others in the intimacy of their own home is unappealing, scary, and risky. I’ve often dismissed those concerns quickly, noting that there is so much to gain in the bargain of communal living. I’ve often thought of it as a practical exchange: you have more, challenging conversations, but gain an economy with many hands making less individual work! In short, we ease our household labors by taking on the difficulty and slowness of process and consensus. However, simplifying intentional living to an exchange of labors misses something significant: the power of process. Those familiar with Quaker practice will not be surprised by this. Much like a meeting, which comes together knowing itself to be more than the sum of its members, a communal home comes together and finds that there is much to be gained from the act of gathering itself. The process of living together (creating consensus, resolving conflict, coordinating the many moving parts of individual lives) creates something bigger and more impactful than the good lives residents could live independently that more than off-sets the cost of proximity. So, returning to my home up north with its own flavor of mis-communications and mis-coordinations, frustrations over changing too slowly or too quickly, labors over practices and policies, and overall struggle to align the lives of its members, I’m reminded to Trust The Process.

Dear Friends, It’s been hot lately. And while I love idyllic lazy sun-drenched days filled with fun and friends, heat isn’t always so pleasant. So then I think of the more negative associations of heat—being hot-headed/hot-tempered, having heated emotions or a heated response—and listen y’all, I get it. When I’m physically uncomfortable due to the heat, I am absolutely quicker to feel frustration and other emotions that exist in friction or tension.  So here’s a hot take—we could all just, like, chill out, bruhhh. Because it’s so easy to react, right? Especially once we’ve gotten activated, our systems have us convinced that we’re fighting for our lives—and sure, sometimes maybe we are. But most of the time, I’m betting it’s not a life or death situation. It’s probably closer to “why haven’t you emptied the dishwasher when I’ve been asking you for days” or “I’m upset because you drank the last cold soda, even though you did not know that I had been really looking forward to it.” I wonder if there are ways we can pause, take a breath, and choose to cool down. Can we hold boundaries firmly but kindly? Can we face setbacks with grace and understanding? Can we offer each other a little more grace? I wonder what we can accomplish together when we stop adding gas to the fire.