“What has been full must empty what has increased must decrease, this is the way of heaven and earth to surrender is to display courage and wisdom.”
Ralph Blum from the Book of Runes.
I had no sense of a next step but felt a sense of enrichment from all my years in community. I had no financial resources and being content for so long to live simply, and entirely dependent on the community for all our needs, I had no idea how to generate an income in the larger world. I felt capable as a craftsperson, and a performance artist and I knew my way around a kitchen, cooking for over a hundred but I had no qualifications to prove any of this.
I began to feel as though I’d been living in a bubble and everything that had given me a sense of security was dissolving, I even began to question the authenticity of my life in the community, what had felt like genuine warmth began to feel the equivalent of being in a warm bath, closer to tepid! I was asked to work full time in the kitchen, hard and demanding work when done on a regular basis; after all the years of creative expressiveness it seemed punishing especially as so many of my good friends had left, many of them inspired to return to their homelands and create centres of their own.
My friend Leona said I was learning to confront my illusions and insecurities and I would come out of this stronger and wiser. A born again Christian herself she said that as we approach the age that Christ died and resurrected, thirty three-ish – those who were on a spiritual path, undergo a death of the egoic self – and a resurrection experience, a new beginning, she also quoted the Bible, about not being able to put new wine in old bottles; it was no comfort.
Ruby and Amber Station House
I was at home more for Ruby and Amber. I continued to rebirth people, as a service, not for income, it was a gift of spirit and I could only treat it as such. I worked several shifts a week in the kitchen and Jan and I were completing the final orders and ‘shutting up shop’ in the Candle Studio; there was talk that the studios could re-open in a year or two but we knew this was an ending, for most all of us our lives were taking us away from here.
Thanks to Lennie there were now grounds for Michael to divorce me. He had a new love in his life, and a significant one. Susie, a New Yorker who left her marriage partner to be with Michael. They took on a small apartment at Station House, and there was mention – so Ruby told me – that they were thinking about a life in New York.
That autumn was probably one of the most painful times of my life. I did my best to be a good responsive mama to the girls but we were all in it together, they felt my pain, I felt theirs, they loved their lives as they were and they loved their mum and dad. I would tell myself that I had no reason to complain, creatively speaking I had been mightily blessed; for over a decade life had been settled and really quite wonderful. I had a good dose of healing and I could help to heal others; I’d also just had a big taste of travel and hedonism.
No matter what the New Age pundits had to say about suffering and how we no longer need to linger there, it seems to be a pre-requisite to growth, change and finding soul strength. This transition was particularly hard but there are no comparisons when it comes to pain – pain is pain and it brings us to a threshold where something new can enter. Is any birth comfortable and pain free? Our lives are made up of endings and beginnings, birth, death, rebirth, and at the end of the day it gets dark, but there are stars and sometimes a moon, the promise of a new day.
Now it all had a different complexion, the balled up fist of anger and resentment I had felt so long toward Michael for his infidelities, undermining my love for him, dissolved into a nagging sense of anxiety as I considered life as a single parent; I experienced a sense of unreality, groundlessness. I had no role models! I was one of a new breed. How to navigate these waters without capsizing would be my greatest challenge. Also, I missed him and the sense of who we were together.
When news of our imminent divorce came out, it was met with disapproval, much of it directed at me. Only a few close friends knew about the personal details and I was not about to broadcast them as some couples, approaching a break-up had done, simply for the curiosity of others. Community life can be like living in a fish bowl but with plenty of room for projection and misinterpretation, and ours, a classic case. We had been loved and respected as a family and for the work we had done in Performing Arts and beyond. Michael’s ‘indiscretions’ had been private and discreet, over the years, whereas mine had been blatant and obvious. I also had to deal with Michael’s judgemental attitude toward me, a proud man, finding it hard to be forgiving, no longer the warm friendly person I had known. While Michael and Susie took a short holiday in France, I wrote him a letter asking if we could give life together another chance. On his return he thanked me for the letter and said his course was clear, it was to be Susie and New York; our time together was over. The fact that he would be leaving the country really ‘kicked in’ and I felt doubly abandoned, knowing how hard it would be for the girls, even with the promise of Stateside holidays.
