Joiners

We have some big news. It's so big that, even though like all healthy things it will start small and with love and nurture grow into whatever it was created to be, I am writing with some trepidation.

Ever since we articulated a framework for the kind of intentional community we wanted to be the catalyst for (and wrote it down here) a year and a few months ago, we've been hoping for some joiners. "God, please--send your people to us!" has been a raw cry more than a few times since then.

We didn't really want to move here and do what we're doing outside of that kind of community, but we didn't have it where we were, so we came on down to SLU, hoping that others would join us.

And while it's been a great year and two months, and God has surprised us with community in many amazing ways, we haven't had any joiners. Nobody has said, "Yes, I'm a questioner, follower, seeker, lover, and/or doubter of Jesus and I'd love to come together with you guys to live in close geographical proximity, support one another through regular community practices, and connect ourselves and our resources to the people in the neighborhood."

Well (drum roll)....we have some joiners! Matt and Marilee, together with daughters Mira and Lina, found us on the Intentional Communities Directory, and wondered if what we are trying to be in SLU would be a good fit for their family. After a lot of emails, a few gatherings, continuous prayer, and a pretty sweet apartment vacancy in our building, they're selling their house and moving in! You can read more about their process on Marilee's blog.

Needless to say, we are totally thrilled and looking forward to working out what this intentional community will really be like for our two families (while being open to other joiners as well). Not only do we have affinity for each other, but we've also all felt an overwhelming peace about the idea of doing this together, even though we don't yet know each other well. God is at work here, no doubt about it. We are thankful and humbled by the intersection of our lives in this peculiar way.

Together with the excitement, there's a vulnerability for all of us in this that sometimes feels a little scary. What if something really bad happens? What if we get close and one of us leaves? What if we have conflict (that's not a "what if"--all people in community have conflict)? What's it going to be like to forgive and be forgiven with people outside my own family? Will we really be able to do that? We have so much to learn--not only about one another, but about being in community.

It's big. It's right. It's humbling. It's happening.

Thanks be to God.

A Place Where It is Easier to Do Good

I start these blog posts when I have an idea and then often discover treasurers when searching for a good summary or quote. Today my idea is, roughly, how mixed-income neighborhoods help give people just a little push toward loving their neighbors by simple virtue of proximity, while income-stratified neighborhoods do the opposite. After a little quality time with the Internet I now have about a month's worth of reading material which I'll share some links to along the way.

When Peter Maurin talked about "that kind of society where it is easier for men to be good", he meant a traditional or perhaps Distributist self-sufficient small village community, either permanently or as a retreat. Some of these projects such as the Amish or Aurora Colony have been successful to a degree, but the story of human history has been cities, from Babel to the New Jerusalem. What kind of "Place Where It is Easier to Do Good" can we make in our modern metropolitan areas?

It is certainly possible to do good in suburbs, where the plurality of Americans currently live. Many good works begin in suburban churches and synagogues, but something feels a little wrong to me about driving down to an urban food bank, dropping off some food for "those poor people", and heading home. Notre Dame graduate student Davey Henreckson summarizes at Theopolitical what makes suburbs politically successful in A theology of suburbs:

This isn’t to say that if I raise my son in suburbia he will never meet a homeless person or make friends with immigrant peers. But suburbs that "work" usually do so because they manage to stake out a demographic and economic niche. In other words, suburbs are not civic societies so much as civic clubs — they exist because of vast similarities in membership.

As another example, Eric Jacobsen provides a retelling of Luke 8:40-56 taken from his book Sidewalks in the Kingdom (p 90-91) for a 2006 Spring Institute for Lived Theology at UVA:

Jesus is in a private home in a subdivision, where he gets a call from an elder of the megachurch, twelve miles away, whose daughter is sick. He and his disciples hope into their Suburban and drive twenty miles across town to another subdivision and heal the elder's daughter. The other parts of town they encounter at 40 mph through shatterproof glass. The hemorrhaging woman is in one of these other parts of town, perhaps in a seedy motel, alone in her pain and convinced that she is not important enough for someone like Jesus.

