A young man living near us asked recently, “So…why you live here? I mean, don’t get me wrong or anything, but it’s kinda weird to see a bunch of white folks walkin’ around doin’ stuff all the time.”
The answer to his question is simple: we live here because we are trying our hardest to become the Beloved Community, a group of friends who see the very best and the very worst of life together, and still choose life together. We are here to witness a place and a time where neighbors are learning to be true neighbors. In this “small town with a big heart” we, with our long and tired histories of suburban american individualism, are not the gold standard for good neighborliness. Instead, every day we are humbled and silenced by our neighbors from all parts of this world as they come together to proclaim to us an ancient, and perhaps better, way: life in community.
While we do dream of a better Clarkston, and a better world, we have not come here to change this community. We have chosen this place as our home so that we might participate in creating a space where we can all see each other as we truly are- both as humans and as the Beloved Community of Jesus Christ.
In participating in community here, we are learning from cultures and people who have spent their entire lives knowing what it means to live life closely with others. If we would begin to throw off our selfishness and shed our layers of individuality, we begin to see that there is something so holy here, a place where people offer their hands, their food and their ears before you can even ask for it. Can’t you see?…we are a mish mash collection of the children of the earth, and we are all just trying to figure it out together. In many ways, our few apartments here in Clarkston have become our schools for learning what it means to live honestly with others. We are learning what it means to welcome people into our homes and into our lives, no matter what time of the day it is or how tired we are. Because we don’t want to let our days pass us by, we answer the many knocks at our door, even though sometimes we may sigh and drag our feet. We answer our doors and we knock on our friends doors because the ways of love ask this of us, because community asks this of us.
We are just beginning to learn how our most ordinary moments here really do come together and reveal to us the ways of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is when we join together with our neighbors in meals and in song, in work and in play that we see glimpses of the powers of Life at work everywhere around us. When we carry each other’s groceries and grow food together, when we color and paint and when we sit around laughing at our feeble attempts at speaking each other’s languages–the Beloved Community is present, showing us how to be good neighbors to one another. Even in this, we still fail every day. But we are learning how to surrender to one another and to the community around us. There is much yet to learn.
Thanks be to God for neighbors, for Community, and for mercy.
ubuntu village 
