Even if you Fall in Love for Life , marriage takes work and committment.
After talking with some friends, I think I should try again to explain my idea for a community Marriage Cooperative (fka the Arranged Marriage Cooperative), a project which would create a coop, a MarriageCoop, like any coop (Cooperative), but with the goal of arranging marriages for its members. Each single person would
1. ) agree to eventually take a turn or rotation as the Matchmaker for the group,
and
2.) Choose 4 people whom he or she would trust to ‘vet’ potential dates, if those 4 people, agreeing to be that person’s Marriage Panel, further agree to help support and work out any problems with the couple, as a supportive community or family would do.
Each single person would meet with the Matchmaker, describing the kind of person he or she is looking to marry. The Matchmaker then picks several potential matches and shows them to the single person and that person’s Marriage Panel, who agree on a person to meet for a date. The Marriage panel then meets with the Marriage panel of the other single, and if both Panels and the Matchmaker agree, then the two singles should meet, then talk to their panels, and see if they want to continue getting to know one another. After a certain period of time, they get married, and there are automatically at least 8 people who have agreed to take on the role of close community members in supporting this couple.
That way both the single person and the community get voice and committment in the process of creating healthy sustainable marriages, which strengthen both the individual and the community.
This is meant to be fully inclusive of the entire community, as even the Village Idiot has an important role in every community. Even people who were formerly abusive, or formerly abused, can and should form part of the Cooperative, given strong supervision and support from their Marriage Panel members. Some singles will have to be vetted and supervised, taught and coached, perhaps monitored, to ensure compliance with non-abusive norms, so that they learn to both give and ask for their needs to be met in healthy ways. This strengthens both them and the community, and forms a more inclusive and reslient society which can channel and help the flowering of each person´s gifts and potential, through fostering healthy contributive cooperative relationships both personal and communal. This is what community is all about.
Thoughts?
Community Cooperation Shira,
Gregorian Date: Monday, 1 September, 2014
MEOW Date : Friday, September 1, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era, aka Human Era)
