My husband and I have recently moved in to live with one of our neighbours. In the start of our dating relationship I remember talking loads about living with other people and how we hoped one day we would get to do that. There are various ways that we would love to live communally... our conversations have spun around ideas about opening up a home for homeless young people and sharing life with them, to living with like minded people that love prayer and God as much as we do, to living on farms with people who like to grow things, to sharing a home with artists and poets... basically we like people and we like sharing life with them.

We have ideas about how we would love to live with people, but its not about having all the rules or ideas or types of people you would live with sorted out. Sometimes it just about sharing life. I think we were created that way as humans... to love being with other humans (I know there are some people out there that don't like to have any human contact... so this is a bit general... I know). But there is this great sense of life when humans get together... a great sense of beauty.

Right after we moved into our new place our new roomie Tracy invited us to join her and her family that was visiting for one of our first shared meals together. There wasn't enough "traditional space" for all of us to eat up at a table, but this didn't stop us. Tracy whipped out a blanket and said that we would have dinner picnic style. She then served us this lush meal of chicken, potatoes, salad and of course garlic bread (now we know it was a good thing). In an easy moment, it felt like we were all of the same place, the same family, the same purpose.... eating and sharing life together connected us in a way that was extremely basic and at the same time extremely complex... the beauty of being human is that there are loads of these moments that at face value are completely basic yet if you look a bit deeper are highly complex.

People have to eat to live... yet people live to eat as well. Its a basic need for survival, yet a time that humans use to connect, to love on each other, to include, to grow, to connect with each other, to be creative, to experiment!

Really what I am trying to say is that loads of people thought we were nuts for giving up our own personal space to go and live with a neighbour. They thought we would hate it because we would have to share things and hide away and work to keep things seperated. Yet in reality (well thus far... which I should remind you we have lived here for two weeks so it is still early days!).... but in reality, as I sat around that picnic blanket spread out in the living room, surrounded by a family that oddly felt like mine, I experienced the beauty of communal living, of sharing things, of opening ourselves up to life and people that are around us... and it is a great great beautiful thing!