Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Fifty Plus Cohousing + ?

[Sara A. (mabonwy]

At 04:40 PM 2/19/03 -0600, you wrote:
> If a wedding
> invitation comes addressed to John & Jane Doe without and family leave
> the kids at Grandma's if possible or be prepared to send a gift & turn
> down the invitation,

Here is a prime example of someone thinking that THEIR notions of "correct" 
behavior is the only one.

I was raised in the rural South, by old country people who still hold 
certain values that, among other things, place human connections and family 
over appearance and convenience.  It would never, ever occur to anyone in 
my family that children would NOT be welcome at a wedding...but then, it 
would never occur to us to spend thousands and thousands of dollars making 
it a rarified, overly formal event, either.  If forced to contemplate such 
things, either would be seen as ridiculous and childishly 
self-absorbed.    Weddings are family events, period.  And if your 
aspirations are too highfalutin' for your family, if your five year old 
niece or your cousin who always wears overalls even on Sunday will be out 
of place, then perhaps it's time to reconsider.   Trying to create some 
kind of false version of reality under glass is pointless and ultimately 
destructive.  Begun in an environment of disconnection, style over 
substance, and false expectations, it's no wonder so many marriages fail.

Cohousing at its base is an attempt to recreate an older, community-based, 
more humane, village style of life.  If you start out by undercutting those 
values...by leaving children, old people, or other members of a healthy 
social ecology off the invitation....you doom the experiment to failure.

Sara


_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L