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the [not communist] Community Village
Our vision for a place to live, work, pray, play, and help one another live out the culture of Life through real reliance on Christ, embracing the sacraments, & truly loving our neighbor.
Why live in community?
In modern Western society, we seem to be expected to survive well as nuclear families on our own. Parents are often overworked, exhausted, and struggling financially while trying to cook meals, keep up with housework, raise children, make enough money to live on, maintain their marriage & outside friendships, and nourish the spiritual and intellectual life that are vital to thrive.
We believe that we are created to live in community and truly help one another, and that nuclear family units were never meant to be on their own. Humans need one another. And in the midst of a crazy world, we need likeminded seekers of Truth alongside us to keep us from digressing into the insanity surrounding us.
In such an intentional community we can do things that we cannot do (or do well) as busy, urban individual family units:
- do the time-consuming work of keep animals, a large community garden, & orchards
- help each other with childcare rather than paying for expensive babysitting or daycare
- help each other with meal preparation, taking turns cooking & cleaning in the common building
- benefit from the shared talents and skills of community members as all contribute to all
- foster our Catholic culture, helping one another to grow spiritually through common prayer, Scripture studies, discussions, & direction.
- help each other thrive intellectually by offering book groups, lectures, classes, and seminars on a regular basis.
- create an environment unplugged from social media and the screen-obsessed culture & encourage each other to connect to Creation & the real, playing music together, having contra dances, having game nights, etc.
Some ideas from Cohousing...
Our vision differs from the cohousing movement in some ways, but the following characteristics from the Cohousing Handbook look like things we'd like to implement:
1. "Intentional neighborhood design: The physical design encourages a strong sense of community. With central pedestrian walkways or village greens and cars relegated to the edge of the development" away from the private residences.
2. "Private homes and common facilities: Communities are generally designed to include significant common facilities, however, all residents also own their own private homes...There is no shared income in cohousing...As an integral part of the community, common areas are designed for daily use, to supplement private living areas" (i.e., gym, library, communal kitchen & dining area, guest rooms, work shop, maker space).
3. "Resident management: unlike a typical condominium homeowner's association, residents in cohousing usually manage their own community, making decisions about common concerns at regular community meetings."
4. "Optimum community size: Communities seem to work best when they contain between 12 and 36 dwelling units." You don't want your community to be too intimate and not have enough funds for common facilities, or to be too big to not allow for all the people to really know each other or be too administratively complex.
5. Shared evening meals: cohousing groups usually choose to share several evening meals together each week in their common house," bringing residents together for "a convenient and pleasurable time of fellowship and sharing."