More backstory…

OK, dear readers, just a little more backstory on "Timely Manor" and then I shall move forward...


From: e
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 8:31:26 AM US/Pacific
To: contessa

thought you'd appreciate this - is a "timely manor" a hip, big house that captures the cultural zeitgeist of an era? or maybe you know...

:) e

. . .

Hi again everyone!

Just a reminder: The trip is this coming Saturday. <…>

Please write back to me to confirm your reservation(s). If the number of
spots you've reserved has changed, please let me know ASAP so that folks
on the waiting list can be notified in a timely manor.

---------------------------------------------------------------

From: The Contessa
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 12:52:12 PM US/Pacific
To: e
Subject: Re: Timely Manor

I like it! I' think I'd like to live in a "timely manor." Perhaps that's the new century equivalent of a commune. Actually this relates to some things I was thinking about last night...

So the new gal moved in yesterday, and she's totally keeping to herself--keeps her bedroom door shut, seems to have no interest whatsoever in interacting with me--and I thought to myself, "I have strangers living in my house." Things have gone from bad to worse with my downstairs housemate. We have nothing in common, and the more I get to know her, the less I want to know her. So, here I am in the house that has been my home for the past 14+ years, and I feel more alone than if I were actually living alone--it suddenly doesn't feel like "home" anymore. One of the reasons I haven't moved out and gotten my own place, is that I like having the _community_ of a shared household. The problem is, neither one of the new people in my house seems to want to share _any_thing. So it's just me and my stuff. And I'm left longing for COMMUNITY. And I was thinking about the VFC meeting Saturday night, and the gal who talked about sharing meals with her community group, and I thought, "Yeah, that's what it's about... breaking bread together and sharing our lives--not just coming together once a week for a brief Bible study and sharing a prayer request or two w/o ever really sharing what's going on in our hearts and our lives." And now I'm lacking that in my home as well as in my community group, and it sucks. I would love to have a once a week (or even twice a month) dinner with friends, where we all come together and prepare a meal together or do a potluck, or take turns hosting the dinner; but everyone is so busy that we (including me) are reluctant to add yet one more thing to our already jam-packed schedules. So what's the solution?... I don't know. I keep asking myself if God put me in the community group I'm in to use me in some way... Perhaps to encourage the group towards a deeper level of intimacy (which is what I crave). But I feel so guarded with those people. I don't know them and I don't feel ready to open myself up, to be vulnerable with them. I think, as humans, one of our greatest desires it to be known... For people to know us for who we really are and to love us anyway. But we have to get past the fear of rejection--the fear of "If they _really_ knew me, they wouldn't like me." And so we put on facades, we pretend to be something or someone other than who we really are, because then, "if they don't like me, it's not really me they're rejecting--it's the facade I've manufactured." Or maybe that's just me.

Whew! I feel like I just had a mini therapy session. And I could go on, I'm sure, about living communally and our need for community, and so on, but I need to get some work done. <…>

I have a vision... A funky, yet beautiful old Victorian, bought and lovingly restored by a community of friends. Friends who live together, cook together, share their meals, their burdens and their joys, their lives... We'll call it TIMELY MANOR. : ]

* * * * * * *

So you see, the name came from a typo, and the typo inspired a lengthy email discourse on COMMUNITY, and now you have a little glimpse into who I am.

Thank you for visiting TIMELY MANOR.