Friendships, not unlike a backyard vegetable garden, can occasionally yield a crop that is unexpectedly bountiful. Yesterday, an old roommate of mine came into town to help with the house for the rest of the week. We put hammer to nail with ferocious intensity and started to make headway with preparing the openings for the windows. (The windows arrived last week Friday and we have gotten five of seventeen in so far)
All in all...yesterday was a good day.
It wasn't really about the progress we made. Nor was it merely a self-gratifying feeling to physically participate in the guts of the house construction. It was one person helping another. It was the shared conversations of two people amidst a task that one could not achieve individually. It was, at its essence, simply a reflection of what this project hopes to symbolize... the growth of a place, a person, a people, a planet.
It was a tentative baby step closer to defining or grasping on to the leap between growing a house and growing a village. When we nurture, feed, water, and provide sunshine for our friendships, we photosynthesize those people the do the same for others.