Here for This

I.
"'So I thought, Isn't that really amazing? What an amazing life. You walk along and reach a barrier and you stop and you just call out help. You don't know who you're talking to, you don't know who's around if anyone, and you wait, and then somebody turns up and they help you across that barrier, and then you walk on knowing that pretty soon you're going to meet another barrier and you're going to have to stop again and cry out help, help, help, not knowing if anyone's there, not knowing who it will be that will turn up to help you across the next barrier.'" ~ Rebecca Solnit

II.

We are here for this. We are here to hear to each other's calls.

We are here to keep going along, even with the full knowledge that barriers are an inevitable part of the journey.

We are here to ask for and receive help along the way. We are here to walk along. We are here to listen and respond.

We are here to examine the barriers and not only clear them out of the way but to question why some people encounter so many more barriers than others. We are here to say hey, wait a hot minute, this is the same barrier as back there... what's going on with that?

We are here to be helpers, not saviors. We are here to receive, which is not the same as needing to be saved.

We are here to learn resourcefulness and resilience but not in a vacuum, not in an individualistic it's all up to you kind of way, not when access to support hinges on how much money is in your bank account and who you know.

We are here to distinguish between inner work and outer work without forgetting that the two are connected the way muscle and fascia are connected.

We are here to dream and to learn what faith feels like without dogma, to discover the songs and sounds and silences that can hold us when we need holding.

We are here to be brave and this bravery requires honesty and this honesty requires safety that not everyone has in equal measure. We are also here to develop compassion for all we don't know about each other's journeys.

We are here to see what is real, what has shape and substance, and what is projection, distortion, confusion. This is a lifetime's work and then some.

We are here to let go of trying to finish work that is unfinishable, and also to complete the work we can. We are here to have moments of thrilling accomplishment.

We are here to figure out why we're here. To try all kinds of things. To pick one thing and go all in. To love what is right in front of us. To respond to the call for help when we hear it – including our own.

It's not always easy but it is always worth it. Whatever you're going through, keep going.