Jesus, or our food bank volunteer, speeds by his neighbor. And another thing, in this story Jesus or again our food bank volunteer is spending a large amount of time and gas money just to get to and from the place of need. (Incidentally, a driver of a vehicle at 40 mph is four times more likely than one traveling 30 mph to kill a pedestrian in a collision.) In other retelling by Jacobsen, only a Samaritan child in the back seat notices the beaten man on the way to Jericho--her dad is paying attention to the road, speeding by on the other side, and the girl is powerless to stop the car.

Of course, living near a food bank certainly does not automatically connect you with it. However, I do know that when I went to a fundraiser breakfast for a neighborhood service organization here, the director thanked volunteers from a high-end retirement community a couple blocks away. Maybe that included some folks who used to drive in from the suburbs, I don't know. Maybe the food bank neighbors and volunteers see each other around.

I don't want to minimize the challenges of connecting people of different incomes and lifestyles. In fact, in June 2010 a veteran Canadian reporter spent a month "embedded" in a condo tower in Vancouver's downtown East Side, wondering "whether the city’s richest and poorest residents can share the same space." (I haven't made it through the whole series; it starts at the bottom of page 3.)

Opportunities for doing good are not limited to people in proximity, but it makes it easier and leads to incidental connections.

Update: local urbanist Roger Valdez put it this way: "Finally, we believe that many of Seattle’s greatest economic an social problems—poverty, crime, homelessness, poor academic performance—can be significantly and positively impacted when people live closer together because, if nothing else, our proximity to each other makes the suffering of our fellow person intolerable."

Stability Isn't Simple

We value good fits. I get nothing less than a thrill out of getting to use my gifts in the company of others also using theirs. We also value stability. While we are shaped by this mobile culture that we live in, we are actively resisting it. We don't want to pack up and move on when things get hard (even though that is always our first idea), because we'll probably find the same demons in the next location.

So, we found the good fit and that is why we came here. It is no doubt a calling to be in this mixed use, diverse neighborhood where we can engage: living, working, worshiping, and perhaps even being a catalyst for the formation of a dynamic intentional community. Hooray! We are so thankful!

But the presence of a good fit doesn't mean the absence of being stretched. Being rooted in a good fit just makes stretching something that can help us have the privilege of growing and moving forward in the sort of life we were created for.

I am learning that stability isn't simple. If it just meant staying in the same place in the same way doing the same thing no matter what, it would be. But stability isn't the same thing as stagnancy. Sometimes going deeper in the same place means taking a close look at how well various parts of the "good fit" are fitting and how they need to change. It is hard to know what to hang in there with. It is hard to know when to let go. It is hard to even know why we might desire one or the other. Shall we jump at every chance to engage with people who really get us and can communicate effectively and easily (and pretty much minimize everyone else)...? Is there something valuable about doing the mucky, clunky work of the opposite?

And what about trying for stability when it's not culturally valued--when the polite thing to do would be to just not be bothered by our tendency to solve problems through mobility? If stability in community means that people will really know us and we can't hide behind our mask or performance (or blog), then it must also mean that the people we know are more known and less able to hide. If stability in community means that we have to learn what it means to be forgiven, it's indirectly asking the same thing of those around us. Yikes.

I guess like most things, stability is a process. With every turn we are understanding it better. We are learning how to be rooted and dynamic at the same time. We are learning that we need space to grow, and trying not to stand in the way of others having the space they need to grow. We are slowly learning to rest and be on the lookout for God's callings, while at the same time diving right into things we notice God already doing.

Churches

We did something a little bit crazy this week--sent this letter to all the churches in SLU. It seemed worth a shot.

November 24, 2010

Dear Leaders of Cascade Neighborhood Church, Denny Park Lutheran Church, Immanuel Lutheran Church, Saint Spiridon's Orthodox Cathedral, Seattle Unity Church and Union Church,

What a pleasure it is to be in South Lake Union together! There's something really unique about being a resident and also participating in a congregation here. While we find living in this overlap to be wonderful, we are interested in meeting others who find themselves in it as well.

