How do we do this?
We ask.
It seems to me, that someone has to be willing to ask for the help on the behalf of another. If someone is struggling, someone else has to step in to convene a community response - a response that will bring healing both to the people struggling but also to the community.
It won’t just happen.
Sadly, raised as we are in the barren wasteland of mono-cropped grown in orderly rows with plenty of space in between each other, raised as we are in schools that separate us in a strict apartheid by age and ability, working as we often do alone at our jobs, learning as we tend to do alone, suckled on the tit of privatized property and nuclear families living in houses surrounded by white picket fences... the chances of a community response being organized are low indeed.
And so someone needs, not knowing how to do it, to try.
And they need to ask more than just the usual, overburdened suspects who are already always there for everyone, sitting on every volunteer board who have no doubt in their mind that they are needed.
What about those people who walk around in our communities doubting that they have anything to give? How else will they find out unless they are asked to appear? How will they find their strength unless they are counted on? How else will they know they are needed without being asked to contribute to a cause that needs them? How will they come to know their wealth and unless someone draws the line between it and all the good it might do that they had never yet considered?
Someone must be willing, with no permission, authority or qualifications whatsoever, to gather people together who never would have gathered on their own and to coordinate some sort of response that redeems both those hurting and those helping. Someone has to be willing to take the first step. Someone has to be willing to fail in the attempts and to pick up the pieces and mend them together with the gold of being a clumsy, plodding, confused, selfish, impoverished and beautiful human living in this modern world. Someone needs to proceed as if they are needed in the absence of any evidence that might back that up and court others so that they know they are needed.
What if that was you?
What if we looked at all of our troubles - and the troubles of others - as yet one more chance for the village to reconstitute itself again?
Conclusion:
Of course, it must be said, that village-making must include more than just humans. It must include the non-human world and the unseen world. It is something to notice about our times. There have never been more humans in the world and humans have touched every corner of this planet and yet we have never been more lonely. What if this loneliness wasn’t just for other people, but other kin - seen and unseen? It’s something to wonder about.
But starting with the human community, though deeply insufficient, is at least something.
What if there's nothing missing in you? What if there's a missing village for you to be in? What if there's nothing missing in you? What if there's a missing larger story for you to be in? What if what's missing is not what is being approached but a more beautiful way to approach it?
We all struggle from the absence of village and then we address these symptoms in ways that ensure the village we need never appears. We internalize our problem and feel like we’re failing for not being the whole village for ourselves and others.
But, what if we looked at all of our troubles - and the troubles of others - as yet one more chance for the village to reconstitute itself again? What if each of our lonely struggles wasn’t in the way of redemption but the doorway towards it? What if the key was our willingness to admit that it’s all too much for us?
These words I am writing are a plea for village-making as both the needed medicine and the process by which that medicine might appear. Village-making might be both the flower that grows from the garden, and the work we do to tend the soil that allowed it to appear in the first place.
On my wall in my office, I have these words written: Be the Shaman in the Village.
What is the village? The tribe. It is said we know or are close to a hundred people at any given time. Sure, over the course of our lives, we know many more than that, but are only close to or comfortable interacting with up to that number in present time. A hundred people is a small village. Even 5000 people could still be construed as a village.
Being of service is of immense value to the collective. As a psychic shaman healer, I have much to give. And I want to. Because I see the impact it has on people.
Everyone has pain, nestled deep within, that holds them back in some way. We all have limits we need to break through. That's how healing can help.
The idea to serve is there. The ability to help is there. The village, even, if a bit disjointed is there. But people are reluctant to ask for assistance with their lives. A cultural shift is needed perhaps?
And how do we serve those we love with no expectation of energetic exchange, knowing we cannot give everything (time, energy) at the expense of ourselves?
And throwing that limit to the side, how do we encourage those who suffer secretly to ask for help themselves? Perhaps it is as you do, a calling to step up and call out to the village, without which nothing will change.