(Editor’s note: This post is the result of conversations/correspondence between two long-term guests and Stan in 2010/11.)

Peter must have still been thinking that he had some good reason to have me come here, because when we finished the renovation work at Cluny and got ready for the coach parties – in order to honor the terms of the purchase, we had to be a four-star hotel that first summer, at the same time as we were running our programs -, Peter asked me if I’d like to be the night porter. I didn’t know what that meant. This is in the spring and summer of ‘76. As the night porter, my job was to secure the building, to do some cleaning, and generally to ‘hold the space’. It also included – as I found out, and on a steep learning curve – giving early morning teas and wake-up calls to the guests.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I had the list given to me by the coach party organizer with the names of those who wanted wake-up calls and those who wanted early morning tea. So I would set up tea trays all over the place. Where now there are shower stalls, there were cupboard spaces with linen and tea-making equipment at the time. My first morning on the job, my mind said: “Okay, there’s a cup and a teabag and some hot water and a little thing of milk” – I can’t remember if I knew about the sugar. I knock on my first door and there’s a lady who sits up in her bed and looks at my serving tray and asks: “But where’s my tea?” It turned out it should have been served in a little pot, so they got one and a half or two cups. I learned very quickly!

Cluny Reception photo Findhorn Foundation

Cluny Reception photo Findhorn Foundation

So I’m running around here all summer with a huge list and serving early morning teas. At Reception, we had one of those old-fashioned switchboards to ring the rooms (worked by taking out and plugging in a connection cord and winding a handle for the ring), so I’d be doing the wake-up calls and then running off to get the teas out to people. It was wild.

And I am proud to say, that through that whole (summer) season, I never missed a beat. They got their early morning wake-up calls, and early morning teas, on time. And I got my exercise, to last me a lifetime.

Another anecdote, with a little more meat to it (rather than milk…): That service continued on through the Fall Conference that year, at the beginning of October, as I recall, before it morphed into a lesser form of night portering, with my Maintenance Department mates taking turns with me on it. One night of the Conference, early on in it, I was doing my mopping of the back (Kitchen) corridor in the middle of the night, and was near the back door of the building when I sensed somebody; and looking up, saw a man standing in the doorway to the Kitchen, just looking at me. I asked him if I could help him; wondering what this was all about. He didn’t reply for a moment; and then, as if having been thinking of something, and then coming ‘round, he shook his head, and said simply, “It’s the light.” I thought: Oh-oh. Did I leave a light on somewhere, that has woken this guy up? But then he just turned and walked away.

I didn’t think anything more about it – peculiar; but on with the job – until the next day, when I happened to go to that morning’s Conference session in the Universal Hall, and Peter told a bit of a story about a man who had had an experience at Cluny the night before, and wanted to tell the Conference about it; and then introduced, lo and behold, ‘my’ guy. His story: He had been woken in the middle of the night, and was drawn to go down to the Sanctuary to meditate. There, he had felt himself moving out of the building and looking back on it, from a short distance; from where, he said, he saw the whole building lit up, filled with light. He took this to mean that Cluny was a light center, and he was moved by it; and it caused him to ‘get’ two messages, both for Eileen. One was to give her some flowers (which he then produced from having been holding behind him), and the other was to give her a kiss. Which he then moved to accomplish, at where she was sitting in the front row, directly opposite the speaker’s rostrum. Some people sort of clapped; but Eileen was not going to have much of it. She took the bouquet from him, but let him know by her body language that that was it, buddy. We are not amused. He took the rebuff graciously, and retired from the field. But – interesting story, eh?

And I was glad to be part of his experience of the place. Indeed: a center of light. Within a larger Center of Light. Doing our thing. Not always perfectly. But with good intentions. And with the support of many people to help us keep it going.

Take a bow, Guests.

And while on the subject of my Night Porter days:

Cluny Bar photo Findhorn Foundation

Cluny Bar photo Findhorn Foundation

One of my jobs as Night Porter, I soon discovered, was to give the coach drivers a wee dram at night, from the stock we had in the Wine Cellar. During these brief social interactions, we would talk about mostly nothing (I knew nothing about ‘football’; what we in America call soccer, a minor sport), but sometimes I struck gold. At the end of their tours (mostly 7-day or 10-day tours of England/Scotland/Wales) the coach companies would ask the folks about their experiences; and the drivers reported to me that when their group had been asked about their highlights, more than once many of them said that the most interesting part of their tour “was that interesting hotel up in Forres, where the other guests were always hugging each other and laughing in the hallways.”

