Life in a Settled Sacred Community

My neighbors and I have lived at Settled's first Sacred Settlement for 14 months now and it's truly a place of peace, love, play and rest. There are eight of us that live in a tiny home community on church land, specifically Mosaic Christian Community in St Paul. Five of my neighbors have lived in chronic homelessness for anywhere from over 1 year to 10 years. The core of Settled's model is community, believing that community is what we all need, and especially what people who have been homeless are missing. We say the catastrophic loss of family is what leads to the catastrophic loss of home. The church gets to respond to God's call to partner with God in His restoration and healing work in the world by loving our neighbor as ourselves, and in this case, literally living right next to each other, sharing life, bathrooms, the kitchen, resources and our stories together. We as a
community get to be a family for and with each other.

Our community is truly marked with play, joy, love, compassion, generosity and peace. My neighbors who have been homeless have such deep empathy, wisdom, compassion and strength that amazes me and also
has shaped them to be people that I look up to and learn so much from. They express generosity and love in ways that surprise and delight me, especially when we have people who are homeless come to the church to
seek help, my neighbors are the first ones to show generous hospitality and seek to advocate for them to get all we can possibly give them to make sure they are safe and moving in a better direction. There is a deep sense of loyalty towards each other, one of my neighbors calls himself the "sheriff" of our community because he is a watchman for us, seeking to protect us and make sure we're all safe. I've learned to see joy in the tiniest things like snow sparkling, trees that look like they have faces in their bark, and the joy of searching and finding four leaf clovers. The question we ask every time we make dinner together is, "what made you smile this week or today?"

This is a place of healing. One of my neighbors, who had been homeless for 10 years, looked like a new person after her first night sleeping behind the locked door of her tiny home. She woke up the next day, made everyone breakfast and shared that it was the first night in many years she hadn't had a night terror. Another neighbor is reconciled with her kids, having game days with her kids once a week in our community room. Another neighbor is making walking sticks for an income, which he's very talented at, even though he just started doing this within the past six months. Another neighbor is the best cook, can fix anything that's broken, and is the most patient man I know, caring for each of us in sweet surprising ways. One of my other
neighbors brings joy as he constantly comes up with new inventions, seeking treasure in everything that he comes across, and literally making musical instruments that make us all laugh. We've all been touched by God's love and each other's love living here at Mosaic sacred settlement. One neighbor constantly asks to pray together and read the Bible together, which is amazing because before he moved in, he said he's never heard of Jesus. We pray together and consistently express love with words and simple actions that shine God's heart and saving love. This may sound like all rainbows and hearts, and of course there are some conflicts that come up sometimes, paying rent is a challenge because my neighbors haven't been used to paying bills, and every once in a while the shower is being used when we are looking to use it. But living here is truly a gift and I believe is a beautiful expression of God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10)!

To find out more about this amazing community, click here.