AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

It hit me yesterday that I have one more week here. I have been too wrapped up in a lot of other things to realize that until now, but during our attunement, when we all walked to the beach together to scream to help us empty some of our frustrations and stress, and when the people I was slowly walking with got there just in time to see the people who had got there just a few minutes earlier running naked into the ocean together, I realized how little time we have left, and how I know these people so well, but can't help just wanting to know them better and better and better. And when we did all scream together until our throats were raw and that man walked past and no one even thought it was strange or made any move to stop, how can I leave that? And 5 rhythms class, where we (there were 40 people there!) made a huge circle and 5 or 6 people at a time danced their chaos dances inside it and I went in and screamed so loud and danced so hard that I couldn't get up off the floor for the next 20 minutes because I would have thrown up, and people just came over to me and laid down next to me or rubbed my back or tickled my feet or ran around me as part of their dance. When that man I don't know gave me a back massage at the end of stillness. What will I ever do without the dance? And last night when some of us got the key to the CC Kitchen to make hummus and ended up staying for 2 hours because we forgot how long it takes garbanzo beans to cook, and so filling our time by having jumping contests and listening to old techno music and dancing and getting the night porter to let us stay longer by giving him some cookie/brownies we had made, how will I leave that?

I don't have any idea.



Anyway, this is one of my assignments for my Worldviews and Consciousness class. It is an autobiography about my worldview and how it has evolved and changed since coming here. The style is a little odd because I wrote it sort of as speaking notes for what I was going to say, but sort of just as a really informal paper. It's pretty personal, but I want to share it with you, because I love you.


HERE IT IS!

I am coming to this presentation with a burden that I am carrying and struggling with.

5 days ago I ended a 3 year relationship with my partner.

As a result, it has been really difficult for me to focus on or think about much else that is going on in my life right now. It’s also really difficult for me to look back over my semester here without bringing in my relationship.

I didn’t feel comfortable writing exclusively about that, though, because it is just really personal and hard to talk about. But this breakup is one of the biggest things that has happened to me in a long time, and one of the biggest things I have started to learn from it is my need for authenticity and honesty and how I think those are two of the most important things in the world. And I’m really FEELING that, not just saying it. And acting on that has just suddenly become more important to me than anything. So I didn’t want to write about what was not most present in me right now. I tried writing about my journey here as connected to spiral dynamics, or the 5 stages, or even astrology, but none of that felt authentic.

So I am writing about my personal sustainability, how being here has helped me heal a lot of self-destructive thought patterns and grow immeasurably. How being here has helped me shift my own worldview so I can learn to love myself better and trust myself and share my authentic self with others.

Coming here I was not really searching for a life path. I knew already that I wanted to be an organic farmer and had spent the previous 6 months doing just that, and the last 2 years self-educating (actually I have spent my life self-educating, but for the past 2 years I wasn’t in school). And I knew that my next step after being here would be practical farmer training of some sort.

I didn’t consciously come here to heal, I came here to figure myself out, but I ended up healing, so much, more even than I maybe thought I needed to heal.

Here are some of the things I brought here with me:

. Lots of body image issues, which has been a lifelong struggle (but I came here in a pretty good place)

. Feelings of creative and academic inadequacy – one of the many reasons I dropped out of college was that I didn’t think I was smart enough to be there, and one of the reasons I ended up quitting playing music was that I didn’t think I was good enough at it. Which was ridiculous, looking back.

.A 3-year partnership that was beautiful, but, having broken up with my boyfriend 5 days ago, a realization that I was in denial about a lot of the problems we had.
.Tying in with that, defining myself as part of a couple, not really as a whole self.

One of the most healing things here has been living in community and living with people who have pretty radically different worldviews than I do/did coming here. I feel like some of the biggest themes of this semester, or at least things we all ended up talking about a lot were: nonattachment, forgiveness/compassion, transparency, going to edges, owning everything you do and have, being open to feedback, creating healthy dialogue and communication, and open/free love/relationships.

Opening my world to all those ideas has made my healing process through my breakup about a trillion times easier, especially since I am in a community where I can talk with people about all these things. I feel no pressure to fit my relationship into a box, into thinking anything like “well he started having feelings for someone else, so that makes him a bad person.” I have a much more open way of looking at all the parts of that relationship, and the ways in which I have built my own self-confidence since being here have made it also so much easier to process.

As far as school goes, I have healed by being with other people who function the same way, generally, that I do in the educational system. Going to school in community has been really important for me, because previously in my life community and school were two different things. Being in a learning community where we sat down at the beginning of our time together and talked about our educational history and the way we learned brought out so many ghosts and showed me what school could/should be, and how school really can be a good thing for me. I’ve also learned that I can do well in school – I can write papers, manage my time, and enjoy myself doing it. It’s really been a labor of putting my belief that all learning is for me and has no other purpose into action.

A lot of you know that dancing and doing the 5 rhythms has changed my life – it has been intensely healing for my body and my issues around that part of myself, as well as for my creativity.

Being in Deborah’s class and just being here and being in community with everyone has taught me/helped me realize that everything I create, especially if I can bring my whole self to it, is a manifestation of myself, and it is so beautiful, because I am so beautiful. Furthermore, I have really internalized the reality that I don’t have to impress anyone with my art or music or my movement – my art/expression is 100% for me.

Being here has helped me break away from so many mainstream, destructive societal/cultural norms and expectations that I didn’t realize I was still carrying with me so heavily, and helped me come into myself so much more fully. I am so intensely grateful for my time here and what I have learned. It has made me an immeasurably stronger person.

