It Takes a Village ~ A House?

Can a House Be a Village?

For Mother’s Day, here are some thoughts on houses and homes where we create our family ways…where we are home-makers…where we are people makers. And, today, my dear Mother-in-law’s birthday. Carol Waldenmaier was a home-maker and, with her husband, a people maker.

Centuries of Puzzlement

I can have an angry, raucous voice with ranting, raving, flailing and failing,

accusing and exhorting about the ravages and destruction, our misery and suffering.

Telling is impotent. I don’t, we don’t. Protests are just “sound signifying nothing.” Useless.

We know that motivating change doesn’t happen with mere words…a bunch of hot air.

Centuries of Puzzlement:

Why?

Yes, some have always known why and what to do.

Silent and silenced.

But the words can no longer be drowned out by the ragers and the dangers.

Written and spoken, our voices are set free to be heard electronically.

Now, spanning the world, the words can inspire with stories spun by visionaries.

We have been gathering sense and strategy.

Like my writings – intelligent, comprehensive, exhaustive, interesting.

Decades of invisible wisdom.

Each point investigated, described and tried until ready for the next.

Now, my readiness when only prejudice pinches off the internet.

The doorway, once held only in hopes, now open.

Inviting the walk over the doorsill with words spoken.

A landscape as infinite as the Earth’s revolutions

Ready and waiting.

Protesters, prisoners, victims, slaves, traumatized

vomit troubled, terrified, vile, cynical and vicious communiques.

Explosive, emotional—the protective distances gone.

The rabble, the rumble, the murmuring crowd spews messy misery. Making fun but no joke.

Free to tell what we see.

Stunted Fluency which Has the Answers

Now that we have the microphone.

Now that we won’t be shouted down

Or shot at.

Stunned wordlessness.

Hopelessness squelched and fluency stunted.

Like learning to spell a new vocabulary in a foreign tongue.

The avalanche of emotional exhortation, held at the hiatus between the wave crashing onto the beach and receding into the vastness.

The hopeful ones hunt, seeking, among the wreckage of outcries,

Sorting for sensibilities and kinship. Believing there is a tribe…

Perhaps only few…but like-minded men and women with mutual answers.

What? Where? How?

No longer a mystery.

The clues have been gathered and assembled ~

The mosaic makes the solutions obvious and clear.

Here it is! Here we are!

Bit-by-bit, brick by brick,

We build the Truths.

We feed the starving.

We defend the oppressed.

We construct tiny homes.

We banish bullying.

We preserve the fine arts.

We band together, build schools, heal injured, protect elders.

We work and preserve the national energy, funds, democracy.

But, we know there’s better.

Can a House Be a Village?

The beginning is always home.

But, our homes were conceived by our men.

They build our houses and our women fill them with family and philosophy.

Women nourish and create culture, neighbors and community.

“The Nuclear Family” was not defined by the female.

We birth and are driven to raise babies into confident and competent people.

Unless, we don’t have the tools.

Like a school with no classrooms, no books, no teachers, no track, no stage.

Single family housing doesn’t have space for the necessary resources.

The foundation of family is extended family…any new mother suffers without help at hand.

The burden of their home demands two incomes diluting the enrichment of youth.

So many of our young are deprived and depraved.

Our school teachers are demoralized and feeling helpless

with their ability to teach accosted by uncivil children.

Indeed, it takes a village. And our villages have been pruned by relocations and transfers for breadwinners. The homemakers displaced, strangers in a new neighborhood, friends and family left behind. Parenting alone.

But, what if our house was a village?

THIS is Heaven on Earth ~ Home.

But, now, we know what’s missing!

Scientists, researchers, teachers have been students studying the human.

Their conclusions show endless details proving a common theme:

People create every dimension of our nations. If the people were raised with deprivation and harm, we haven’t provided them with the ability for a happy home or career.

The human being has a heart and soul as well as a mind. Without parents and role models and a caring culture, we have incurred a failure to thrive and worse. The news provides us with daily evidence of our failures.

Victoria Erickson wrote:

If you inherently long for something, become it first.

If you want gardens, become the gardener.

If you want love, embody love.

If you want mental stimulation, change the conversation.

If you want peace, exude calmness.

If you want to fill your world with artists, begin to paint.

If you want to be valued, respect your own time.

If you want to live ecstatically, find the ecstasy within yourself.

This is how to draw it in, day by day, inch by inch.

We have the knowledge, the checklists and instructions.

Yes, we DO have the manuals today and we can locate the one which speaks to us in minutes on our screens.

We can become someone who innovates and implements those improvements.

Our Basic Tool: Our Home

We can build the people, the relationships, the families, the teams, the communities

If…IF we have the time and the space…the things we need at hand.

Rest, repast and recreation is limited by the culture of work and materialism.

What would we find with shared expenses and labors?

Could we thrive on one income? Work at home?

Our personal rooms, spaces, furniture and grounds are our invitations and limitations.

We are starting over and repurposing corporate offices.

What if we revisioned our space, our living environment?

What if we started there?

What if we went big instead of small?

What if we didn’t have to leave home for the basic enrichments of life?

Feasts, festivities, fun, work, employment, inventions, games, arts, sports…

Our own extended family:

Apartments, kitchens, hearths, swimming pools, theaters

Laboratories and lavatories, studios, tables, gardens, animals…

What would be our optimum?

How would our towns be organized?

Home. Homes. Yes, the roots, the place and the space.

Because THIS is Heaven on Earth ~ Home.

Let’s give our architects carte blanche!

We dream and draw the plans…

Designing homes…huge homes

Like none we have ever imagined.

Home is families.

And, here we must house our bodies, the sacred personal physical carrying the internal tools, abilities and passions.

Like a painter with a full palette of colors able to mix endless variations…

Our homes can invite endless endeavors and provide any materials.

We have refined the skills and the materials.

They are all at hand: pockets and places for play, pleasure and creativity.

To make real those truths carried in our bones ~

Glimpsed like birthing babies:

nothing held in reserve, all given, generosity unbound for a new life.

Today, no need to transfer for a job,

No need to leave home and separate the family.

No need to grieve friendships, schools, neighborhoods and community.

No need to cobble together random teams.

Leaving behind the pioneering survival fears of independence, of paying bills

We can create nests of extravagance together.

 ~ ~ ~