Give the Gift of Conscience

This Holiday season, share a gift in honor or in memory of a loved one, choose a card, print, and give as a token of the gift.

Donations may be made online via our website at www.belovedhouse.webs.com or through the mail to our community house at 39 Grove St., Asheville, NC 28801.

PRINTABLE CARDS (click on the link below):

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM BELOVED HOUSE

coexist card

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So Many Stories So Little Time

Our life is a busy, bustling life. Our life is full of people! And there are many stories to tell but we often have so little time to tell them because of all that we are doing just to simply say, “We love our neighbors.” Every day in our living room, our dining room, on the porch, and in the front yard there are people without a permanent home who make our little community house theirs during the day time hours. We hear laughter and tears. People share their stories, their jokes, their frustrations, their music (yes you’ll often hear the sounds of guitars and African drums and sometimes what we have termed the most obnoxious birthday song in Asheville). Our friend, James, who lives in our intentional residential community often regales us with stories of life on the streets and on the road from San Diego to the east coast. He tells of sleeping in dumpsters and in a small dugout hole by a large bank downtown. He tells of hunger and how God sent just the right thing his way even in the desert to preserve his life. Now every day he spends his time not surviving but “tending to orphans and widows” as he calls it. These were the ones in ancient Bible days who suffered most in the economy, the ones most on the ragged edge of survial. James’ story is our story. His mission, our mission. Every day we hear stories and see people coming alive again! Our time is full of the things that count. We love our neighbors and help them when they are sick. We open our door to folks who don’t even have a door. We sit and listen. We offer our time as a gift not for money but for love. We have so many stories to share so we hope you’ll come visit with us at our community house. We will fill your ears with stories and your hearts with love. And we may unashamedly take some of your time! And we hope you’ll be glad you came!

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Magic

Last week, we had two children share our Wednesday open hours, meal, and Bible Study.  Ella was fascinated by our new mister.  One of our supporters gifted us the mister which will humidify the air in the winter and help keep our folks healthier.  Winter is brutal when you’re on the streets.  Pnuemonia and bronchitis are common occurences and so this gift of health was much appreciated. 

Through a child’s eyes, the mister has great features that have nothing to do with health (or do they)?  The mister has visual mist that looks like fog that rolls out around changing colored lights.  To Ella, it was pure magic!  It delighted her and made her think and wonder.  Warm lights and mist catch the eye of many who live on the streets.  Christy talked about just staring at it and realizing that being at Community of the Beloved feels like home.  “It’s what you’d do in your living room.  Just look at it and everybody chilling, relaxing, enjoying each other.”  So maybe the lights and cool mist are healthy, too.  They remind people that our living room is home and sanctuary, safe space.  And that de-stresses us all.  Stres is dangerous to your health.  And what could be more stressful than to be without safe space to live in. 

I think God is into magic.  Just look at all the miracles.  And no wonder Jesus loved children.  They have the proper respect to see that all of life is a miracle.  Breathing is a miracle.  Having friends is a miracle.  Making home is a miracle in world where money is respected more than people so that people are shoved to the streets. 

It is a miracle that we have a residential community of people who now make home together and who do believe that people are to be respected and share home.  That no one is defined by their disabilities but by their gifts.  It is a miracle that we make safe space each day for people on the streets to share life and humanity.  It is a miracle that we break bread together five times a week off the leftovers of our society that would have been thrown in the trash.  It is a miracle that people from all walks of life without even a common language or culture can find that we’re all children of God and that we are a family.

Yes, magic is in the air at Beloved.  So come over.  Take a deep breath and get ready to be transformed!

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Precarity by Amy Cantrell

Precarity.  The first time I heard this word was at the Open Door Community in Atlanta, Georgia.  Much of my roots as a follower of the vagrant, people-loving, good-news-to-the-poor sharing, Jesus came from the Open Door starting in college when I was re-schooled by community co-founder, Murphy Davis, to take to the streets and cross lines of difference.  Precarity was a word fully embraced by Dorothy Day, a journalist who stood with workers and the poor.  She helped to begin the movement known as the Catholic Worker communities.  Dorothy Day wrote an article on Poverty and Precarity where she talks about the need for the church to live on the edge instead of being so worried about the condition of the buildings we have church in. 

“Poverty and Precarity”
By Dorothy Day
The Catholic Worker, May 1952, 2, 6. “True poverty is rare,” a saintly priest writes to us from Martinique. “Nowadays communities are good, I am sure, but they are mistaken about poverty. They accept, admit on principle, poverty, but everything must be good and strong, buildings must be fireproof, Precarity is rejected everywhere, and precarity is an essential element of poverty.”

That has been forgotten. Here we want precarity in everything except the church. These last days our refectory was near collapsing. We have put several supplemental poles and thus it will last, maybe two or three years more. Some day it will fall on our heads and that will be funny. Precarity enables us to help very much the poor. When a community is always building, and enlarging, and embellishing, which is good in itself, there is nothing left over for the poor. We have no right to do this as long as there are slums and breadlines somewhere.”