We'd love to come together with people from your congregations who reside in South Lake Union to pray the Psalms--an ancient Christian practice. Praying the Psalms simply means reading from the book of Psalms out loud together at the same time.

We're envisioning meeting weekly for a half hour at a time for seven weeks, and would like to find a day and time for as many people as possible who are interested in participating. Please spread the word to people you know of in your congregation who live in South Lake Union, and encourage them to get in touch with us as soon as possible.

God's Peace,
Joshua and Molly Franklin
together with children Cedar and Frances

Videos

These videos were shot in South Lake Union and highlight some of the issues that are unique to this neighborhood. Thanks to Tim from Cascade Neighborhood Church and the Seattle Channel for making these available.

Collaborate (Rather Than Compete)

Pray With Your Feet

Seattle Channel's City Inside/Out show about changes in SLU
(this one is longer, but we're actually in it)

The Commitment of Shared Work

Lately I've been thinking about how neighborhoods are similar and different from intentional communities. Neighborhoods run a spectrum of involvement, from bedroom suburbs where you're unlikely to know the names of the folks next door to heavily involved communities with phone trees to contact each other and regular events (the same could be said for churches). But what I keep coming back to is shared work, because it requires intention and some sort of "common vision."

As I've become involved in the local community council and especially the Cascade People's Center, shared work has taken on a new meaning for me. It's not just pulling up invasive plants on MLK Day with some casual friends, it's real work with big time commitments and sometimes differing opinions that lead to hurt feelings. Of course in the meantime we're getting to know one another, learning to communicate, and making a difference in our neighborhood. I recently read this, which I think sums it up nicely:

Best I can figure, community is a lot like a garden. Somehow there's always work to be done-- dishes to wash, meetings to go to, prayers to pray, meetings to go to, laundry to wash, meetings to go to, meals to prepare . . . and more meetings to go to. After you've sat through a few hundred meetings and heard the same people say more or less the same things over and again, you are tempted to think, "I know what this community needs. If they would just listen to me, we could get on with more important things." But it never works. Because, as with a garden, you can't make community grow. All you do is tend to a culture of grace and truth by listening to every voice, loving people who frustrate you, telling the truth as best you can, and doing the dishes.

-- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism, p. 136.

Goodbye 11111

Once a young monk asked an elder why he was wasting time gardening when there was important work to be done. He replied, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." No doubt the monk loved trees, but his key point is that we should spend our time and resources doing what is important in the long run.

Yesterday I turned 100000 years old (in binary of course; many humans prefer to think of it as 32 years), which led to me to reflect about my life priorities. Lately we have been investing a lot of time and experiencing a lot of stress in the big transition of the Cascade People's Center to a fully community-run institution. A bit to my surprise I realized that I feel pretty good about that. As they say, the best time to establish a community-run institution is 20 years ago; the second best time is right now.

"Giving and Receiving" or "The Collective Process"

Linda Moore on Giving and Receiving in Cascade, July 2010 - Cascade Listening Project from Joshua Franklin on Vimeo.

About a month ago I had the honor of interviewing Cascade resident Linda Moore just before she moved outside Seattle to Vashon Island. Linda's years here were eventful for sure, and full of relevant lessons for current residents; one about giving and receiving through the collective process is captured in the snipet above.

I especially appreciate the clay pot illustration. As Joshua has wisely pointed out, having a diversity of opinions is not a problem, but having no process by which a community can work through differing opinions is a problem. So we're advocating for that process, helping to discern it, and along with everyone else, being transformed by it.

Learning how to be a part of Cascade is learning how to have our hands on the turning pot, while resisting the urge to push other hands off or overextend ourselves by thinking that only our own hands are suitable. During this process we are actively working with God and at the same time submitting to the ways that God is working with our neighbors. It's a great pleasure to listen, to wonder how people's stories may intersect with ours, to find common ground, to connect, to get angry, to appreciate, to see people grow, to be in relationship with the cast of characters that make up this place.

