Spare Key Springfield: 2016

A Note on Taizé in Springfield

A Note on Taizé in Springfield

Amber and I went to a Taizé service at Brentwood the other day. It was the first Taizé service we had been too since we first discovered Taizé at East Liberty Presbyterian Church five years ago.

Taizé prayer is characterized by contemplative songs, low lights, crosses, and candles. I don’t have a picture of the service to show you because I left my phone in the car. The distraction of electronic devices just seemed antithetical to the whole idea of Taizé. The lights in the sanctuary were completely off. Candles were lit. Music floated from the piano and violin. It was time to sit still.

Taizé services are stripped down to the basic elements of religious experience: music, candles, and animated PowerPoint backgrounds. The songs are short, repetitive, and contemplative. Some are as few as ten words, and half of those are in Latin.

Only eight souls were present when we arrived. (That’s assuming one soul per body. Honestly I haven’t been in a church for awhile, so I might not be up on the latest numbers.) By the time everyone had sat down, there were 14 of us scattered throughout the sanctuary.

One of my favorite Taizé songs---the Taizé song that everybody in Taizé land knows---is called Ubi Caritas, which I refuse to learn the meaning of. My only complaint is that they sang it to a different tune than I’m used to. It’s like when Todd Agnew decided Amazing Grace should have a refrain about rain for some reason. But I still enjoyed it, and I learned several songs I didn’t know, many of which are stuck in my head at this moment. (Here’s an example.)

The beginning and ending of the service were beautifully unceremonious, punctuated only by silence. There was no call to order. There was no dismissal. Throughout the whole thing, there was less talking than a Quaker meeting. Just the way I like it.

I’m grateful Taizé exists in Springfield. Thank you to all the people at Brentwood who make it happen. I’m looking forward to the next one.

6:55 AM
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Creative Sharing Made Easy: Splitzee & Splitwise

Amber Howard

Spare Key recently decided on new people for leadership roles, which we call czar positions. Last year, I was the Sharing Czar and I was asked to continue in this role. My main job is to find opportunities for us to share life in creative ways. This past year that has taken the form of hosting a wedding shower for Rob and Abbey, a total of five group gifts, and a four-day vacation together, among other things.

All of this sharing meant a lot of money changed hands. According to our current budget, we have shared over $1,700 in expenses in just 2016. We did this in a variety of ways, but we found two that are my favorite! Introducing Splitwise and Splitzee.

In June, six of us took a vacation to Colorado to "crash" Rob and Abbey's honeymoon and meet up with our friends Josh and Alyssa who live there. (Disclaimer - we didn't crash anything, we just happened to go at the same time so we got to hang out with them in the mountains one weekend.) This involved a rental car, a pretty sweet Air BnB in the mountains, and sharing gas expenses. Now we could have just written checks to the person who paid for everything, but with a total of 10 people sharing the cabin for different lengths of time, that sounded like a logistical nightmare. That's where Splitwise saved us! We created a group on Splitwise that allowed us to split up the expenses in a fair way to reflect when each person stayed at the cabin. Then when we rented the car, we were able to just post that expense on Splitwise. This saved us so much time and hassle because Splitwise divided up the expenses for us.

As I mentioned before, Spare Key has gotten into giving group gifts. Why don't more people do this? We were able to be so much more generous than ever before through group gifting. Our group gifts included some awesome camping gear for Rob and Abbey's wedding shower, a beautiful leather bag filled with office goodies for Tessa's graduation, a comfy rocker for the Cowen's when sweet Autumn was born, and a group care package for Abbey when lots of her things were stolen with her car. At first, we just had one person pay for the gift then everyone gave the same amount to that person. We quickly realized with all the gifts we were giving this wasn't sustainable. It also wasn't fair because one person might want to give a different amount than someone else. That is where Splitzee came into play. This wonderful tool allows you to create a "fund" for whatever you want and whoever wants to participate can give however much they like to the fund. That's how we ended up doing the group gifts and it worked like a dream. You can connect it to your Paypal account and just give the amount you are comfortable with super easily. For most of our gifts, we put a deadline on it and then used whatever funds we collected to determine what gift(s) to purchase.

All of this to say - sharing money doesn't have to be difficult. With tools like these two (and I'm sure there are many more), sharing is easy. Group gifting is quickly becoming one of my favorite things.

12:02 PM
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The Declaration of Czars II

history

8:19 AM
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Dispatches from Columbia

community of communities

Dispatches from Columbia: Rob Hunt’s Initial Report on Dinner Club, c.3/2016

(Jay here. As the new History Tzar, I get to comb through some of the un-posted blog posts of yore. Here's one that got stuck in the tubes but should have been posted a long time ago. It's Rob writing about his and Abbey's discovery of the Dinner Club concept, for which we are very grateful. I posted about this earlier but I didn't realize he had already written it. I like his better. jh.)

Dear Spare Key,

Abbey and I recently made a trip to Columbia to visit friends. She has a school mate there who runs the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture. They also have a wonderful old house where they live with five other energetic adults, from college students to young professionals. This shared-housing model caught our interest and we were eager to report back to Spare Key Springfield.

While we aren’t ready to buy a big house and move in together, Columbia had another community rhythm that really resonated with our group. They call it dinner club.

While the potluck is the staple of community eating, we have found potlucks to be a little tiresome and sometimes uncoordinated. Truly, there is beauty in the variety of random dishes you see at an honest-to-goodness potluck dinner, reflecting the wide spectrum of cooks and diners in the group. However, as a model for sharing meals once or twice weekly, this model causes some problems. One is that everyone ends up cooking every time. It’s true that you only have to prepare one dish and you get to eat many; however, it can lead to a bit of burnout. Second, not everyone likes the “pile your plate with whatever is on the table” approach, and it’s hard to coordinate a culinarily coherent potluck dinner.

I have to say, Spare Key has become pretty good at potlucks, and I don’t think anyone would complain too much about our dinners. That said, we may decide to keep our potluck system and extend it into the future. My purpose, in reporting to Spare Key and writing this post, is to describe another way.

The rules of dinner club are simple. One person cooks for everyone else and the meal should cost no more than $25 to prepare. Cooking a meal for everyone earns you 10 meals with the dinner club and everyone has access to a healthy supply of home-grown veggies. With its simplicity and ease for everyone involved, dinner club has allowed this particular group of people to share dinner five nights a week! At first this seemed very overwhelming to us, but the more we talked to them about it, the more sense it made. Everyone has to eat anyway, so you can either cook every night, eat out, or eat with your friends. They will even pack it to go for you if you are on the run, so you can’t lean on the I’m-too-busy crutch.

For us here in Springfield, we are excited about simplifying our dinner meetings on Tuesdays and Sundays. We are going to start slow and steady and see if this idea fits our group. Rather than our longstanding potlucks, only the host will be responsible for the main dinner and one other person will bring salad. If people have food to share they are encouraged to contribute, but this should relieve some of the burden of food preparation every week. Who knows? If it goes well, we may also be eating together even more often than we do now!

As it stands, Sundays will be hosted at The Howard’s Hospitality House and the Gallery on alternating weeks, and Tuesdays will be hosted at The Bell Tower and The Good House Providence on a similarly alternating rotation. We are also excited to include more of our friends in these shared meals, so if you are reading this now, please contact one of us and plan on attending once or twice to see how you like it. We are eager to bring our friends in to tighter circles and share life with more of you.