By Natalie Strait
Creating a community while in Baltimore is something I’ve been challenging myself to continually work towards. The intentional community of the Gilead house is an integral part of my Baltimore community; but, as I quickly realized when I started this program, alone it is insufficient for truly becoming immersed in this city. It sounds strange to talk about creating community. The communities that are built around us and that we foster are not created through a step by step recipes with carefully measured ingredients, although I’ll admit I was hoping it would go that way. But somehow, to me at least, that phrase fits. I’ve been finding that as I very intentionally seek out places that feed me, churches, parks, gardens… the communities that are already there tend to open up and help me find my place among them.
I have found worshiping communities that expand my understanding of my own faith in #Breakingbread and Amazing Grace Lutheran. I have push myself to learn and connect at my internship at Great Kids Farm, at our community garden next door, at dance classes around the city, and jumping into opportunities that are unfamiliar to me. I have been able to explore my own interests and share what I enjoy with my fellow housemates as well as with people from other faith based service year programs similar to our own.
I sort of skipped this stage of life during college. Of finding myself in an unfamiliar place, without the structures of the community I’d grown up in. I went to a school that was only about a half hours bike ride away from home. My childhood community still surrounded me, and I had freedom to expand my community while maintaining my safety net of friends and family close at hand.
This new experience of creating a community, almost from scratch in Baltimore has been in turns exhilarating, frightening, lonely, and immensely fulfilling. It has pushed me into places, and conversations, experiences and emotions that I might never have found, or might even have avoided were I still so comfortable in keeping hold of what I was already familiar with at home.
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