House Rules

In My Heart

You stand at the door to my heart

A garden where I am growing beloved community

Seed by seed, tending, nourishing, and waiting patiently for each relationship of reciprocal love to thrive and blossom

Come, bear witness to it

Be a part of it

You are welcome here

If you enter this place, this is my promise to you, and what I ask:

For us together, to tend this garden with all the tools needed for reciprocity in love

To strain to know the flame of the soul within as the heart cracks wide

To be patient as tender hearts open

To allow this opening, this vulnerability, this mustering of courage - faith that another will see our souls for the beautiful flames that they are

To reach deeper as we come to see the complexities of our truths

To imagine creatively, co created futures more aligned with those truths

To to strain and yearn and struggle together bearing our gifts as offerings - our hand in birthing the world we wish to see

To embrace the beauty and the pains that come with seeing and being seen

To lean in when we are hurt, when we do not know, when we are confused, when we lose sight

To fail and to give grace in failing, knowing that we are committed to one another again and again

To hold each other to this covenant and to the truths that we are coming to know with compassion

And once you have left this place

Go forth, reciprocity of love in your heart,

and share it

Step in

The garden is open, and warm, and full of potential

Together, let us bear witness

In the heart

Originally completed: 9/5/2022

Last Edited: 12/30/2022

This poem In My Heart is actually what I call my "house rules".

Through the process of writing my credo, I came to the conclusion that my purpose, as I see it now, is to work to bring beloved community into being. This brought about a great deal of thinking on the topic of building and sustaining community more broadly. Creating not necessarily many, but deep, strong, growth-oriented, and loving connections with others. Not an easy thing!

Friendship creation and maintenance are both hard and things that I have struggled to prioritize at different times in my life. As such, I would not consider myself to be an expert in building and maintaining adult friendships let alone a thriving community.

I don’t expect to one day have a huge community or be a prominent figure in community building (if there is such a thing). Rather, I hope to be an instigator of this kind of deep community in my own small corner of the world. I hope to help other people become instigators. And I trust that there are others out there in their own corner of the world instigating their own beautiful, loving communities.

So I started small, thinking about how I could create a sense of intentional community among my friends, and to me, the space where I really have the influence to create an intentionally constructive and loving space is my home.

These “rules” are my intentions for the space. What I hope to create with all those who enter my home.

For right now it is just written digitally but I hope to put it into motion - as art on the wall of my home, as a note I send to my friends, as a reading to bring love into the space… and I am sure things I have not even thought of yet.

This is one of many things I intend to do to create connections of love and growth in my corner of the world. I have much journaling, discussion, listening, and creating to do to make this happen.

I am excited. My heart yearns for this rich community that is to come.

Originally completed: 12/30/2022

Last Edited: 1/2/2023