Free Ride!

    Ryan here. We have been in Pittsburgh for 1 month and 5 days!    Let me start with some updates.  Probably the biggest  is that Jenn has started her placement at Propel Homestead as an assistant Teacher for 7th and 8th grades.  She will hopefully be able to write about the experience in more detail, but it has been a little different for her.  One of the main reasons for this is simply because she was a full time teacher last year but now, inherent in her job title, is taking more of a backseat role in the classroom.  However, she will be the first to tell you how happy she is to have NO papers or homework to grade and NO lessons to plan.  Gotta give a shout out to teachers, it is much more than a full time job! Anyways, making that shift from teacher to assistant seems to be kind of an awkward one no matter how well you do it.

  
     In other news, Jenn and I started volunteering for a Co-op in the area called Free Ride! I have to be honest, though, this is not self-less volunteering.  We are in it for FREE BIKES!  This bike repair shop operates on the "Repair someone's bike and they will have a fixed bike for a day.....Teach a person to do bike repair and they will have a repaired bike for a lifetime" -policy.  They teach people to be their own bike mechanics and use damaged and discarded bikes from around Pittsburgh to refurbish, sell, and teach about bikes.
     The concept is this:  You come and volunteer for two hours and you can go to one class on bike repair for free (during volunteering we helped sort out old wheels and tires).  There are  six classes that I know of that focus on separate parts of the bike. When you have gone to at least two classes, you can pick out an unclaimed bike of your choice from the shop to repair.  The bike is then appraised ($20-150) and you can earn the bike by volunteering for the Co-op at $8/hour.  Once you have volunteered your hours, you get your bike and hopefully have the skills needed to repair your bike!

     We took a class on Hubs and Bearings last Sunday, and are looking to volunteer and take another class soon.  Here is what the shop looks like:

Bikes everywhere.....

One hot bike mechanic learning to clean the wheel hub. (I love this pic!)

Why We Moved to Pittsburgh, Pt. Deux

Jenn again, for part two of last Sunday's post. Part one gave some background of our journey toward this adventure that we're on known as intentional community. Now, you might ask. . . . what is intentional community? That can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. A simple definition would be a group of people who have committed to living certain rhythms of life together. One intentional community might be focused on prayer; members might meet in a coffee house one morning every week to pray together. Another might focus on hospitality and share all their resources so that they might have shelter and food to give to disadvantaged members of their area. An intentional community might be people who live on the same street and decide to share meals together in a regular rhythm. Or, it might be musicians who meet and share music and inspire one another in their creative endeavors. Needless to say, there are a lot of different ways that this can be done and a lot of different purposes for which people choose to live this way.

We have several specific reasons for why we have chosen to live this way, at least for the time being. Of course, we wouldn't be here if intentional community were not something we had been thinking over and considering for a long time, as outlined in the previous post. We want to explore how we might grow and be strengthened in our faith and in ourselves by living closely with other people of faith in commitment to one another: as iron sharpens iron, so we want to be strengthened by the other couples who are here, as well as to discern if this is a way of life we want to continue after this year. Also, we want to use this space as a time to discern future steps for our lives in general. Let me preface what I'm about to say with this: we loved our time in Dallas and daily miss the people who were a part of our lives there. In fact, we may be back one day. . . at this point it's really hard to know. However, we largely felt unfinished during our time there. We moved after our wedding without a real plan. We never intended to settle there (at least not right after our wedding), and therefore kept our costs for our Dallas time pretty low: teeny apartment, no car purchases, no huge commitments. Last year, my job took up practically all of my time, at least at the beginning of the year (although it was a blessing and I could very easily see myself going back into teaching). We didn't know exactly what we were looking for, and in such a place of impermanence we had a hard time imagining our future. In no way were we ready to commit to the usual things that go along with married couples settling in a place. We knew we wanted to explore intentional community, but didn't know what on earth that would like. In order to move forward, we felt the need to launch ourselves into a situation which would allow us to dream and vision about the future, a place unfamiliar to both of us where new doors and ideas might be opened, new dreams awakened. This was very much a move for our strengthening as a couple as much as it was a move to practice living in intentional community. In fact, the two ideas are entwined in my mind. We could think of nothing more beneficial for our marriage than entering into an adventure together that would allow us a prayerful space to consider what we really want our life together to look like.  Free of overwhelming job commitments and in the presence of a community of prayer, we would have more time to determine our next step as well as inertia to propel us forward.

The blessing of it all is that this is already happening. Our short three weeks in Pittsburgh have by no means been perfect. Any major life upheaval causes some serious questioning and brings to the forefront a lot of uncomfortable emotions. There is stress, questioning, anxiety, frustration, fear, getting lost driving ( a lot) that attend moving to a completely new part of the country. But with all the tension of the newness, there are healthy discussions happening that need to take place. The uncomfortableness of uprooting our lives has shaken around some things that need to be shaken around, blown the dust off some old conversations, and allowed us to reach new levels of understanding that we hadn't experienced before. Not to say that this could not have happened had we not moved. However, the quicker we can move to deeper understanding of one another and our goals for the future, rather than continually hitting walls we often hit in communication, the better. This is a pruning time in our lives. We want to do everything we can to intentionally move our marriage forward, rather than to be forever sitting in the ocean, waiting for the waves to pick us up and take us to shore. Amidst all our questions, we are very thankful to be here.

