So, I read this post by Aubs about her year. It struck a cord. While mine hasn’t gone nearly as bad, it’s been hard. Really hard. If it wasn’t for the efforts of friends, family, and community I’d be worse off.

It got me thinking about something I wrote about two year ago. It was a series of three posts about community. I’m going to be re-posting them again, and I look forwards to people’s thoughts on them. Hopefully, I’ll be able to expand beyond the three. Initially, there was supposed to be a larger number of them, but life got in the way on that. We’ll see what happens.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been blogging for over three years now.

The thing about these posts was they were written back when the economy was sound. Well, more sound than it is now anyways. Back in Jan of 2011 we couldn’t imagine how bad things would get. We’re still looking at an “underground” unemployment rate of around 20%, higher in my generation. The jobs aren’t there, and those that are can’t cover the ends. I have a full time job and like three bills, and I still can’t meet them all this month, partially because I helped out a friend, and partially due to some emergencies that happened.

And I’m not even the worst off compared to a lot of people. But it’s gotten hard, and as much as our….leaders…crow that they’re solving the problem, they aren’t. It’s getting worse.

We can’t make it alone.

When I first started looking at the idea of Pagan and Heathen communities, the idea was about moving our religions forwards. We’ve reached about as far as we can in terms of power with individual/solo practitioners. If we want to really keep growing and furthering Paganism and Heathenism in terms of rights and legal protections, we need to start to truly gather together, not just in organizations, but in locations to live as actual communities.

Now though, I am starting to think that this is something we have a need to do just to physically survive. Heathenism is based on family and hospitality. And I know we need that. Humanity survived because we built communities, clans, tribes. Now, I think we have to do this again. Because a nation isn’t enough, a government won’t save us. It’s going to be coming together, settling land, building trades and communities that are self sustaining, that is what is going to get us through the next few years.

So I’ll be re-posting the old posts, and I’m going to try and move forwards from there. Hopefully with your help, your suggestions, I’ll be able to help fill in the holes that have caused communities to fail in the past.