Weird Humans Together in Community, Otherwise Known As "Koinonia"

I had the honor of spending last week with a group of fellow students and one staff person from my school in San Francisco doing service work in areas related to queer and intersecting identities. We stayed in a hostel in the Tenderloin, which is essentially Skid Row of San Francisco. There was overstimulation from a new environment and experiences, but I think one of the hardest things we faced as a group was the overwhelming presence of people experiencing homelessness on our walks to and from the sites we volunteered at.

Having lived in the Twin Cities for the majority of my life, the presence of people experiencing homelessness has been made clear. However, I’ve noticed that we’ve been conditioned to move past the people on the medians holding up cardboard signs with “God Bless” written on with sharpie. We ignore their humanness.

In San Francisco, we learned quickly that in order to cope and grow with the overwhelming presence of people in need of food, shelter, health services, and even the simplest “Hello,” we had to see them as humans. We had to realize that everyone we encountered was a person. We made it a point to ask how their days were going, we listened to their stories, we were pained when they shot us down with profanities.

We prepped meals for and served them to people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, we canvassed for San Francisco Women Against Rape, we cried when we felt we weren’t doing enough, or even too much, we ate food, we cried some more at cat videos, and we had nap puddles. We were outside our comfort zones from the moment we walked from the transit station to the hostel at 12:30 that first night in the Tenderloin to the sleepy moments we left.

All of it was in community with one another. (Even the moments of some dire bathroom emergencies.) Our little community was intentional in our service to not only the nearby neighborhoods, but also to ourselves.

In Greek theology, the term koinonia (koy-no-nee-uh) means communion, Eucharist, to be in community or fellowship with one another.  Koinonia is a key theological term. It isn’t restricted to the walls of a church. It pours out into the streets of the Tenderloin of San Francisco, it happens in the middle of reflections after a long day of manual labor, when we want to curl up into a ball and turn into an introverted gremlin, our people are there with us and they bring koinonia.

As I talk to people about whether or not they think church is a worthwhile institution, I’m finding that the biggest thing people yearn for in terms of worship is a sense of community. And not the kinds that gather together, is silent during worship, mouths the Our Father, and moves on with their daily lives. I mean the kind that moves together, that feel together, that acts together in service, all while simultaneously uplifting one another in our confusion, doubt, frustrations, fears, and heartbreaks. Intentional community.

Koinonia is not a simple thing to create.

Nadia Bolz-Weber explains in her book that as her church House for All Sinners and Saints (HFASS) aged in years, “the lack of growth in church attendance was maddening.” Later, when the congregation grew, she was still frustrated when she found that a large portion of new members were from the ‘burbs, driving into HFASS because it was new and more authentic and cool.

To have a community of weirdo hipsters is awesome because many of us have felt excluded from the normalcy of the world and we finally have place to be ourselves. We create a new kind of normal. The problem that might bring up is the restriction of other people’s “normal.” To be part of a community that has endured being frowned upon by social norms, it’s pretty hypocritical to exclude others because “they don’t look like us.”

How do we include other people’s kinds of normal? By realizing that there is no set definition of the word “normal,” by removing prejudices of people’s experiences and embracing them for what Nadia calls the greatest spiritual practice: simply showing up.

The point of intentional communities is the first two letters of “intentional.” Everyone is “in,” everyone gets their own letter jacket, and everyone is welcome to join in on the team cheer (be it the Our Father, a team cheer, or the Beyonce song that plays over and over…)

Tell the people in your communities that it is good that they are there. Learn from them, listen to them, grow with them. Acknowledge and embrace their humanness.