First Reflections

I said my final goodbyes to Findhorn this morning and I now sit on a crowded train down to London as the sun’s blaring rays reveal all of the dust on my computer screen. I plan to continue blogging about my experiences and I expect I will have much more insight now that I am leaving the physical place of Findhorn Ecovillage. Someone once said the Findhorn program doesn’t begin until you leave. Deep inside, I know exactly what they mean. It will take me a long, long time (if ever) to process all I have learned from this magical place.

It feels nice to fly away from the Findhorn community and back into a traveling mode of spontaneous people, places, and spaces. A sweet young lad (as one might call them here) helped me get my unnecessarily large bag onto the train this morning. He chuckled as I told him I liked his Santa Claus hat that he sported for the day. We sat on the train together and I could not have asked for a more fitting departure from Findhorn…

As we settled into our seats, Steve explained that he was heading home to Newcastle for Christmas, taking a vacation from his job as a plane technician at the Air Force base adjacent to Findhorn. From day one I was blown away by the blunt paradox of the Air Force Base and Findhorn at each others sides. The roaring engines of the fighter jets would halt my brain waves daily--ultimately it was a blessing; a moment for appreciation; a reminder that the external war rages within and that my inner and outer experiences are eternally intertwined.

So this lad and I started chatting about world traveling—my stories from Guatemala and his from Poland, Greenland, Iraq, and other places the Air Force had stationed him. We exchanged pictures, and he showed me an American base-camp in Afghanistan. Wow, I thought, now that's first-hand experience.

He grew quieter, a bit more solemn, as he told me about his trip to Poland and how it had been an Air Force team building experience--they just so happened to be in Auschwitz on Remembrance Day. Then he flipped through some more photos and bashfully sunk into his chair as a picture of him making a goofy face standing on the wing of an airplane came up. I had a picture of myself making that same goofy face while standing on top of a compost heap. We shared some more laughs and some oohs and ahhs and wow, Greenland is just one giant rock, huh!? The last photo in his slideshow was a picture of him on a small stage playing a beautiful classical guitar.

“Oh you play guitar?!" I asked excitedly. "I do too. Do you write anything yourself?”

His face lit up—“well actually, I bought this great little gig here and I can record my own stuff and put background tracks to it.”

“Oh wow...You think I could I hear one of your songs?”

He became shy again and proceeded to warn me how not good he was before he handed over the iPod and gave me the pleasure of listening to some of the sweetest songs I’d ever heard. I remembered his anecdote about his trip to Poland as I listened to his second acoustic track and heard his beautiful melody harmonize with the chorus—and his words that sang, “Everything is nothing if we can’t look backwards.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The seemingly paradoxical shadows of the Air Force base and the Findhorn community dissipated in one strum of a chord as I heard words that I had felt before. For the guitar picking boy in the Santa Claus hat, fixing military planes is a job, singing is a passion, and war is not his direct intention. If I step back from Findhorn, its own nonsense hits me right across the face. The Findhorn Community Centre sign, for instance, has parenthesis underneath that read “(Private Facility)”. For Findhorn, spiritual community is the driving force, the uniqueness of people bring the passion, and social exclusion is not its direct intention.

My eyes increasingly recognize the contradictory lives that we live—it is useless to blame or shame, more important to recognize the game. I am not saying Steve is innocent and I am not saying Findhorn is guilty--but I am saying that paradoxes live deep deep within our lives.

I knew he would be embarrassed but I said it anyway, “I really like that line—about how everything is nothing if we can’t look backwards.”

“Wise, I know…” as he shyly chuckled and shrunk further into his seat. Steve confirmed for me that souls speak for themselves through art. We all live lives of paradox, doing things we may not believe in, trying to make a living even if our living perpetuates dying. Deep inside we undoubtedly have the capacity to see the bigger picture, to act on that is a huge...yet not impossible...next step.

Five hours melted into the snowy Scottish hillsides and his stop was approaching near. I said, “hey, keep writing music.” He said “you too.” And then we departed and carried on our way.