August 28, 2025 | Jen Newman

Dear Friends,

When I first moved into the Beacon Hill Friends House more than seven years ago, I didn’t know it would become so central to my life. I was new to Boston, just out of school, and thought of the House as a good landing place while I figured out what was next. What I couldn’t have imagined then was how much this community would shape me — through its challenges as well as its joys.

As I wrote when I first applied to live here, “[T]his is the first time I will have moved somewhere without a built-in network of people. This is a significant part of why I want to live in intentional community … I think it is incredibly important to be in consistent and honest relationship with other people. I value the kinds of relationships that living in intentional community, and particularly this Quaker community, helps to cultivate.”

Looking back now, through my journey from resident to Executive Director, I can see how deeply this place has worked on me. The House is not only where I live and work, but also where I’ve been transformed—stretched in my leadership, softened in my listening, held through heartbreak, and reminded again and again of the power of practicing community. I hear echoes of this from alumni all the time: they didn’t realize it at the moment, but later understood how much the House formed them into who they are.

There’s no single curriculum here. Some of us learn how to listen better. Some grow in navigating cultural and generational differences. Others deepen into shared responsibility — serving on committees, cooking meals, carrying the weight and joy of common life. What binds these experiences together is that the House invites us to grow in ways we can’t plan for, and to let the practice of community work on us.

I hold close these words from Rainer Maria Rilke:

“[H]ave patience with everything in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. … Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

For me, BHFH has been a place of living the questions. I’ve been learning to trust that even when I don’t know what’s next, I can grow into the answers over time. This community has shown me again and again that transformation happens in the dailiness of cooking, listening, and showing up—and in the courage to keep choosing each other.

In Light and community,

Jen Newman
Executive Director