Finding Community, Finding Home, part 1

Finding Community, Finding Home, part1

It took a while. I finished high school. I started at Wright State University. I dropped out of Wright State. I went to Maranatha Bible Institute associated with my church. Then there was a church split and I was excommunicated. Friends were told to mark, admonish, and avoid me—a sermon preached from the pulpit, as laid out 2 Timothy chapters 2 and 3, Scriptures taken out of context and perverted for power over others.

I suffered a breakdown.

I went back to Wright State while at the same time moving out of my parent’s house. I was struggling for clarity. I dropped out of Wright State—again—and traveled out West, getting a seasonal job at Yellowstone National Park. I extended my work contract, as I had no future plans. Late 1979/early 1980 found me in Athens, Ohio enrolled at Ohio University. I chose this school as I wanted to be close to a very solid friend, someone who would call me out and also encourage me: Keith Wasserman, who would go on to start and continue in service as director of the only homeless shelter in the tri-county area, Good Works.

It was while finishing up my Bachelor’s degree at OU that I was visiting with friends when another friend walked in with a record album, saying you’ve got to hear these guys. The music wasn’t exactly to my taste, but I was intrigued by the liner notes: They lived in community in the inner-city of Chicago doing outreach. That Christmas on a cross-country bus trip to visit my sister in New Mexico, I made a quick stop in Chicago to visit the community.

Even more intrigued. What would it take to live this lifestyle? I was only thinking a few months. I paid another visit over Spring Break; this time with another friend who I thought might be more than a friend, something I was open to. After that visit Jim packed up his stuff and moved to Chicago to join. Again, I had no other plans. There was a recession going on, there was no Internet, I had no idea how to apply remote to jobs without being somewhere first. The recruiters from school districts were very limited that year. Anyway, I wasn’t sure at all anymore if I even wanted to teach.

What I’d wanted to do was write, but my father put the kibosh on that. I’m not sure why I let him stifle my dreams. Perhaps, I wasn’t quite secure or confident in my writing. I’d been chosen for a prestigious workshop under the author Daniel Keys (Flowers for Algernon), where my one-on-one sessions were comprised of me crying and blowing my nose and Keyes handing me tissues and critiquing my submitted work. Graduating and moving to Chicago to live in a commune, moved writing to the back burner temporarily.

So I followed Jim to the community for what I supposed was going to be a few months. Just for the summer, until I got a real job, until the next thing came along. But nothing ever did, and I ended up staying for almost 40 years.

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