It was not the kind of heralded Washington arrival (usually reserved for queens, popes, Soviet premiers, and Patriot missiles) that gets written up in the Style section of The Washington Post. Barb and Jim Tamialis, with 1-year-old Michael, 2-month-old Nathan, and a puppy, inconspicuously crossed the threshold into their new home on 17th Street -- to discover layers of dirt, discarded furniture, peeling paint in a shade dubbed "swimming pool green"and a man on the first floor. Everything but the kitchen sink -- literally. And no oven.
For two-and-a-half weeks they cleaned, throwing old mattresses out the window into the backyard, sterilizing baby bottles in an electric coffee pot, cooking on a hotplate, and praying for the plumber to arrive. On Labor Day weekend, two cars and a moving van from Chicago pulled up next door.
A troop of children from the neighborhood witnessed the arrival of this unusual, long-haired group. The 11 sisters and brothers of the Williams family helped carry in their belongings and then laid claim to the discarded mattresses for tumbling in the alley.
Altogether 20 people had made the move to Washington, DC in the summer of 1975 to make a new life in the two houses on 17th Street. For some, their first experience of intentional community -- though they wouldn't have called it that then -- had been in the home of the Jolly Green Giant in a suburb of Chicago in 1971. Seven students from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School had responded to an announcement on a seminary bulletin board requesting students to paint and house-sit that summer. The house, it turned out, belonged to the radio personality behind the famous "Ho, ho, ho." There the first issue of The Post-American, forerunner to Sojourners, was created.
That fall the seven moved into a house in Lake Bluff -- cheap because it was next to the sewer. It was easily identifiable by the bright yellow buses parked out front that they used in the early mornings to drive children to school, and it soon became a gathering point for many others who were drawn to the worship, the political conscience, and the shared life of the group.
A year later a dozen people moved into the Rogers Park neighborhood of inner-city Chicago, where days were marked by fervent political discussions around the open oven in their heatless apartment, growing involvement in their low-income neighborhood, and an intense effort to find a perfect community model. It was a time in which a valuable and enduring lesson was learned. A community heavy on vision and ministry began to neglect the relationships that formed the foundation of its life. Ego clashes and identity struggles erupted, and the community eventually collapsed.
Jim Wallis and Joe Roos were The Post-American's only staff for several months. They moved with three others into another low-income neighborhood of Chicago called Uptown. Slowly the group began to experience healing of their wounds and to recover a vision for living together. Prayer and worship, forgiveness and reconciliation became central to the community's life.
By this time they had severed all ties to the seminary -- or, perhaps more accurately, the seminary had severed ties to them. This may have had something to do with the fact that they had showed up in class one day wearing war paint as an anti-war protest; or because they had dug graves in the lawn of the administration building (though, admittedly, this was not a protest of deaths in Vietnam but an effort to symbolically "bury student opinion" because the seminary wouldn't allow women to visit in the men's dormitories). In any case, the political shenanigans of a handful of students at a leading evangelical seminary were making news, and Trinity's big donors were not happy about it (the dean called Jim into his office to tell him so).
AFTER MUCH PRAYER and discernment, the group decided to head east to the nation's capital. The move to Washington, DC precipitated a name change from The Post-American to Sojourners, borrowing a biblical metaphor for the people of God. The new name reflected a deepening of identity and a posture that not only took on all that was negative and oppressive about the American system but also was committed to building up faith and life in the church.
The early encounter with the Williams family was providential, setting into place the neighborhood ministries of Sojourners Community. Barb Tamialis cared for the youngest of the children and her sons in the living room of one of the houses, which soon became decorated with their artwork and overflowed with a multitude of projects and books. Over time her effort grew into the creation of the Sojourners Daycare Center, which served a hundred neighborhood children, including many in Clifton Terrace, the large public housing project in which it was located.
An after-school program, including tutoring and trips to Washington's monuments and museums, was created for the older children. Today 50 children who are "at risk" educationally participate in programs at Sojourners Neighborhood Center. The after-school program now includes a computer learning center, which is also available for adult computer training. Last year -- in a neighborhood in which most children don't graduate from high school -- all 50 Sojourners students passed to the next grade.