Lennie was a good friend still, as long as I kept my aching heart out of it – we could spend time together; he was winding up the work on the Hall, before returning to the States and we’d take off on his motorbike for an hour or two to the Findhorn River where we would walk and talk. Lennie was everything I would have liked to be myself; isn’t that one of the reasons why we love romantically? because the loved one has the very qualities we long for? He was simple and uncomplicated, he could build his own house, he was open minded, loving and resilient; he’d tell me I needed to learn how to “roll with the punches” and “life was the guru”, to “trust life and let go of attachment, then I’d be a happier person”.
Around this time Ruby experienced a spontaneous rebirth… For every good reason she had been in a stew for some time and before the difficulties surfaced in our lives she was finding her approaching adolescence hard to deal with; each time she came into the room she brought – it seemed – a black cloud with her and on this occasion I asked her to come and sit with me and see if she could put it into words; she let me put my arm around her and I advised her to take some deep breaths as her breathing was constricted; as we breathed together for a while she began to cry and said she wanted to lie down; we were sitting on a thick hearth rug and a couple of logs were burning in the big fireplace. I lay down beside her and draped a blanket over her before realising she was deeply into a connected breathing pattern.
I felt inadequate to act as a rebirther for my own daughter as I would probably connect with whatever was about to surface and lose my objectivity. It was extraordinary that Lennie arrived in that moment and he took my place, asking Ruby that if she was O. K. with this to just keep up with the breath work. As I sat with them it became apparent that a release was in order and Ruby’s birth trauma was still sitting on her soul’s expression with significant density. Her breathing became relaxed and rhythmic with Lennie’s directing and after a while there was a good deal of cathartic crying followed by a kind of dialogue, as there often is, between conflicting forces in the psyche. There was then a monologue addressed to those who were present at her birth. I learned that a ‘solution’ had been put in her eyes to apparently ‘clear’ them, I knew nothing of this at the time as she relived the burning sensations.
Ruby worked through the ‘clearing’ of her bronchial tubes with mechanised suction, yet another invasive experience I hadn’t known about, then there was a period of quiet breathing before her words of forgiveness: she said she forgave the doctor and nurses, they were only doing what their doctors had done to them, then she cried and the whole tenor of the rebirth changed and her breathing became fuller and words flowed again as she said how she really wanted to ‘Be’ in the world for Ruby, to learn to dance with Ruby and live a life of joy. This came from a profoundly transpersonal place and moved me to tears with its simple sincerity; then there was peace and a sense of completion. Lennie and I were both stunned and we hugged. Ruby had reminded us just what a gift it was, to have such a tool of simple and immediate transformation and we both felt humbled to have been present at her rebirth; she lay for a while and was in a pretty amazing state of consciousness, I felt, as I brought her a warm drink and sat with her as she ‘landed’.
She wanted to be outside, it was cooling off in the early autumn evening and I draped the blanket around her and over her head and we walked out into the garden, she was a bit wobbly which is normal after a really good session and I kept my arm around her as we stood on the lawn watching a robin sing its sweet evening song. At one-point Ruby turned to me and said, “I feel like Mother Mary – I feel so peaceful”. We were not Catholic and I took it to mean that she felt her own innate sacredness, something we sadly lose sight of as we become accustomed to carrying the burdens of stress, anger, fear and trauma. I was touched to the core, amazed that such grace had been bestowed and I had been witness to it. Ruby’s birth had weighed heavily as a memory; I felt responsible, for being so young and ignorant to protect her, but also I had to acknowledge that in our society, that was the way babies were delivered in 1968 and there was nothing on offer in the way of preparing pregnant women for what childbirth involved. What a distance we’ve travelled.
Ruby had cleared a lot of density and it was a delight to be around her; later it became clear that she wanted to be with Michael and live in New York which was more heartache for me, but she was thirteen and more than ever now, knew her own mind and heart.
