The Eighties

 

Building the extension of the Community Centre

After the expansion during 1979-80 with the purchase of Cullerne House and Gardens, the acquisition of Drumduan House, and the caretakership of the Isle of Erraid, the 80s started on a note of consolidation, not least because the Foundation found itself going into debt. We continued to do well with guest numbers in the summers, but in winter the heating bills from our draughty caravans were putting us into a financial hole. So much so, that it began to be the main subject of discussion in community meetings, to the unhappiness of many members, who ‘didn’t come here to worry about money’. But we needed to deal with the issue. How to do so?

We put Cullerne House on the market, and trusted that if it was meant for us to continue to have it, the scenario would play out. And it did, when a consortium of members bought it. The veggie garden stayed with us, and, for a couple of years, was run as a gardening school for additional income.

There was also a major pruning of our membership numbers. From a high of around 300 members when I left in the fall of 1981, the numbers dropped to around 180 by the time I came back from America, almost exactly a year later. However, even with the pressure off from those food and accommodation numbers, we were still in difficult financial straits. What to do? One member decided to personify The Debt, calling it Bernadette, so it wasn’t this big ogre hovering threateningly over us. Her idea caught on with the membership and we began relating to it in a different way than just from fear.

But it was still there when we were faced with an interesting proposition: the opportunity to buy the Caravan Park. The site owner, Captain Gibson, had already sold us the Park Building and an acre of land around it (on which we started building the Universal Hall), as well as Cullerne. It almost seemed as if he was scouting around for our next steps – there must have been a karmic connection between him and Peter. Now, he put The Park up for sale, and gave the Foundation the first crack at it.

It seemed like an impossible dream: how could we raise the money for that purchase, and get out of debt? Community discussions on the matter brought out the point that we could start paying off the debt from the profits of running the Caravan Park: Running the Caravan Park! Are you serious? Us?!

To cut a long story short, after about a year of community meetings trying to get consensus on the issue, we finally decided to go for it – and in the spirit of that decision, within the space of one year (1983), we raised the money to buy The Park via a major fundraising effort, letting all our mailing list, guests and ex-members know of our desire to buy our home, and asking for their support.

We also finished the Universal Hall after nine years of effort, just in time to host a major international conference there, and balanced our operating budget for the first time in years. What a year that was. A time for celebration, but also a vow amongst some of us: Never again.

However, life has a way of keeping us on our toes. That particular issue, of being in debt and of ongoing lessons, will come up again later in this chronicle of this spiritual community, which has one foot in the ideal of Neverland, and one foot in the real world.

The 80s played out from that high in a very solid way. We continued to attract good numbers of guests, created some new programmes, built the extension to the Community Centre and the sauna and plunge pool at Cluny, and explored different ways of creating a Core Group. The Foundation also spawned its first businesses: Daybreak Designs, a neo-Celtic greeting card and stationery business, formed by Alice and Terry Rigan-Ryan and managed by Yours Truly; and Weatherwise, a solar panel and home insulation business run by Lyle and Liza Schnadt; followed by Alan Watson Featherstone’s Trees for Life. We erected our first wind turbine – Moya – and at the end of the decade we could afford to begin paying the staff a slightly higher allowance. The allowance scenario played on into the 90s as a Community issue during that period.

Despite all possible appearances from the outside, it is not an easy ride in this spiritual community-cum-mystery school. Periodically, we have to hold onto our hats – oops, here comes another one!

Stan Stanfield