August 15, 2006
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Knitting oikos with Just threads
The most fundamental level of creating oikos (the web of relationships that is the social world we inhabit) is mothering. Last weekend I met Kemi Ingram, a mom whose new radio show is all about "socially conscious" mothering. She has lived and studied in Oxford England as well as here in America, and has friends all around the world. Her show debuts September 5th on iThinkRadio.net. Meanwhile, see her website at theradiomom.com.
I look forward to hearing Kemi, and eavesdropping on her developing conversation with her listeners/readers. But as I do, memories of mothers with far fewer choices will nag at me. So here is a meager sample of a few other ways that oikoses can be knit together (or back together) with threads of justice and kindness:
Just Coffee, Chiang Mai, Thailand-- Mark and Christa Crawford are close friends, entrepreneurial types who started a coffeehouse/restaurant for the specific purpose of giving alternative employment to prostitutes. Some of these women were trafficked into sexual slavery, tricked or torn from their families and villages; some saw no other way to provide for their aging parents; many are mothers themselves now, and would weep with frustration listening to Kemi's program.
Casa Quivira, Antigua, Guatemala-- Clifford and Sandra Phillips run a licensed private orphanage nestled among the volcanoes of Guatemala's high range. It is a model for how an orphanage ought to be run. Note that they do not use the word "orphanage" on their site: Casa Quivira is so far removed from the negative preconceptions most folks have of orphanages that they avoid that term like the plague and make up their own descriptors.
Vista del Mar, Los Angeles, California-- We were certified foster parents through this excellent private agency, and hope to be recertified again someday. Vista provides every kind of safety net for families that disintegrate or explode or simply never existed: all sorts of counseling, inpatient and outpatient mental healthcare, group homes, alternative school, foster care, adoption (all three flavors: local relinquishment, international, and fost-adopt... we've tasted all three). I'm sure they do even more than this. I highly, highly recommend them. If you are not an Angeleno, there may be something akin to Vista del Mar in your area too. I hope.
If you are considering mothering a child, whether for the first or tenth time, please consider taking up the loose thread of a child's life and knitting it into your oikos. Or enable someone else to do so. It won't change the whole world. But it will change that child's world, and yours.
