File this under “be careful what you wish for.” In December 2023, I moved with my wife and five boys from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A year earlier, I’d never even heard of Winston-Salem. (It turns out the place is known for cigarettes, hosiery, Moravians, and Tim Duncan.) But an Easter 2023 trip to visit friends who had recently moved to the city put in motion an intense six-month discernment culminating in us purchasing a hundred-year-old house sight unseen. In October we took a weekend retreat in the mountains with some friends potentially interested in joining our venture. Just before Christmas, we finally packed up the fifteen-passenger van and U-Haul trailer and headed east and south. (That epic drive alone is worthy of its own essay – there was scarcely room to breathe in the van, we found ourselves in the middle of a snowstorm in the West Virginia mountains, after which our poodle decided my lap was as good as a tree, and with Winston-Salem finally in view, I became acquainted with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol because all the lights on my van and U-Haul, save one, had burned out).

The decision to leave Saint Paul was not easy. We’d been there for nearly twenty years. I loved my work as an appellate criminal prosecutor. We lived in a great neighborhood, close enough for the boys to bike to the park and safe enough for them to set up ramps and take over the street on their bikes and scooters. Most importantly, we belonged to a rich Catholic community.

But we – especially my wife – desired something more: life lived and shared in common in Christian community. Notice the commonality between the words “common” and “community” and “communion.”

“Common” can mean “occurring, found, or done often.” It can also mean “ordinary, typical, average, unexceptional, and everyday.” And further, it can mean “collective, communal, community, shared, joint, and combined.” Be careful what you wish for.

Long inspired by the likes of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and Catherine Doherty, we envisioned making our home a house of hospitality where various creeds, races, and socioeconomic classes could live, fellowship, and share life. We’d already started making that dream a reality in Saint Paul, creating a Christ’s Room and hosting large weekly dinners. But the pace of our Saint Paul life and our obligations outside the home prevented us from more fully developing our vision in the home.

And so, like the Moravians 250 years before us, we struck out for Winston-Salem, inviting friends and families to join us. Much to our surprise, several said yes, including our dear friends the Winds from Saint Paul with their six children, who got here in August. While waiting for the Winds to arrive, we got to work, opening our house to Imani and Aliyah, a teenage single mom and her daughter for several months, as well as Nia, another teen girl we knew from Saint Paul. Our house had five bedrooms, so we were easily able to expand from one Christ’s Room to two. But there was still unfinished space in the basement. Not wanting to waste any room for Christ, we converted that space into a bedroom and hosted our friends’ seventeen-year-old son for several months. Now with three Christ’s Rooms, and a household of eleven, we had to learn to share the space, share the work, and share the challenges of common living.

The teens went back home for the summer, and our family visited relatives, which allowed us to renovate the kitchen and install an industrial oven and refrigerator for our blossoming community. Meanwhile, our prayers were answered when the Winds bought the house next door, on a beautiful four-acre property.

Knowing that the Winds would be staying with us in August while they waited to close on their house in September, we had some decisions to make. Imani and Aliyah were coming back. So was Nia, albeit begrudgingly; she didn’t want to come, but a series of shootings in her neighborhood convinced her mom to send her back. She negotiated to bring her fifteen-year-old cousin, Mike, down as well. He was eager to get out of Saint Paul, where he’d somehow emerged unscathed after the summer even though his bedroom had been shot up with dozens of bullets by a rival neighborhood youth. With great hesitation, I consented. But now beyond capacity, and with another single mom and her two kids indicating a desire to move in, we knew there was again no room at the inn. We looked to the “stable,” a little barn out back that housed only snakes and squirrels, and asked a contractor how much it would cost to remodel it into a tiny home. When we got the quote, we figured it would be cheaper to just buy a small house instead, which we did in August with the help of funds raised by my wife. (Since then, we’ve remodeled the little barn into a guest apartment as well.)

We got back to our house in early August and, not surprisingly, the kitchen was not finished, which made for some creative dishwashing when the Winds and Nia and Mike arrived later that month. Our family of seven had swelled to seventeen. The common life my wife had long dreamed of was in full swing. Getting kids fed and transported to public school, Catholic school, alternative school, and homeschool co-ops became a full-time job. Every meal was the size of a holiday feast. Saturday chore day was never so rich, with many hands (and still only one home) to make light work. During the workday, the husbands worked side-by-side on their home computers while the wives kept the day-to-day life of the household flourishing.

The Winds stayed in our home for six weeks. They are gone now, but only a dozen paces away, a dirt path worn through the grass showing the steady traffic between our homes. While they were here, there was never a moment of quiet. Irritation at times ran high. But there was also much laughter and fullness of life.

I am not a people person. I like my quiet, space, and time for thinking and reading and being alone. I was never alone those six weeks. But when I woke up the first day they were gone, the silence was eerie. I missed the crying and the chaos of the mornings. I missed the crazy common life.

