Celebrating One Incredible Family came out of a deep crisis and is now blossoming into our 60th Birthday Celebrations and our collective autobiography to create a people’s history of the 60 years of this spiritual community, and a storytelling resource for future generations as they continue to build this centre.

We have come a long way in the last year or so….

In May 2021 Liza Hollingshead, Leona Graham and Cornelia Featherstone met in the Phoenix Café at The Park to ask the question: What can we do to help?!

It was 6 weeks since the fires had destroyed the Community Centre and the Sanctuary. The Community felt fractured by the trauma of the fires, by the distress of the crisis in the Findhorn Foundation leading to redundancies of over 50% of the co-workers, and by the disconnections caused by the Covid pandemic. We had already been reeling, individually and collectively, and now we’d lost two main remedies for healing community distress: eating together and meditating together. Our social hearth and spiritual heart had gone up in flames.

The answer that came through in that first meeting was clear and strong: celebrate the 60th birthday of the community and create a vehicle for people to tell their stories, to take their place in the history of this community.

Very quickly a group came together, both Findhorn Foundation co-workers and NFA Listener/Conveners and volunteers, to start weaving these two strands. The motto was received in a collaborative bout of creativity:

As we Honour the Past, We Meet in the Present and Together We Step into the Future.

Ideas for a 60th birthday event in November 2022 were developed parallel with the concepts for a website to hold members’ stories.

The global Findhorn Extended Members Council (FEMC) met monthly at the time and fed in many ideas that enriched the process. During one of the FEMC sessions the term ‘collective autobiography’, to describe the Community History project, was born.

December 2021: During the Winter Solstice ritual here at Findhorn the group picked an angel for the project:

The website development progressed fast, including the decision to base the ‘chapter structure’ of collecting stories of our Community’s many facets on the 8 leaf ecovillage model. This linked the whole history project to the work of the NFA council and the Collaboration Circle as they are using that model.

January/February 2022: The Findhorn Foundation funded the development of a logo. Avalon Willmott consulted the Community on a title for the website and created our beautiful mosaic logo which reminded us of the magnificent Phoenix mosaic created during the first Covid lockdown in 2020.

The inspiration to build the website on the 50th Birthday Book Spirit of the Future was received, and in an intense but graceful process it started shaping the structure of the website.

March 2022: The Red Ball Play opened the artistic events by reflecting on the problems of a community that had lost its core and illuminating the solutions brought in by the Future.

We started a simple blog to track the development of the project, to build momentum and allow Community members to stay abreast of the many different aspects we were juggling. It has now grown into this Newsletter with over 200 subscribers to date.

April 2022: Following the generosity of a few individuals, and NFA council re-allocating funds to develop the NFA website, we could contract a web developer to start working on the website and we began our relationship with Val from DigitalRoutes, a company located in Lossiemouth, just along the coast from Findhorn.

May 2022: we celebrated the Findhorn Foundation’s 50th Birthday both in person and online, allowing the residential and the global community to take part.

The phoenix is stirring in the ashes, the caterpillar in the chrysalis
may start getting ideas of what it may look like to become a butterfly.

With many events, big and small, the Community has nourished connecting strands which are growing more and more visibly. To describe all the mycelia in this amazing network is impossible, so here is just a taster.

The landscape around the Sanctuary and the Community Centre has seen love put into the earth and beauty is flowering: in the plans for the New Sanctuary and in the CC garden.

Many more people are gathering in collective spiritual practices – meditations, singing and dancing. The Sanctuary Group is providing a Spiritual Practices Directory, reconnecting with a longstanding tradition.

People have started to eat together again in community settings, be that as pot-luck in the CC Garden, in the Sunshine Room for Friday Night dinners cooked by Desie and Thomas, or the In-person event for the Global Community Quiz which includes a lunch at Cluny.

Community workshops have started again to offer collective learning, including trainings in trauma-informed practice (in different shapes and forms).

The Findhorn Foundation has seen guests returning in person and is also offering online programmes where members from the residential community as well as global members meet with many folk from all around the world who have never been here.

Under management by the NFA, the Visitor Centre has re-opened and Park Tours have become a regular offering again.

The Findhorn Bay Holiday Park has been teeming with visitors, and families with kids, buckets and spades were meandering up the Runway on their way to the beach.

Monthly Saturday Markets at The Park have become colourful opportunities to meet locals, to eat some delicious food and marvel at the creativity and abundance of talent in the Community and the local area.

Community Meetings have become blended events – with many meeting in person in the Universal Hall and others joining on Zoom, grateful for the opportunity to join in from afar or from the comfort of their home when energy or Covid restraints would keep them away.

Only last night we had a wonderful meeting hosted jointly by the Findhorn Foundation and the NFA to look at Learning, Development and Education in our Community.

And now we are getting ready to IGNITE – to be part of the phoenix rising!

The celebrations are starting to ramp up with the Photographic Exhibition and the Global Quiz and then of course with the week of Celebrations.

The mascot for the Birthday Week is Phelix – the Phoenix

               


There have already been visitations of Phelix and her/his/their friends.

People have booked their accommodations, either in the Findhorn Foundation, in local guest accommodations or they are staying with friends – so it is very hard to gauge how many there actually will be.

The emergent programme for the week is becoming ever more inspiring. And people are starting to buy their in-person or online pass to join in.

We are all looking forward to the Community Transformation Game in the middle of the week. The group intention connects to our motto “As We Honour the Past, We Meet in the Present and Together We Step into the Future”.

It will be an in-person event and we hope that many people around the world will gather around their own box game and play either by themselves or even better with others using the same intention as the Community is holding.

One thing is clear – it will be different from any birthday celebration we have ever seen AND the spirit of One Incredible Family is strong and tangible and delicious.

Our website, which is owned by the NFA, is up and running and will be officially launched during the Birthday Celebrations. The COIF team has recorded a Sunday Slot presentation where we shared a bit about the many different aspects of the website. You can catch up with the video here.

COIF Members already has reached 114 members and the number is increasing daily. We so enjoy the Gallery of the Faces of Our Community.

In addition to the 156 stories from the 50th Birthday Book, there are over 100 stories already published and that number is also growing rapidly. At this point 25 wonderful accounts of Findhorn Journeys, answering the questions “What drew you here? What did you do here? And What did you do in the world with what you learned here” and  lots of stories about the many different Community Facets. A marvellous playground to browse, to dive into, to go down rabbit holes….

The Members Area which we call the Family Room is the most emergent of all the sections of the website – as it is really for the membership to influence what it wants to see there.

So much for you to get involved with – we look forward to seeing you there!

So we have come a long way since that meeting in May 2021 in the Phoenix Café – and there is still so much that can be done to help unfold the potential this Community has to serve humanity and our planet in these times of transition and emergence.

As we Honour the Past, We Meet in the Present and Together We Step into the Future.

We look forward to doing this with YOU!