The children are very aware that they live in one of the violent and drug-ridden neighborhoods that has earned Washington, DC the title "murder capital" of the nation. In response to this, this summer's program will focus on nonviolent conflict resolution, drawing on the principles put forth by Martin Luther King Jr. and encouraging development of verbal skills in resolving conflict, as well as the usual trips to camp and the beach.
Shortly after we came to know them, the Williams family received an eviction notice. It was our first introduction to "gentrification," the process of the wealthy putting the poor out of their homes in order to "revitalize" neighborhoods. Thus was launched both our hospitality ministry -- we created a new household to take in the Williams family -- and our housing work, which eventually led to the creation of the Southern Columbia Heights Tenants Union (SCHTU).
The tenants union flourished for several years, organizing in buildings to pressure landlords to provide such basics as heat, running water, and locks on apartment doors. In a few of the 50-plus buildings, the tenant organizations grew strong enough to make strides toward becoming tenant-owned cooperatives, but hopes for some were dashed when the priorities of the Reagan budget removed purchase money. Among SCHTU's more creative efforts was serving a notice of eviction at the White House to Ronald Reagan for "conducting criminal activity in a public housing unit."
The Reagan years also launched the food program at Sojourners Neighborhood Center. Today more than 1,400 families are served through the Saturday morning food line, deliveries to seniors, and distribution of food from the federal Commodity Supplemental Food program. The food program is run and staffed primarily by neighbors who first came through the line for food.
Two years after arriving in Washington, Sojourners Community moved a few blocks east. It didn't take long before two households weren't enough. Nor could our worship be contained for long in a living room.
For a time we gathered for worship in our daycare center, accompanied on Sunday mornings by the chirping noises of the center's guinea pigs and the outbursts of its large parrot -- not to mention the frequent rush of water any time anyone in the apartments above us flushed any of the 300-plus toilets. On Good Friday 1983 we acquired the building that is now Sojourners Neighborhood Center, which became the site of prayer meetings, Bible studies, and our Sunday worship, as well as our neighborhood ministries.
A lot has changed over the years -- perhaps most of all us. These days there are more of us over 40 than under. Michael Tamialis is now Mike; his brother Nathan is 6 feet 3 inches tall; and they're both learning to drive. The Williams brothers went on to become "The Afrobats," winning citywide gymnastics tournaments in high school, then dropping out; their sisters are raising their own children now.
We have watched other communities come and go, grieved their loss, and faced our own fragility as a community more than once. We have done a lot of praying, and some celebrating, these 20 years, establishing traditions that are the spiritual touchstones -- and signs of the passage of milestones -- in our life.
We share sunrise at Easter -- this year in Malcolm X Park, with a panoramic view of the city and a breaking of breads from around the world. We mark Pentecost as a time to pray and act for peace, empowered by the Spirit. We serve a neighborhood dinner at Thanksgiving and follow it with an annual community retreat in the country. At Christmas we read the story of Jesus' birth with our neighbors, interspersed with our favorite carols, and then choose toys for the children from a donated bounty.
We celebrate a holiday that most communities probably don't: for 11 years we held a "Sometime After Groundhog's Day Sojourners Talent Show" -- which gave way this year to an even bigger social event. We raided our closets and flocked to the thrift stores to dig out taffeta gowns, or polyester jackets and bell-bottom pants, for the Sojourners Senior Prom -- coordinated, of course, with the Queen of England's visit to Washington (building on an earlier tradition when our own Pope John Paul George & Ringo paid a visit to Sojourners while the official "papal party" was in town).
Things change. But the things that brought us together remain the same: a belief that the gospel is good news to the poor, that community is a gift, that peace is possible and justice necessary; a hunger for a world unmarred by divisions of race and class and gender; a commitment to honesty with one another, to leadership that serves rather than dominates, to respect for each person as a child of God; a trust in the unity of the Spirit and the power of prayer.