Today we have our portfolio presentation. It's a Big Deal and I think we are all a little nervous. 5-8 PM, outside on the Park green, braving the unpredictable Scottish weather, dancing and food and campfires and singing and trapeze performances and beautiful sustainable art from all of us. I'm going to be uploading my portfolio onto the internet someday soon, because it tells even more stories from my time here than this blog does.

I hope you are all well,
Love,
Nora

Work!

We have been doing lots of homework lately. It is really good for me. I have a hard time balancing hanging out with my friends and getting all my work done, and this weekend is the first time I have been really social besides meals and class and dance in awhile.

Last Sunday I did an all-day dance workshop called "Satisfying Anger" that was about working with the 5 rhythms to express and work through feelings of anger. It was taught by my teacher for creativity class, and there were 20 community members there, along with me and Charlotte and some people from Inverness. In the morning we worked on feeling the difference between tightness and openness in our movements and bodies, and did this fun fun fun exercise where we all lined up in 2 lines facing one another across a line, and we danced our anger dances to each other without crossing the line (it was like creating a safe space, while allowing for expressions of anger in front of another person). Everyone was screaming and yelling and jumping around and punching the air and I did this incredibly fun dance where the woman I was partnered with and I danced our annoyance, I guess you could say. It was so useful to dance all our emotions at another person and have them dance theirs to us while knowing that it meant nothing personal. Then in the afternoon we danced a wave with all this angry music and did a lot of partner dancing and my chaos was so so so intense. I thought I was going to throw up, but I feel that most times I dance the 5 rhythms. When we ended we all partnered up and gave each other massages and oh man it was just the best way possible to spend a day. And SO useful, it has made my dance practice better already.

This past week has been full of assessments and big projects, and it has been stressful but also really fun, because we have had all these presentations that have been so full of beautiful, authentic sharing. On Monday we all talked about this Joanna Macy article in a colloquium-style class, and on Tuesday we presented our Art of Fascination projects with the class. I presented my slow eating endeavor with Sarah and Nicole, and other people presented what they learned about batiking, making food (we all made some food together...and subsequently turned into a big class of kindergarteners, it was ridiculously fun), campfire building and cooking food over campfires, (Ashley had made muffins with Amy inside of orange peels on a campfire and brought them in, and also built a sample campfire our of dried bananas, raisins, and coconut flakes), guitar (people who had never played guitar before coming here getting up and played and sang and it was so beautiful and inspiring), tai chi, bike carts, massage, bookmaking, and knitting. Then in the afternoon we started planning our big presentation at the end of the semester. Then Thursday we had a big paper due in Group Dynamics class and we spent the first half of the morning doing a forum, which is a type of check-in or attunement used at a community called Zegg. It differs from a lot of traditional check-ins in that people can give and receive feedback as part of their sharing. And also the person who is speaking stands in the middle and walks around, sometimes even on a stage, instead of sharing from their place in the circle. It was really intense, a lot of people cried and a lot of other people just expressed how big their love was for everyone in the program. At the end of forum everyone also sings a song together, and so we did that, and I don't really have the words for how much I loved it all.

Also all week there were two ladies here from America who were making a documentary. About us! Well, partly about us. I was never totally sure on what it was about in the end, but they filmed all our classes and asked me if they could interview me. They are in some way connected to the Living Routes program or founder, and they did interviews with some of the FCS people before the semester even started, and they came here to fill it all out. But anyway, I think it is about sustainability education and young people who are into this kind of work. In my interview I talked about anthropocentrism and how what I'm doing here connects to the anti-racism and anti-oppression work I have been doing for the past 5 years. So someday I might be in a documentary. Acting nerdy and talking about how I cry sometimes when I read things about sustainability and how young people are gonna change the world. You know.

The other night Dana and I were walking to Lollipop (my house) to watch a movie and on the way there we saw these three girls carrying a mattress and at intervals they would throw it down on the ground and jump up and down for a minute and then pick it up and walk a few more feet and do it all over again. I love Findhorn.

But yesterday Sarah, Dana, Charlotte and I went for an afternoon walk through the dunes and we came to this road that goes to the dunes from Findhorn village. And on the road there was a gang of 15-20 children. At first we thought they were being nice, because they were giving us peace signs, but then we realized that we are in the UK and the kind of peace sign they were giving us meant something very different than peace. And then they started yelling "FINDIE FOUNDIES! FINDIES!" at us. And then they mooned us! And then they ran away. I guess Findhorn is still seen as strange and thus provokes the hatred/mocking of small children.

But we all love each other. After our public humiliation we jumped on the trampoline at Shambala, the Buddhist center, and then we all lay together on the lawn outside the CC with all our friends as we waited for dinner. And after dinner we danced a beautiful wave together to the loudest music while the rain pounded down outside. And after that we lay in a big pile all on top of each other on the floor and told each other about our days.

The end.

Love,
Nora

Disjointed

So, the past few weeks have been really full. We only have one month left and lots of projects and people are either starting to get a little stressed, or go on holiday. This past weekend six people were gone (2 in Dublin, 4 in Amsterdam), and the 12 of us who stayed mostly did homework all weekend. Not too exciting. It was really interesting though, we all decided that the FCS program probably shouldn't be as big as ours is. 18 people is probably too many for Findhorn to hold - there have been secret rumblings of discontent produced by the community surrounding our group, apparently, and it's really just because there are 17 young American people living in a community of mostly older folks from Europe, and there is a disconnect. So sometimes when we get told that we are doing something that is shaking up the community, the person who tells us usually leaves the solution up to us, and says something like "yeah, you could clean that space, but it's good for some youthful energy in the community, so also you could just let them deal." It's a really interesting dynamic.

Here are some things that have happened. You can look at my flickr too, for the corresponding photos!

