Cottage in the Village
Things are feeling so good in the cottage these days. Like the house is a portal, but the portal energy follows all of us wherever we go.
Last week we moved a man into the house, and it's hard to remember it without him.
Our lives are guided by the perfect fit created through alignment to devotion.
We pour out all our love, enjoying the ones who are present without any caretaking, earning, or maintaining of relationship.
We've ended up with a core 3-6 solid men who are showing up for us beautifully, including this new roommate.
They seem to rotate in and out of the house, today Jen called it a heartbeat, the way they flow in and out to steward and serve and co-create with us. There are no agendas, no confusions, no competition energy whatsoever. The connections are clean and clear and loving.
The purpose of relating is to love.
The more we center the purpose of relating, the easier it is to identify and retain, by gravity and pure delightful desire, the most succulent, delicious, loving, supportive relationships.
The men in our lives offer us all we offer to each other and more. They are a vast listening presence, essential reflectors, enthusiastic and dedicated takers of responsibilities like wood and trash. They offer us grounding and safe touch. They cook for us, wash the dishes, take us out for meals.
Most beautifully, they connect with each other. We wander off to be in our life responsibility and find the men have been dropping in together for 45 minutes or more.
Every day in this life feels like the best part of a group vacation.
"What should we have for dinner?"
"Let's get a hike in before the light leaves!"
"Who's driving? Who's sitting in the middle in the back?"
These core men are not the first to be in our lives. We have seen men come and go in much vaster quantities, seeming like they will show up with powerful offers, and falling away.
We love this. We allow this. We don't make meaning or story about the types of men out there. Some of these men show up later, and, because we have not written them off, we see the longer cadence of their most easeful presence in our lives.
We simply adore the ways the men DID show up for us without any future story of how they SHOULD show up for us. (Yes, thank you, Something Like This.) We only want the ones who really want to be here, who are really available to be here.
The vibe is immaculate and we are thriving.
Life beyond the nuclear family is not only possible, it is calling to all of us.
That loneliness you feel might just make you willing to put someone else's cup in the dishwasher, or fold their forgotten dryer load with devotion.
That exhaustion you feel might be channeled into an unwillingness to ever blame someone else or fight reality. Answer the call to efficiency.
That burnout you feel might show you the way you DO keep going on, you do not NEED other people, you can limp forward just fine on your own. This can free you to real love and generosity, to deep appreciation for what the presence of others in your life has to offer you, to truly connect in generativity with only those who land in your life as nourishing resource.
The village is here and now, the network is fueled by real practices of intimacy and devotion, encoded in our language, our energy, our approach, and our deep beliefs about connection, relationship, and how meaning is made.
Many of us were primed for conflict and violence. Many of us were primed with tones of fear which fuel practices of reactivity and protection, delusions of threat in those closest to us.
In the clarity of distinction required for real devotion, it is easy to see what is mine and what is yours, what is here for us. It is easy to be eager to reap a truth that is stripped of harsh judgment, to adjust to a mutual desire, to refine with the girding of compatibility, to be relaxed without the threat of punishment.
Relationships do not need to be created or actively maintained. Connection only needs to be allowed to be in right-relationship to desire and embedded in real-time practices which nurture it in a tone of love.
In practice, this looks like a happy, collaborative home, one which can bear an influx of people with only increasing delight.
It looks like communal living without the drama.
It looks like independent adults making life easier for each other, making life more fun for each other, making the most out of life together.
The here and now is here and now. When you commit to only celebrating it, you'll see what's here that's worth celebrating.