A FEW WEEKS AGO, on the hottest May day in Washington's history, Sojourners Community headed out of the city for a retreat. On Friday evening we ate pizza and drank root beer on the porch of the farm/retreat center until almost midnight, when the moon came up over the river and the old slave cemetery. A fable of a haunted farmhouse on the property prompted ghost stories and then tales of our favorite grandparents, followed by reflections on our life together.
We had survived a difficult year -- a fracture in the community that had reduced our numbers, and personal struggles born of our children growing up and ourselves growing older; a neighborhood become increasingly violent, and a devastating war. But indeed we had endured -- and been strengthened.
The next morning we focused on biblical passages about joy. We acknowledged that the prophetic charism that we embrace -- the drivenness to expose what is wrong and try to right it -- can lead to self-righteousness and judgmentalism, sure killers of joy.
We talked about the fact that we never suffer for lack of a vision or political analysis. But where we fail most often is in understanding the Spirit -- not the Spirit of Luke 4 that came to anoint with a mission of liberation, but the Spirit that showers us with joy and invites us to celebrate.
After a game of volleyball, most of us spent the afternoon in the pool, where we learned an astounding fact -- that Barbara Ryan, with whom we have shared community for eight years, once earned a silver medal in synchronized swimming in the Junior Olympics (she did explain that there were only two entries in her category, but still ...).
Barbara proceeded to try to teach a few of us "The Dolphin Chain," whereby one person, floating on their back, grabs another around the neck with their feet, and then drags that person in a backward somersault under the water, until both surface -- smiling (that's required if you want to earn points). I was disturbed to discover that I could only succeed at "The Dolphin Chain" when I was the drag-er and not the drag-ee. One of my sisters in community tried to tell me it had something to do with being in control.
"The Dolphin Chain," it seems, is a metaphor for community. It's a balancing act requiring grace and cooperation, a little bit of fearlessness and a lot of letting go -- and the capacity to hold your breath sometimes if you don't want to drown. And it helps if you laugh along the way (but only above water).
In the pool that afternoon I recalled another sweltering Washington day. It was a Saturday in June 1984, and we were at the Department of Energy (DOE) protesting the "white train" that carries nuclear warheads from the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas.
By mid-afternoon all that was left of our children's wagon-and-bicycle "peace train" was a string of wilted streamers and popped balloons, and one of the children was overheard telling a TV reporter about a train from "Armadillo, Texas"; among the adults, leaflet lethargy had set in; and the police still made no move to remove the 37 people who had been praying at the front entrance of the DOE for seven hours. We nixed "We Shall Not Be Moved" from the list of songs appropriate for the occasion.
Later that night we watched the local news and discovered to our disappointment that our peace witness got no coverage. But five of us were in fact featured. In a blatant act of civil disobedience (hoping not to be discovered by Park Police), we had plunged into the waterfall at Rock Creek Park after our tiring ordeal at the DOE. We were the major focus -- along with a Salvadoran family that eventually joined us -- of the annual first-hot-day-of-the-year human interest story on channel 4, called "Washingtonians Beat the Heat."
Things don't always go the way you want them to. In fact, they rarely do.
As we gathered in our closing worship circle on retreat, we each lit a candle for the person sitting next to us. After awhile, the fans blowing air around the room also began to blow the candles out. As we sang and shared the bread and cup, one by one people spontaneously and quietly got up to relight a candle. And I thought, "It all comes down to this -- lighting candles for one another, keeping each other burning bright, rather than letting each other burn out." It's a task related to joy -- to creating space for celebration, helping each other to laugh when things don't turn out quite right, and living with a sense of awe and gratitude for God's goodness.
Someone once compared Sojourners to a three-ring circus, referring to our community life, our neighborhood work, and the outreach ministry through the magazine and speaking. It seemed appropriate then, and fitting now to remember.
We'd be better off if we were a little more like a circus. For one thing, this circus needs a few less lion tamers and a lot more clowns. The Spirit promises joyful, abundant life -- not simply faithful endurance. I think that's our challenge for the next 20 years.
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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