Somewhere Distant - A Tribute
An old - and ‘old’ in the mortal sense - friend has died, I am informed by a mutual acquaintance. He - the newly deceased (our mutual friend being a she) - was a member in long-standing of the community, in the north of Scotland, where I lived for even more years.1 I knew him - name given of Richard (read on) - as the community’s Transport focaliser, in charge of both the community’s vehicles - of which there were several - and, in a way, of us drivers of them. And therein lies a bit of an aside, as well as a wrapping-up, tale for this eulogy.
First, to clarify. I had been a driver for the community from well before Richard even first came to it; my coming dating from the beginning of the addition to the community - which started in a caravan (trailer) park on a bay on the coast - of the large hotel in the nearby town which the Founders of our community had once been the managers of, and which came up for sale just when the community had outgrown its home base, in numbers of members but more particularly of guests, and needed more room for the large surge of guests that started coming to the community from the effect, on peoples all around the globe (or whatever it is, precisely) of one book: ‘The Magic Of Findhorn’. Written by a young American who had visited, off his interests in both Nature and ’new ways of being’ - the specific ’interests’ of the community itself; which felt itself on the leading edge of the birth of a, the, New Age - he stayed for some months, and wrote about his experiences there, which book came across my awareness as well. The purchase of the hotel - name, because of its site, of Cluny Hill - in particular caught my eye over in Southern California, where I was living at the time, and where I subsequently attended a talk by the male member of the founding trio, looking for my next step, on a, the, ‘spiritual path’. That long story short, I joined the ‘founding’ team engaged in major renovation work of ‘Cluny,’ to bring it up to the standards which we needed as the major accommodation space for the guess visiting the community, now in droves. Thus the need for a fleet of buses, to haul our guests, and members, back and forth between the two home-base locations, and then, subsequently, out to the Southwest coast of Scotland itself, where there were some other sites of the extended community. (More on which, later.) Thus, I was a seasoned veteran of the transport crew; and even focalized the (fledgling) department for a short while.
I first knew of Richard as a member working over in one of the community’s gardens (Cullerne, for those of you who know whereof I speak, for identification purposes; the largest of the three gardens in the community for those who don't). But he was a bit of a gentle-but-irascible handful, as I understand it, rubbing some of the members and guests the wrong way; and the writing was on the wall for him, when he was given the offer of taking over the Transport department. Where he could be more on his own (the drivers all belonging to other home-base departments, and doing the driving outwith those duties)…but where, in my opinion, he did an excellent job. And where, among his other duties, he seemed to enjoy in particular the role of naming the ’members’ of our transport fleet, when the time came for new ‘members’ to join the ‘community'. Of our transport vehicles; and of the community itself.2
Early on there were Jasmine and Blue Bus; then along came Henry and Hamish (twins); for a short while there was a double-decker named Woodstock;3 then, when Richard came onto that scene, there was Sir George (after, of course, Sir George Trevelyan; a good friend of the community’s), and then came a bit of a wild card: Sheena, named after the first wife of the male member of our community’s founding trio. Richard being a big fan of both Eileen’s books and Peter Caddy’s autobiography, ’In Perfect Timing’ (‘Memoirs of a Man for the New Millennium’). Perhaps their lives (along with their spiritual partner, a Canadian woman named Dorothy Maclean; Peter and Eileen both being Brits) sparked something off from his own.
I don’t know. Nor, I doubt, did anybody else. He was always a bit of a loner. For one thing, he, like me, was older than most of our 'siblings' there. And as I have indicated, he (and somewhat like me, too, I can well imagine) was not always easy to get along with. And though he actually had a heart of gold (I always felt; was just a bit uncomfortable in his assigned meat suit), he preferred to be by himself. It was no surprise to me, for example, when I found out that he liked to work with a pilot Simulator in his room on his computer, and enjoyed going ‘up’ in real terms (‘real’ being a relative term) with a young visitor to the community, living in the area, who had become a pilot. Sailing around up there, virtually alone (and 'virtually' as in a virtual reality); above the madding crowd…
Who knows if I will die, pass through that particular passageway to the, my, next realm. There is talk, and not least by me, that The Play is over, and it is time, and Time, now for The Real Thing, wherein we are immortal, being chips off the ‘old block’ of The All That Is, and, finished with our sojourn in the wilderness of our making - this realm, this matrix, this hologram of ‘life’ in a state of free will, once removed from our root, our home base - and ready, now, for the final Takeoff, revert ‘in the blinking of an eye’ to our basic light-body Self. But if I do, and, nudged by my friend’s passing on by this mortal scene into thinking what I might like read at my own ceremony of passage, and its title inscribed for my epitaph, I have hit on what I would like for that remembrance of my passing by this way to be. It is Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’.
