The House That Formed Us

A house is not just a house. We know this because 32 Newberry is very much a place that has formed us.

This house has held many twenty‑something‑year‑olds who do not have it all figured out but know they want to love their neighbors well. It holds them for a summer, a year, or fourteen, and allows the people and stories around them to invite them in, growing them, prompting them, and shaping them.

This house has also held many who are in the middle of their lives, passing through or stopping by for a cup of coffee, a shower, an outlet, a friend, a bed, or the newest episode of The Walking Dead. Its doors open again and again without hesitation as a place of respite and refuge.

This house has held countless babies who grew into childhood and then into their teenage years, growing up alongside this place and learning what it means to belong to a community and to show up well for one another.

This house has a way of holding us all. It reminds us what it means to be human and to love. Then it sends us out with pieces of its story tucked into our pockets, carried into all the spaces that continue to call us.

And as we look with optimism toward the future, and prepare to make a new home across the street at the Webster Community Center, we know we will still return, again and again, holding near and dear to our hearts the house that formed us.

- Faith Borow