A few weeks ago we had an Applied Sustainability class session on food and farming. SO exciting. We visited two farms, Cullerne (which provides a lot of food that we eat here), and one that provides for Earthshare (where we get a lot more of our food), which you can read about here. When we got to the Earthshare farm, the farmer who owns it met us in a field and read us a Wendell Berry poem. Then he took us on a silent tour of his farm, and at certain points, like in the plum orchard, he stopped and held up sheets of paper with information about what we were looking at. It was beautiful. Then he gave us cheese that he made from the milk from his cows, and raw milk, and tea from mint he grew, and everybody got an index card with a quote on it that said something about farming, and we talked about them. Mine said "98% of people are freed from the drudgery of producing food." It was said by the US Secretary of Agriculture in 1977. Crazy, no? Everyone laughed at me because I'm the aspiring farmer in the group, and everyone else's quotes were all things like "Farming is co-creation with God." Also at the farm there was a gigantic pile of carrots, more carrots than I have ever seen in one place at one time ever before, and that was cool.

We've actually had a lot of really great classes lately, let me tell you about them.

For Worldviews and Consciousness a few weeks back, right after we got back from Erraid, we had a session about Jung where we did some sand tray/play therapy. We were in this room (the sauna changing room actually) down in Findhorn village, and there were these shelves in the corner covered by a big sheet, and suddenly as we were about to begin, David, our teacher, flung the sheet off to reveal thousands of tiny little figurines. It was a little too overstimulating. First we just chose figurines that represented who we were at that point in time, and then ones that represented who we wanted to become, and wrote about that and shared about it, and then our class created a whole "world" in a sand tray with these little figurines. David didn't tell us what it said about our group, but some of it was pretty self-explanatory. We had a lady-worshipping corner, Ronald McDonald on a cross being protected by the army, a beach party, and various other scenes of meditation and relaxation and a big ole elephant in the middle. There are pictures.

We also had a Worldviews and Consciousness class that was a whole-day retreat at Shambala, which is a Tibetan Buddhist center down the road from the Park. We talked to a Venerable (I don't know how to spell her name) who used to be a Methodist minister for 18 years in the States, and then 7 years ago found Buddhism and took her vows over a period of 5 years during which she studied at various monasteries all over the world. We also talked with a man named Thomas Warrior who was also a Tibetan Buddhist but had not taken vows, I don't think. There was a big picture of the Dalai Lama (who he has studied extensively with) blessing his daughter. He said they got along famously (the Dalai Lama and his daughter) and that they had a special bond, and also that every time the Dalai Lama was in Scotland he hung out with his daughter. They also showed us DVDs that had different monks talking about different aspects of Buddhism. Also Richard Gere was in it a bunch. Yep. We ate lunch (all organic, served home style, with two courses...absolutely incredible) in silence and I spent an hour dancing in the ballroom while Tim drummed and played guitar for me before class started again. A lot of what we learned really resonated with me, and has definitely stayed with me.

The other day Charlotte and I went to Cluny all day to do homework, as it is a more homework-conducive space than the Park, where all I want to do all day is run around and catapult myself into the dunes. After we had worked for something like six hours, we walked into Forres, where we bought some pens and things, and then Charlotte wanted to go into this fishing store so she could buy a knife. It was amazing, here we were two young ladies debating over the best knife ("but that one's not serrated...") while the two older Scottish men who were having a conversation at the counter eyed us with deep confusion. After we chose the best one ("The Forester's Knife"), Charlotte asked the shopkeeper questions about its quality and where it was made, and he amusedly responded. As we left, exhilarated and supremely satisfied, we wondered about what the two men really thought of us. A wonderful experience was had by all, I'm sure.

As I have mentioned before, I've gotten really into dance since coming here. I maintain that this experience would have been worth it even if didn't enjoy any of it (which I obviously am, very much), just because I got to learn about the 5 rhythms, and for the experience of dancing them many many times. Because I never want to be doing anything more than dancing while I'm here (except maybe eating the kitchen's delicious Friday-night sugar-free wheat-free vegan desserts...I'm so serious) I decided to take a dance improv class with my friend Charlotte. We meet every Tuesday for 2 hours with a woman named Jackie and 2 other students, Jo, who is maybe in her late 20s, and Dave, who we think is in his 70s. I never had so much fun in my life. All this dancing is truly becoming a daily practice for me, and building my personal sustainability (health, happiness, etc). I love it. I want to have a thousand dance parties when I return home, with everyone I refused to dance with in the past.

The other day I had what I think was a very Findhorn day. Or at least a few very Findhorn experiences throughout the day. We spent the morning creating a model wastewater treatment wetland system, and hooked it up to a dirty pond, and then we visited the Living Machine, which is what Findhorn uses to transform all its wastewater into water that can be used for irrigation. After lunch, I found myself doing KP for Brian, who needed to go to a NextGEN meeting. So Matt and I walked to the kitchen, and we washed all the pots to a supremely exciting 80s mix (Bruce Springsteen to MJ...Matt says they play it at every Monday afternoon KP) all while dancing wildly, Matt at one point flinging off his shirt and covering me in a cascade of soap suds, amusing all the other KP workers, I'm sure. Walking home from lunch, I passed by a dumpster where a mother was yelling at her child (his name is Storm) "not NOW," as he attempted to climb on in and find whatever treasures he was searching for inside. Ah, the joys of rampant, acceptable dumpster diving.

As we have become more comfortable in the community, Findhorn has become more of this type of day and less work work work, though this weekend I've been pretty holed up trying to finish a paper on identity in Findhorn for my group dynamics class, and getting ready to present my slow eating endeavor to the class.