Universal Hall complete photo Findhorn Foundation
Somewhere around my final autumn at Findhorn, something wonderful happened to me. There was knock on the door one Saturday afternoon, a striking looking woman asked me if I was ‘the dancer’. She had been directed here by someone in the community; she was a dancer herself and a choreographer and wished to create a dance piece for the newly completed Universal Hall. I invited her in and we drank tea as she described a little of what she had in mind. Here was a true professional with her own dance centre in Santa Fe. She had worked closely with the great Martha Graham when both were in their prime as dancers. I was impressed and excited, though she refused to nail it down, so it was nebulous, abstracted, somehow removed from reality and that is how it remained, even as a performance piece. For my benefit I thought of it as Madonna of the Whales – it was a profound expression of a human gesture – reaching out to whale consciousness, cetacean soul – in gratitude and compassionate acknowledgement for the barbarity and ignorance shown them for centuries, by humankind. The only way this could be conveyed was through some kind of transcendent structure, a choreography akin to higher mathematics and this was the power of ‘the dance’ she coached me in, over the next three weeks.
The basic movement, based on the ‘Sufi turning’ of the whirling dervish, but slow and contained and she gave me the image of a scallop shell to work with, my feet inscribing circles around the shell; for twenty minutes or so, at a time I had to become proficient in working a very large area, simply turning at various speeds with varied arm movements and the guiding principle – as always – but from her it carried weight – being totally present and seeing space opening as I moved through and closing behind me. My awareness being simply to bring this prayerful presence of quiet rotating stillness, through gravity observing movement.
A white costume was being constructed, like a great circular sail and as I learned to work with it – not easy – it would cause an actual wind and around its diaphanous base, heavy ship’s rope were sewn so I could hoist it around for a sense of ‘keeling’ and ‘pitching’. For my head a white cowl with a coronet of eight lit candles, a construct of metal and wire that worked quite well, despite the very hot wax that cascaded at time down the back of my costume.
There was ‘down lit’ floor lighting in a vivid blue and the piece began with a solitary trumpet player standing high up on a piece of scaffolding playing a ‘call to the spirits of the wild’ … Then there were the whales, a profound recording of their undersea singing and dialogue over a great distance and the backdrop for what took place next; a slowly swirling figure, the circles gradually extending, building in expression, increasing in speed, the gown like a great sail extending, generating a wind, at times, creating a cracking sound, an unwieldy thing that took on a life of its own. I felt a sense of reaching out over space and time, at which point a definite and unworldly presence would enter the space – then a sense of reparation – a meeting point of peaceful resolution, the very hot wax sliding down my neck, then a gradual winding down and silence, the whale songs fading, profound silence, as we all felt sanctified in some way.
This was my parting gift from the muses, and the Angel of performing arts. I performed it on two more occasions that year for the autumn conference; I was ‘lifted’ each time into some other realm – and the audience with me. I was deeply touched to have played a part in it.
Now I had to accept that my life had moved beyond a zenith and in the natural cycle of these things there could only be an emptying and any and all hubris I had accumulated over these privileged years was about to meet its nemesis. Peter would say that in order to move through any ‘given’ situation, accept it and learn from it; to love where you are – what you are doing and love who you’re with; I learned to respect Peter and Eileen’s approach to love as something you did with and acted upon… love in action.. it was a brave aspiration. It was hard to love this new life when I felt so bereft, but I had to put on a brave face for my girls in those final months! Ruby excited about her move to New York and Amber, always accepting of what is, the most easy going, likeable child I have ever known, and yet I was waking in the mornings with a sense of exultation, at times, and excitement, despite everything; often it would move me to walk on the shore at 5am. The early morning light filled me with a new sense of promise and purpose; I’d return to make the girls breakfast, full of a strange quiet joy, these feelings came out of nowhere and I couldn’t sustain them, a sense of grace. By evening I’d be on my knees again, a good place to learn how to live a more prayerful life. I was fortunate in having the ability to rebirth myself, now that I’d worked through much of the ballast of old pain over the previous two years, it meant that I could breathe through the fresh negativity as it came up, and it did, each night after the girls were sleeping.
The community was making a lot of changes and creating structures, administration, a bureaucracy. Of course I cared about the place, its need to find autonomy and be free of the massive debt, but I questioned the methodology and no longer felt the magnetic pull, that sense of belonging to a larger identity; the basic glue that held that in place was friendship, a sense of kin; a shared vision, all thin on the ground, now, so many of my good friends and associates had left.
