Re-Imagining Home!
Written by Tim Dickau
Live with other people in our home? Are you kidding me? That was my first thought when we were invited to share the house we lived in with another couple. Like many people, I conceived of my home as my sort of private castle, the place where I walked around in my underwear if I felt like it, watched my own shows when I felt like it and got away from everyone but invited guests. Thirty years ago, however, that all changed.
Our church had recently welcomed a couple from Ecuador to help us serve and connect with the Latin American immigrants in our neighborhood. They needed a place to live, and we tentatively suggested that they could stay in our downstairs suite. They stayed for a year and a half until they returned to Ecuador following their studies. Then we opened our place to a woman whom we knew through mutual friends, and who needed a place to recover after a messy divorce and ensuing depression. She stayed for a year and a half. When she moved out, a single mother whom we had gotten to know through our parent’s group at our church needed a place for two weeks to escape from an intrusive landlord. She stayed with her son for a year and a half.
You are starting to get the picture here. We sometimes joke that people live with us for a year and a half by which time they realize what we are really like and then move out! In actuality, our experience with our roommates has been quite different. In the first six months or so of sharing a home, we would experience delight in getting to know one another. In the next six months or so, we usually developed a growing awareness of each other’s quirks, weaknesses and faults. Following that period, we delved deeper into what a man who lived in community for the whole of his adult life, Bernard of Clairvaux, described as “the school of love”. The kind of close proximity that sharing a house requires is an educational opportunity, one that not only exposes how petty, resentful, or envious we can be but one that also can teach us what it means to love another person. This more realistic love is based less upon a false, airbrushed image of each other and more upon the sometimes grumpy, edgy, quietly caring and funny image of each other. Sharing a home invited us to both see each other’s gifts and grime close up and to “accept one another has Christ had accepted you” (Romans 15:7). Sharing a home is a path to learn what it means to accept one another with in the way that the God of mercy accepts each of us.
After these longer than expected initial shared living experiments, we made an intentional choice to live with others. Sharing a home with other people became the practice of our family (which included three boys) as we welcomed over 30 people as housemates over the next 25 years.. This vision of hospitality spread throughout the church I pastured as well: over the years, we developed more than 15 shared homes, a free weekly meal and overnight shelter in the church hall, transitional housing for refugee claimants (Kinbrace.ca) and a 28-unit housing project over our parking lot (coherehousing.com).
These homes and shared spaces of habitation have become “schools of love”. For our three sons, living with others provided them, especially in their teen years, with adult mentors and extended family. Our children also became a gift to the many single folks who lived with us, surrounding them with the joy and energy children bring. For example, we had one housemate who lived with us while recovering from a psychotic episode. During that time, our housemate seldom spoke but our boys were always excited to see him, hugged and hung on his back after dinner, and unconditionally accepted him. He often spoke about the healing impact our three lads had upon him. Our kids also grew up not being afraid of someone who was experiencing mental illness and discovered that they garnered skills from those experiences in caring for friends enduring mental health challenges.
Someone has said that one of Vancouver’s main housing problems is not a lack of housing but too many empty bedrooms and buildings. If you have an extra room, have you considered sharing it with someone who is more vulnerable and who needs a place to stay or live? If you do share your home, you may just be surprised you with an unexpected sense of belonging and joy!
Tim Dickau was a pastor at Grandview Church. He currently teaches through the Center for Misional Leadership at St. Andrew’s Hall (on the UBC campus) and directs Citygate Vancouver an organization helping churches address systemic issues such as poverty, homelessness and reconciliation. He is a co-founder of the Shared Living Exchange, a group that resources others who want to exploring living in a shared home. The Shared Living Toolkit is being launched this Fall as a practical resource for people living in a shared home with others.