
The Village Soul was alive in us then, and it longs to be known in our hearts & in our communities... The village being not so much a mystical concept, so much as it is a practical way of being and loving in the world. The village becomes the place and the people with whom you build: connection, culture, memory, healing & resilience. And as human beings, we all long to belong...
At some point in history, all of our ancestors lived in villages. They breathed, bathed, grew food & harvested, grieved & celebrated, loved & lost as a village way of life. They tended the what Martín Prechtel so eloquently calls "the Village Heart" in every interaction, and in small everyday actions.
They lived lives deeply embedded in place, in season and in rhythm with the moon, the stars, the earth and water bodies. They lived lives deeply indebted to each other, inter-connected to the rite of passages of one another's lives. And ritual is what tied all of it together in a way that gave meaning, coherence and beauty to the totality.
To be without a village was to be bereft of soul. To have a village is to be home.
May we each return home.