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Molly's Perspective:

Two years and four months ago, Joshua and I wrote down the kind of intentional community we wanted to pursue, together with our children Cedar and Frances, and announced it to everyone we knew--in person, through email, and with this blog:

We are heading up a South Lake Union based group seeking to be intentional about:

-moving into close geographical proximity to one another
-supporting one another through daily community practices that help us follow Jesus
-connecting ourselves and our resources to the people of South Lake Union
-maintaining "one foot in, one foot out" of Union Church

Interested? Contact Joshua or Molly.
Not interested? Please be our cheerleaders!

I still remember that night. To take what we had been thinking and reading about for five years and nail it into four bullet points (later we changed it to three) seemed simultaneously like nothing at all and like something monumental. So, we moved and endured an assortment of experiences, trying on all sorts of different hats, getting to know all sorts of people in all sorts of different ways, being surprised in positive and negative ways about where there was a good fit of support and understanding, and where there wasn't.

There have been some big shifts--Union is a past, not current or future part of our lives now; the "joiners" that we wrote about in this blog learned that they just wanted to be neighbors (and they were indeed incredible neighbors) and ultimately that they need to live in a similar, but different neighborhood; we are no longer really inclined to join (or get other people to join) much of anything other than specific projects but instead are quite content to keep living here doing what we find compelling.

Are we still fascinated by Jesus? Yes.
Are we being ourselves in our neighborhood in response to and drawing from the tangible love of God as primarily expressed in the incredible story of Jesus? Yes, but of course unpacking that more all the time.
Does that include "building community?" Sure.
Do we invite others who are interested in living an integrated life in an urban neighborhood to visit us to learn what it's like or even move here and be a part of it? Absolutely--come hang out and/or search Craigslist for an apartment and we will definitely be neighborly to you.

The wise Parker Palmer says that "by allowing something to die when its time is due, we create the conditions under which new life can emerge." I am thankful for our season of trying to create an intentional community and the important part it played in bringing us to this day, this context, this contented place. Most especially I am so grateful for the remarkable people that were part of that equation--the people of Union Church and of course Matt, Marilee, Mira, and Lina.

So ends the season of trying to build an intentional community in South Lake Union around three things, and so continues daily life here, intentionally, enjoying and wrestling with the amazing people that come in and out of our lives all the time.

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Joshua's Perspective:

Wow, what a lot we can learn in a year, though I suppose it's not
really fair to call it a year since it's been slowly dawning on me for
quite a few years. I feel that our grand experiment days are over as
we realize that intentional living is not about finding a few kindred
spirits and creating a community from scratch. Instead, intentional
living has to start with a healthy sense of self and willingness to
deeply connect with people who, at least at first glance, are not
kindred spirits at all.

In some ways the idealized homes and communities of the past had an
"us vs them" structure, often defined by ethnicity and religion; think
of the Irish Catholic or Swedish Lutheran neighborhood. This spilled
over to the physical geography of the right and wrong side of the
tracks. In starting a community, we were trying to create a new better
"us" in our own image, not on purpose in a Utopian sense but now I see
that's what it was.

Real people and places don't work that way. Instead the world is
unintentional community (har har har), with many "us" circles
(geography, hobbies, relatives, old classmates) and people dropping in
and out all the time. I'm still convinced that the mobility of our
current society has gone too far and fractured community, but that
doesn't mean we can create a little bubble and make it go away. What
we can do, whether we share ethnicity and religion with our neighbors
or not, is be true to ourselves and celebrate the people in our lives.

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fyi: We wrote these posts without knowing what the other was writing--different but complementary angles and definite agreement... :)