I am so thankful that God works through all of us--not taking over the wheel, but deeply knowing and working with the many wonderfully and terribly human hands on the clay.

Beyond Exasperation

Fathers, don't exasperate your children by coming down hard on them. Take them by the hand and lead them in the way of the Master.
Ephesians 6:4 from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase The Message

"I think his parents were just exacerbating him all the time," my friend mentioned about her husbands' tumultuous growing years. That was the first time Ephesians 6:4 really clicked for me (I know--it's probably obvious to everyone else...). "Of course!" I thought to myself--"exacerbation." That's the word for the thing we've been trying to avoid in our parenting. Beyond it is how we are trying to live in partnership with the Holy Spirit.

I'm so happy to say that in many respects our life in South Lake Union is turning into one that is beyond exasperation.

Some people comment that South Lake Union isn't very family friendly, what with all the traffic and warehouses and office parks and photos of hip young adults. But it's hard for us to imagine a place that's more family friendly. We don't need a big house with a big yard to have the burden of taking care of alone. We need a functional private space that is surrounded by an active neighborhood.

Cascade People's Center/Playground/P-Patch is not only a safe place where our whole family is welcome to be and find support, but also a place where we can interact with a great diversity of neighbors. Many of them stop and take time to engage in a sincere relationship not only with me and Josh, but (drum roll...) our girls.

For the most part, life is integrated. We see most of the people in our life in more than one context. Josh walks to and from work very quickly and can easily join us for lunch, which opens up valuable time for me to be involved in projects outside our family and for the all important Daddy time. And most importantly, it's all a give and take. We're not here to serve or be served, but both. Everyone has something to give, including us and people making their bed for the night in the P-Patch across the street.

Living in the midst of that meaningful connection feels like life as it should be. Even as lately we feel alone in our identity as people of God in this place, we feel like we're smack in the middle of the work of God. We are beyond the exasperation of trying to find a way to use our gifts, trying to conjure up support in being a family, trying to form contexts for integration. We may get angry or annoyed, but without becoming exasperated anger or annoyance can be used to birth new life, new refinement in our community, new arenas for others to discover life beyond exasperation.

Cascade People's Center

Cascade People's Center was started about twelve years ago when some neighbors noticed an abandoned building and wondered if it could serve the community. Enthusiasm was high, and soon the place became a model of grassroots activism, embracing the neighborhood and maintaining a high priority for activities to be free of charge to ensure that all people would be welcomed.

Yesterday the girls and I were there three times. First to deliver a card, then back across the street and up the stairs to retrive "diver guy," which Cedar intensely needed to work with in a paper Victorian doll house that is there, then a third time for a meeting. The card, diver guy, and meeting were just the start of our experience there. In between, we had several conversations with neighbors, found and completed a skeletal system craft, read several books, met a new friend and joined him at the playground, etc.

The furnishings aren't fancy, the toys are mostly hand me downs that often have missing parts. There is a rug but no vacuum cleaner. It smells similarly to a nursing home or a place that offers services to folks who have a hard time keeping up with hygiene. Don't get me wrong. Improving these particular characteristics will likely happen soon and be an iwonderful thing. But we already love it. And more importantly, my girls love it. There are toys there. There are nice people there. It is our neighborhood get together spot. There is a sign on the wall that says "Children should be seen, heard, and believed," and the folks in charge actually live that out. Score.

Places like this are crucial to a neighborhood. They are holy ground where people can listen to each other and share resources. They are safe. They are welcoming. Sometimes, when I imagine abiding in the vine (as in, when Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches") I see it in our context growing in the earth where CPC is. That whole block--the center, playfield, playground and P-Patch--right across the street from our little private dwelling--that is the earthy heart of my community. And there is a vine giving it life.