In other news, I've finally figured out what I want to do next semester, which is moving to Marshalltown Iowa to go to community college there to study sustainable agriculture. I've been writing and talking about it a lot so I'm not going to go into it right here, now, but I'm so ridiculously excited about it all that I'm having trouble staying in the present here sometimes. I'm working on this, but sometimes I just wanna pack up my bags and move on home and settle for the next two years. Enough traveling/living in a transitory space.

Also, I'm just gonna put this out there: I think astrology is kind of cool. And I decided I'm coming home with my own deck of angel cards. Please don't worry. I'll never be New Age, I'm too skeptical.

One more story: last night Charlotte and I were walking home late from dancing in the Universal Hall and we came across a little bird sitting in the road. It didn't move even when we walked right up to it so we stopped and I waited with it while Charlotte went in our house and got a box to put it in that we could nestle up in some bushes where a cat hopefully wouldn't get to it. When she went to pick it up it scampered away, but she caught it, and just as she was setting it down in the box, I heard a noise and turned around, and there, just a few feet away from where the first bird was, was a second, identical bird. Have you ever seen the Matrix? It was like the deja vu when that man sees the second cat. When there was a "glitch in the matrix," or something like that. WEIRD. But anyway, we determined that they were okay, and went inside. I don't know if that was a good story or not, but it was scary and strange and I still don't understand it, so I like it.

Love you all,
Nora

This one is shorter, I'm so sorry about before

Everyone has been walking around since we got back from Erraid saying things like "I have sooo much love for all of the people here." We are all giddy from a week of lying (can someone teach me when to say lying and when to say laying?) together in the sun and traipsing around on a haunted island, and we're all in love with each other.

Also since we've gotten back a lot of us have noticed that we are eating REALLY fast when we eat in the CC. Even faster than before, which was too fast. So Sarah and I are changing our Art of Fascination project (the one where we share talents or skills or special knowledge with one another) from learning guitar, which I will try and do anyway, to learning how to eat slowly from Tim, who eats slower than anyone I know. We're going to start spending our mealtimes learning how to savor our food. There is talk of incorporating slow food and slow eating into our end of the semester presentation too.

I've started getting more into my assignments and the readings and the writing. Yesterday I finally figured out what I'm going to do for my applied sustainability project, which had been looming over my head. I'm going to integrate sustainable education, permaculture, and community work to develop a weekend/day workshop that can be used at UUI (the church I grew up in). And possibly modified to be used at other churches? Though I am also pulled to just working with UUI specifically. I feel like I can really integrate permaculture principles with UU principles, which is exciting, and I have the model of the green sanctuary to work with. I'm still playing with the whole idea, and am also considering just planning a YRUU conference or a workshop that can be brought to different conferences and meetings. Sooo does anyone have a free copy of the green sanctuary manual that they can send to me?

I stayed up way too late last night and found a bunch of farmer training/certification programs in the midwest, and my excitement for what I am doing at the end of this summer has grown exponentially.

"ugh there is SO much nora, too much. you wrote a BOOK about erraid" - Nate Redman

I did write a book about Erraid.

I have just returned home to the Park from a week on the island of Erraid. It is, my mom told me, where Robert Louis Stevenson found inspiration for his book Kidnapped. I haven't read it and even though it is always nice to really have a sense of place when you read something, I'm not sure it is something I will ever actually want to read. Either way, I can see how someone would fall in love with the island and write an adventure story about it. We certainly had adventures. Broken elbows and jumping off the pier and prayer poles with sheep skulls on top. I'm not going to explain any of that, which I feel makes it all the more mysterious and exciting, as all islands should be.

Unfortunately for you, or maybe fortunately, depending on what type of person you are, you might not think my pictures give a very good view of the island. That is because, I just realized, I only really like to take pictures that have people in them. I usually think people are more interesting for pictures than places are, unless there is a whole lot of color in the places, and I think it is more fun to look at people rather than places later on to remember the place by. And with our group there is just so much motion to try and capture. And also, it is so beautiful here that sometimes I just get fed up and annoyed and refuse to try and even document it. I took four hundred and eleven pictures while we were on Erraid, and I think probably people are in about three hundred and fifty of them, which I realize and acknowledge is sort of ridiculous. So I don't have any pictures of Loch Ness, which we passed on our way there, or the mountains of Iona, another island we visited for a day, and very few of the water and the beaches and the heather-covered landscape of Erraid. Mostly they are just of the eighteen people I spent my week with there.

Also, before I start, I just wanted to say sorry for not telling you about the things that happened before I went to Erraid. I keep a very nice record of what happens day-to-day here for my daily practice (that I do for Worldviews and Consciousness class), so luckily I have a way to remember what I have been doing and I promise I will go back and talk about some of the other things I did in March.

We left last Saturday, March 31st, at 5 in the morning. We all stumbled out of our beds and wandered down the field of dreams to the runway (I don't know if I ever explained this before, but the main street of the Park is called the runway because it really used to be a runway! Findhorn is right next to a Royal Air Force base and I guess it used to be over in the part that is Findhorn too) where we got some instructions and sleepily threw our bags and our selves onto two of the Findhorn buses. The buses were named Pegasus and Sir George. I rode on Sir George. Before we set out we all held hands and attuned for a safe ride. After that most people fell asleep, but I spent the whole time listening to music and watching the sky turn from black to green-black to pink-gray and finally a burst of sunrise color. We passed Loch Ness while the sky was still a pre-dawn green-gray color and it was eerie and it all felt very fitting. There were flashing green lights at places along the loch to show when a bridge was coming (I think), and all those colors combined contributed to me thinking most of the way there about big underwater monsters and why people believe in them. Then once the sun rose we came to what I guess was the highlands. We were in the mountains for hours! Coming from the pancake-flat part of the midwest, it was exciting and a little unbelievable. We rode in the buses for a long, long time, maybe six hours all together, and took two ferries as well, until we all got out at a big old cow farm in the middle of nowhere. We walked across a sheep field and there was the beach! Just hangin out. It was so crazy, I've only been to the ocean a handful of times that I can remember outside of the 6 months I spent living in Vietnam, so my first thought was "this is just like Vietnam!" Which it was NOT. But I guess that is what having limited experiences to draw on will do to you. We climbed in batches of 8 people onto the little motor-converted rowboat and Heather (an Erraid resident) sped us across the little stretch of water to Erraid. The tide was really low, so probably half of the group opted to walk across a little further down the coast where there was a sandbar. Erraid is pretty well connected to Mull, another island, and you could walk over most days if you wanted.

