We spent this past weekend at a "Barn Raising". More accurately, "A shed completion" or something, but the idea is the same.
A couple in the local pagan community hired a Contractor to build a two story garage-like structure in their backyard. The structure was planned as an art and crafts area in one part, with a ritual area/covenstead upstairs. They have a really tiny house and need the room.
The Contractor turned out to have a certain lack of ethics and left the job uncompleted. The couple tried all forms of reasonable recourse to get him to complete the job, and failing that- took the weasel to court.
They won a judgment on the case- and the contractor was supposed to give the money back. Some people are unethical on the surface, but know what "The right thing to do" is. This fellow was not so troubled.
What this comes down to is that this couple had a partially completed structure in their yard for about two years, and no remaining funds to hire another contractor. Like most of us, they are of modest means. They are a little on the "Not so spry" side, and a project like this is a heck of a lot of work.
The building was partially up, but exposed to the elements, and after about two years of chasing around trying to get the contractor to do the right thing, it was getting to be time to finish the thing or give up. One thing led to another, and the idea of a barn raising came up.
This past weekend at least twenty members of our community came together and finished getting the building enclosed. Actually, as I sit here on Monday, on my butt, nursing some muscles that definitely need to get out more, and a mild early season sunburn, there are at least one or two folks getting off their day jobs early to go over and put the last 50 or so shingles on and do some last detail work.. But, damn it, we got that building enclosed. Another member of our community is able to have a place to work on their stuff.
It benefits the community because the woman of the couple makes some beautiful artwork, and creates some wonderful rituals and does a lot of other tangible and intangible things to benefit out community. It benefits the couple, because it gives them storage, helps their equity and all that sort of stuff.
It helps those of us who worked on the project on a bunch of levels:
We had a great time doing some thing tangible – those of us who do a lot of mentally oriented work deal with a lot of intangible stuff – I’ll driving by that "barn" for the rest of my life cracking a smile thinking about the folks who were there this weekend; thinking "Hey – we built that!" and smiling at the memory of noticing that five or six people in the "siding gang" were all singing along to a particularly good song on the radio.
Later we all had a big meal together and were able to see that we had done a good thing.
I'm expressing this in an inarticulate manner, but I'm proud as hell of the folks who showed up and did this. A lot of us spend our time working on intangible stuff, both in Magic and in our conversations of how to be good Pagans, Witches, Shaman, Druids, Faeries or whatever. A lot of the things we talk about will never add up to anything as tangible as that building we built this weekend. Some talk only leads to more talk. That building will be there for a lot of years.
If the purpose of Magic(k) is to cause change, it seems to me that community efforts like this are very magical.
It was a lot of fun to have all of these folks stopping by for as long as they could, contributing the work that they could. Some people (like myself) couldn't be induced to climb out on a roof at gunpoint. Some folks were scrambling around up there like maniacs. Some folks had never hammered a nail in their lives and learned. People did whatever they could to get the job done; each according to their skills and abilities.
There were folks preparing food, cutting trim, framing, watching children, carrying materials to people nailing them in place – you name it.
Some things got done really well, and a few folks got the chance to show off skills and talents that you wouldn't have guessed they had, or taught others how to do things that they had always wanted to learn. Some things got done in sort of humorous fashion; like the saw horse that got cut in half, or "the learning curve" (a course of shingles from the early hours of the roofing) that will be the things I grin about when I drive by there years from now.
But it got done.
And I am proud as can be to be a member of a community that can come together to do something like this for its people.
—Joe Dellea
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