let's be intentional

I wrote and submitted an article to this Australian magazine called frankie. It's a wicked magazine and I totally love it.

They didn't accept my article however, so I thought that I would put it up on here.

Even though they didn't accept my article you should totally check out their webpage:
www.frankie.com.au/

Here is my article:

let's be intentional

The word community has become a cliche. It brings to mind a time when milk was delivered in glass bottles, five cents was a lot of money, and you knew all your neighbours and all their business because there was no "modern technology" and thus you had nothing else to amuse yourself with. What has also become a cliche are people looking for community - some place to belong because for some reason no one feels like they do. They funny thing: that latter cliche is me. It's you. It's the person sitting beside you in the coffee house or the pub. It's the person across from you on the bus. It's your best friend. We're all searching for a community and a place to belong. We're all cliches.

New word: Intentional community

Definition: When a group of people purposefully seek out and create their own community.

This is becoming a phenomenon in North America. People are feeling the lack of community and are thus creating it. They are seeking each other out, living and/or working together, and then reaching out to others and bringing them in.

This is happening in my town, Kingston, Ontario, Canada (yes, you should google map that), population 152,000. The first place is the Sleepless Goat. The Sleepless Goat is a cafe. It's a little hippie, a lot vegetarian and you can borrow board games and sit and play while you drink your cup of coffee or eat one of their amazing toggen burgers. It's a worker's cooperative, meaning that all of the workers own it together. That is their intentional community, and they reach out to others by making yummy food and being a favourite local hangout spot.

The second place is House Famous. It's eight 20 something to 30 something year olds living together in a house. Their focus is helping those who need it - they have a drop in for homeless people, they give part of their income to charity, they have people they don't know, who are in need of a place to stay, crashing on their couch, and an open dinner where anyone can walk in and sit down to eat with them. That's how they reach out to the people around them. That's how they're creating community.

For the first time it seems that we as a people have to be intentional about community. It doesn't seem to occur spontaneously anymore - maybe because we're in constant communication with so many people each day that conversation starts to feel superficial. But, whatever the reason, this disconnection that everyone seems to feel is starting to be remedied by the idea of an intentional community. It takes effort to reach out to others, but the feeling of loneliness that plagues so many people is combatable, we just have to decide that we want community and then go out and make one. We have to be intentional and genuine when we say to someone, "Hi. How are you doing today?"