Peter gave his farewell speech in the Hall; in many ways, he’d already left and created a new life and a new marriage in the U.S.A. His presence would always be felt here by those who knew and loved him and in his own words – his heart would always be here.
When I spoke to him later as he was leaving the sauna at Station House I hoped there would be some words of advice, Peter, as always, was unsentimental; he said we both had lessons that needed to be learned elsewhere and they may be painful, difficult, but for most of us this was the only way we would grow. We hugged, and he wished me well, there were no words of regret for Performing Arts, the studios, the way things had turned out, though I know how much they meant to Peter because of his support and enthusiasm over the years; Peter existed fully in the now, this was his training, looking back, having regret, agonising over decisions and mistakes that had already been made were not his way. Peter maintained that it was our mistakes and failures that helped us to become rather than our successes, our movement toward being ‘whole’ human beings was one of overcoming. I told him I’d been asked to leave by the Personnel Department, a new policy had been put in place excluding single parents from being involved in the community; Peter was sympathetic at this point and said how there comes a time when you’ve been in a place too long and life conspires to move you, to embrace new life, to have faith, to put the things I had learned here into action and let go of fear. He gave me one of his best hugs and took his great warm, larger than life presence out of my life, though I was fortunate to meet up with him on several occasions over the years when he came for short visits and our paths crossed.
The final development came as the last straw, and was inevitable; I was occupying a three bedroom cottage having my utility bills paid and basic food needs met for the three of us, nevertheless, because rented accommodation was so hard to come by in the area and I was so attached to our lives in this wee home, I was well and truly ‘gutted’ that I’d been given six weeks’ notice to leave. Michael was unable to help us make a graceful transition; financially he was in a similar situation to me, resource free!
I still felt a sense of disapproval directed toward me from nearly all quarters, as though I had recklessly ‘destroyed’ my marriage; It was a similar collective judgement I saw directed at Peter and had a lot to do with people’s fear of change.
Years later I saw Peter in the community gardens; he was surveying the changes, no longer manicured and ‘famously’ cared for, but infested with perennial weeds, the shrubs and trees growing into one another, in dire need of pruning. He wore an unflattering white cotton sun hat and looked bemused. After a hug and a brief chat he said how he’d like to organise a good ‘set to’ in the garden but no longer had the authority. I said, the biggest mistake he’d ever made was leaving the place, he looked startled then smiled when he saw I was joking. He confided how he was on a steep learning curve as a single parent to a young son, staying in the village for a short visit. After many years away Peter was still not welcomed into the community and Eileen didn’t soften toward him until a year or so before his death when he stayed for a short while after being hospitalised with a thrombosis of the leg.
Now I was caught up in a ‘harangue’ with the Personnel Department that went back and forth for several weeks; I offered to pay my rent and expenses as well as work part time on a voluntary basis having just found out that Maggie Thatcher was supportive of single mothers being ‘there’ for their children and in fact I was a privileged person living in a welfare state that cared about me; suddenly I had an income, a great comfort, but “income support” was frowned upon in the community context and my suggestions were not acceptable.
My only alternative was a winter let in an uninsulated summer A frame chalet on the North shore at an extortionate rent; I began to see a way forward by ‘setting up’ my own small cottage industry carving candles, but first I needed a cottage. The village had gone the way of most touristy beauty spots, expensive summer lets, holiday homes used only in the summer, forty percent of the housing would go this way -, in winter a ‘ghost village’ with no real heart, a housing shortage was endemic.
***
About the photos: Many individuals were involved in the performing arts during the 1970s at Findhorn. Much of the work was well documented by seriously talented photographers. As I only have access to my own album of the ’70s, many of the images above are of a more personal nature, and sadly I don’t know whom to credit for the photos.
A big Thank You to my grandson Ziggy for enhancing the appearance of many of my somewhat battered and ancient photos from the’70s.
I live very simply in this land I love. On returning to the area with my daughter Jade, I found joy in volunteering in the life of the Community; until Covid, then everything changed.
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