In the early 1980s I was living in Chicago but beginning to feel that my life needed to take a different direction. At around this time I found a small article about Eileen Caddy in a holistic publication, and a close friend of mine took a trip to the UK which took her and her travelling companion to the Findhorn community. I had never been to Europe but had always wanted to go, and I planned a trip in June of 1984, visiting London, Edinburgh, the Findhorn community at The Park, and Paris. I stayed a few nights at the B&B in the heart of the community (little did I realize that one day I would be running this B&B!).

I found the environment enchanting, attended a sacred dance evening in the Universal Hall, walked on the beach, and wound up staying 4 days rather than the 2 I had arranged for (thus cheating Paris out of those 2 days). While at the B&B I met a young man who was also a guest there and we struck up a friendship. We wound up riding the train together on the way to Paris and later, once I was back in the US, wrote to one another and met up once when I was visiting friends in NYC (more about him later).

I began to think about returning to attend a programme, and in October of 1985 came back to participate in Experience Week and stayed into the next week for part of the conference called The Spiritual Work of our Time, with Brother David Stendl-Rast, who made a deep impression on me.

Then I began thinking about taking a 6-month sabbatical from my job at a hospital chemical dependency programme so that I could live in the community for a while. This seemed like a very big commitment, as I had to give up my apartment and put my things in storage. In the run-up to the date when I would have to leave Chicago I was feeling ambivalent—was I doing the “right thing”? I wandered into a bookstore which specialized in spiritual books and went straight to a book by an author I had heard of, a psychotherapist who was well regarded. I “accidentally” opened that book to a page on which the author spoke about having visited Findhorn. He related that he had gone there with his “expert’s” hat on, but had realized once there that he needed to open to what the community could teach him. This went straight to my heart; I took it as a sign that indeed I was doing the right thing.

Fast forward about a year or 18 months. By this time I had not only arranged for a second 6 months of sabbatical but had given up my job entirely and was running the B&B where I had originally been a guest. One day I was getting ready to walk into the village to mail a letter to the man I had met when we had both been guests at the B&B several years earlier, when I heard a knock at the door. I went to see who it was and found…the man to whom I had just written. He said I looked as if I had seen a ghost. I handed him the letter I had just finished writing and he saved me the purchase of a stamp!

Fast forward again about a year. It is now autumn of 1989 and I am travelling in the US on my first trip to the States since coming to Scotland in 1986. I am visiting a number of old friends and family. In San Diego I am staying with my mother, but I have decided to give myself a break by going for 2 nights to stay at the city’s YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association—you don’t have to be Christian to stay there) in the middle of my week of visiting my mother. She doesn’t understand why I want to do this, but for me it is a sort of declaration of independence, a chance to write in my journal and evaluate the time I have just spent with her. The “Y”, as it is known, is a huge building with at least 75 rooms spread over several floors. The rooms have private toilets but there is a large toilet with several sinks and big mirrors on each floor. I go into the large toilet on my floor and see a woman standing at the sink and looking in the mirror. I look into the mirror and my gaze meets hers. We recognize one another—we know one another from the Findhorn community.

These could be considered examples of “coincidence” or “serendipity” but to me they have always eerily represented something larger, or deeper, at play in the universe. They informed the first years of my life in the community with the sense of being in the right place and the belief that there are forces at work which have my best interests at heart. I am still here, and grateful to have been able to make a life for myself as part of the community, wearing several hats over the years.

Janice Eddy