heart tenders
We are remembering how to be a village.
An intergenerational community in the Ojai Valley. We gather for ceremony, for the table, and for the kind of belonging that asks something of you.
Most of us grew up without a village and learned to manage without one.
You handle things at home. You see a professional. You keep the hard parts to yourself, mostly out of consideration, because everyone is busy and everyone is carrying their own. It works well enough. It also leaves each household holding alone what a hundred people used to hold together.
We think that arrangement is the thing that needs repairing, and that the repair is slow and fairly unglamorous. It looks like knowing which child belongs to which parent. It looks like the same faces in the same rooms across years, long enough that showing up when someone is sick is obvious rather than heroic.
So we are building something ordinary. A calendar people can count on. A house with the light on. Older people and children at the same gatherings, often in the same conversation. Enough continuity that nobody has to arrive as a stranger twice.
One thing we hold to. Money should never be the reason someone cannot come. The Thursdays are potluck and cost nothing. The weekend gatherings run on a suggested contribution, and nobody is turned away for lack of funds. If that is a problem, say so and we will work it out. It is a normal conversation here.
Right now we are three people, a house, and a list of dates.
We gather every other Thursday evening, and four weekends a year.
The Thursdays are potluck, six to nine, children welcome. Some nights a movie projected outside. Some nights prayer and song around the fire. Some nights long conversation on the porch while the kids run around. Come for the whole evening, or for forty minutes on your way home from something else.
The weekend gatherings are the deep end. Saturday morning through Sunday afternoon, no more than sixteen people, by invitation, and for adults. Almost everyone who comes has been to a Thursday first.
Write to us for the dates.
June 2027
Once a year, some of us make the pilgrimage to Chavín de Huántar, high in the Peruvian Andes.
Come on a Thursday
There is no membership to buy and no form that decides anything. The way in is to show up on an evening, eat with us, and see how it feels. Most people come the first time because someone here brought them.
If you do not know anyone yet, write to us and tell us a little about yourself. We will send you the dates and the address.
Inquire