My current procrastination project is a linocut of an illustrated drawing of one of my housemates, Nia — one of the most interesting, mysterious, and delightfully curious human beings I’ve had the privilege of knowing, much less living with. The lino is based off of a photo that caught my eye. It’s moody. Stage lighting reflects her hair and face as she sings into a mic. As I carve away at this block, I’ve let my mind wander back to the story of this housemates season-of-life. What a gift, what a time.
I live with three WOG — “Women Of God” as the Harvard gen Z students at church inform me. But this isn’t about the other two, this is just about Nia. Now you know that WOG and MOG (Man of God) is a thing according to the brightest crop at the Yard — do with this information what you will.
Nia & I. The lost girls of Neverland. We’re both living these meta parallel lives and the magic of it creeps up on me in overwhelming ways. This Texas-raised woman is a full time working musician for her church and there are little to no greater delights than living the artist life side-by-side with a person who shares the same sacred home space. We’re actual neighbors, bedroom doors next to each other on the third floor and almost every day when I hear her trekking up the flights of stairs I wonder how she manages full time work, full time school, and full time life as an emotionally sensitive creature awake to wonder.
One tough week a few months ago, deep in my own melodrama on the couch, Nia walked in and after her cheery “ALOHA!” I managed to shed some exhausted tears of frustration about a church conflict where I found myself isolated and misunderstood. She sat down, she listened, she left the room and returned with a canvas she painted one late night of a hand being held in glory. “God is holding you,” she said, and she propped the canvas up on the floor for me to look at for a while. She paints, too.
Nia is like a mysterious butterfly. Sometimes I won’t see her for days upon days, ships passing in the night we’ll give each other an understanding *nod* in the hallway with the look that says I’m sorry, I’ve been swamped, and other times her presence creeps up on me like a divine appointment that finds me where I am.
She’s the only person I know who will take showers at 3AM, or consistently finish listening to her Spotify jams or Joel Osteen sermons after she’s parked before turning her car off. And when she sings, when she makes it sing, I open my door so that I can catch her voice.
Whenever I digress about an idea or share something I’ve learned, more often than not Nia will say “hold up, gotta write that down, that could be a song”. And on the occasion when we take a walk, and the light is just right I say to her “hold up, stay right there, gotta take a photo”. She has taught me how to be an artist, a worshipper, how to chill out without doing drugs,1 and how to keep my heart open to wonder. She lets me turn our shared bathroom into the inside of a printer for the nights when I retreat into craft-gremlin mode. She taught me about wabi-sabi and told me embrace it. And no matter how much thrifted art I bring home and arrange and rearrange on the walls, she’ll always say: “The new art. It’s giving. It’s a vibe.” Or, it’s not a vibe, and then we have to rearrange the rearrange. She remains the only one that I have ever listened to #despaircore2 songs for two hours straight. We’ve weathered classic rain-drenched porch chats, skated at the basketball courts on our street corner, and mercilessly debated the quality of Marvel movies.
While we work with different mediums and lead full, busy lives it’s ever so nice to have a creative friend so close who relates to the calling and joy and burden to make. Both of us live lives saturated with media — we’re frequently out on shoots (more video shoots for her) or stockpiling instruments and props, lighting equipment, recording videos, packing and unpacking gear, screaming about how annoying ProPresenter is, working with sound, mics, technology, and always making art for others. On occasion, we talk about what we’re up to art-wise but we live in this mellow middle-ground of not talking about work at home. It’s because, at home, we’re at home.
This season of living-with-housemates with these women of God feels like a season of make-believe, and play. And not to say we never get on each others nerves or struggle with communicating, get sick, hurt each other, or choose not to share when our external lives swell beyond belief with our separate social circles, churches, travel schedules, family demands, and differing theological views. At the end of each day, we may be worlds apart mentally or emotionally but we both occupy a Place together, and that place is binding.
A binding moment, infused with real care and a real knowing with a sharp looming that this season is all too short, that it will pass, I know that this will not be the story forever. Taking a moment to name this season feels important.