I’m not about to say communal living is easy. The Winds surely won’t be nominating me for dad of the year after observing my parenting skills up close. No matter how cute kids are in small doses, even the cutest get on your nerves in daily living. Some of the boys think they are Justin Bieber, or worse, a 1990s boy band. Ask them to help with the dishes, and they’ll drive you mad singing “Baby, baby, baby, ohhhh!” And the teens we’ve invited into our household are as moody and, at times, idiotic, as teens come. Common life is ordinary life, and it brings with it the ordinary annoyances, petty grievances, weaknesses, and selfishness of the human character.

Tired of spending so much time in the car driving the teens around, the community decided to buy a communal car for the teens to use. Alas, it lasted less than a week. One of the teens, who shall remain nameless, backed it into a pole, bending the rear axle. It sat in the front yard for half a year, a daily reminder of the frustrations of common life.

A couple weeks in, Nia and Mike had had enough. They packed their bags and were ready to leave. My wife and I told them we loved them, and appreciated the hard work they were doing, and hoped they’d give us another chance. They stayed. The following week, I got a call from their principal. Now it was the school that had had enough and was ready to give them the boot. Talking back, wandering the halls, and cellphone use had to stop. I had another firm pep talk with them. The following day, Mike got it into his head to get himself kicked out. He succeeded.

The day after, a Friday, he had a change of heart. He saw the error of his ways and wanted back in. I pleaded with the school, and they were willing to give him a second chance. We seemed to be making progress. Then I woke up Saturday to tragic news. Their best friend had been murdered in Minneapolis, one of many of their friends to be killed on the streets over the past few years. They repacked their bags and headed back for the funeral. Common life is ordinary life. Unfortunately, for some neighborhoods, death by murder is all too ordinary.

Nia and Mike came back, but they didn’t come alone. They brought two more cousins with them. Our “Christ’s Room” became a “Christ’s Hostel,” with all the corresponding blessings and challenges. When the cousins needed some space from one another, the Winds stepped up, offering their guest bedroom so Mike could move in. Soon after, the Winds stepped up again, agreeing to host a friend’s newly married and pregnant teen daughter and her husband in the little guesthouse out back. The couple is still there, and the baby is set to become the first child born in the community any day now.

Now nearly two years into our Winston-Salem adventure, I won’t pretend to predict what comes next. Some dreams have come to fruition, and others stalled. The dads renovated a nearly termite-destroyed shack out back into a chicken house and now the community enjoys daily farm-fresh eggs. Unfortunately, the community dogs find a way into the run from time to time and also enjoy the chickens. The first community garden had mixed reviews, with the harvest of weeds at times surpassing the harvest of produce. But nearly everyone loves the first batch of pickles. I have dreams of growing bacon out back, and building a greenhouse, but whenever I reference either project the wives roll their eyes.

A big part of the vision for our community life is just to be physically present to the needs around us. One day last spring, one of my boys ran into the house breathless. He told me the neighbor across the street had fallen in her front lawn and was injured. I ran over to find my ninety-eight-year-old neighbor, whom I had never met, on the grass with a clearly broken wrist. We were able to get her inside and call my wife, who brought her to the clinic. That chance meeting has turned into a dear friendship, with the children of the community as excited to see her as she is to see them. We even had the privilege of recently celebrating her ninety-ninth birthday at one of our community dinners.

We believe that much of life’s greatest treasures and richest moments are found in the home. Which is one of the reasons we were so thrilled to renovate the beater house we bought down the street, thanks to the labor of the four teen cousins under the supervision of a church friend, and some handymen. A friend going through a divorce moved in with her four kids and the whole family has become a fixture in the life of the community. As the needs grow, so grows the community.

There are victories to share too. Two of the cousins joined a YMCA basketball team, fulfilling dreams of being on a “real” team. Imani and Nia held down steady jobs, obtaining rave reviews from their bosses. And in perhaps the most exciting news, Imani and Mike both graduated high school in May, accomplishing what had previously seemed impossible.

The common life is a shared life, and we do our best to share the joys, sorrows, and work. I routinely raid the Wind’s garage for a tool I don’t own, or an ingredient I forgot to purchase. When Imani worked weekends, the young girls of the community happily watched Aliyah for hours on end. With nearly six acres between us, there is near-constant outdoor work to get done, and near-constant broken mowers with which to not accomplish the work. Our kid’s faces are rarely glued to a screen – just give them a hatchet, a rake, and a match and they’ve got hours of entertainment. Some of the older boys even built a shelter in the woods and completed a thirty-six-hour “survival” challenge in the spring, with high hopes of becoming YouTube stars. Then there’s the community sports. Football and basketball tend to be the favorites, with the teen cousins often inventing new forms of smack talk as they attempt to prove they are king of the court. Feeding everyone is nearly a full-time job, but the moments of connection over a meal and perhaps a spiked drink are worth the effort. Our Wednesday night community dinners, in particular, have become a staple of our communal life, a chance to invite friends, colleagues, and neighbors to share a meal and come together in fellowship.

Prior to marriage, my greatest fear was that I’d live a common, ordinary life. My fears were justified. I now live a completely common life. And yet, in the end, I had nothing to fear. Turns out the common life is extraordinary. It’s also the most fun.

Some names have been changed.