And have I mentioned what an awesome city Pittsburgh is? Seriously. When I told people in Dallas I was moving to the Burgh, I was amazed by the amount of people who literally fawned over the place. Typical reactions: "Oh my gosh. You'll love it." Or "My entire family lives there!" (Really? Who knew??) "It's literally my favorite city in the world." I haven't known too many cities to receive such rave reviews. Before all the adulations from friends, about my only thoughts on the city had been "Steel. Grime. Football team." Now that I'm here, let me attest to the truth of these accolades. Pittsburgh. is. cool. That's all there is to it. Each neighborhood has it's own distinctive character. There are tons of markets, festivals, gatherings that happen all the time. There are several parks within walking distance of our apartment. There are coffee shops and restaurants in abundance that are not a part of a national chain. The mountains are beautiful. Pittsburgh has been rated as one of the top cities for culture junkies. There. are. TREES. Lots of them, tall trees, trees whose branches meet over the roads. . . . . need I go on? We have been here just a short time, but are loving getting to know the place. There is no reason to ever be bored here (unless you wanna be).

Think I'll leave you all with some pictures of a very Pittsburgh outing we had on Tuesday; Primanti Brothers sandwiches and a Pirates game. What's a Primanti Brothers sandwich, you ask?

It's a simple concept, really. Whereas in other sandwich shops you get a sandwich, some fries, some coleslaw, at Primanti's (Pri-MAN-ti's in Pittsburghese), they slop all those ingredients together in between two buns. Pittsburghers are nothing if not efficient.

Now some pictures from PNC park, from a game in which the Pirates destroyed the Braves and we left the game early due to torrential downpours which forced us to sit freezing on a bus which blew cold air onto our soaked skin for a good 45 minutes on the ride home. But hey, the park was beautiful!

Can't Comment?

Apparently, the last post is not letting people comment.  We were having some issues with the website when it was posted.  If you would like to, you can comment on this post.  Also, Jenn is going to get a 'Part 2' of the last post going soon!  

So. . . . We're in Pittsburgh.

Hi, loyal followers. Jenn here. This is really a shared blog, though I can't figure out how to add my info. to the profile. Ah, well--another time.

Since we've been here for a little over two weeks now, I thought it would be a good time to post about. . . . what exactly are we doing here? It's a good question. It's one we've asked ourselves several times in the last fourteen days. Why exactly would two people with well-paying jobs and a community of friends and loved ones around them pack up everything and move 1,200 miles away? Where it's cold? What exactly are we hoping to get out of this experience?

To tell our journey of how we got here, I need to back up a few years to Dec. 2007. That's when Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President came to Harding to speak. (If you haven't read these books and you're up for being challenged in your faith, READ THEM. Totally life-changing). He is a part of a movement called New Monasticism. This does not mean that he wears robes and goes around chanting all day. What it does mean is that he and several other people have chosen to live in covenant relationships with one another. Their way of life grew out of friendships with homeless people in their area; they wanted to find a way to be the gospel among them, rather than just a mouthpiece. So, they took up residence together in the midst of their new friends and decided to share all they had so they could meet the needs of others. They called their little experiment The Simple Way, modeled on the Christians in Acts and in quest of the line stating that "there was no needy person among them."

I'm glossing over a lot of things. There is a LOT more involved in the decisions they made and what went into them, the journey that this little community went on (which you can read more about in the book! plug. plug). I share all that to share the background of what got Ryan and I thinking. We were not sure exactly which direction we wanted our lives to take after college and marriage. We were not committed to settling down in any one place, and recoiled at the idea of moving somewhere and devoting ourselves to houses and careers which we were not ready to take on. In his talk, Shane mentioned an organization called Mission Year. Participants would live together in an urban area and seek to know and serve the disenfranchised people who lived in the neighborhood. Their motto: "Love God. Love People. Nothing else matters." We were very interested, applied, got accepted, almost did it. But the program required participants to raise money. Due to our very late decision making (this was in June, we got married in July, the program started in Aug.), we decided that the timing wasn't right. So, we got married and moved to Dallas, but we never lost the desire for a different way to live.

Fast forward a couple years to Feb. 2010. We got news of a conference that was taking place at Harding University, our alma mater, which was all about intentional community (that's the stock phrase for the adventure we've entered into). As soon as I saw event postings on my facebook page advertising it, I knew we had to go. At the conference, we got wind of an opportunity of an organization called Formation House, a year-long training program for people interested in intentional community. This seemed like *exactly* what we'd been looking for. We began the process of applying and looking for jobs in March. There were some major hurdles along the way before we got here, the biggest of them being that the house in which Formation House was going to be, umm, housed, became no longer available for use due to some sneaky zoning laws enforced by some people in the neighborhood. The other couple who was committed to Formation House and living in Pittsburgh quickly set about finding apartments in which we could live and set up shared spaces to do life together. We, by the grace of God, found jobs before we got here, which eased our minds about making such a drastic move. Two weeks ago, we set out in Little Blue (my car), loaded to the max, and drove up the windy mountains in between GA and PA until we arrived at our new home.

Whew, I thought I'd get through all of this in one post, but it looks like this is going to need to be broken up. I'll leave you with another book that you should all read, which explains the purpose and place of intentional communities much better than I ever could.

Very readable, challenging explanation of intentional community; it has thoughts for everyone, even people who have no interest in intentional community itself. (Again, plug, plug!). Thanks for making it all the way through this. Part two coming soon.

Parting shots: Some pictures of us at our new favorite coffee place that is, drumroll please. . . . within walking distance.