Erraid, which was a lighthouse-keeper's community until the 1950s, was bought in 1977 by a Dutch family who wanted a safe place for their children to have adventures. But when they bought it it was all rundown and the old lighthouse-keeper's buildings were all fallen to pieces and they didn't have the resources to be there and fix it and do upkeep and all, so they approached the Findhorn Foundation to see if they wanted to be the custodians of the island and it became a partnership that continues today. The island is still owned by the family and the Foundation has a small community (currently 7 people) who live there and maintain it, and the Dutch family comes for maybe 6 weeks out of the year for holiday (the community members stay in other housing on the island and take care of the gardens and the animals during this time). Erraid is as close to self-sufficiency as I have ever seen. There are outdoor composting toilets and the drinking water is pure rainwater that is collected from the rooftops, which is heated from mostly the wood-burning stoves that also help to heat the houses, and a lot of the food is grown right in the front yards (there is also cheese and milk and eggs and sometimes meat from the sheep, cows, and chickens). Guests come pretty much every Saturday from Findhorn (which sends a lot of workshops and groups like ours, as well as individuals) and elsewhere. While the nineteen of us were there, there was also a family of 6 people on holiday from Germany, a family of 3 from Findhorn village, and another couple. So the community has the capacity to hold about 40 people. And it really is a community. There is a daily flow, community meetings at 9:15 and shared work time 4 days a week in the morning and afternoons. Two tea breaks a day (11:30 and 3:30), shared dinner every night (at 6) and lunch on the work days (the other days you can eat leftovers from the communal fridge or get ingredients from the food room and cook for yourself), and meditation and taize singing (5 and 5:30 pm on weekdays, 10 on the weekends). Someone walks down the street (there's only one) ringing a bell to call all the people to every activity. It's like the Park in some ways (we all chose angel cards for the week -- mine was freedom -- we bless every meal, we attune before group meetings, we check in a lot, we do KP, we eat oatcakes for tea, etc) but it's mostly different. Which of course it would be having a population more than a hundred people smaller. I have decided I like Erraid more than the Park, but still don't see myself settling, at least not for a long time, in a community like them.

The first day we were there is a blur, I remember eating a big bowl of soup and toasted sunflower seeds and afterwards collapsing with everyone in my class onto the green grass and lying in the sun for hours. We left some not so nice weather in the Park, but were lucky enough to have full sun for most of our time there (it just keeps getting warmer and warmer and stays light so late into the night now). I took a walk by myself later in the afternoon and stumbled upon the shell of an old stone house. I sat in the window and journaled for something like 2 hours, which was really wonderful because I haven't been writing for myself near enough. It seems sometimes like half my homework is journaling, so I hardly ever have the energy for any more of it. Something about Erriad immediately brought everything I have been feeling and thinking right up out of me though. The residents all say that if you are supposed to be on Erraid, you find your way to Erraid. I hope some of you end up there someday.

The next day I went to the beginning of the week meditation and then our group had an attunement, where we set intentions for the week. Mine had to do with making a conscious effort to think about school, relationships and time and how they interact in my life. I have big decisions to make for after the summer and being at a place like Erraid where I could do a lot of reflection came at exactly the right time. We also chose some intention cards and setback cards to give us guidance for our intentions. You can ask me what mine said if you are interested. I spent the rest of the day lying around in the sun again. I started to get a sunburn, but it was worth it. I have missed the sun, or at least the temperatures that allow for being still outside in it without my big blue jacket.

One of the best things about Erraid was that all our housing and roommates were all mixed up from what we are used to at the park, and also we all stayed down the street from one another on the little row houses, whereas at the park my house is a walk from anyone else. So I got to know people I don't usually get to hang out with. We all seemed to congregate in whatever house had the warmest fire going at the end of every night, instead of going home to our own bungalows as happens a lot here.

Monday was our first work day. We all met up for community meeting in house no. 8 and sat in a circle on the floor (obviously). We went around the circle three times - the first was for a check in, the second for the residents to explain the jobs they were doing and how many people they needed to help, and the third was for everyone to say what work they had chosen to do. I worked in the garden in the morning and the candle studio in the afternoon. I didn't realize how much I missed weeding until I got out into the jerusalem artichoke patch I spent the morning digging up and weeding. I'm thinking of working at a farm in Danville instead of doing something that would be better paying when I get home this summer because I realized how much I miss it all. But anyway, have you ever had jerusalem artichokes? They are also called sunchokes because they have are related to sunflowers, and have a big stem and flower in the summer when they come up. They look like a mix between little knobbly potatoes and ginger root and taste sweet, sort of, and very starchy. We dug up a trashcan and a half of them in this tiny little patch to the sound of our sniffly noses and the cows in the pasture next door, telling stories about things we have found in the woods (clothing, notes, etc). Then in the afternoon I scraped wax off of candle molds with a knife and polished finished candles. Erraid makes a lot of candles and sells them at the Park and also at Cluny, as well as in some other local shops. They are all rainbow and very nice, if you are into that sort of thing. And I went to meditation and taize singing, which was a strange experience as a lot of the songs in the Erraid songbook I know as old YRUU worship songs that I have sung hundreds of times. Hello, fourteen years old. The meditation room is up by itself on a hill, with windows for walls, and is guarded by a cranky old goose who extends his long neck at anyone nearing the door and taps at the windows with his beak at the beginning of every meditation but seems to settle down along with us.

