Four More Years! Four More Years!

We had a fun time today eating breakfast at BruCo and then drinking Founder's Breakfast Stout on the back porch and dreaming about what the next four years will look like. Stay tuned, everyone! And thanks for your continued support.

Spare Key just finished reading Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's The Wisdom of Stability which makes a case for staying in place and investing in a neighborhood. This is the second of two posts inspired by that book.

In our mobile culture, we are constantly under pressure to move from city to city in order to advance our careers, to further our educations, or simply to trade up for nicer houses in nicer neighborhoods. We are taught that fulfillment is always just over the next hill.

"...We can see the paradox: the same restlessness that sends us searching for community also keeps us from settling down wherever we are."—Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Wisdom of Stability, p 20

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove does a great job of pointing out how despite our desire for true community, all of our social habits push us to seek what we're looking for somewhere else. There always seems to be bigger and better opportunities elsewhere.

Typically, there actually are better opportunities elsewhere. For this reason, we get very antsy when it comes to committing to anybody or anything.

But stable community cannot exist without commitment.

So if (and this is a big if!) community really is what we're looking for, stability of place is a necessity. There is no way around it. As Jonathan writes, "Stability demands that we do the long, hard work of life with other people in the place where we are."

I say "that's a big if" because I've moved at least once every year for the past ten years. Given the choice, I would do it all again. I moved from place to place in order to advance my education, learn about community and challenge myself. Sometimes we must go through a season of mobility to reach our goals at that time.

However, if a person chooses to move to a new city often, it is safe to say that person's immediate goal is not community. And that's okay. There are plenty of legitimate goals in life other than community. In fact, most people do not choose community and never do.

That's why intentional communities are radical. We like to call ourselves "ordinary radicals" (especially those of us in the New Monastic vein) because we make counter-cultural life choices.

Because we value friendship and conviviality, we decide to live together or near each other even though that decision might limit our other choices. Since we value collaboration, we choose to share things when we could just as easily go out and buy those things on our own. And because we value stability (and because our community members value us), we choose to stay in the place where we are.

This post was written by Jay Howard, Neighborhood Czar of Spare Key. If you missed the first of this series on The Wisdom of Stability, click here. 

Photo credit: The Wisdom of Stability

Spare Key just finished reading Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's The Wisdom of Stability which makes a case for staying in place and investing in a neighborhood. This is the first of two posts inspired by that book.

Spare Key's decision to read the Wisdom of Stability corresponded nicely with my and Amber's recent decision to buy a house. We have chosen to put down roots, and so it was nice to read something that affirmed that decision.

But in making his case for stable intentional communities, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove drew heavily from the Desert Fathers and Mothers. For example, he quotes Saint Antony a lot:

"In whatever place you live, do not easily leave it."
—Abba Anthony, 3rd century AD

As a recent home buyer, I resonate with the Desert Fathers' commitment to place. But in other ways, I have to admit I have a hard time getting excited about the wisdom of the Desert Fathers.

In many spiritualities---take Buddhism for example---the way of the householder is not considered a very spiritual path. In fact, the term householder meant "non-monastic" and contrasted sharply with the more spiritual and ascetic monastics who rejected the cares of society and sought freedom from all worldly attachments.


Christian monasticism makes exactly the same distinction between monastics and laity/householders. Monastics in general and the Desert Fathers and Mothers in particular always emphasized withdrawing as much as humanly possible from the distractions of everyday life. No getting married, no having a secular career, and certainly no buying houses.

Modern intentional communities aren't like that at all, of course. Instead, we put a great deal of emphasis on being active in our neighborhoods. Many intentional communities, including Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's own Rutba House in Durham NC, make a point of being hospitality houses.

So, while the Desert Fathers have much to teach us about the power of committing to a place, they're not quite as natural a choice when it comes to teaching us how to serve that place.

This post was written by Jay Howard, Neighborhood Czar of Spare Key. Check back later for the second part of this post series on The Wisdom of Stability. 

Last July, my dad, brother, and I built a harvest table. A harvest table is basically a very long picnic table. Since then, I have learned seven things about harvest tables.




1) Autumn is for harvest tables.
Fall is the perfect time to be outside.  The colors are changing, the air is cooling, and it's often nicer outside than inside. Putting a harvest table under a maple tree basically adds a whole new room to your house!

2) Use your harvest table regularly.
We have been having Sunday breakfast on the harvest table every week at 9:30. We've had pumpkin themed breakfast, apple themed breakfast, donuts themed, cereal themed, etc. We also have dinner on the table often.

3) Put your harvest table in the front yard, not the back yard.
Front yards are more open and inviting than back yards. We have often attracted passers-by during community meals on the harvest table, and we have gotten to know many of our neighbors this way.

4) Harvest tables are for friends.
We have a big community meal each week, and we couldn't fit everybody around a regular table. This is what motivated the harvest table idea in the first place.

5) Good luck trying to find a tablecloth long enough.
I once spent five years crocheting a blanket that was monstrously too big for the purposes of a conventional blanket, but even my monster blanket is not nearly long enough to cover this 12 foot long harvest table.

6) Bring your harvest table inside during the winter. 
We made the table out of treated lumber, but we still plan to bring it inside before it snows. It is actually made of two 6 foot tables placed side-by-side. Inside, the tables will make a 6x6 foot square rather than a 12x3 rectangle.

7) Having a harvest table in your front yard generates many possibilities. 
When we bring the tables inside, we will leave the four harvest table benches outside. The benches will be placed in a diamond shape around the fire bowl so that the outside festivities can continue.

Spare Key having a meeting on the harvest table.

I have been thinking about support systems lately - people we can turn to for help when we need it. I am surrounded by a robust support system of family members, community members, and friends. We are ready to help each other at a moment's notice should the need arise.

I tend not to think of next-door-neighbors as part of my support system. I have lived in rental houses and apartments for a long time, and we nomadic-rental-people tend not to work very hard at our relationships with one another.

I currently live in a rental house with a yard, but I do not own a lawn mower. I had been borrowing a nearby community-member's lawn mower, but it broke down. I couldn't really borrow from family, because my family members live impractically far away.



So there I was, hat in hand, on my next-door-neighbor's doorstep. She's a kind lady. She lives alone. I'm worried that my lawn mower-deficiency will offend her. "What kind of man am I if I don't even own a lawn mower?" I wonder. She is probably going to think I'm a freeloader.

 I knock on her door and ask her if I could borrow her mower. She says, "No problem! I just bought a new one!" So we talk for awhile about lawn mowers, and we work it out that I will mow her (small) lawn next time she thinks it needs it. I offered to help her paint her garage, too.

She has lived in her house for a long time. She said she's mowed my house's lawn many time in the past. As it turns out, I'm not the first renter in the world to not own a lawn mower. We talked about the neighborhood, and jobs, and so on.

I mowed my lawn and brought her mower back with a full gas tank. The tank cost 7 dollars to fill, and she said for 7 dollars I could use the mower for the rest of the season. Through this experience I learned that there are four corners to support systems: friends, family, community, and also neighbors.