The Value of Your Magnificent Life is Community

I awoke with this dream in my heart.   I thought about how parents raise children.  I am staying with a couple who are sharing parenting, not helping, but actually sharing it.  I saw how they were encouraging their children to embrace and love everyone who is in the house.  They are teaching them community.  They are modelling the mother and father as co-parents, I really love to watch this.  Even when the children are crying the mother is loving her life as a mother, she says it gets full on but she really loves it.  She was born to be a mother.  Not every woman is a natural nurturer as is the case of men.  Not everyone desires to be a parent and I would advise them not to do it because everyone tells them ‘now is the time’ or ‘you don’t want to be alone in old age’.  Just have a child if you feel called to have one, if you feel you would love to dedicate your life to family then do so.  It is the most important task in this life, more important than career or success, it is success itself when you are happy. 

It takes a village to raise a child and what really inspired me about this couple was the mother and father are actively creating community around their children, people they can become close to and go to if they need to.  This is actively creating community.   Parenting does have instinctive aspects but we need to learn how to understand children and through them, ourselves.  Many parents make mistakes and children just absorb those mistakes and pass them on as adults or choose the opposite.  I think parenting courses should be mandatory, equality and kindness are the centrepeace of this training.  As I write this I feel the inspiration. 

This poem is dedicated to Lauren and Damian, who kindly took me in, not knowing me and becoming my friends and family in two short days.

THE VALUE OF YOUR MAGNIFICENT LIFE IS COMMUNITY

The centrepeace of the family,
Is the bouquet of love in full bloom.

The fragrance of kindness and equality,
Permeates wide open spaces,
Enlightens dark corners,
Where all are welcome in your garden.

For as the family garden welcomes all in friendship,
Children learn community is family,
And family is community,
For we are each others keepers,
We sow what we reap,
We grow from what we real-ise,
We give what we keep,
For what we value most
can never be seen.

It takes a village to raise a child,
And a child to remember the village,
As all children walk through life in freedom,
Discovering the great varieties of diversity,
Celebrating the differences as contrasts,
But never points of disagreement,
For all are as they are meant to be.

Harmony is a blending agreement,
That Is not binding,
Each challenge is a point of growth,
To be embraced and faced,
To be loved and graced,
By each presence,
For each is present in your life,
On purpose.

Beauty arises in the eye of the beholder,
Who has learned that love is alive,
As the world becomes your oyster,
You find your mother of pearl emerges from the hard shell,
For removing all hard edges of conflict leaves the smoothness of understanding,
That rolls and glides without resistance,
For truth is the persistence,
That is the hope for humanity,
Revealing the value of your magnificent life,
is in comm-unity.