We held a beautiful benefit concert called Play for Shelter, on Friday night here at Shekina Garden. There are three families we know of in the area who are in need of some assistance with housing - these families are living with a range of difficulties including disability, recent loss and grief, addiction and poverty.

Neil suggested we put on a night of performances and ask our traveller friends to contribute towards this cause. Usually we would hold an Open Mic -style concert for a benefit night, but we decided to curate the evening more closely and invite people to play. We had our friend from Australia Bo play some originals, a bunch of the Shekina community banded together to play and sing Jesus bhajans - devotional songs in an Indian style, Chinua played a solo set of originals, then played with Devin and Eliza for some very danceable trad songs - Irish tunes with bodhran and mandolin and guitar and whistle. Rae shared some of her original poetry in both sets. We had a bunch of us Shekina folks play some bluesy/country-gospel tunes and then our friends from Circus Arcanum Erika and Scion brought the grand finale with a gorgeous clowning act. They then spun fire with our friend Ryan to live drumming in the garden!

A whole bunch of us also made cake, cookies, fruit crumble, slices and chai which our dear traveller family snaffled up with gusto. KIds ran around the garden, we danced and sang along, lit a bonfire and had a really really fun night together.

I love that our spirituality is not just in a building once a week. It is prayer and meditation and bible circles…and it also finds expression in throwing a big party with our friends to raise some money to help others.

And raise some money we did! Including gifts from Australian and Thai friends, together with what was given on the night…we smashed our target and raised 31,650 baht!

Such generous friends!

We feel so pleased to be able to help these three families to set themselves up with some better housing for the cold season.

- a post by Ro