Ten years ago I had my first impactful experience with community. When a recent micro essay course prompted us to write about what it means to be together, my mind immediately traveled back to Park Slope. I mapped the space as a warm up (another exercise we did in the course) and was amazed at how many details I remembered - but I shouldn't have been, because my mind returns to that place often.
The books were the first thing I noticed. There was a bookcase, and a shelf full of books above the couch - books were also stacked under the couch, under the bed, and on top of the kitchenette cabinets. Books took up more space than furniture.
The next thing I noticed was how she packed the ten of us in like a game of human Tetris. Two at the table, one perched on the counter, four on the bed with our backs to the chipped plaster walls, and three slender volunteers squeezed onto the couch. More people than furniture, too.
We complimented her book-stacking skills, then opened our Bibles to the Psalm we were studying that week. It was only a few verses long, so Kristen, the English teacher, read it over and over, shifting her inflection each time. There was a long silence after she finished, everyone inhaling the lingering words, which had built on each other like the reverberations of an organ. Jess spoke first, low and with a sniffle. "What was that?!”
Then conversation began, each woman saying which version most impacted her, and how it related to her life at the moment. Hair stylist, tug boat hand, school teacher, costumer, editor, culinary instructor, artist, fashion designer, and more, each occupation and each heart connecting to the same passage in different ways.
This country mouse from the often-performative South learned a lesson in that tiny Brooklyn apartment, that has since served me well: belonging can be a choice. We were ten women in our twenties with more differences that commonalities, but we all loved Jesus, together, and that was enough.
Comments