Your hands and heart may already be full parenting your child. You may not have the wherewithall to even contemplate other children. But that’s what I’m asking you to do, if you’re willing to consider it.
If like so many of us you yearn for a village, you must take the first step in creating that village. There’s no reason I can think of for waiting for it to show up. If villages arose spontaneoulsy, we’d all have the communities we dream of. But we don’t, do we?
A village is where our children run from one unlocked-house to the next; where they play in wild woods until sundown; where they learn about life from running with a band of children of all ages; where their hair is bleeched by sunlight and the skin on their feet thickened from pebbles and fir needles; where elders mentor them and know to spot a gift when they see one.
It’s a rare thing indeed. We know of it through whispers. We hear of it in stories glimpsed through the veils of time and place. It’s perhaps a treasured memory from our own distant years as new arrivals to this world.
And yet one thing hasn’t and will not change. Every child still needs an uncle, an aunt, a grandparent, an older brother. Someone not dad or mom. Every child needs an adult whom she trusts enough to welcome his guidance and loving voice. Every child needs a place to which he or she belongs.
Here’s why you’re asked to meet this longing–because you may have wished for that village yourself as a child. And if you see the possibility, and you hold the want, then you can honor your wisdom by making it so.
Are you ready to become an uncle or an aunt, a grandparent, an older brother or sister to a child who crosses your path?
If you still long for a village, there is only one answer to that question.