Tuesday I washed windows all morning and walked to the beach with eight other ladies in the afternoon. It was wild. We walked over heather and lots of muddy bogs on our way, and came up over a hill and suddenly there was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen, framed on either side by big brown rock cliffs and guarded by little herds of very pregnant horned sheep with big black faces and mounds of white woolly hair. We all threw off our welly boots and our clothing and ran shrieking to the beach where we jumped into the ocean and laid out like mermaids on the rocks and the sand. It was a little too cold despite all our enthusiasm but I worked on my sunburn (it has since faded into a very nice freckly tan) anyway. We talked about...boys. I felt a little like middle school, but in a really good way. It is certainly weird to be pretty much the only one here in a committed relationship with someone at home, but everyone is very nice and they all indulge me and ask me lots of questions about Nate and let me tell as many stories as I want when we get down to talking about that sort of thing.

Wednesday was magic, and a day full of firsts. I took my first shower since coming to Erraid, and also we herded sheep. We really did! With a real shepherd and dogs who looked sort of like Socks (the dog I grew up with), who I have now realized is too beautiful and fluffy and pampered to be a real sheepdog. The sheep are about to all have babies, and they needed to get shots and things from the shepherd, who comes and herds the sheep maybe 7 times a year. There are about 150 sheep on Erraid, and they pretty much have free reign of the island, so it is a job to collect them all (one square mile is bigger than it sounds). The way we accomplished this was by making a big line and walking in the line across the island, which sounds pretty simple, which it was. By moving slowly toward the sheep they would just naturally walk away from us and clump together. At certain points we would hold the sheep we had already collected in a little circle while other adventurous people went up into the cliffs to gather the strays. All I could really do the whole time was wonder how exactly I got there, sheep herding (shepherding?) on a little tiny island off the coast of Scotland. What were the events in my life that led me there, to a place so out of the ordinary? Most everyone else I know is sitting in rooms in the USA and doing things like reading books and writing papers and I am in Scotland, herding sheep and calling it school. I recommend sheep herding if you ever get the chance, because it is an Experience. It is gentle and strange and a little intimidating to be holding a big flock of sheep and keeping them from running up into the hills. After getting back from shepherding even more sunburned, I sat in the warmest living room to be found writing and talking until I couldn't stand being dirty anymore and took a shower. I was planning on going the whole week without one (why not, it's something I've never done before) but after the trek around the island I caved and showered in the brownish, sweet-smelling peat water that they pipe down from up the hill behind the houses for bathing. I used someone's Herbal Essences shampoo, which seemed very out of place.

Thursday we went to Iona. I didn't think I wanted to go but in the morning when we woke up Dana and I convinced each other we should, so we did. And it was wonderful. We danced in this ancient broken-down nunnery (built in 1230), danced in a field with some newborn lambs, danced on our way to the abbey, probably danced in the abbey, danced our way to the most delicious surprise organic, sustainable restaurant, danced out way out after two hours and too much loud conversation, and danced down to the beach. We hopped some fences and walked through some public backyards and I ate the most delicious chips of my life. I'm sorry I don't have more history to tell you; it was mostly about church-related things and I couldn't really focus on anything but the laughter coming at me from all sides from my wonderful friends. Later that night as we (5 or 6 of the ladies) lounged in the no. 6 living room around the fire, 3 shirtless boys (Matt, Brian, and Tim) came in, plugged in a boom box playing Brazilian music, and danced silently for us for 10 minutes, then walked silently out. Things like this happen every day here.

Friday I finished my book of Flannery O'Connor stories that I brought with me. It was sort of a strange place to be reading such a grotesque book, but I've really been trying to make time for some outside reading, as it keeps me sane. Nighttime was an open-mic, a bonfire, and the darkest night I have ever seen. Saturday morning was goodbyes and 6 hours on the bus. We made a stop off at Cluny to drop off Erraid's laundry (the bus goes back and forth anyway every week, and Cluny has better capabilities for washing lots of linens, so they are done there), where I found cake in the stillroom (where the dishes are done) and mistakenly took a piece outside, where Tim tackled me to get at it. There are probably still cake crumbs littering the drive up to Cluny, remnants of our tussle on the tarmac. I actually never had a chance. I was on the ground in seconds, feebly holding the cake while he devoured it from my hand and over my head.

Now we are home, the homework is looming over my head, and it is almost time for Sunday brunch. I will go to the beach today and reminisce about the Grecian beaches of Erraid and wish you were here. Only seven weeks left, and it seems like nothing.

Love,
Nora


P.S. If you get time, please check out the Erraid community's website. The history they have provided there is very nice.

P.P.S. To all of you who have asked me how my mono is, thank you! I think it is mostly gone, or maybe all the way gone. I don't really know, but I feel like I have more energy. I still feel like I have to walk slower than other people, but that might just be because I am kind of a slow-moving sort of person.

Never shine sun, let the moon stay above, I wanna keep on keepin' on lovin' my love

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile! It's really busy here, surprisingly. We have class only Tuesday - Friday, but usually Tuesday and Thursday are completely scheduled up morning to night and Wednesday and Friday have morning and afternoons scheduled. Monday we have work departments in the afternoons, and it feels like all the free time is sucked away into work or KP or meals or planning things to do in the rest of the free time. Usually this means dancing or watching documentaries together. I'm not sure how many I have watched so far. And I think I really do dance every day. The homework doesn't feel like it is too intense, but if I think ahead to all my big projects (one in every class) it starts to get overwhelming. I've been trying to really get started on my projects but I'm still so excited about my daily practice of creative expression that a lot of my time/brain power ends up getting sucked into that.

