It begins: building a new Shekina space.

When Chinua and I moved to Pai, it was with the intent of beginning a meditation community similar to Shekina in Goa. This past year has been a settling year. We’ve been learning language, getting to know people here, playing music, making connections-- doing all the things you need to do to get into life in a new place. I didn’t want it to take a long time and I’ve been very impatient at times, sitting on the bus trying to make it move faster with my knees and the muscles in my cheeks.

But sometimes we wait for God. He has his time and we don’t know what’s going on, but we wait. We looked and looked for what would be our own space, a place to gather, to be the place for our circles and meditation here. Sometime in May, a friend told us about a property for rent that he thought might be something we could use, a lot like what we’re looking for. I walked out to the property. Chinua was away for five weeks, and I remember the Skype call I had with him.

“I’m in love,” I said. I took Miriam out there and she loved it too. And Chinua, when he came, saw all the things we saw and more. We started dreaming.

The property is small, just the right size for beginnings. It’s for rent, rather than for sale, also good for beginnings. It’s close to town, close enough for people to walk out to us in no time at all, and yet when you walk out to it, crossing the river in the process, you enter a little space of quiet and you can see for a mile, all the way to the mountains. It’s lovely.

We signed a lease on June 15th.
We started building on July 2nd.

We’re making progress, and we’re so excited; planning and sketching, dreaming and comparing ideas. We talk about the feeling of absolutely everything. The words we use in designing are: simple, welcoming, sacred, artful. We ask ourselves questions: Can you see the doorway when you walk in? Will you feel drawn in? What does the way the buildings are arranged do to your headspace as you see them? It’s all important.

There were two buildings already on the property. We kept the kitchen (re-did the walls) but took down the bamboo hut, and now we’re in the process of building a large meditation/gathering space and a bathroom.

We’re nearly ready to begin here. And of course, the timing of God is perfect. If we had tried to do all this a year ago, without the amazing connections we have now, we’d be spinning our wheels. If we tried to do it without being able to speak Thai as we are now, we’d be incredibly frustrated. It shows me yet again: Wait, oh wait on the Lord.