Those would be the Foundation guests; who, true to rumored form, began to arrive in greater numbers that summer, because of ‘the power of One’ – in this case, the power of one book; the Magic of Findhorn, which had just come out in paperback (and a glowing review of which had been carried in a major new age magazine in the U.S., the East-West Journal), The warning word about this was the catalyst for the purchasing of Cluny. And there we were, ready for the guests when they started arriving in droves.

Later I realized that Peter asked me to be the night porter because he trusted me. He actually wanted me to hold the space. I was very happy to.

I had a cleaning routine. I had this place perfect the next morning as a hotel. When we finished with the coach party guests, everyone wanted me to continue with early morning teas, but there was to be none of that. At the end of the season, I joined the Maintenance Department, and we were all going to take turns doing the night porter thing. I worked up a sheet of instructions about the job. Then I started noticing that the Lounge looked a little unkempt in the mornings, so I brought it up at one of our weekly attunements.1 “Someone seems to be missing the straightening up of the Lounge on their night porter rounds.” Silence. Then one of the guys said casually: “Oh, I never do that.” What?! He shrugged. “It’s my home. I don’t straighten up my home.” ”Neither do I,” said one of the other guys. I was stunned. Peter’s philosophy was not only about ‘Work is love in action’, but also ‘Perfection in all things’. Which brings up a point.

Cluny is where the community really began; because Peter grounded the basic principles of what later became the community, here with the staff in the hotel. This is one thing I’d really like to share. He met with them when he took over and he said to them: “We’re going to run this place probably a little different from what you’re used to.” Peter, Eileen and Dorothy’s being here was to get grounded in daily life with a spiritual approach; asking the staff to put their heart into everything they did. To us he would go into more detail. If you don’t give of your best, and if you don’t give of your heart, you’re letting yourself down, you’re letting the spiritual realm down – which is using us to bring spirit into matter. We’re the handmaidens of the spiritual dimension into the material realm; that’s how spirit comes, embodying through us – and you are letting down all those people around you who could have been inspired to give of their best if you had given them a good example. A lot of people have lost that ‘spirit’ here over the years, in just getting on with the job, I feel. Like my buddies in Maintenance then, there at the beginning of our time and life at Cluny.

So I met Peter and then Eileen; and I think Peter respected me. We had a good rapport. You didn’t talk to Peter about personal things. There was no ‘person’ there to do that with. It was always about ‘’How’s the work going on?” Peter would come over to Cluny and say to me: “I noticed the driveway verge is getting a bit overgrown” and I’d say: “Yes, I noticed that, too. We’ve been rather busy. I’ll have a word with the Garden.” I could appreciate that this man was the custodian of this place. He’d trebled the takings of Cluny while he was the hotel manager. I was very happy to honor what he had grounded here; not just in a loving but also in a respectful way.

I had a couple of personal connections with Eileen. After being here for about a year, I moved to the Park and worked in the Publications Department, which was located where the now privately-owned printing press and business is housed. I started working there, and became the printer. Never done this before; but that’s part of the beauty of living in community. Somebody there asked me if I wanted to be the printer, I didn’t know any better and so I said yes. I only found out later that printing is a 7-year apprenticeship in the commercial world. My little story here is that after having done it for a while, I spent hours in there late into the night, and started having troubles with my eyes. Anyway, one day Eileen asked to talk to me. She was living in what is now Genesis. She asked me to come and have tea in Genesis: ‘Tea with Eileen’. She says: “Stan, I’ve observed you. You’re working too hard. You need to bring more joy into your life.” I said: “Oh, but I’m enjoying life.” Eileen: “Yes, but Stan, you’re working too late.”

What that was about: Friday night sharings used to be a major rhythm of life in the community, where we used to let our hair down. It started in the Community Center, or CC for short. Peter was good: you worked hard and you played hard. During Friday night sharings, anyone shared whatever they wanted: poems, about their holidays, skits. Peter was able to take a joke. Some people would love to rip off Peter as this proper British type among hippies, and he could roar with laughter. When the Universal Hall got built [a large performing arts center seating up to 300 people, completed in 1983], we moved to do our Friday night sharings there. It became more formal then, like a presentation, a performance, and no longer the funky little stuff we used to do. Anyway, many members stopped going regularly as more guests started doing more things at them. It was a shame, as it was a great way to play with each other at the end of a working week.

And Eileen would see me working in the printing press room as she would be going over to the Universal Hall on Friday nights. So, I got told off by Eileen.