On a Tuesday evening in April, we decided that our
search for a house was not going well.
My friend Jack and I had been intensely scrutinizing local ads for
rental housing, specifically an affordable, 2 bed/2 bath stand-alone rental
house for three: Jack, myself, and Brenda (Jack's fiancée). It was an interesting idea for sure, but whether
the plan was motivated by a real desire to share living quarters and getting-to-know-each-other-better-ness
or merely reduce rent by having a live-in third wheel (that's me) no one could
say.
If there were any available houses in our Central
Valley college town, they certainly were not presenting themselves. The local newspaper gave promising leads with
disappointing results; the university housing website lead to musty apartments
with cheap rents but even mustier roommates staying on for another year;
Craigslist offered many houses beyond our current financial station, which, I'm
told, is down the line from Dead Broke but a few stops short of Middle (Class)
America. After all, who wants to pay
$1800 a month for a dump that hasn't been renovated since the Summer of Love,
when the landlords left for Haight and Ashbury and never quite returned...?
In short, the long-awaited rental house, despite
our best intentions, was slipping away.
Enter David, a mutual friend from our church. On
this Tuesday evening, Jack, David and I were sprawled around an acrid hookah
discussing the times when Jack brought up our lack of rental housing for the
next year. I added that most houses in
the area were 3 or 4 bedrooms, and with another roommate, we could make it
work. Jack, a rather spontaneous fellow,
asked David if he and his wife, Cynthia, would be interested. David replied, "If you find a house that
would work for the five of us, we'd consider it." And thus began our next chapter in
house-hunting.
---
Fast forward three months, and the five of us are
eagerly anticipating our move-in next Thursday.
The house is tentatively being called "Agape" to reflect our knowledge
of Ancient Greek (limited), experiences in the house hunting process (funny, and
the subject of another post) and our commitment to each other (Hallmark moment right
here folks). There has certainly been a
lot of talk and preparation going into this move, far more than I've ever had
before. And we hope to share this talk
and preparation with you all.
So what is it that you, our readers, should expect
to get out of this blog? We've got a few
ideas how this site could be useful to you.
First, we want to keep an open record of the events and happenings at
our place as a kind of journal. We have
lots of family and friends that are interested in our comings and goings, and
this is an easy format to share our communal life. We're a bunch of characters, that's for sure,
and we might provide decent entertainment value. We won't even charge.
Related to that idea, this record is also for
those who are interested in community life.
Readers approaching from this angle might ask questions like, "How
do you manage to live with married people?" or "What sort of
shenanigans go on there?" While we
were researching these questions ourselves, we were thoroughly underwhelmed by
the Internet. This blog should help fill
in that information gap.
Second, we hope to think about the concept of
community life. In a culture which prioritizes
independence over mutuality, skepticism over trust, and the self above all, how
can five people manage to cobble together not just a house but a home? We don't yet have the answers, we don't
really ever expect to have them, but we might just get a few hints along the
way.
Third, we hope this will be an interactive format
for discussions of community life. We
know we aren't the only ones who have asked questions like, "How do you
fit five people in a three bedroom house?", "How do you split rent
fairly?", "What are great pranks to pull?” We're interested to interact with you all via
comments, suggestions, ideas, and questions about community living. We know we aren't the only ones out there;
please share your thoughts!
Last, tying all the above points together, what
does it mean to live together as the body of Christ, both within our home and
in a global context? What does it mean
to love your neighbor as yourself? Being
the hands and feet in this context is humbling and remarkable.
No doubt about it, our living situation is
demographically interesting, perhaps counter-cultural but certainly just plain
odd. Five people have willingly and intentionally
chosen to live together, and at least one of them will be blogging about their
experiences in the year ahead. And who
knows what could happen? I'm eager to
start our Adventures in Agape.
