A Magical Yurt Raising!
We are all still sitting with the experience last weekend of raising the yurt, and taking in the simple unexpected power of it. This was our first public “event” kind of thing - and it was not the elegant curated open house we might have dreamed up before covid time, but a Hail Mary of a barn raising, a flinging open the door and laying bare our need for help.
And amazingly, perfectly, a most kind-hearted and enthusiastic crew of you showed up to stand around in a boggy field with a bunch of strangers and do something none of us knew how to do, and call it community. And laugh together and swear together and figure it out, and make something breathtakingly beautiful.
By which I don’t just mean the yurt, but also the feeling of magic we’re left with. And yes, actual community.
Many of you have written back to us saying how wonderful it was to get involved, and how world-changing it was to spontaneously show up and feel welcomed and needed and part of building something good.
Frances sat down today, inside the yurt she’s dreamed of for many years, right up until last week as it arrived in the dark with no certainty of how it would get assembled - and she laughed to me, “I definitely believe in miracles.”
Me, this has been a year I learn about prayer. Which has become, essentially, learning about asking for help and allowing myself to feel held. That feels miraculous in itself, and is the current that holds me afloat as I manage all that is mine to hold. To experience you all coming out to help us hold the vision of Dogfish Moon in this way was such an affirmation and such a blessing.
My husband said, a bit stunned, “I’m so used to having to do everything myself all my life. It’s so powerful to remember that we can just ask for help, that people want to help each other.”
For whatever reasons in this time, in this place, in this year, when we’re all so frayed and distant and weary, I guess it’s an especially powerful reminder.
This week, reflecting on all this, I remembered this passage in The Art of Asking:
“From what I've seen, it isn't so much the act of asking that paralyzes us--it's what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. The fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one.
“It points, fundamentally, to our separation from one another.”
“Those who can ask without shame are viewing themselves in collaboration with—rather than in competition with—the world. Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.”
I also came to a passage in a book that tells the story of a young man learning to become a healer:
“You remember that,” his teacher says to him, “When you need help you must ask for it.” She looked carefully through the darkness at me. “Everyone comes to such a place in their journeys,” she said. “No person escapes this moment of despair. We can only pray for the strength to walk through it, to know how to handle it, to know how to solve this crisis of faith that always comes.”
And then this, tonight, advice I witnessed given to a dear friend by a community elder:
“Dear friend - sometimes when it has all been too much, for too long, you can feel totally shredded. Wrung out. Depleted. Done. In those moments, anything feels like it requires too much effort. Help! is a good prayer to say, from that worn out place. Just Help! You may not believe help is available....as it wasn't there when you were a child. Offering the cry of Help! as a prayer, is an act of courage under those conditions.”
It’s clear to me that we are all learning or relearning that not only is it allowed to ask for help, it is necessary and there are good and right ways to do so.
We are all remembering that asking can be a gift as much as a need, an invitation to make and remake the world together.
What a gorgeous gift to carry into this season.
What a beautiful blessing to underlay the foundation of a sanctuary.
May this be a place we continue to relearn these mysteries together.