A fistful of years have passed since I first read about a Vineyard in Cincinnati who’s strange turn of fortunes had lead them to live in priest’s lodgings and celebrate the hours in a crumbling stone cathedral. After watching them from afar through the lenses of websites and magazine articles, I’m finally here, having walked through the double doors of the parsonage-cum-neo-monastery last night long over due and ridiculously jet lagged. (Me, munching a burger and fries in the clean, quite kitchen. The rest of the ten member household sound asleep above me.)

This morning Kevin and Tracy, Aaron, Kenny, and I gathered around the long dinning room table lit dim with candles, and we greeted the morning with prayers. The morning Psalms were 105 and 34. “Search for the Lord and his strength, continually seek his face.” “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me out of all my terror.” The prayers were simple: for job searches, stolen vans found, travels safe made and yet to be made. Then Kevin made eggs and Kenny made coffee and 7year old Isaac drew picture of stickflowers for his mother. It was a very good morning.

Barbara says I have a good engine. By this she means; I have a good mind, and a good heart, and a good “gift mix,” and all the sorts of things I need to be a cultivator. What I don’t know, she says, is what kind of vehicle I want to put that engine into. A VW bug? A minivan? A truck? I think here, in this house I will find the answer to that question. No, that’s not quite it…. There is table tucked into one corner of the kitchen here. It is economic in size and topped with a cracked piece of white formica, old and thick like the kind that used to be in kitchens in the 20’s. I feel like I have been carrying around a small cardboard box of puzzle pieces, and that here in this house, I might be able to spill those pieces out on that little piece of formica and shuffle them around with one lazy finger, holding a coffee cup in one hand, not really caring, and in that not-really-trying-too-hard moment, I might find a fit.