A Freeing Idea: Living in Community Is Impossible

by Lee Van Ham and Juanita Mangan-Van Ham

Intentional, faith-based communities are increasing! Does that surprise you? It did us. We thought they had peaked in the 1960s and '70s. Not so. As we formed a new community in 1999, we learned that we were not a throwback, but part of a growing number who are seeking life-sustaining, affordable alternatives. Even so, some have chuckled their response to our move: "Hippies of the sixties," they smile. Okay, we admit to sleeping through the revolution of the sixties, but what's stirring in us now isn't just living something we missed out on then.

The focus of this venture has been a Sunday night small ecumenical group. Some of the members were seasoned activists. As they spoke of the work of justice, intentional communities, though not required for all, had proved to be energizers for such discipleship. More and more we sensed that we were to live in one.

Hearing that we were thinking along these lines, our daughter sent us for Christmas Why Live in Community by Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof in the 1920s. There we read a particularly freeing idea: Living in community is impossible! He goes on to say that those who come into the Bruderhof decide to do it anyway because they deeply believe that the godhead lives communally and wants people to as well. We were encouraged to see how grace, faith, and impossibility become a creative, life-sustaining mix. That it was impossible for humans, but intended nevertheless, freed us from fears of failure, idealistic expectations, and other preventing arguments. Into our souls was driven this truth: Spirituality would be at the core if communal living were to be possible for the likes of us. And with that, we just wanted to do it.

Now, to be sure, we wouldn't have had to live together to be in community. Most of our lives we have been intentional about community in some form. Only recently have we been led to move into intentional community. A 3-day visit to the Spring Valley Bruderhof in southwestern Pennsylvania was important. There we lived with over 300 people in an experience that clarified more of what we wanted and didn't. Their simplified lives, commitment to community, and radical discipleship really stirred us. They sought to stop the bombing of Iraq, lift the embargo on Cuba, support the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, teach their children nonviolence, protest the death penalty, forgive and pray for enemies, and as best they can to live the way of Jesus. They claim to do it poorly.

So three months later when Juanita retired at age 50 from a transnational corporation (after 24 years), and Lee decided he would retire from pastoral ministry a year later at age 58 (after 32 years), we began to think "community." It was, we had become convinced, how we were to arrange our lives more around doing justice. And that, we knew, was now required of us more than we had yet managed to do. Nothing else felt faithful to our inner God-stirrings. Never mind what was right for others; we had to go the way of living in community until shown otherwise.

We remember well the small group meeting one Sunday night in March 1999, when the possible became probable. Over several months prior to this meeting, we had looked at various properties, joined in the search by two other households. We assessed cost, location, and room arrangements. We got ideas and felt tested by prices. Our society isn't arranged for what we wanted to do.

But at this meeting, Grace and Tom said, 'We have talked a lot about community in this group, and some want to live in community. Well, as you know, Tom's mother died last month. That means that the two-flat she lived in, and that has been in our family for over 60 years, is available. We don't know if you would want to consider it. But we have had a dream for many years that someday it would be a place for communal living, and that out of the community would flow ministries of justice."

Wow! Who was bringing this together? Awe muted our joy for a moment. Our minds raced to review implications. Three households in the group felt, "This was it." The other households present also felt happiness even though they were not planning to be part of the residence. Blessing pervaded us all. During the following weeks further discernment and prayer confirmed that the brick two-flat at 3913 St. Louis would be the place. Renovation plans followed. Workdays were scheduled. By August 17, four households had moved in.

Before ever moving in, we agreed that social justice, witness and spiritual life were the core of the communal life we sought. We didn't want just to live at the same address; we wanted "life together" --- an experience of corporate life along with personal life focused in the Spirit and in doing justice. Here are the patterns as we practice them in the early months.

1. Private space is essential. As one household, we have three rooms of private space and then communal spaces: kitchen, dining, living, meditation-library rooms. Space for guests and family visitors let's us offer hospitality.
   
2. We eat the evening meal together six days a week. Each person takes a turn preparing the meal. Others meals are the responsibility of each individual or household. At the evening meal table we often hear the stories of our days, and the stories of the past which they call to mind. We learn lots. Sometimes the stories lead to deeper reflection on how our actions and faith are converging ... or not. Always, there are puns, quips, and laughs. Occasionally there is communal business that needs attention. We conclude by washing dishes together.
   
3. Each week we gather for a time of biblical-theological reflection and prayer. Well, sure enough, we don't make it every week. Isn't it revealing that in our current culture such things as eating one meal together each day and meeting once a week for spiritual reflection and prayer are radical acts? They're so against the flow. So countercultural.
   
4. We decided to fast 24 hours once each week. When we heard that the Jubilee 2000 Debt Cancellation Campaign was inviting people to fast for the lifting of poverty through debt cancellation in 60 of the world's poorest countries, we signed up. We begin after Friday's evening meal and continue until Saturday's. But not legalistically. Each person feels free to shift their fast day when the activities of the week make it wise. We found wisdom in the words of David Dunscombe who fasted 45 days in September-October 1999 while visiting congressional offices to seek support for debt cancellation. He said that he found eating food less appetizing when he was truly aware of how many of his sisters and brothers in the world would eat so little and that 40,000 would die in a day from lack of food and water. So we fast in solidarity with thousands. They come closer to us when we feel hungry on our fast day. Fasting slows us down, and we appreciate why people without food move more slowly. Fasting also takes us closer to sabbath --- an act of resistance to The Market god who requires no-rest consuming and producing.
   
5. We share finances in two areas: food and housing. We don't, as some communities do, have a common purse. Housing is very affordable done in this way. In the early months we are spending one-fourth of what we were spending in a single-family residence for housing.
   
6. We rotate some chores monthly; some are more continuing. Bookkeeping, food shopping, cleaning communal spaces, yard work --- all, by sharing them, take less time than they do in single-household living.

More than once as we've told people what we are doing and that we like it a lot, they say, "Oh, you're still on the honeymoon." Could be. We know that our gratitude for what's happening shows in our faces and animated speech when we talk about it. It's what we feel. But, true enough, we do irritate one another in our community. Evil resides here too --- along with a more abounding grace.

We return to our basic understanding: our desire is not for utopia, but for faithfulness. It's about arranging our lives so that God's call to us to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God" (Micah 6:8) isn't an add-on, but the homebase. For us it's about root-living --- basic, life-sustaining, and sustainable living.

More and more, we who have been receiving the privileges of the dominant system know that it's time to live differently. For us Jesus' alternative Way has become more doable at this time in our lives through "life together." Paradoxically, it's impossibility has freed us to move along this path.

Lee Van Ham and Juanita Mangan-Van Ham write from Chicago IL. For more information on their new ministry, Jubilee Economics Ministries, or about living in community, please contact Lee & Juanita.

September 21-23, 2000, Jubilee Economics Ministries will be sponsoring "CitySojourn", an opportunity to see faith & economics intersect in a Chicago Southside neighbor.

Lee Van Ham also wrote an article entitled: Some Benefits of Losing Heart.