Exploring Family
What do Hopi Indians, John Keats, lost loves, intentional community, and family have in common? For better or worse, they’ve combined to befuddle, enlighten, dismay, and inspire our author.
What do Hopi Indians, John Keats, lost loves, intentional community, and family have in common? For better or worse, they’ve combined to befuddle, enlighten, dismay, and inspire our author.
Twelve-year-old Jibran has always lived with fuzzy boundaries between “family” and “community.” They became even fuzzier when he came home to discover his mom’s positive pee test.
Though “baby having” had not been a consensus decision, a small community embraces a newborn, survives his infancy, and bonds like any other family: doing each other’s dishes, snuggling on the couch, and fighting over who gets a shower before the hot water runs out.
Four very different father figures help guide a communitarian son into adulthood, as he combines distinctive traits of each.
At a permaculture-based ecovillage in North Carolina, care for the earth, care for people, and care for inner health all benefit from a dynamic culture based on local self-reliance, holism, and community.