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

I have a very personal take on this story, even though I wasn’t here when it happened.

That was in mid-August of 1982. I had just come back to the community, a few days later, after spending a year in New York City working for an NGO called Planetary Citizens. I walked in the front door of Cluny, and some member said: “Welcome back, Stan. Would you like to hold the focus for the cleanup of the fire?”

What fire??

It turned out that on the previous Friday night, late, someone had lit a fire in the Dining Room, the central hallway, and the Sanctuary, with Molotov cocktails. The house was saved by the quick action of the young son of a member, who, returning to Cluny from a night out with some friends, saw the fires in the Dining Room and central hallway. He dashed off to tell a long-term member about it, who was just the sort of jack-of-all-trades whom you would call on in such a situation, and who took over battling the fire in the Dining Room whilst the young member beat out the column of fire in the hallway with the help of his friends.

The older member – name of Eric Franciscus, a practical and multi-talented Dutchman – happened, in his colorful lifetime, to have been a fireman at one point, and knew just what to do (which consisted first of making sure that the fire department had been called). Grabbing the firehose that we had had installed by the door leading into the Dining Room, and covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief from the thick black smoke billowing out of the room and through the main hallway (and up the main stairwell), he got on his stomach and, ascertaining where the column of fire was originating from, trained the hose at its base. He put it out fortunately in the nick of time, as the fire had just about eaten a hole in the ceiling above it – which was the floor of a member’s bedroom – and, if it had breached that barrier, a chimney effect could well have been caused, and that could well have been all she wrote.

By the time the fire crew arrived – and all the occupants had vacated the building (in their pajamas) – both fires had been put out; but when they checked the nearby rooms, they found that a third fire had been lit as well, in the Sanctuary [the former billiard room of the hotel’s days, converted into our meditation room, especially because of its lovely exposed wood-beamed ceiling]. The erstwhile arsonist had thrown his Molotov cocktail into the center of the room and closed the door behind him on his hurried exit; which saved that room from anything other than major smoke damage (and a bit of charring of the beam directly above the flame) when the fire, deprived of oxygen, went out of its own accord. A close-run thing, all around.

Everybody pitched in to move the Dining Room tables down to the Ballroom [at the other end of the building] and clean them off, where breakfast was held a few hours later (and all our meals took place for six weeks) – and I walked in a couple of days later, to take charge of the cleanup.

Cluny dining room - cleaning the ceiling after the fire 1982 photo Findhorn Foundation

Cluny dining room – cleaning the ceiling after the fire 1982 photo Findhorn Foundation

We had, as alluded to above, six weeks to get everything ready for a major fall conference of guests scheduled to arrive – and we did it! Four weeks of cleaning (twice through), and two weeks of painting (ditto); and the Friday afternoon before their arrival, we dismantled one of the two scaffoldings we had been working on, stripped the tarpaulin off the carpet, and did last-minute touch-up work. Professional plasterers had come in that day to complete the work on the ceiling area near the fire, which they finished at 5pm, and then that section of the room was readied as well. (We didn’t have time to paint that section of the ceiling at that time, but by the next day – Saturday Turnaround Day at Cluny/the community – it had dried to a nice neutral tone, and I don’t think any of the Conference guests noticed the difference.)

Cluny Sanctuary restoration-Stan stripping beams photo Findhorn Foundation

Cluny Sanctuary restoration-Stan stripping beams photo Findhorn Foundation

The Sanctuary cleanup had to be put off until that winter; when I ended up holding the focus for that project as well. For that, I didn’t have as much help. For the Dining Room job – and the simultaneous cleaning of the walls of the central hallway and up the central stairwell of their smoke damage – I had a lot of guest help.

It was a sight. Everybody in a motley blend of colored overalls & hats & gloves and with their white face masks on, protecting from the fumes from the cleaning solution; me trudging back and forth emptying dirty water buckets and bringing fresh; keeping them supplied with sponges and scourers…

I had taken one look at that black hole that I was about to hold the responsibility for returning to its pristine state, and realized: Right. This is going to be a glass half full or a glass half empty; how do I turn it into the former. The way I hit on to keep our spirits up was to start each work session with a Sacred Dance [folk dance with a deeper appreciation of how the movements relate to the life experience – the whole of the life experience – and can be used to channel qualities of love, healing, etc.; the Foundation being a major holder of the Sacred Dance flame. So to speak]. We have one classic dance in the repertoire called The King of the Fairies, which is a salute to the four elements – earth, water, air, and fire. Comes the ‘salute’ to the air element and we become a line of swans, taking off from a loch and winding our way up into the air (flapping our wings and making wind noises): I would lead the crew around and between the scaffoldings, until we came back together in a circle in the middle of the room, to finish the dance with a movement called ‘saluting the sun’ (the fire element; ironically, considering). It brought us together; and lifted the spirits in the room. So much so that other departments started joining us in the ‘dance du jour’, before going back to their work departments, with a lilt in their steps…it worked.

As to the fires. Eric told me that they never found out who had lit them. If it had been a guest, they were all off the next day, back to their destinations around the world; no chance to interrogate or even interview them. If it had been a local; well, the Foundation did have its enemies amongst the locals;* so that was a possibility…But the timing of it, I inquired. And then got the fuller story. Eric mentioned a possible lead: how the female partner of a male guest took up, to some extent, during that week with one of the focalisers of their Experience Week (a rather handsome chap, whom I remembered from ‘my days’ there – and whose Experience Week I actually had been a co-focaliser of, during the year before I had left); and some members wondered…nothing was ever proven. But the incident – potential causative incident – inspired a change in policy, or rather clarification, regarding ‘fraternization’ with the guests: henceforth the focalisers of programs were not, repeat not, to have personal relations with their guests; at least not during the times they were their focalisers.

