On Relationships, And Golden Chances

I have just received word that an old friend from my days back in the Findhorn Foundation, the spiritual community where I lived, off and on, for many years, recently turned 98, with her husband of the same age having passed on to greener pastures about the same time.

Kay and Floyd.  That was how it always was: Kay and Floyd, with Floyd happy to play second fiddle to his wife because he loved her, and she was a real go-getter; a staunch feminist before it was the big thing that it became, and still is.  Americans, they came to the FF as they were entering their 60s, and Kay is responsible for one of the great anecdotes that I like to tell about the community. 

Having become quite a big wig in the political arena, serving on a federal board having to do with Economics, specifically with Union-Management relations, she came to the community ready to pitch in with her organizational skills, and met, for her, a wall.1  After explaining what her background was to the young woman who was interviewing her, said young woman responded politely (something like) “Well, that’s really interesting, Kay.  But what we really have a need for right now is someone to focalise the Cluny Housecare department.”2 

Picture it.  This eminently successful businesswoman, and staunch feminist to boot, having served in the highest echelons of the U.S. federal government, being asked to get involved in…house care???

‘Women’s work’???  You want me to do 'Women's work'?????????

“I may not have made myself clear enough,” responds Kay, or words to the effect, and goes through her CV again.  And again, the young woman, in a very friendly manner, says the same thing back…

I’m not sure how long the exchange went on for.  All I know is that at the end of it, Kay took on the focalising of what became known under her aegis as the Homecare Department of Cluny; to which job she brought her considerable organizational skills, and laid out the weekly template of work to be done in the big building that has lasted to this day, I would dare say.  Her skills also being ‘taken advantage of’ in the organizational operations of our other work departments, and in workshops offered to our guests on that general subject.3  A success story after all.

I had a personal interaction - ’relationship’ - with Kay when she ended up as co-focaliser - with ever-reliable, sunny-smiled and gentle-souled Floyd as her partner on their spiritual path - of Cluny while I was away back in the U.S., having spent a year working for an NGO connected to the UN called Planetary Citizens (on an international educational project of theirs called ‘The Planetary Initiative for The World We Choose’; helping to set up grassroots groups all over the planet working on such themes as recycling, environmental awareness in general, etc. etc.), and, feeling that my time there was up, and not sure what my next steps were best to be, I wrote to her, asking her what the needs were back at the community, that I was casting around for my next bite at Service to the planet.   She wrote back promptly, letting me know that she would very much like me to come back and give her and Floyd a hand at Cluny, “with all these youngsters around here”.  (As I say, they were into their 60s at the time, and I was approaching 50; at a time when the average age of the membership was probably in the high 20s.)   

All of this, I realize now, had an effect on why I wrote to her today the way I did.  After giving her a rundown of what I had been up to since our time in the community, which has included a spell in the ‘90s of living Down Under in Oz (where I gave up a personal relationship in order to get back to my work.  My larger work), I found myself writing that:

“I felt drawn back to the community, and returned to live there (at dear olde Cluny) in late 2001; where I stayed until I returned here to my old home town in early 2012 to retire in the sun and on the coast, to see out my remaining days in the peace and quiet of reflection on what it has all been about.  And I see that it has all been about relationships, and the lessons to be learnt therefrom.

“I have a fond regard for you two guys.  Thanks for having been in my life.

“Take good care of yourself, Kay.

“Love”

(signed)

- 

 Relationships…which can take various forms.   As I think about it.

And if the leaders of this country were to to come to their senses and ask me to take over now - that we are either going to succumb to the Dark side of the Process, or make a shift up into the synthesizing Light of a New Day - I might say something like:

‘Got your knickers in a twist, did you?’  And when they ask me what I am talking about, I might continue with something like:

’So a hundred years ago now your ‘elders’ gave control of the money printing presses to a private consortium, with no checks built in to the operation, not even audits required; which, of course, rely simply on what someone tells you about their operations, is simply on paper; like the currency that you are using, with no backup to it, as in precious metals, nothing but being Redeemable simply in itself - and said private consortium also having been given the right, and responsibility, to set your interest rates; and thus to create boom and bust, boom and bust, knowing, of course ahead of time, how to place their bets - all of this designed to take your country down, by the Evil Ones who have had you in their sights for generations.  Even when your Constitution requires your Congress to be responsible for the money process in the country.  All of this, going on for a hundred years.  And now you are in deep, deep trouble, with your country having been sold out from under you, to your creditors.  And you expect to get out of having to take responsibility for your own actions?  How does that compute??’   

But don’t mind me.  I’m just an old man, living out his remaining days in the sun, and near the ocean; not gazing out to sea as if for a rescue ship on the horizon.

But just wondering, How could this happen to the country that I love.

And may have to release.

For its citizens having had their golden chances - of 'rising to the occasion,' in various ways.

And letting them pass them by…

’Tiz a puzzlement.

But 

that’s life.

—

footnotes:

1 A parenthetical comment at this point: Peter Caddy, of Peter and Eileen fame - the prime founders of the FF - always talked about the community being “the graveyard of egos”.  He had lost his own - to some degree - through the same process, after having successfully managed a Three-star hotel and turning it into Four-star status under his tutelage (with Eileen in the background, giving him, from the spiritual realms, via her ‘guidance,’ advice on various decisions to make), only to lose his job (another story) and have to suffer the ignominy of being reduced to living on the dole in a nearby caravan park, with Eileen, their three small sons, and their spiritual partner, Dorothy Maclean, witness to his failure.  It was “the dark night of his soul” as he put it, from reading of such things in his spiritual training.  But it was to turn out to be all ’part of the plan’ for them, as the world was to experience, with the rise from the ashes of his ego of the world-renowned Findhorn Foundation; its ‘word’ reaching all the way to California, and to the unlikely likes of veteran establishment types, Kay and Floyd Tift.  But to continue. 

2 ‘Cluny’ being the former Cluny Hill Hotel, which Peter and Eileen had managed (with their partner Dorothy handling the books) nearly 20 years previously by then, and which came back to them, in perfect timing, to be reincarnated as Cluny Hill College, just in time to handle the growing number of guests coming to visit the community under the magical effect of the book ‘The Magic of Findhorn’.  With Peter having been given an interesting lesson in life in the process.

   But to continue.

3 A specific example: The Relationship between I - We - It: How to balance the often competing needs between the individual, the group, and the job at hand; what is the ideal formulation, and at any given time, in the life of the organism.