A 7-Sided Council House where the Community gathers to talk, celebrate, govern, organize
Sunny Greetings! Welcome to the de-light-filled, meaning-full, Home of Wellness and Spirituality!
What’s the solution to loneliness? What’s the solution to finding childcare? What’s the solution to all manner of modern problems, from economic hardship to care of the elderly? When I began to look for a spiritual teacher/medicine woman and found Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha (aka, Parisha Taylor), the utter importance of community, the Circle, the tribe hit me full on!
Back before Grandmother Parisha, when I was raising my children on my West Virginia homestead, my workaholic husband kept long hours at the school where he taught and coached. While living in the root cellar, he and I had lived “on the cheap” and worked side by side for six years with only sporadic employment. He was my buddy. Then, poof! When my first son was born, my pal was gone! We had decided we needed a steady cash flow so he had to go back to teaching. Eventually, I began to feel isolated and overwhelmed. Children are the sweetest things on the planet but an unbroken diet of children, like sweets, is not always easy to stomach.
Although we had a very dear group of friends, we were scattered far and wide amidst the hills and hollows, each pursuing their own agendas. And anyway, what I sensed that I needed was not just friends….it was support. In other words, the “down side” to living in Nature–out in the boondocks–was–from my experience– the lack of real community. But where could I find such a thing?
I have since concluded that what I truly needed was a tribe, a Circle, a community that worked and lived and grew and learned together, and were organized to care for one and all. And I also needed a wise ELDER, who had experience with community, who had a Vision of community and who saw clearly that the modern rat race was not sustainable…was not life-nurturing and that Community was the way to go.
When I first heard Grandmother speak at an “Earth Changes” conference, she was accompanied by about a dozen associates of the Learning Center For Human Development www.cfhd.org. They described to me a big project they had undertaken in Ohio, the construction of Friendship Village www.fv-intl.com, a place for teaching, living and learning about a better way of life than what is afforded by the modern “rat race.” I was so excited! It was only an hour and a half from my home!
So began my many years of finding a real, heart-linked community of People in a home away from home at Friendship Village. This is the Circle I once longed for. For many years there were lots of construction projects. A community, I learned, does not grow up overnight but by the sweat of Everyone’s brow! Indeed, there were also workshops from Parisha Taylor and events such as “Wind, Fire and Earth” programs that we put on for seekers from far and wide. All this activity was food for my soul and spirit. I have especially fond memories of the days I devoted to building the Ancient Village www.ancientvillage.com. to demonstrate the one room shelters that earlier Peoples lived in down through the ages. And the seven side Council House-a place where the People gathered to govern themselves and share all manner of communications–is so beautiful!
One of the first times I talked to Grandmother Parisha privately, I said to her that I wanted to help in founding a new civilization. She’s given me that opportunity….and we are on our way!