I was really stuck back in 2016. We were living in a house in the Gloucestershire countryside, with few friends locally and little sense of contributing much to the community around us. Nor was it clear to me how to shift things. In creating a comfortable nest for our two young children, we had become isolated and withdrawn.
So, when other things drew us to Devon, I jumped at the chance to start over. Maybe this time we could create a more outgoing lifestyle? Deep down, however, I worried that my habit of withdrawing would lead me to create yet another prison for myself.
Praying for help
I don’t think I ever formed it consciously into words, but there was in me a deep prayer for help in this situation. Like someone sinking in quicksand, I felt so stuck that I knew I needed outside help to free me from my own habits. This is the story of how that prayer was answered…
We had already found a secondary school for my son, but getting a place for my daughter Lara at a local primary turned out to be a big challenge. We had taken great care in finding a school with a spare place for her, visiting it without her first, then taking her along to see it for herself, and then applying only when we were all happy.
Our original plan was to move down at Easter, and we had a place lined up for her then. But when we decided to delay our move until the summer, things started to unravel. The school told us that we’d have to reapply for a place in the spring, but reassured us that they had plenty of spare places so that shouldn’t be a problem.
However, when I called the school about this a few months later, they informed me that they’d had a rush of new applicants and there were no places left. We’d have to start looking for a new school for Lara!
In a panic, I called the council and was given the name of three schools with spare places. But with just 24 hours until the application deadline we had no time to look at schools, let alone take Lara along for a visit. We had to make a decision by the next day, based on looking at google maps and school websites!
I spent the afternoon doing just that, and later that evening when the kids were in bed, I broke the news to Sundara. She was as shocked as I was, recognising how little we had to go on, and how little time we had.
The Jumping Buck
I started showing her the school websites, and she was as nonplussed as I was by the first two. But then we came to the third, for a school in a town called Buckfastleigh.
I clicked on that school’s homepage, and our very slow internet connection set about bringing it up on screen. While we waited, Sundara suddenly said “Look!”
Out there in the field in front of our house, there was a deer leaping around. It was very unusual to see such animals and they generally kept well out of sight. But this one seemed to be trapped in the field and was urgently trying to get out.
By now the web page had loaded and when we saw the school’s logo, we both gasped. It was of a deer, leaping and making exactly the same shape that the deer in the field had just made.
We looked back at the deer, and watched it find a hole in the fence and bound away. We looked back at the website and then stared at each other in astonishment.
Our dilemma was then whether to follow the poetry of that moment, or keep plodding along with our logical minds, trying to work out the best thing to do. There was really nothing between these three schools. They each had minor advantages and disadvantages that seemed to cancel each other out. But Buckfastleigh had the jumping buck!
In the end we chose to be “fools”; to follow the poetry of that moment rather than our minds, to allow a deer to lead us.
Divine Messenger
I later read that deer have often been seen as divine messengers. And we later learned that Buckfastleigh means “a field (leigh) where a deer (buck) is held (fast).” Indeed, the famous abbey of Buckfast is said to have been founded when monks followed a thirsty deer to the river here a thousand years ago.
Once our kids were settled in their new schools, we started looking for a house to buy. After an exhaustive search, we found nothing suitable, and eventually had to admit that probably we had chosen the wrong school, as we couldn’t find anything to buy near Buckfastleigh.
We started looking for places in Totnes, but they were very expensive and would involve us making a daily school run. But after viewing a house there and admitting to the estate agent that it wasn’t right for us, he said “where does your daughter go to school then?”
“Buckfastleigh” we replied.
“Oh” he said, “we have a house just opposite the school there!”
And he did. It had been listed as a two bedroom house, but since we needed a 3 bedroom house it had never shown up in our internet searches. But their calculations hadn’t included the attic conversion, which made the house big enough for us after all.
We looked it up online, and that’s when we saw the gallery!
It was called Jellyfish Artshub at that time, and there were pictures of people mingling, enjoying art and stories and performances and it was a moment of pure magic for us! We knew at once that this was the place for us. It wasn’t as if we’d been looking for a house with an arts space attached, but as soon as we saw it, we knew it was the answer to our prayers!
The next morning we made an offer which the owner quickly accepted. Looking back I really can say that The Dragon Sanctuary has given us what we were needing at the time. It has become a way to contribute the things that Sundara and I most love and to bring people together in a beautiful space. It’s become a temple of stillness, as we both still need to retreat from the busyness of life; but it’s a temple in which we can share that stillness with others.