Though I’ve known the word precarity since the late 1990s, I must admit that I really didn’t know it at all.  My head knew it well but my heart, my body knew very little about it until just recently.  Precarity (comes from precarious which we are more apt to have heard and) basically means living on the edge.   Poor people know precarity though they may never use the word.  When you’re poor, you always live on the edge—the fine line between survival and not survival. 

Our little community has spent the last few months fighting for our life (at least in my mind).  We have wondered whether we will be able to pay the rent, received disconnection notices from the electric company, and saw our food supply dwindle.  We took on extra part-time jobs and worked alongside other poor people doing meanial labor during the hours we weren’t open.  If you received a phone book at or near your door lately, it may have been us.  We saw how firsthand how corporate systems use desperate people to do a job that pays dramatically less than the worth of the labor given because capitalism thrives on poverty.

I am a worry wart.  My partner, Lauren, says much of my worrying comes from getting a first taste at real poverty (though I’ve lived in voluntary poverty for years).  She is right.  And so with bills piling up and very little donations coming in, I spent many a sleepless night wondering how to help our little community survive.  Stress is unhealthy and so my health and quality of relationships unraveled to greater degrees as my worrying increased.  You might say I went kicking and screaming towards precarity.

There is a simple gospel thought that runs through the heart of the Jesus life.  It says, “We are saved by faith.”  And though I am the pastor, Lauren seems to embrace this simple statement far better than I.  She has told me during many a worry-filled night to have faith and demonstrated that by the freedom with which she embraces poverty (this comes from years of being poor and learning to live with it even as you struggle for justice). 

So in short, I’ve learned that we are not saved by worry.  We are not saved by fear.  We are not saved by trying to keep ourselves alive. 

I have begun to embrace precarity and the power of love.   I do not know what the journey toward precarity will mean for our community.  But I do believe that our community exists by God’s grace and not by my worry.  I have now embraced deeply in my bones what we’ve said from the beginning: that our true mission is to love and give in love and to change the world by the power of love lived out in community, a community that centers itself at the margins.  And if we give everything away in love then we have been faithful.  Faithful–even if we can no longer keep our doors open and are pushed further to the edge and the streets. 

Thank God for walking on the edge of this world.  We just might fall off into the kingdom of God, the Beloved Community.

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In the Media

Our work for social change and speaking out against prejudice and oppression has been in Asheville’s weekly independent newspaper:  Mountain Xpress. 

Raising awareness: Local group focuses on jobs, community          by Margaret Williams on 05/20/2010

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photo by Jerry Nelson

 

Community of the Beloved — a local group of “diverse people, most who live in poverty and many who live on the streets,” says co-organizer Amy Cantrell — held an ice-cream social and a sign-toting event on Tuesday, May 18 at Prtichard Park in downtown Asheville. The goal, says Cantrell, was to raise awareness about the challenges facing Asheville’s poorest residents.

“We believe in building community, and we need to help each other,” Cantrell tells Xpress. Tuesday’s participants carried signs reflecting the need for jobs, healthcare, education and more. As one sign indicated, many Asheville residents may be just one paycheck away from homelessness.

 

A shocking cartoon appeared in the Mountain Xpress that treats our friends on the streets with disdain and disrespect.  The cartoon is a reflection of how we see certain people as less than human and how the media feeds this type of prejudice.  Here is the cartoon followed by a letter of outrage written in repsonse by Beloved co-founders.

A place to sit

by Brent Brown on 07/27/2010

A message from Be Loved to… everybody

by L. White and A. Cantrell in Vol. 17 / Iss. 03 on 08/10/2010

Prejudice is destructive to the fabric of our community.It is appalling that, on the one hand, Mountain Xpress can write such a powerful piece exposing the past prejudice of deeply rooted racism in “Back to Summerlane” [July 28 Xpress] and, in the same issue, promote such blatant prejudice against people who are homeless [in the cartoon] “Land of This Guy.” This kind of prejudice ripples out, changing the landscape of our city as revealed in “Benched” [July 28 Xpress] and can lead to the awful violence seen at Camp Summerlane.

We welcome citizens without homes, seniors, tourists and Asheville residents to find comfortable seating, rest and the opportunity to build real relationships that have the power to overcome our prejudices at Be Loved, a community house located at 39 Grove Street in downtown Asheville. — L. White and A. Cantrell
Be Loved

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Smokey Train Hopper

Smokey Train Hopper  by Lauren White

One of the first people I met upon opening our community house was Smokey “the Train Hopper.”  Smokey was a well-guarded, wise soul with the grayest of ZZ Top beards.  The gruffness of his hello warned me to tap down my enthusiasm.  He sat in the corner and picked up a beat-up guitar and began to sing songs fit for campfires and beans.  His eyes became alive singing lyrics of riding the rails.  Suddenly, we all felt like kids circling around grandpa. 

