Random thoughts from Bethesda

I've moved into a beautiful apartment at Bethesda Lutheran Church, just down the street from the Divinity School Campus, where I used to live.

Living in community has been both challenging and a blessing, after having a two-bedroom apartment to myself for an entire six months.

My first night here, I bleached and scrubbed the bathtub.  Rent is less, but it comes at the price of my independence. Community will be a good cure for the parts of me that like to be in control and to be left alone.  And as much as I cherish personal space, it is nice to feel like I have a family with which to share life in New Haven.  I now have housemates who care enough to call and text when I'm not home by 10:30 at night!

Bethesda was a pool in Jerusalem, believed to have healing powers.  Invalids gathered around and hoped to be carried to the water when it stirred.  Jesus healed a man at the pool, telling him to pick up his mat and walk--on a Sabbath day.

Religious life is a funny thing, and it's even more interesting when Jesus gets involved.  Perhaps angels do stir the water from time to time, and perhaps we do need our friends to give us a lift towards forces that heal.  Perhaps sometimes, too, we just get up and walk away from the place at which we stayed for so long.

Community is an important, beautiful thing.  It's also where the rubber meets the road and where love takes form in concrete acts of giving and receiving.  Done right, it can be a healing force for all involved.

I chose to come to this intentional community, and I look forward to living here this coming year.  Come September, I'll also be a Community Life Co-Coordinator at the Divinity School, making "community" an official theme of the year I transition from my 20s to my 30s.

June gloom had me hermited away in my apartment, cherishing my last month of solitude and spending time completing 70 educational credits for my Music Therapy Recertification.  July is come, and I am ready to connect with friends again, for doing life alone can only last so long.  Already, conversations in the past week have been life-giving and inspiring.

I don't know Hebrew, but some translate Bethesda to say House of Mercy.  May mercy abound in this house of mine--this house of ours--and may it become a home where community is found!