We wanted purple laces...and we got richer.

by Austin Pfeiffer

My wife Erin and I recently moved from Boston, MA to Winston-Salem, NC. We're a part of starting an intentional living community. Its been a two year preparation for what we're doing and its taken many forms. The idea began when I was living in San Diego and met a group of people who call themselves "The Ecclessia Collective", specifically, "The Hawthorne House." I must admit my initial attraction was its subversive nature in relation to typical American community, but I was compelled for the sake of attention...like someone who wears a feather boa in summer or green high tops with purple laces...its just as much about subversive expression as it is a cry for attention. Jason Evans of the Ecclessia Collective quickly warned me that the sexiness of this lifestyle is a myth. Of course we are still on the honeymoon and incapable of seeing past the glossy shine of our new world.

The few things we do know so far are we all experienced short seasons in our life, on the gulf coast after Katrina, in the Dominican Republic, on the streets of San Francisco, where we lived out of a backpack, with a rain soaked Bible, a journal, and a desire to love other people. Then we found ourselves returning home, eager to pursue entertaining ourselves with good beer, hip cafes, movies, afterall, that is what our generation does best, we entertain ourselves. So we set out with three things understood and the rest is still up for debate. The first thing, we are not simply renting a house together, this is a lifestyle, not a lease. The second, we will live intentionally, a word my wife treats with vehement sobriety. The third, we will live simply.

The first thing first, we have a house, we live together, we have a lifestyle...so far things are working. The second thing, intentionality, really only requires proximity and deliberation. We wake up every morning at 8 am and pray together, we have meals together, we discuss the arrangement of furniture, we intend each thing to have a purpose. Simplicity, such a shoulder shrug of a word, so unassuming...simplicity, that is our steep incline.

Simplicity has been the absolutely most difficult part of our lifestyle. We have eight people deeply involved in our community, four living with us. Before the eight of us came together, we all lived in seperate dwellings, with partitioned possessions. Now we are a collective of people with many musicical instruments, one guy roasts coffee at home, another brews beer, we all have a DVD collection, and we are shocked to find ourselves...wealthier through the experience. In some ways, we find ourselves realizing in a shallow sense, what it meant in Acts 2, that none among them were in need. However we've found ourselves at a crossroads. How many Target pot & pan sets can we harbor "just in case this doesn't work out." How many televisions, DVD's, do we need, should we have? Simplicity is easily the most difficult to accomplish. We hope long term that as we share possessions, we will feel released from the perpetuation of our American lifestyle of consumption. If we borrow what we do not have from each other, we free our income, our time, to be spent living out the most fundamental expressions of the Gospel, captured in a tidy sound bite known as Micah 6:8,

But he's already made it plain how to live, what to do,
what God is looking for in men and women.
It's quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
be compassionate and loyal in your love