“A time to come as you are and care for one another.”
Those are the words on the sign one of our community members put together to advertise Community Hours at the Green Bean, which take place from 9am-11am every Saturday. Those words aptly summarize an objective we are trying to achieve with the Community Hours: a crumbling of barriers that divide me from my neighbors.
A little history. In the far dark reaches of the Sanctuary church office there exists a storage room with a shower in it. It seemed that this was a resource we needed to at least offer to our neighbors who might not have access to basic dignity such as a warm shower; there aren’t exactly an abundance of available hygiene stations in the North Seattle area. So, last fall some of us started being present every Saturday morning in the front room of the church offices, aka the Green Bean, in order to facilitate that resource for anybody who might want to use it. Some days it would get used, and some days it wouldn’t. But most every week, people would poke their head in through the door and say “Is this the Green Bean”? “No, well, uh, yes, but not really right now” would be the premise of our response. “We have a shower.” To which people would look puzzled and walk away. Over time and through conversation with folks from the Sanctuary community we realized that just having a shower ministry wasn’t enough. We didn’t want to be doing something that implied, “if you are dirty then come in and welcome; if not then I guess you might as well just be on your way.” We wanted to be able to invite everybody into the space. Green Bean regulars, people using the shower, folks just passing by on a Saturday morning stroll who were curious enough to poke their head in.
And thus Community Hours were born. Because sharing food is something everyone enjoys, a main facet is provision of breakfast by whoever is hosting the space on a given Saturday, for anyone to share, and of course lots of coffee. Community members have put in time and treasure into making the storage room where the shower is into a more hospitable place. We are trying to learn how to practice radical hospitality.
A beautiful example of the very thing we are trying to create occurred last Saturday. A woman from the Greenwood community came in and was tearfully sharing about how it was the anniversary of the death of her partner, how she felt especially lonely on that day. As she and I were conversing one of the families from Sanctuary came in. One of the children came over, and I introduced the child and the woman to each other. The child didn’t say anything but just gave her a warm hug. I could see the woman melt. It was a microcosm of why we do what we do.
It is still a learning experience though, and learning how to foster truly caring relationships with anybody who walks in will never cease to be a challenge. There are weeks where I recognize a tendency in myself to buy in to homogeneity, to interact more with the people I’m used to interacting with rather than someone who might be more difficult. There are times I disbelieve in the chance for meaningful encounters to occur, thus making it more likely my disbelief will become self-fulfilling prophecy. I pray for forgiveness of this in myself, for just as the example in the last paragraph is an example of barriers crumbling, so my tendency to remove myself from uncomfortable situations, or my disbelief in the chance for meaningful encounters to occur, is an example of how I participate in barrier building.
Thank God for grace.
Silas Bergen