(This area isn't finished yet, mind you...)
Metanoia House (1987-1992) was a grand experiment, a congregation of like souls, a test of endurance, a spirit, a dream, an ideal, and a family. This portion of my personal hyperspace is devoted to a memory of Metanoia.
The documents contained here include:
I sit here, late at night, and I ponder what has come before. And I give requiem, finally, to the haven of the tender years of my college experience. Metanoia offered me much my freshman year at Willamette, and now I offer these memories back to it.
The word "metanoia" is Greek for "change in spirit" -- an experience which suddenly opens your world, expands your heart, and illuminates your mind. It is perhaps fitting that I -- a student of both computer science and history -- should be assembling this space, an homage to my friends and to an ideal, and to a place that indeed wrought a change in spirit in me and in all that it touched.
When I arrived at Willamette, I was a scared and nervous freshman. I had survived four years of high school and a few years more then that in adolescence, and I was a little bit worried about having to start from scratch all over again. Living with a roommate, getting away from home . . . it was all very exciting, but it was also all a little scary.
Willamette had sent me some residence hall information, and had asked me to fill out a form so they could place me in "the Right Place" on campus. But how is someone to choose a residence hall based solely on a one-paragraph blurb in a campus guidebook? I picked two big halls, and checked Metanoia House as almost an afterthought -- I liked the fact that it was only about 30 people strong, and that it emphasized things like awareness and community. Ironically, those same reasons also had me leaning somewhat against leaning there, because I suspected that it would be full of those who wouldn't think (you can be dogmatic and liberal just as easily as you can be dogmatic and conservative, unfortunately), or those who didn't think and were just posing as people who cared.
But while I suspected that things like "awareness and community" were nothing but cliches for the liberal-minded young college student, I was fortunately served by my afterthought. I did, indeed, end up in Metanoia house, and I found it to be populated by people who cared, people who were passionate . . . people who I could be happy to call my friends.
Since my freshman year, Metanoia has seen it's hey-day, and finally faded away. But it lives on in the hearts of those who lived there, loved it, fought for it, and eventually let it go. And it lives on in this little pocket of virtual reality, perhaps to inspire kindred souls whose wandering brings them this way.