Retrofit Cohousing

This afternoon we went to "Curious About Cohousing," put on by Grace Kim from the Schemata Workshop. We've been indeed curious about cohousing for a few years now, but since we're pretty committed to staying in South Lake Union where land is at a premium, we've drifted away from the word "cohousing" and more toward "intentional community."

Although there is a lot to be said for good cohousing architecture, we've been suspicious that when it comes to living in (various forms of) community, intention can trump many challenges of the built environment. With this on my mind, I was thrilled to hear Grace Kim open by saying that cohousing is defined by people, not buildings, and elaborate on this point throughout the presentation. When I asked a question about it, she even put a name to what we are trying to do--"retrofit cohousing," and added that without intention, cohousing is no different from any other housing--such as a condo association or an apartment building.

So there you have it. We are a starting a co-housing community after all, even though we don't have plans (or money!) to build a cohousing village from scratch. The idea of using what is already here is attractive to me, anyway. After all, we have a common room, and so do several buildings within a block of us. We have the pea patch right across the street with the playground, playfield, and People's Center whose motto is "A place where you can..." With some intention, we have everything we need for a thriving retrofit co-housing community.

What can I do?

I often feel overwhelmed at the problems of the world: continued economic and environmental exploitation of developing countries, poisoning our air and water with our cars and streets and parking, human trafficking, wars and rumors of wars. I have mentioned to friends that I wish we had a non-political leader like Dr. King who could inspire millions to demand the injustice stop, so this recent feature on civil rights leaders really hit me:

"One thing that I think the history books, and the media, have gotten very wrong is portraying the movement as Martin Luther King’s movement, when in fact it was a people’s movement," Diane Nash, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said. "If people understood that it was ordinary people who did everything that needed to be done in the movement, instead of thinking, I wish we had a Martin Luther King now, they would ask, 'What can I do?'"

When he was 26 years old, Dr. King reluctantly agreed to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He became the public face of the movement, but he was speaking for millions who were already acting. As the late June Jordan said, "We are the ones we have been waiting for".

Update

We've lived in SLU for almost four months now. Here's what we're up to:

-developing a website that helps families connect with families in and around the neighborhood

-working with the Cascade People's Center about the prospect of reviving the after school program, with a new twist--include homeschoolers and set it up to function democratically

-saying hi to people on the street--construction workers, neighbors, workers, etc.

-showing up at neighborhood planning meetings and with stakeholders along with our "indicator species" (aka--children)

-going to Cascade playground frequently and asking people, "do you live around around here?"

-devising a way to help connect Union with the needs of the neighborhood

-walking down ugly streets and imagining how they could be nicer

-reading Blomberg's Jesus and the Gospels (+ accompanying scripture) and having folks from Dust (and hopefully some from Union soon, too) come over weekly to discuss/unpack/fellowship

-wondering how we could welcome the stranger (literally, into our guest room) in a way that works for everyone

-visiting neighborhood churches with an eye for church unity

-shopping at local businesses and asking things like, "How long have you been here?" and "How's business changed over the past few years?"

-frequenting our (awesome) hardware store (to make our apartment more functional)

Sisters and Brothers

I've been saddened lately by the anger in public discourse, all the way from national to neighborhood. On the way home I often walk by the site of Kapow Coffee which will soon be a new restaurant. I've heard neighbors advocating a boycott of the new business due to bad blood with the landlord. Us vs them.

On Monday we went to the Martin Luther King Day Celebration at Seattle Center, where a local pastor gave a stirring reading of the full text of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech. I was struck by the fact that Dr. King, though attacked physically as well as verbally throughout his career, advocates reconciling with instead of merely defeating his opponents: "one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Next Tuesday night we'll attend the city's public meeting to discuss the South Lake Union Urban Design Framework. The local rhetoric about building heights has been particularly vicious. (For those of you not familiar with our South Lake Union neighborhood, there are fears that billionaire Paul Allen's company uses insider government access to write laws for its own profit.) I hope that whatever the outcome, we can help form a neighborhood of reconciliation.