the greatest commandments.

I've been talking about community for a little bit now, but not actually voiced (typed?) my intentions. Read on.

Columbus has a lot of needs. Columbus has a lot of people. Columbus has a lot of resources. Columbus has a lot of churches. Sound like an oxy moron? One way to bring restoration and community revitalization is to create a sense of community beyond the church pews and free coffee. (Which I know how to make now, by the way. Made my first kraft of coffee in my life on Sunday!) The goal is to bring together a small "community" of people who are passionate about bringing restoration and revitalization to neighborhoods in Columbus.

The greatest commandments, according to Jesus, are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. This means the house will intentionally plan to hold each other accountable for loving God, for loving His world, for loving oneself, and for loving neighbors. We'll commit to spending time with neighbors, building relationships, using our talents where it helps, and creating new talents when ours wouldn't. (I'm sensing a pi-day party...) I would like to not have this be a piece of a particular church, but supported by the Church in the broad sense. And it will probably end up running under the umbrella of a church to allow for donations, grants, and funding allocations from the church. For example, I could apply for a grant to create a community garden, and get neighborhood kids in on the planting and picking. Someone else could give music lessons and we could have a Christmas carol sing-along. We could have a "supply closet" of coats, mittens, bicycles, things that others around us might be in need of.

What would you get behind? What  needs do you see in Columbus?
If you want to talk more with me about this, please do! We don't know exactly what it will look like, but we're in the midst of forming backbones and when the group solidifies, we'll be working on the details.

"Let us live with passionate worldliness in the brilliant and fleeting time of our mortal life, and let our witness to peace grow out of the convictions of our faith, the audacity of our hope, and the generosity of our love. Let us never forget that the community of Christ exists as a structure with four sides open to the world."
 - Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community: How faith shapes social justice, from the Civil Rights movement to today , p.213

 I am currently making an Egyptian lentils dish (kusherie) and if you feel like learning - when lentils are browning on medium heat in a large pan, and you have to add three cups of boiling water - be prepared. Lentils act like Mexican jumping beans! That was a fun few seconds - lentils were flying out everywhere, a foot above the Dutch oven. And yes, I made a note in my cookbook. It says "CAUTIOUS: POPCORN IMITATION" by that step.