This past Saturday was one of the best times I've had here so far. We all, at lunch on Saturday, decided that we really wanted to cook for ourselves for Saturday night dinner. For us, this meant a lot of steps: signing out of dinner so the cooks could adjust quantities, getting passwords and keys into the other food sheds (besides the one where we get all our oatcakes and apples), being aware of all the different dietary needs in our group, coming up with enough ingredients for some semblance of a dish, preparing it, and organizing enough dinner utensils for everyone to join together in one house. I was prepared for it to be really shabby, thrown together, and our house opted to just make a raw dessert (apples, soaked sunflower seeds and raisins, dried coconut, and cinnamon, delicious!) and bring some food from the Commnity Center (CC, where we eat all our other meals), just to make sure we would all have enough food. I was blown away though, as everyone prepared loads of delicious food, all with an awareness of who could eat what, and spent money (not very much at all) and spent all afternoon baking spelt bread and EVERYTHING you could possible think of. We set up our classroom in a big, clean circle and attuned and everyone shared what they were bringing and what was in it and we all made toasts and there was so so much joy. It was one of the first times we have Really felt like a family to me.

After the dinner, which disappeared pretty quickly, we all laid on the floor together, having of course all eaten way too much, and told stories and played games and sang and laughed for a long, long time. And then, of course, we danced. Not all of us were ready, so it was just a small group of dancers for a long time until Seth and Matt came back from an excursion and told us there was a 70s dance party happening in the Universal Hall. It was hilarious and strange. It ended up being a 16-year-old's birthday party. Everyone was dressed in really intense costumes and it was kind of cool to see a bunch of teenagers partying it up in Findhorn. Of course, because we are in Findhorn, everyone seemed to have been invited, and so every once in awhile I would see who I thought was a teenager in a minidress and platform, knee high boots, and it would turn out to be a forty-five year old. Also, I'm not going to lie, we kind of got that party started. We were riding the high of just discovering 5 rhythms dancing and coming out of a night full of love and happiness, so we were ready for anything, and at the party it was a bunch of self-conscious teenagers - though it's true that they were quickly losing that self-consciousness through alcohol consumption (remember they were sixteen and it was a party with tons of adults in attendance as well...Europe?). In any case, Tim hurt his hip from his incredible dancing and could hardly walk the next day, but we all agreed any physical pains we may have suffered at the dance (it really was WILD) were completely worth it.

This morning I ended up skipping the session on clowning for Creativity class because I woke up feeling like I could throw up a hundred times and it would never be enough. I may have accidentally eaten something with wheat (which I have discovered I am genuinely allergic to) or dairy in the CC last night, which would explain it. But I didn't throw up because I have a phobia of it, which I learned this morning is called Emetophobia. So sometimes when I am nauseated I start to have little panic attacks, because I am irrationally afraid of throwing up/don't know how. It was a weird morning. I mostly tried to fall back asleep and hoped it would go away after some more rest. It seems to have subsided, but I'm going to be really careful about what I eat. Most of us here are taking this kind of care and attention with our bodies and food and it's really amazing to see what everyone is learning about their health. I'm sad I couldn't even go over to the class to see what it was all about, but I'm glad to have taken care of myself, and I've just been relaxing in bed listening to Greg Brown for awhile now, which makes me have a lot of good memories of family and friends and home.

Mom and Dad are in Kenya right now, I'm sending them lots of love, and you should too. Patrick has a broken hand from playing Ultimate, which makes him a badass. I have a new first cousin? I don't know what relation she is to me, but my cousin Elaine had a beautiful baby girl named Taylor. I can't wait to see her. I can't wait to see my family! I had a dream about the Indianapolis airport the other night. I'm not ready to go home though, I still have so much to do here and love it tremendously, and wouldn't really rather be anywhere else in the world at this point in my life. Ecovillage living is amazing and I wish you could all come see.

Love,
Nora

P.S. I put new pictures up too!

Gratitude

I love it here. I really, really love it here. I can't believe that this is my life, and that I am in a space that facilitates my learning SO much about mysef, and that I get to keep that knowledge and these experiences with me forever. I am so lucky. I am so very privileged and blessed and lucky to be here and with these people and in this place. It is incredible. Thank you.

Saturday was the eclipse. Charlotte and Page and I made it out the bonfire really late; we got extra lost on the way there and ended up wandering through the dunes for over an hour. The journey there was definitely the best part of the night though, as we were stumbling about for the better part of the three hour eclipse process and got to see it from lots of different angles. The night was perfectly clear and the moon turned a deep, vibrant red, and when it was mostly eclipsed the stars were so, so bright. It was like being in a planetarium. The stars were ALL around us. Isn't it awful that I feel I have to liken the experience of the real thing to a simulation to convey how amazing it is? It makes me so sad to know that the clarity with which I saw the sky that night was nothing like many people have ever seen. We saw the Pleiades, which I've never seen before knowing what they are, and when we got down to the water we all laid down together on the sand and watched the moon come back out.

Sunday we mostly did homework, and a bunch of us got together and watched a documentary about Hugo Chavez and the coup in Venezuela surrounding him in 2002. It was intense. I love that people here just plan these things independently in class and most everyone will show up and all pile together onto couches and beds and get really, really into it and have long conversations about it afterwards.

