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Rutba House

January 13, 2009 | posted by Lars under united states, updates

God is good! Last night, we rolled into Asheboro, NC looking for a place to set up our tent, but after a stop at the library, we were being hosted by a doctor and his wife just outside of town! We’re glad to be keeping up the no-tent record, given that night temperatures are dipping into the 20s.

Anyway, it’s been the better part of a week now since our last substantive update, but we’ve been off the bikes for much of that time, at Rutba House in Durham, NC. Rutba House is a Christian intentional community in Durham committed to “a new way of life in community.” Rutba was formed almost six years ago in response to the hospitality several of the members received in Iraq when a vehicle in their CPT delegation convoy wrecked on a piece of shrapnel in the desert, near the town of Rutba. Even though the U.S. had bombed the hospital there just three days earlier, a local doctor treated their injured and refusing payment, asked only that they tell the story of what happened in Rutba.

So this small community in North Carolina has committed themselves to sharing this hospitality and becoming part of the community in the Walltown neighborhood of Durham. They recognize that this will take time, so they’ve given their lives to it, and mean to live their whole lives out in that community.

Now, everything we learn about progress assumes upward social mobility - that people should work for higher social class, marked by more opportunities in terms of employment and lifestyle - but folks at Rutba are turning this on its head, saying we don’t need the world at our doorstep if we have neighbors there, and Christ as our center. This is radical, I think, but most fully in the true sense, of getting back to the root of “community.” This “downward mobility” is in effect a statement of submission to the community, “You’re more important than my personal fulfillment. In fact, you are integral to my fulfillment in Christ.”

This commitment aside, Rutba is a pretty “normal” when it comes to intentional communities. You don’t have to be a hippy or a tree hugger to live there - in fact, as one of the members, Susan, said, “anyone could live here and it would feel normal.” With two married couples and three under five years old, the community is growing fast; Taize songs are punctuated with bowls of Kix cereal, and the running commentary of the four year-old keeps everything from fasting to long church services in perspective.

More to come on Jon’s health and on generosity, hopefully tonight. We need to get on the road to Charlotte.