another picture of life here in community

Marco moved into our community 6 weeks ago and has been sharing on his blog his experience of living here. part of his expectation in writing it is to give a bit of an account of his reactions to life here in community - and see how that changes as time goes on. if you read his accounts of community and compare it to my accounts of community life, they're fairly different. they both do paint a picture of life here - and so perhaps it's only fair for me to give you an opportunity to see another perspective of life here. not that i think that Marco has a full picture of how the community here is (nor do i :)).

yet the picture he paints of life here fits. he's right, sometimes breakfast conversations are annoying. although i have to admit i find the alert-ness quality of some of the others to be highly entertaining (you have to pay attention to a lot of subtleties, though - and be able to appreciate how and whether the amount of time a person stares at their bread contemplating what to put on it changes). and i've been contemplating lately how more to contribute to improving the atmosphere at breakfast, especially when the conversation annoys me.

and yep, sometimes there are not enough people for dishes. since i watch over the kitchen (at least kind of), this is something i pay quite a bit of attention to - and it annoys me - and sometimes annoys me a lot. so the people who tend to disappear instead of doing dishes have been approached and the hope is that things change somewhat - even if this is a re-occuring problem. and it helps, too, that i know better now that some of the people leaving without helping are off to do other necessary things...

and there are more things that are disappointing and annoying for me. but i don't want to dwell on them. if they annoy me enough, then i need to talk to somebody about changes - whether the change needs to be my attitude or my expectations or whether the change can happen elsewhere. but otherwise i'll try to focus on what is life-giving about community here.

for this, too, is a good picture of life here: a friend from the community went to the hospital today with heart problems. and it was great to see how much the community came together to reach out to him and his wife and children. it was obvious, too, that we were all grateful to hear that he's doing better.

and after chapel, a bunch of us were sitting around. daniël and i were talking about what we were doing this weekend and what we wanted to do. he mentioned how much he loved "hints" (a game of charades) and would really like to play that this weekend. and after a bit of random chatting, Petra got up and started acting. and so a group of us played. and we laughed. and the joy of having this unexpected fun together - as well as making space for each other, being able to be fully ourselves, and being spontaneous - reminded me again that this is where i want to be - and this is how i want to live my life. and so when i picture life in community, this is the picture i want to paint most - because it is the picture of how i want more and more to live my life.