Another year, another Christmas, another place...This update comes to you from Arlington, Massachusetts, where I finally landed in June after 6 months in Dorchester, a month in Cambridge, and a month in Jamaica Plain. I’m living at the Arlington Friends House, which is an intentional community of 6 based on Quaker values of simplicity, nonviolence, and consensus. We have a poet-teacher, an economics professor who is also a graduate of St. Olaf, a piano/harpsichord technician, a theology PhD student who spent 2 years as the musician on Iona, a UU/UCC MDiv student/aspiring army chaplain/former Agape intern, and me, whatever I am...and three cats and a dog.
I spent the first half of the year feeling like a fish out of water (or maybe more appropriately a heron among seagulls…), debating the idea of leaving Boston – or leaving Massachusetts altogether. I applied to some internships in Maine and New York state, but ultimately decided to commit myself to my communities here: The Crossing (my church), Agape and the Creatively Maladjusteds, and the Friends House. In fact, in July I made a formal commitment to follow The Crossing’s “Rule for Life” for a year.
Highlights of the year included flying out to Washington to my friend Christine’s wedding, where I reunited with my friend Mary Beth and spent a day with my family in Oregon; showing my parents around the area when they came to visit me in October; discovering the SSJE and making a retreat at Emery House; and finally having a farm job, at least for a while. For a couple of months, I was employed by a friend of a friend to help organize his home office for his new furniture refurbishing business. In February I started working a few hours a week at a little day care center, and much to my surprise I’m still working there! During the summer I was employed at Land’s Sake farm in Weston as a member of the field crew, weeding, harvesting, transplanting, and the like. When that ended in September, I started working for an after-school farm education program at Wright-Locke Farm in Winchester until the season ended in early November. Since then I’ve been working more hours at the day care, doing odd jobs here and there, and volunteering with the Boston Area Gleaners in my spare time (and then doing things like making apple butter!).
I don’t know how it’s going to happen yet, but I’m excitedly anticipating participating in Mary Beth’s wedding in California this spring and a Cutting cousin reunion in Colorado this summer! Other than that, I have no idea what the coming year will have in store for me - though my hope is that it will include deeper friendships, more connection with the local food movement, more intentional spiritual practices, less anxiety, and a stronger sense of direction and confidence!
May your lives be filled with love and light,
Autumn
