Koinonia: the experience of being in community

The last two weeks (July 24 – August 5) I was in Los Angeles. The first week I was living at the Orange Grove Meeting House in Pasadena, California. There were six of us looking at the economic discrepancies in metropolitan Los Angeles.
Five of us took the train down from the San Francisco area. On the train we got to joke around and get to know each other in different ways than when we had hung out with each other before. Our age rang was from 15 to 56 while on the train and then by the end of the week it was from 16 to 59.
While on the train, I stated to read a lot from the Bible. I have never been interested in the Bible until these last few weeks. It became really interested when I went to Bible Study one Sunday and we started talking about how we took the Bible and the practical translations for this day. This really helped me to understand how I should read the Bible and how it can help me now.
The Bible I was carrying with me was only the New Testament and had eight different translations so it was very helpful to me to understand the different ways the Bible can be translated. I was hoping that we might have sometime to do Bible Study while in LA but we filled our schedule in other ways.
Once we got to LA we took the gold line to Pasadena and walked to the Meeting House where we settled in and made dinner at nine o’clock at night. The first night we were so tired that we just decided we wanted to hang out and that the second day would be at the meeting house and scheduling and getting to know each other.
When we got up in the morning we started with meeting for worship and then looked at our schedule and decided what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do it.
My favorite thing about Koinonia was the check-ins that we did everyday during dinner. This is were became totally transparent to each other and update people in how the day went.
My next favorite experience was going to the Los Angeles Catholic Soup Kitchen to serve lunch to the homeless. When we walked down skidrow at 7:30 in the morning but when we walked back at 1 pm we were fine. This change happened because we now new everyone in an intimate way. I felt like I new the people just because I had given them a spork.
One other way that I felt like I was connected over this week was one when I was at the beach and I held Carl in the light. Carl was at Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting and I was sitting on the beach in Santa Monica California. My friend Kristina and I sat there for about thirty minutes and then in forty minutes later I sat in worship again holding him while he finished his speech. This was a very powerful experience because I was totally connected to him and I was more than two thousand miles away.
These are some of the experiences as well as a transformation. I was dealing with getting ready to move and wanting to have some closure with California.