As we move through our annual Stewardship Campaign and into the holiday season, we are highlighting the work of the Charis Community with a series of blog posts based on informal interviews with current residents. Charis is an intentional community centered around the shared values of simplicity, prayer, and hospitality. Although there are guiding principles that inform everyone who joins Charis, current residents have the opportunity to discern their shared purpose, intention, and community covenants.
Emily Wright: Although you’re relatively new to the Charis Community, I understand that you’re not new to intentional community. When and how did you first get involved?
Craig Green: I grew up in Staunton in the 1970s which, at the time, was a very parochial, southern town, and I just didn’t fit in there. I didn’t see a future for myself there. I developed an interest in intentional communities and the broader counterculture, but it was a pretty romanticized view. After college – which also wasn’t a good fit – I left after two years and moved into my first intentional community.
EW: What was it about intentional community that you found so compelling?
CG: What drew me was the value system – the emphasis on sustainability, relationship to the earth, the emotional satisfaction of relating more authentically. I first read Wendell Berry as a teenager, and he really informed my ideas of land stewardship. I will say that these are still my dreams, my ideals. But intentional community is also challenging. There is a tension between the ideal and the reality of living it out. My dreams and my reality have not matched up yet, but the dream persists.
EW: Can you say more about that?
CG: Sure. There is an inherent struggle in living this way. The current website refers to Charis as a community of “radical Christian discipleship” which is interesting because the word radical comes from the Latin word radix which means root. In one way, to be radical is to be rooted in our core convictions and to identify our core challenges. What does this mean for radical change? Radical change is root change. It looks at the fundamental ways we relate to each other and our own experience. So, there is an inherent tension there. We are working to develop a shared vision while being willing to continuously revisit and re-evaluate that vision.
EW: What was it that drew you to Charis in particular?
CG: I’d known about Charis for a few years. I first visited about three years ago, when I attended a Taizé service that was held at Good Shepherd church. The second time was a Grace Church dinner church event. It’s actually a funny memory because there was a cardboard coffin with the words “white supremacy” painted on it that hanging up on the porch. It had obviously been used at a protest related to the August 12th events in Charlottesville. And I was actually getting ready to begin some Extinction Rebellion activism, so I emailed KJ about it. That was probably the strangest email subject line – “Can I borrow your coffin?”
EW: What are you hoping to focus on during your time with Charis?
CG: Hosting the Community Night with Neal and Emily Little is something that we like to establish and continue to share with Grace Church. We want to create a context for heartful imagining of the life we want to live both inspirationally and practically. It’s predicated on the notion of cathedral thinking which refers to the ways that cathedrals were built in medieval times over the course of hundreds of years. You have to develop a long view and consider how your work will impact future generations. We want Community Night to be a sanctuary for this kind of long-term thinking and inquiry, a place to practice both faith and perseverance. I’m also a singing activist, and community singing is another context for connection and inspiration that we want to extend to the broader Grace Church community. As the pandemic wanes, we plan to host more community singing events. We’re in the process of bringing a gazebo onto the Charis property for this purpose, so stay tuned for more about that!
EW: Is there anything else you’d like to share that I didn’t ask you about?
CG: I am very aware and grateful for the support of Grace Church that makes the Charis Community possible. The models and methods we develop here are intended to be shared. So, we want to extend that invitation to the Grace Church community and also, hopefully, make a broader impact on the larger community.