Abundance of Resource Drives Us Apart

Village Eros is something I "got" (both in the sense of receiving and in the sense of understanding) because my family didn't have a lot of money.

We had enough money. Plenty. But not enough to drive us apart.

We had hotel-room money, but not hotel roomS money.

We had visit-family money, not resort-vacation money.

We had one-bathroom home money, not double-sinks money.

It forced us to be intimate with one another.

It forced our bodies into close proximity.

It had us living with others, for days, weeks, or months, who were not members of our immediate family.

There is a poverty available in the abundance of resources if we are unintentional in our stewardship—it is a poverty that the richer classes of Americans slurp up to become hollow in modern ways.

It is poverty to never see our friends and family dress and undress.

It is a poverty to hide our bodies and our animal functions from one another.

It is a deprivation of eros we enact upon ourselves, to never be imposed upon, never be embarrassed, never be SEEN in certain ways.

It is stifling to eros, the way we expect to have a "bubble," to be asked before we are touched, the way we hesitate to reach for a stranger's baby.

Close community requires safety to be witnessed in all the animal nature of our humanity.

Close community is literally body to body, that is the definition.

Village Eros is the way that my body is a home for the bodies of my loved ones--and it can't really be a home if you're never there.