Smokey knew how to captivate a room with his story-telling about all his adventures riding the rails throughout this great land.  And he spoke of something sad–of not loving anyone cause that leads to hurt.  So right then and there I took it as a personal challenge to disprove his belief and get him to say, “I love you.”  I told Amy about my challenge.  Smokey continued to come every day to share in fellowship and meals.  He loved to cook and volunteered to cook some breakfast one morning.  We had sausage and some eggs.  Well this would never do he said.  So a couple of hours later, he’d turned the small loaves and fishes we had into a miraculous feast–a five course meal!  He beamed while serving folks–that same shine that came out while singing about riding the rails.  Bells and whistles went off in my head.  YES!  YES!  This is it right here!  People feeling proud regardless of where they are at in life.  People coming together sharing gifts and needs.  It was great that within a couple of weeks here we were doing the damn thing!  Community was happening! 

Smokey continued to entertain us with stories and songs.  One day, as we were closing up, Smoke reached out for a hug.  We fell into a safe, cozy one and he whispered, “I love you, sister.”  HE SAID IT!  HE SAID IT!  The highest of honors.  Flabbergasted, I told him I loved him, too, and celebrated my victory silently.  Yes, we want to be love and we want everyone to know that they are loved and can live love.

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Sharing our Stories

Since April, we have been sharing love, life, and hospitality at our community house.  We meet so many people every day and are touched by their lives and stories.  Every day we see the distress and pain of homelessness, poverty, and prejudice.  Every day we commit to changing the world by the love in our hearts, the work of our hands, and the way we live our lives.  We’d like to share with you some of the stories of our life in community.

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Who We Are

We are a place of empowerment for those without a home to feel at home; for families to have a supportive environment to appreciate each other; a space for the forgotten to find their voice; where people with disabilities and seniors find purpose; where people support each other and work together to make a difference.  We are the space you come to be loved–regardless of who you are and where you came from.  Because don’t we all deserve that!

The theme song from the tv show, Cheers, says:  “you wanna go where everybody knows your name.”  There is a reason we like such places.  Something happens to us when people know us, when people believe in us, when we believe in other people.  We create a supportive network that builds hope and creates change in us and the world around us.  This is the power of community.  What makes us different from social service organizations–we focus on the often forgotten element:  community.  We all need each other.  We are here to create a place where people feel connected, cared for, and empowered to live fully and make a difference.  We all need help sometimes.  We all have gifts to share.

Everybody needs space to be human–to rest,
lax, and play, a place to work together with purpose, to share our gifts, grow, and make a difference in the world.   We are working toward opening a community house that would be this kind of space and we need your help to do it.  Picture it with us:

You walk in the front door to a cozy couch, a cold drink, a good meal, a hand shake or hug, and good conversation.  After you’ve cooled down and rested your feet (you walked a few miles from your camp site), you can join a group of people playing a board game, or head to the art room to make something beautiful, or maybe you want to jam out with a few folks on the musical instruments in the music room.  Later you’ll take a hot shower, get a change of warm clothes from the clothes closet, enjoy a meal, and take a nap in the nap room.   You feel like yourself again–not a “homeless bum” like they yell at you from their cars but a man who shares his music to make others happy, a man who is part of something bigger than himself, a man who gives now and has a future. 

Sometimes you have to leave home to discover each other.  Sometimes in families, you get into such rigid roles and routines that you need to get away to neutral space where you’re all just people.  You play a game, share stories, serve others together.  You learn to see each other in a new light.  Your family bond strengthens. 

Your heart is heavy.  The weight of the world is on your shoulders.  You’re afraid, worried, confused.  You head to one of the support groups.  You listen.  You share.  You know you are not alone.  You feel human again and somehow you know you’re gonna make it–with a little help from your friends.

You’re lonely rattling around in your apartment.  You’ve been a widow now as long as you were married.  All your family is gone now.  You walk in the door and find a new family.  You meet some people who like to cook and the kitchen is open to you.  You talk and laugh and taste each dish.  Then you sit down at the table with people from all different walks of life and enjoy the meal.  No one leaves hungry for food or friendship.  Then you realize you have lots of gifts to share.  You garden and sew and you’re patient with people.  Suddenly you have a place to share all these gifts and you’re not “the lonely widow” anymore.  You have a reason to get out of bed.  Your community needs you.

A place for community.  Will you join us in making this vision a reality?  With your help, we can raise the necessary funds to open this community house as we ring in 2010.  Will you share a gift with us?  And if you can, as you spend the holidays with friends, co-workers, and family, share our story, our vision about the power of community.

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Community of the Beloved

 

 Picture a place

• where everyone has something to offer
• where talents are utilized for good
• where families enjoy spending time together
• where people find their voices & gifts by sharing them
• where youth learn to love themselves and others and not judge based on what they see and hear on tv, radio, magazines
• where someone learns to write a poem or grow a vegetable for the first time
• where a child learns not to bully
• where people gather as neighbors and friends to care for each other, our city, and world

Picture community!

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