Tall. Slender. Beautiful.  Barbara looked like the archetypal hippy dolly bird, with long, dark hair and a fringe framing her big, grey-blue eyes.  I mention her looks because they were striking – there were some who called her ʻthe Goddessʼ – and they certainly enabled a strong feature of her personality, which was to tell people (especially men) the truth they werenʼt facing. Being teased by the beautiful Barbara, people just didnʼt take offense. And I think there was another, more hidden, reason for that.  Barbara was someone who had worked hard on dealing with her own ego. That meant she quickly spotted when others hadnʼt. But there wasnʼt a shred of malice in her, and people sensed that. She was only interested in truth.

Barbara was someone who, as a young child, saw fairies at the bottom of the garden, and I think that, all her life, she remained touched by them. It grieved her, when her family moved to a more urban setting, to find the fairies had departed. But they stayed with her in the sparkling mischief with which she went through life.  She loved living in London in the Swinging Sixties. She worked as a typist at Senate House, doing admin work for London University, and that put her right at the heart of the London scene. In those days I believe she took LSD, just once, and never forgot the visions and sensations of the experience that followed, in which there was nothing to grieve her.

For there was much in life that grieved and disappointed Barbara. The glamour of the city began to pall. She needed to find a place where she could live her truth, her aspirations.  How she heard of the Findhorn community I donʼt know, but in the early 1980s she did the year-long orientation programme, as it was then called, the entry to membership.

I got to know Barbara in 1998 when I rented the tiny room at the end of her caravan, Heartstone. By that time she had left membership of the Findhorn Foundation and earned her keep through a combination of offering B and B and doing cooking shifts, usually at Cluny or Newbold. (She was also an early-morning presence at Park Kitchen every day, preparing the bean sprouts.) I remember a cooking shift we did together, a big shift, one Christmas Eve, in Park Kitchen. With her usual mischievous sparkle, and pulling rank as the person present who had lived longest in the Community, she announced to Francine who was focalising: “We always have champagne for the Christmas Eve shift!” Whether or not that was strictly true, I was sent to the Phoenix to get some.  It did add considerably to the magic of preparing that Christmas meal.

Barbara in her caravan Heartstone

We became close friends.  Once I moved to Findhorn in 2002 she asked me, each year, to help her with her tax return. And, when something was up and she wanted to consult an oracle she would invite me to sit with her at Heartstone, in her incense-scented, creeper-covered caravan, and we would draw from her own, hand-made pack of cards, with pictures and quotations she had cut out herself. I remember her handling those cards with her long, elegant hands with long, yellow-painted nails. And sparkly bits.

Early in 2005, Barbara became unwell. She came to stay at Heatherfield, the house Iʼd had built on the Field of Dreams and shared, at that time, with Duncan Easter, Alix Bernard and their daughter Jo.  It turned out that her illness was serious, and I recall the day I went with her to Raigmore hospital where she received the diagnosis of terminal lung cancer (of a type not caused by smoking). Before we went in to see the consultant, I asked Barbara what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.  “Thereʼs nothing really, except inner work,” was her response.  In the six weeks she had left, she did a master-class in inner work.  She continued to live at Heatherfield. Her sister, Marianne, came from Australia to help. And the Community rallied round.  I would tell Barbara what people were offering; she chose, very clearly, which offers she would accept. (I believe the life-review she did with Vivien Maule was an important piece of that master class.) One day, astonishingly, she told me: “Iʼm having the time of my life!”

Barbara died gracefully, and in a state of full consciousness, with Judith Berry by her side midwifing her transition, on the afternoon of 29th April 2005, just as the world outside was shutting down for Easter. Mercifully, the cancer that took her life did not cause her physical pain. Dressed in her best, her body was carried to the Earth Sanctuary where, two by two, people sat in vigil for 24 hours.  She was a dearly beloved member of the Findhorn Community.

She left behind her a body of vibrant poetry, Itʼs poetry that come from the heart, and gets to the heart of things, like Barbara. Together with her friend Ramon, who has his own connection with Findhorn, I hope to bring this out, maybe in 2024.  (See www.brynglasbooks.com for further news on this.) Below one, from her experience of a cooking shift, so that we may end with her own words:

Dichotomy of Feeling

As I walked into the Newbold kitchen
I was met by a barrage of love
– all directions coming for me –
A multitude of feelings,
affections, tender eyes, contact,
filling me up, feeding me;
energies rampant
as I step into a vortex of love-buzz,
sweeping me off my feet

Can I handle it?
Can I be in it?
Can I allow it in?

I am overwhelmed

Is it safe
to be open completely?
Or should I be
closed, a little …
Let love trickle in slowly

It’s a warm balm
It alarms my senses
I want to run away
Be alone
I want to groan in ecstasy
at love’s power and passion
knocking on my door
pawing like a cat at my lap

And then, the ecstasy of playing with food
Sensuous food!
To knead and cut
and wallow in the flavours,
the smell – so many smells –
taking me away on a fountain of juices,
ripe with sheer ripeness of colour,
texture, nectar, subtle flavours,
powerful explosions of soft and warm
between my fingers;
lingering smells on cloth and breath

Leaving, I’m full
Fed
Love has struck me down again
in all ways
in all senses
in all delights

Food
You
God
All of life
Pulsating …

Barbara Loveland