We have just a few more weeks with one of our housemates who is getting married, and we will celebrate the death of our current house iteration and watch it turn over, again. We will feast. We will participate in celebration. We will raise our glasses and cheer our sister on toward new heights of anticipated glory. The temporary nature of a season gives it its value, but deep down, desperately, I want the good times to stay. I’m stubborn about change and growing up. I don’t want to be a Susan and lose her way — or as C. S. Lewis spoke of it:
“Peter gets back to Narnia in it.
I am afraid Susan does not.
Haven't you noticed that she is rather fond of being too grownup?”
Being too grown up kills any of the magic of living together with other humans. It denies the existence of home and place and community.
Having the courage to stay missional in the housemates season is hard work, and an inescapable calling for me. I’m not sure how long this season will last, or how long this chapter is supposed to be. Maybe one of these days my current string of dates with overly intense men3 will finally stick, or I’ll move to finish grad school, or I’ll fundraise a few million and renovate a townhouse I can turn into an artist’s residence, or I’ll do my year out of the country or in NYC or on some farm in California. Maybe I’ll be able to rightly order my dreams in the future, but the child’s voice in me wants to stay playing in the ‘ville, be the lost girls of Neverland with Nia, and not lose housemates to marriage. I'm fine if we sink into some cultish vow of friendship where we live as God intended — all together forever and ever Amen.
She doth protest too much.
No, I don’t want to be a Susan. I don’t want to be the grown-up that shuts down the game of living in this magical ordinary. However, we all know that Real grownups, and Real velveteen rabbits and real rabbits are those who are old enough to recover the joy of the ordinary.
Nia is not someone I knew two years ago, and in a year or two she might be someone that parts ways for good — and therein lies the gift of the present moment. Doing life, doing stress together and reminding each other that we don’t go from stress to stress but from grace to grace and glory to glory. This is the home from which we can water our dreams and call it a good life and call it good home. As Christie Purifoy says — every dream needs a home.
A question filtering through my social circle lately has been one of those fun pop-quizzy ones determining if you’re a past, present, future-present or future-past person. I have no good data to measure this, but living in the present is the very last place my brain spends it’s time. I’m always thinking about the future, being future-oriented, or dwelling in the past and filtering through memories and moments that track my own story. When I’m by myself, the present has always been my weakest reality. Which is largely why I love living with people — they tether me to the present, they do life side-by-side with me bringing present moments into focus. They turn the ordinary into Neverland.
I suppose this is why I wanna write on the wall, and take note for a moment this precious ordinary. A friend called me out once for mythologizing my house, but I don’t accept that this is what’s happening. Perhaps it’s self-deception, but I’ve learned my painful lessons about expecting housemates to become your closest community, or expecting friendships to go beyond a place they were never designed too. Not every roommate is going to connect in all the ways and live a life with you above co-existence.
What I don’t accept, though, is a denial of the deeper reality what living with friends actually is in this current moment. By default, the people who live with you know you in a unique way that most of your friends or family do not. They may not know you to the extent that you might share yourself with those who don’t live with you, but as your fellow-house-dwellers they share a trench with you like no other. And if you let them, they can speak into your life in rich ways. They know your blindspots, and can speak to them. They know your comings and goings. They know who you spend your time with and who you share your meals with. This place you occupy becomes an experience that you share.
Is this not the beauty of the ordinary?
Again, Purifoy writes:
“Our lives are stories built of small moments. Ordinary experiences. It is too easy to forget that our days are adding up to something astonishing. We do not often stop to notice the signs and wonders. The writing on the wall. But some days we do.”
I deeply wish to be a person that celebrates the ordinary moments in a specific place with a specific set of people. I want to be someone who looks through the present moment to the harmonious truth and beauty of a greater reality. And Nia, whether she knows it or not, tethers me to these ordinary moments we share. The place is an invitation, community is the choice.
Since the start of this post, I’ve finished procrastinating on the paper I was supposed to be writing and completed the linocut. Made some prints, wrote a sticky note on it congratulating Nia on a stunning spoken word poetry Easter production she was a part of, wrote “the world needs your art, keep going” and slipped the prints over to my ordinary neighbor, a person I get to do daily, ordinary life with in a season that I never want to take for granted.
we do consume ungodly amounts of tea, our drug of choice.
we’re into #despaircore in this household. think cottagecore or hobbitcore or bardcore but despair. all the sad songs.
I should try offering them our drug of choice.