My friend has this problem. She will do anything for anyone but has trouble asking for help. This summer she started building her art studio- we had spent years talking about it and dreaming together about what it would look like, and even buying things at thrift stores that were going to “be perfect for your studio someday”. So here it was happening and she was doing it all herself, getting tendinitis from hammering, etc – “I know you’re busy”and “I can do it myself” she would say when I complained that she hadn’t called for help.

Finally she saw the light when I told her this story, which I heard from the phenomenal Jan Phillips:

Jan was in India in a small village where they were building a school. They were making cement for the walls and to do this they had a line of all the people from the village from the banks of the river up to the building site. The person at the river would take a small container, fill it with sand from the bank and then the container would be passed from person to person up the line.

Jan was in the line helping, and as they worked under the hot sun she noticed a small tractor and truck sitting idle not too far away. Jan was getting very hot and uncomfortable, so she said to the woman next to her, “This is crazy, why don’t we just go get that tractor and use it to fill up the truck with sand and the drive it up there? It’ll be so much easier and faster instead of all of us baking in the sun here.”

The woman looked at her compassionately and said, “You don’t understand, every person in this line wants to be here. When this school is done they want to be able to walk by and say- I helped build that. And they want to tell their children and grandchildren about the day they helped build the school. If we use the tractor and trailer, we will be robbing them of that joy.”

So think of it this way, think of how much we all like to help others. How good we feel to be of service. So when we want to dismiss the idea of asking for help, maybe we ought to question whether it is our right to rob others of that joy.

love says, I am the bark of a tree
I will wrap up your unquiet heart
until you can shed the shame,
carve your own initials in your
naked, trepidatious soul

love says, I am an animal
like a racehorse with good teeth and strong legs
I stand under the streetlight
and wait for your forgotten urge
to undo all your buttons

love says, I am the holes
in your breath
where cathedrals are built

love says, YES.

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want to join in?

“Don’t be afraid,” the angel says in greeting. This is an important idea, easily passed over. The world would like us to be afraid. Afraid of each other, afraid of life, afraid of doing the wrong thing, afraid of illness, misfortune, and death. How many preachers try to scare you into belief? As a child I was threatened into faith with terrifying images of hellfire. But fear is never a good matrix for religion. The angel says, “Don’t be afraid.” The Greek words could be translated: “Give up your phobias.” Let’s not operate from anxiety, the angels might be saying, but from trust, hope, and a feeling of participation and connection. Let’s live into life rather than shy away from it in fear.

This is an excerpt from an unpublished chapter from Thomas Moore's book Writing in the Sand: Jesus and the Soul of the Gospels.  It's an examination of the story of Jesus' birth. Thomas Moore is one of my favourite authors - get a taste yourself by downloading the whole chapter at his website.