And fitting for an old bus driver.
As to that: A final memory of the incarnate soul name given of Richard (family name of Adams; not to overlook that aspect of his life, in its wrap). I think what occasioned him to begin to keep an eye on me, as a driver of one of ‘his’ buses, was an incident once, late in my time in the community, when I was driving back from taking guests out to our community’s ‘little brother’ on the small isle of Erraid and to our community’s home on the larger island of Iona4 and, having stopped along the way for a short ‘coffee break,’ was backing out of my spot in their large parking lot. When I walked out to our bus, ‘the coast was clear’ for a back around in a sweep to turn around and head out from; but in the event, and making an assumption that said coast was still clear, I ended up scraping fenders with a car that had somehow, unobserved by me, pulled into the space, to let someone off at the entrance into the building - that is, not in a parking space per se, and so completely unexpected. (But isn’t that often how it is...) From then on, Richard began checking with occupants of my runs and nature-outing services (I found out from one such member), asking them if I had been safe in my driving.
Good heavens, Richard, I was only in my 70s, and a young 70-something at that, plus - as I say - a well-seasoned veteran at the job. (And having passed a driver's test a couple of years before, for insurance purposes, with flying colors.) But I acknowledge - and can even laud you for it - that you were just doing your job, as you saw it. To see that we, ’your’ drivers, straightened up and flew right.
I should report that Richard's vehicle-cum craft had a flaw, was damaged, but still workable: He had a walleye; and I often wondered what the world - this world - looked like to him, and how it must have, has to have, colored/tainted his life experience.
i will never know, now. But - any great loss, that???
Happy landing, Richard.
—
footnotes:
1 I joined it in the beginning of 1976, and, after one hiatus, of a year back in the States (working for an NGO connected to the UN called Planetary Citizens), and another, some years later, of nearly 8 years living Down Under in Australia (in a personal relationship), left there for good - and, presumably, ‘good’ - in 2012. In part, because the community, I felt, was subtly changing, from the spiritual community with members that I had joined lo, those many years before, into a personal-development workshop center of employees. But also because it was, simply, for me, time. And particularly because of my concern about what was going on back in my home country, of the good ol’ U.S. of A. Barack Hussein Obama had been elected in 2008, and word began seeping out onto the Internet very shortly after (and a little, but not much, even before; long-planned clandestine coup that it was, with ‘friends’ in both major political parties and the MSM being intimately involved) that he was not, had not been, eligible for the top job. Was not a “natural born” citizen. Which only then I found out meant what it means. And that it was an eligibility requirement for that particular office. And he was not one.
What the hell is going on?? I wondered, about my country. MY country. Why were they not living by Truth???
I determined to go back and find out.
And do something about it. All.
Another story
2 As a community, we liked to put a name to inanimate - and even, in some cases, animate; like our buses - objects, so as not to take things for granted, show some respect for what was helping us humans do our job, in a community dedicated not just to the principle that ‘Work is Love in Action’ and to ‘the New Age’ but to Nature Herself. Thus, the drawers in our kitchens (plural, for having more than one location) that housed kitchen utensils were named ‘Metal Beings’ and ’Wooden Beings’; and the kitchen machinery and equipment all had names, as did our Homecare Department equipment; and so on.
3 I never knew if it had been named after the iconic place or the little bird in the Peanuts cartoon strip. Given the nature of many of our community members, it could easily have been from either.
4 Scotland’s 'holy island,' and whereon we had been bequeathed a small house, and started using it during the summers as Retreat for our guests; we members needing to be ‘all hands on deck’ back at the community then, for the busiest time of our year.
—
Condensed version of a poem by Rumi that Richard asked to be read at his funeral:
Listen
to the sound of the flute,
hear its tale of lamentation,
ever since it was cut from the reed bed,
the flute has been wailing its separation.
I want a heart torn by separation,
that I may unfold to such a one the pain of love,
for everyone who is separated far from his Source,
wishes back the time when he were one with it.
—
What I would like to be read at my own funeral, if ever there should be one:
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
