Cohousing-L Mailing List: Christian Cohousing IV

[William Germino (germino]

Greetings to all,

I'm a newcomer to the list and very grateful for the diversity of dialogue 
from the members.  It's somewhat auspicious timing for this thread because 
it was the Christian religion that started a group of us considering a more 
communal housing arrangement.  As a Catholic in the Boston area I share the 
faith with many others who are starting families as my wife and I are.  Our 
goal is to provide the best environment where we know our children will 
become strengthened in their faith, and where we as adults will grow in 
ours.  Along these lines, the ideas of neighborhood homeschooling and a 
common service ministry (such as serving the poor) has come up with 
interest and appeal.

We only came upon the cohousing concept very recently, but it embodied much 
of what we sought before we even heard the term (you might say it was an 
epiphany of sorts).  Many of the questions raised in this thread have also 
been raised with us.  We know it would be counter to our faith to be 
isolated from others and to be exclusionary, yet the thought of having 
neighbors who raise their children with same beliefs and values as ours is 
very appealing.

We're still very much in the information search stage (still have to read 
the McCamant/Durrett book), so we're keeping our minds and options open at 
this point.  But relative to this discussion, it happened to be our 
Catholic faith that was the impetus for exploring the cohousing concept.  
(BTW, if we ever did form such a community with our faith as the basis, we 
will be sure not to keep it incognito:)

Many thanks for this discussion group!

Bill Germino
Boston, MA
germino [at] babson.edu