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EGACY Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
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Community embodies radical discipleship, more AMY SOWDER
In the 95-degree heat, a young, bearded white man wearing a hat with a “Black Lives Matter” pin sprawls on a lawn chair past the graveled driveway of the house nestled in a valley off Monacan Trail Road southwest of Charlottesville. A rainbow of origami cranes strung together like garland hovers between two posts behind him. When a visitor approaches, he stretches as he gets up and leads her through the front door, where young people huddle in a colorful living room packed with books and art. Within the hour, the house and lawn will fill with more than 30 people, bringing chatter, singing, children’s laughter, a strumming banjo and serious conversations — along with the salads, enchiladas, quiches and cookies of a casual summer potluck party. This is home base for the Charis Community. Pronounced kaar-is,
Charis co-founder Grace Aheron tends bees for honey farming, a sustainable practice that’s part of the permaculture values of this intentional community on Episcopal land. PHOTO: Eze Amos Charis means “grace” in ancient Greek. Cofounded in 2015 by Episcopal
Claire Hitchins tends the food garden that supplements the diet of those living at the Charis Intentional Community, a mission of Grace Church, Red Hill, southwest of Charlottesville. PHOTO: Eze Amos
youth leader Grace Aheron and the Rev. Neal Halvorson-Taylor of Grace Church, Red Hill, the Charis Community is a gathering of people living together under the shared values of simplicity, prayer and hospitality. This intentional Christian community is housed at an unused Episcopal Church property. The eight acres owned by the Diocese of Virginia include a small cobblestone church, a ranch-style house, a food garden and a forest of tulip poplars and dogwoods. The Charis Community is a partnership with Grace Church, a nearby mission parish. This Charis mission is supported by the church’s vestry, and members keep in contact with Halvorson-Taylor weekly on an informal basis. The Charis Community idea formed through a connection followed by discussions and prayer. HalvorsonTaylor is married to Aheron’s Hebrew professor at the University of Virginia, and they got in touch a year after Aheron graduated and was
living in San Francisco. HalvorsonTaylor knew of this property no one was using. “I felt like God was calling me to go and do this in Charlottesville. It took me a long time to figure that out. We were in conversations for months,” Aheron said. Trusting in the transformation of the spirit, the young adults living at Charis are discerning their vocational call, sitting in the tensions of injustice and inviting others into the journey. “We understand that all of what we do is interconnected, from the radical activism to the ecological,” said Claire Hitchins, 26, a musician and one of the five long-term residents. These young adults share an explicit passion “to respond to our context of empire, capitalism, and alienation, along with the environmental and social destruction that those forces perpetuate,” according to the community’s official mission statement. They want to model Jesus’ vision of community, resist society’s violence and accompany each other on their individual journeys of discipleship and growth. An intentional community can take many forms, but it always involves a group of people living together with a clear mission. While a commune usually means all individual resources are pooled and shared, other intentional communities share only some of their resources. Charis housemates share chores posted on the refrigerator, including gardening, tending chickens and bees and general household upkeep. They contribute monthly to a fund for the house’s food and supplies, and they maintain an account at a credit union for house bills. Once or twice a week, they join for a morning prayer, also considered an open-faith meditation.
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