It’s getting towards the end of the harvest season – quite a sensible time to be thinking about collaboration. For most of settled human history, harvesting was a big job that required the work of entire communities. Before that, survival for our ancestors certainly depended on working together. Modern technology has ‘liberated’ us from the apparent need to fit in and work alongside others, but the truth is that our ‘freedom’ also means loneliness and isolation for many people.

Any Pagan ritual or celebration is an opportunity to come together and make something. One of the reasons I especially like improvised ritual is that it creates the scope for everyone to be equal participants, crafting something in the moment.

At the moment, collaboration is something that I have a lot of reasons to personally celebrate. I’ve just committed to being a bit more involved in an ongoing way with Contemplative Druid events in Stroud. I’ve also taken the plunge and got myself a lot more involved in local bardic events and group celebrations, and I feel very inspired and optimistic about all of that. This month’s image is also a collaboration. In the last year I’ve become a colourist for my husband, which means our working lives are more closely intertwined. This piece is for a setting we co-created.

There’s a lot of romance attached to the idea of the solitary genius – be that the lone crazy inventor, the poet in the high tower, the single hero or whoever it is. In practice, most of the best things humans do we do in teams, not as individuals. Even when it looks like it was all down to one person (as with a novel) there’s usually a tribe involved in there somewhere.

 

Lone heroics might look like the makings of a good story, but they aren’t the makings of much of a life. If there are people with whom you can do good things, celebrate them.