What does it mean to live well together in times of catastrophe? This paper reflects on the theological and existential challenges of living and building community in such times, in conversation with thinkers such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Hannah Arendt, and Donna Haraway. Drawing on Jeremiah's prophetic writings to the exiles of Judah, I reflect on the call to begin anew (plant gardens, build houses, make kin) within disaster rather than hopefully awaiting a turn toward a better future ("do not believe the dreams you dream"). Paradoxically, perhaps it is hope we need to overcome in order to nurture community in dire times. Yet a futural orientation remains deeply embedded in both neoliberal modernity and progressive thought. To develop this, an unlikely conversation partner is found in a gathering of radical reformers at the dawn of modernity, who respond to catastrophic circumstances with practices of repeated communal copresence rather than the apocalyptic expectation of many of their fellows. I suggest that faithful living requires a shift from anticipating salvation to engaging deeply with the present. The paper further highlights parallels between Arendt's idea of natality and the Jeremian exhortation to begin, suggesting that the act of interruption and insertion into time holds the potential for new beginnings. Today, climate collapse, media saturation, and technological acceleration fragment and mediate our sense of (co-)presence. Yet beginning again in a "thick" present is not the mere now or right now of experiential immediacy. Embodied, repeated practices of community may yet be reclaimed to nurture justice, kindness, and faith amid the ongoing polycrisis.