Family dinner.

We talk a lot in Cocoa about this thing called community.  While community is typically defined as a group organized around common values and location, we believe it is something so much more that has to be earned and worked hard at to achieve.  According to Scott Peck, there are four stages of community a group must move through in order for it to be effective: pseudo-community, chaos, emptiness and finally, true community.  Only in true community do you learn to deeply respect and compassionately understand each other.

I’ve found my community here in Florida within TWLOHA, the artists at Brick&Mortar, and in my church in Orlando.  Many of us here have also chosen to live in communal housing, simply because we believe in this idea of needing other people in our lives.  When I moved to Florida, I lived in the Bungalow with six other girls.  We worked together, laughed together, baked together, and explored Florida together.  Now I live in the Yellow House with four other people, and five more of my friends live together in the Klaas Haus.  In both households, we share chores, cook for each other, and inspire each other creatively.  We grow gardens and have long talks on front porches, prayer time and movie nights.  We do life together because we’ve learned that it’s better than going it alone.

Last week, the Klaas Haus invited us over for their weekly “family dinner”. Every Monday they bring a special guest to their dining table, entertain the lost art of conversation over wine, and simply extend a hospitality that is nowadays hard to come by.

That one family dinner gave me hope that just maybe the way we’re doing life in this season will change our relationships and even the way we raise families for the better.  Just maybe this time of acknowledging brokenness and celebrating joyfulness in the presence of other people will give us the courage to do so the rest of our lives, far beyond the Yellow House.  I’d encourage you to find people to do life with and let them see the real you.  I think it’s possible on so many levels, and even though it’s hard at times, it’s definitely worth a shot.