Why We Live In Community

This is an article written by Christine Sine, fellow communitarian at the Mustard Seed House, about living in community.

Read full article at The Other Journal

My husband Tom and I live in a small intentional community in Seattle, Washington called the Mustard Seed House. We inhabit the middle floor of a triplex with a young family in the apartment above us and a young couple in the basement apartment below us. We get together at least once a week for dinner and sharing and once more for prayer, and we garden together once a month. We are keen on hospitality and have fun hosting people from around the world.

Recently we received a visit from Noemie, a young French woman researching sustainable community living in North America. She has already stayed with a cohousing community in Washington DC, an old order Amish community in Pennsylvania, and an income sharing commune in the woods of Virginia. She also met with Catholic workers and young Christians from the New Monasticism movement living in an intentional community.

Noemie did not grow up with a Christian background, but since her time in DC where she had opportunity to speak at length on how to live out the Gospel, she has become intrigued by the linkage between community and Christian living. Her recent experiences have convinced her that the only way to live out Christian faith authentically is in community with others.

I agree with Noemie. The pressures of our individualistic, consumer driven culture make many of us who call ourselves followers of Christ, functionally live as atheists. We may pray for a few minutes before we head off to work each morning and go to church on Sunday, but our faith has little impact on how we live the rest of the time. Our daily routines are increasingly not just disconnected from God’s rhythms and purposes, but in competition with them.

For us, as for our secular neighbors, “Normal is getting dressed in clothes you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”

Read full article at The Other Journal

A Good Weekend

We have had quite an adventurous weekend at the Mustard Seed House.  Saturday morning we braved the cold and the snow (or at least threatened snow) to get out and plant the cool season garden - cauliflowers, cabbages, broccoli & greens all went into the ground and are obviously shivering under the unexpectedly cold burst of weather Seattle is enduring.  Hopefully the row covers will keep them snug and warm.

Saturday night we held a community games night by candlelight to celebrate Earth Hour.  It was great - not just because we saved a small amount of energy by turning off the lights but more importantly because we had a wonderful community evening of fun and fellowship.  We are thinking about repeating this once a month.  Another way to slow down and enjoy life.

Unfortunately most of the rest of Seattle did not turn off the lights - though Sydney Australia certainly did.  Here is a great video of the lights on the harbour bridge and opera house going out.

Christ Is Risen Indeed

For the secular world Easter is over and done but for us who live into God’s resurrection world the season has just begun.

Yesterday we celebrated with a feast and a festival at the Mustard Seed House

We brought together a great group of people

Read liturgy, sang of the resurrection and with Catie’s leadership decorated a banner.

We finished with a wonderful feast of rich food and good wine.

May the glory of the risen Christ go with you this day and throughout the easter season

Easter Thoughts to ponder and live

The world has already been turned upside down; that’s what Easter is all about. It isn’t a matter of waiting until God eventually does something at the end of time. God has brought his future, his putting-his-world into rights future, into the presence of Jesus of Nazareth and he wants that future to be implicated more and more in the present. That’s what we pray for every time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Kingdome come, they will be done on earth at it is in heaver.”

… if Lent is a time to give things up, then Easter ought to be a time to take things up.

Easter is a time to sow new seeds and to plant out a a few cuttings. If Calvary means to put things to death in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering and training things up in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume and in due course bearing fruit.

All right, the Sundays after Easter still lie within the Easter season. We still have Easter readings and hymns during them. But Easter week itself outght not to be the time when all clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-aday festival, with champange served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. It is any wonder people find hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? It is any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simple the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long over due that we took a hard look at how we keeo Easter in church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up. That always comes as a surprise

+NT Wright

Praying with Missio Dei

One of the blessings of grassroot communities is to be able to collaborate and support other communities in the fringes living out and embracing God’s dream.

Missio Dei is one of those communities - Missio Dei is a church–but not a conventional church. It is to most churches what a tangerine is to a regular orange: smaller, but more intense. Some folks might call them a “new monastic” community. And I guess those folks might be right.

Tonight at the MSH we will pray with our brothers and sisters of Missio Dei, by praying using their Prayers Breviary.

full house

 As we get ready for The New Conspirators Conference (AKA Festival of the Imagination) our friends beginning to  arrive. Last night we enjoyed a delicious soup and homemade bread with the company of our kiwi friend Mark Pierson. Mark is one of the pioneers alt. worship, emerging church leaders.

Tomorrow I’ll (Eliacin) be picking up Mark Van Steenwyk. Mark is the pastor of Mission Dei, a new monastic community in  Minneapolis. I’m excited to have Mark around, he has an awesome laugh.

Shane Claiborne and Tom Balke will join us on Thursday during the day.

There will be about 14 of us in the MSH going and coming in for the next couple days. I’m looking forward the many stories to be share, morning prayers and great evening conversation over coffee and tea.

Monks, Community & Rule of Life

Christine writes about our dreams and vision for Mustard Seed Associates, the Mustard Seed House and the Celtic Community Project -

Monks, Community & Rule of Life « Godspace

Yesterday the Boston Globe printed a great article The Unexpected Monks, on the move towards monasticism by many evangelicals. It is something that resonates very deeply with me personally as well as with all of us at MSA. In fact we are in the process of reimagining MSA as a network of communities with a common rule of life. We believe that God calls all of us to embody an incarnational faith in all aspects of our lives but we all need spiritual disciplines that enable us to live that out.

After the New Conspirators conference we plan to spend a extended time fleshing out what our rule of life should look like. Below is an outline I wrote for our Board meeting last Saturday that outlines some of our reasoning on Why Community? Even though we have been working on this for years we feel we are still very much in the early stages and would appreciate your prayers and comments as we move forward. Tomorrow I will post some thoughts on Why a Rule of Life? Lent - the season for reflection and self examination seems a good time to grapple with these issues.

Read more…

The unexpected monks

The unexpected monks - The Boston Globe
New Monasticism is part of a broader movement stirring at the margins of American evangelicalism: Evangelicals disillusioned with a church they view as captive to consumerism, sectarian theological debates, and social conservatism. Calling themselves the “emerging church” or “post-evangelicals,” these Christians represent only a small proportion of the approximate 60 million evangelical Americans. Yet their criticisms may resonate with more mainstream believers. A recent study by Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois - one of the most influential megachurches in the nation - discovered that many churchgoers felt stalled in their faith, alienated by slick, program-driven pastors who focus more on niche marketing than cultivating contemplation. The study suggested that megachurch members know how to belt out jazzy pop hymns from their stadium seats, but they dont always know how to talk to God alone.Read more…

Our friend Mark Van Steenwyck from the Missio Dei community in Minneapolis, is quoted in the article. Mark will be one of the conspirators at The New Conspirators: Festival of the Imagination in Seattle, later this month. Check it out.

slow down week jan. 13-19

Christmas, Advent & Epiphany - a time to celebrate

Finally I have gotten around to uploading my Advent and Christmas photos. It was a real season of celebration for all of us at the Mustard Seed House. We held an open house for friends near and far, with lots of Christmas goodies, and carol singing.

Next e held an Advent celebration in which we focused on the coming of God’s multicultural kingdom. We wore a wonderful array of international costumes, ate food from all over the world and made decorations for the Jesse tree. Jenny Porter accompanied our carol singing on her viola.

Christmas Day was a wonderful community feast with roast lamb & vegetables, and a beautiful Italian cream cake to celebrate Gabriel’s first birthday. Anneke’s parents were here from Hawaii and entertained us with their rich gift of music. It has been a memorable Christmas season - the first time we have celebrated as a community and a real taste of the kingdom.

And a happy new year from all of us at the Mustard Seed House