"We Have the Stars"

There are women who seemed, in 2004, to rule the roost in Findhorn.  Organising meditations, leading Taizé, focalising, saying the things, keeping the place running.  Some died too young.  Some stayed too long, making such little income, that they couldn’t afford to leave when it all collapsed around them.  Like the grasshopper who sang all summer.  The one who works in the Phoenix shop will throw your chocolate at you, as if it was a curse.  If you walk towards the Co-op cashpoint, where one is standing, too far away to form a queue, appearing to be with the man using the cashpoint as she is shouting at him, and you politely enquire, ‘Are you waiting?’, you risk getting your head in your hands.  Nowadays, I don’t accept that treatment.  Thank you, Findhorn, for all those teachable moments.  I said, ‘I was just asking’.  She wouldn’t look at me, disdainfully shaking her head, an old woman, her hair far too long, making her seem stuck and tragic.  What a shock, to have been in the thick of Samsara, and now, under the thumb of reality.  When she couldn’t get any money from the cashpoint, she walked past me tutting, ‘No receipts’, shuddering her too long hair again. 

Their energy hasn’t changed, still feels like a jinx.  Now decidedly elderly, living enraged by their life choices, in joyless poverty; could they even afford a concert at the Universal Hall?

By 2005, I saw it coming… I believe I wanted to escape the life I was living too.  But witnessing women five, ten years older than I was, leaving their jobs, selling their homes, based on one week at Findhorn.  I couldn’t do it.  Move there.  Only one other time have I experienced such a visceral ‘No!’ 

Still thanking my lucky stars. 

Let's not ask for the moon, we have the stars