Community Meeting from Angela

Dear friends,

This weekend our new community got together to dream and plan. No name yet - except for Jodie's appropo Protestant Slackers - in response to being a block away from the Catholic Worker houses. Perhaps we should come up with a translated version of it in latin to make it sound cool.

My Brother's family house-swapped with us - so we ended up in the small town of Beamsville and they ended up in big city of Toronto. A plus for both of us! Especially for the kids - as they both had a house full of new toys to play with.

Friday night was a night for relaxation and gaming. We had a gender war for Trivia Pursuit. The woman were kicking butt for most of the game, but fell behind in the very end, to lose to the guys who pulled up from behind in their maiden game together. Which, according to Trivia Pursuit, is something that horses in their maiden races never do (win that is).

Saturday we started off with a great breakfast of eggs, bacon and pancakes to energize us for a day spent indoors. Johanna and Simeon were babysat by my niece Erin and her friend for the day. The kids loved a day spent with their very own playmates.

Now to the matters we spoke about:
Our long term mission statements
Our short term vision
Spirituality
Sharing Resources

Everything we came up with is open for comment, and we just started the foundational conversations.

Some of the highlights include:
- plans for a garden this summer,
- welcoming someone into our house in May,
- creating a space for meditation
- beginning Wednesday evening worship times together (Lenten season a great time to start) - along with weekly reflections on the blog
- a discussion of what a common purse looks like and how we might move towards this as a community
- a discussion of financial priorities
- starting a car coop with our van with people around the neigbourhood, basically being more conscious and deliberate with our use of the vehicle (saving money... :-) )

This is obviously a short summary of day long conversations and we will hopefully be putting together minutes that will include mission statements that we were working on as a group as well as more details of the common purse and other items.

Love to hear any comments,

In Christ,

Angela