Today we’re giving a big shout-out to our current and previous *culture is not optional community members who have lived in the intentional community at the center of all of our work. We are so grateful for your support over the years and the impact your efforts have brought to the Huss Project!
*cino’s intentional community has evolved organically over the years; in fact, it took us years to realize that we were an intentional community with an intention of working toward the flourishing of all in Three Rivers. The community now includes permanent core members as well as summer-long internships and year-long partnerships. The core community is comprised of four folks from three different households who have been working alongside one another for over eight years. Short-term community members—a few months to a year—often live together in *cino’s community house. This May, we became an AmeriCorps VISTA sponsor site and VISTA members began partnering with us in order to build long-term capacity for our organization. Here are a few of our their thoughts on living in the intentional community with *cino:
Annelie Haberman:
In the two years I’ve been living in *cino’s intentional community, I’ve seen the transformative power of what happens when a bunch of people choose to do the daily grind of living life together, supporting, challenging, and growing each other into new and hopefully better people for a future that needs people who lean into community. This kind of lifestyle pushes you to constantly practice personal self-reflection and empower one another to connect with and understand our best and our worst selves and how all the parts of ourselves are beautiful tools for doing life together.
Living in a communal home, you never know who your housemates will be and you don’t always know what kind of person you’ll become as a result of living with them. There’s a mystery and a magic to navigating the strange and beautiful ways of being human together in the small things of life like everybody cooking oatmeal in the morning, planting carrots and beans on the farm in the afternoon, and watching weird Netflix shows together at night.
Intentional community is not easy. I don’t always make it easy for myself or others, but I’ve learned that the joy and the pain has given me a clearer picture of the constant evolving we are always going through within ourselves and all that chaotic energy of our souls is wrapped up in a deep love for each other when we choose to live this crazy life together in a very vulnerable and re-imagined way of being in community together.
Ale Crevier:
Intentional community doesn’t operate in a way where everyone is doing their best all of the time or doing relationship building well all of the time, (although that’d be ideal). But living without the support and care of other people is, in my experience, an almost impossible task.
I’ve been learning to ‘move at the speed of trust,’ (an adrienne maree brown quote), which is hard; I would rather rely on my own rhythms, thereby ignoring the vulnerability required to build trust and acknowledge where a relationship stands. Trust and true accountability to each other are important vehicles for relationship building and relationship reckoning, and I hope to keep striving for those things at *cino.
Please accept our invitation to join us in this work by becoming a Friend of Huss! With a monthly donation of $10 or more, our Friends are the foundation for a flourishing future for our creative, community-building efforts. Thank you for your partnership!