The policy has served us well, as over the years sticky situations have come up, and been largely avoided, because we – hopefully – learned that lesson; the hard way.

Potentially. As I say: nothing was ever proven. But an ounce of prevention…

Confession time. I had been in the Guest Department over the previous two years before I left the community, and I can remember there was some sort of unwritten, un-hard and -fast policy even at that time over this matter. I can remember it, because an Experience Week (FX) week came wherein one of my female guests took a fancy to me, and I found myself feeling perfectly obliging; but I dutifully toed the line of proper behavior. Until midnight came, of the Friday night, and a celebration evening I was holding in the Cluny Lounge – for anybody wanting to join us, in disco dancing, with cheese and crackers and wine on the side table, after coming back from a Friday Night Sharing in the U Hall; a regular community event at the time. At the stroke of midnight, she helped me clean up from the enjoyable completion to the week; and then she and I retired to put the icing on the cake, as it were.

Recalling this incident reminds me of something that I communicated with a lady friend from my home town, whom I happened to meet during that time, when, as part of my Guest Department duties, I was manning the Drop-in Office over at the Park. (Our rhythm as focalisers of the FXs and the DGs of the time – Departmental Guests; that program now known as Exploring Community Life (ECL) – was one week on as FX co-focaliser, the next week as DG focaliser, next week an FX again, and then one week off, although needing that week to man the Drop-in Office while doing the organizational work for the next FX week coming up. In those days, we could have two, and sometimes three, FXs a week. The heyday of the Foundation, those days (this is the late ‘70s-early to mid ‘80s). I feel grateful for having been able to be involved in them. And not just for the reason of this particular reminiscence.)

That afternoon, in the late summer of the year (this would have been 1980 or ‘81), an attractive woman came whishing in the door and ‘announced’ (that was the energy she gave off) that her husband was playing golf in Nairn [a nearby town] and she was a teacher of metaphysics and had long wanted to visit Findhorn and she had forty-five minutes and what could I tell her about the place in that time, and sat down for the instant delivery of her goods. I gave as good an account as I could in the time allotted; during which I noticed her peering closer at me. When I came to a full stop, she asked me (a bit bluntly, to my liking) where I was from. I told her (Long Beach, California). She replied briskly that she was from there, too; and asked me what highschool I went to. I told her (Poly High; for Polytechnic High, but nobody called it that). She replied that she had gone there, too; and asked me what year I graduated. I told her (1952); beginning to wonder about this interrogation, and my interrogator. I didn’t have a clue. And then she suddenly dropped out of metaphysical-teacher mode and exclaimed, brightly: “Duane? Is it really you??!”

She certainly had me; nobody at the community knew me by that name. I had been ‘Stan’ to the world for yonks. (Ever since my days in the military; Duane being the sort of name that its carrier didn’t usually own up to, in my bringing up, and especially not in a macho world. I noted in passing through my years that the name had been used in a movie once for the name of a good ol’ buddy of the leading character – and not a leading buddy of his at that; just a bit player. Hmph.)

To get back to the story: It turned out that I did indeed know her, and remembered her as one of the prettiest Juniors in the sister sorority of my fraternity (which, and as a Senior, I was president of, at the time; and which was named Sphinx; wouldn’t you know, from the interests that came my way in my life’s journey). A less likely candidate to become a ‘metaphysical teacher’ in life I couldn’t have imagined; she was destined to marry well and grow up in the local country club set. In the event, she did a lot of that, too; but had expanded her interests well beyond what I would have given her credit for. It just goes to show you…anyway, in very quick order she told me that ‘they’ at home were going to be surprised out of their socks when she told them that she had met me (it turned out that my dropping out of school and disappearing from the scene had caused quite a stir amongst my former school mates, and even minor acquaintances; I was the fair-haired boy – and literally – who was really going to do & be something in life) and she wanted to buy some books to take with her and would I help her with that in giving advice and so forth; and off we went to the Phoenix, where she loaded up with over a hundred pounds (in money, not weight) of books, and before rushing off to meet up with her husband – who indulged her in this metaphysical business of hers – insisted we stay in touch. Which we did; and in the course of that correspondence (this is pre-Internet days, so this was the real thing), in explaining what I was doing at the community, I happened to mention once that, to some of the female guests, it felt often to us that we male focalisers appeared to be the equivalent of the quarterback of their favorite (American) football team, bedding whom would be a feather in their cap; a real status thing.

That’s the sort of thing that we had to put up with.

And that’s precisely why we needed to put a sock on it, as it were. For you never knew where that sort of energy might lead. Besides to bed, it might lead to trouble in River City, my friend.

(A quick aside to this story: We stayed in touch, and she became an investor in a New Age-Celtic greeting card & stationery business that I became the manager of before I left the community to go join Planetary Citizens in New York; the wife of the founder of which was a champion yachtswoman, who was going to go over to the west coast, to my old home town in point of fact, to engage in a pre-Olympic regatta, for sailors of Olympic-class boats to ‘test the waters’ before the Olympics in two years’ time (the 1984 Olympics in L.A.). Long story short: I helped her drive her boat (Soling class; a lovely, 3-crewperson boat that I had had the privilege of going out on, in the Long Island sound, whilst working, and living in community, with the PC office staff) across the country, and whilst there I met up with some of my old friends, whom I hadn’t seen for nearly 30 years, at an evening’s reunion that my metaphysical teacher friend organized. What fun, to recognize the voice perfectly, but not the face. It was like we were all wearing masks to a masquerade party.)

And that’s the story of the Cluny Fire.