Monday all we had was work departments, and I got to go to Cluny gardens once again and work with Sverre and Christine. It is the best thing in the world to be working there. Caitlin and I were feeling like we wanted to stay in so we washed sick plants in the greenhouse with toothbrushes and organic biodegradable lavender soap and water. They had little insects on their undersides, so we took them off and got rid of all the sap that had accumulated because of their sicknesses. We ended up singing a lot of Leonard Cohen songs and some Unitarian hymns to keep our energy up, and poured all our love into the plants. I'm starting to feel the "work is love in action" motto in my life here. It's so easy, when all types of work and the people who do them are respected. I don't know how I'll go back to doing work where we don't all attune together first and do a check-in and sharing of where we all are. It all seems so necessary and natural.

Today we had creativity class. We danced the 5 rhythms (which we call a wave) twice and I absolutely loved it. I thought the euphoria of being in a place like this had all worn off but I keep getting falling back into it. We did a bunch of dance exercises before we started, lots of things like gliding/rolling all over one another and funny partner improvisational dances, and loosening up all our body parts. The wave is a form of dance and I guess spiritual practice where you dance through these five rhythms: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness. We did a 20 minute wave inside with music, and having never really danced before, ever, besides ridiculous dancing at parties, it felt surprisingly natural and safe. I wasn't nervous at all and I can feel a lot of my old silly self-consciousness breaking down already. Later we danced a little shorter wave outside, with no music, and it was kind of incredible to me how different the two experiences were. I guess I really have never danced for any extended period of time without music before, and I really felt in touch with my body and was just flowing through the wave. There are 5 rhythms dances twice a week, and a lot of us are planning on going, as well as having our own waves most days of the week. I might have to switch my daily practice to 5 rhythms dancing.

Tonight eight of us went to Melissa's house, which she shares with seven other people, to cook and eat a meal together. She ended up not being able to stay but we cooked a delicious, gingery potato leek soup with Hannah (who led our sacred dance in the first week). It was so nice to cook a meal and sit around a big table in a warm kitchen and be a family. We eat potatoes and leeks most days but it was better to cook for ourselves and it all just felt really special. After that we went to a presentation about Trees for Life, which is a great organization that we will be doing some work for in May. It was nice but very, very long. So now I am here. And now it is time for bed. I got a sweet letter from my best friend today and I got into a letter writing frenzy as a result. If you want one give me a holler.

Love,
Nora

A dance party every day

On Thursday we had "Service Learning: Exploring Self and Community through the Arts" class. That is a ridiculous name. It's really just Creativity class. We already have a lot to be thinking about, lots of projects and activities. Some of the things we are going to be doing are dancing the 5 rhythms, a workshop on clowning and physical theater as activism, pottery, weaving, sharing creative skills with one another (I'm sharing knitting, and I hope that my friend Matt will teach me guitar), creative writing, making big portfolios that connect all our learning here from all our classes and experiences, and a big group exhibition and presentation for the whole Findhorn community at the end. I'm thinking about doing a bunch of artistic identity mapping work for my portfolio, either just on myself or on our group as a whole, on assumptions and identities and how they manifest in groups and group behaviors. It's all a lot clearer in my mind, I'm sure I'll show you pictures as I get further along. It's really fabulous for me to be in a creative, artistic class and not feel so much fear and anxiety. I'm still nervous, because I haven't ever really felt like I was an artistic person, but this class is more about exploring our own creativity and working through the creative blocks that we all have and developing trust in ourselves and knowledge that all of the art we create is valid and beautiful.

Then Friday we had Worldviews and Consciousness (WC). I mostly wasn't excited about it because we had to read this book I have a really hard time with, A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. Ken Wilber, who I affectionately renamed Man-Face (do you see why? Now no one here refers to the book as anything but Man-Face), is absurd and says most things with a lot of unnecessarily difficult and confusing and academic words. It's a very inaccessible book, and he has weird weird ideas about gender equality but I like some of the other concepts. It takes me 5 minutes to read a page though. I feel most times like the whole thing is just so pretentious. But the class was alright, the teacher is the most formal, but the assignments are still very much about personal development and learning and far removed from traditional school. The best thing about WC class is that our biggest assigment is developing a daily practice and journaling about it. My daily practice is working on creative exploration, I got a few books and am very excited about it all. Other people are doing things like yoga, mindfulness meditation, T'ai Chi, and dream interpretation. School is kind of fun here.

The castle I mentioned we were going to in my last entry was beautiful, I put up pictures on my flickr website. You can read about it here. We climbed on it and then had teatime and a Bard told us the story of Tristan and Isolde. Apparently we are going to be doing restoration and planting trees in the forest that Tristan and Isolde ran away to, the Caledonian Forest. The Caledonian Forest is also where Merlin lived, in the Legends of King Arthur. This place is wild.

Yesterday at lunch Sarah found a caterpillar crawling on her plate under her salad. Kirk then ate it, without a dare or anything. It reminded me of my Dad, and when he made us go to a bug-eating festival. I think Kirk ate the bug because he misses eating meat. I just miss sugar. I ate some apple crisp the other day, because it was a special occasion, and it didn't make me feel bad or anything, I just felt so happy because it tasted like granola and home.

Today Page, Dana, Sarah and I all went to Forres for the day. All there is in Forres is thrift stores and pharmacies. It's very strange. We were so overwhelmed, because there was so much stuff there! (There wasn't really. There was one main street and it was 3 blocks long.) We also had a really hard time crossing the street because in Findhorn everyone just walks wherever they want and cars just wait. Also driving on the other side of the road is really hard to get used to. There is a free bus between Forres and the Park (because part of Findhorn, Cluny, is in Forres) every day at 5 or so different times, but by the time we wanted to leave, we had to take the public bus, which is bright blue and neon orange on the inside. I Love Scotland.

Tonight is the full moon, and a big lunar eclipse, so we are having a dance party on the beach. I hope you can all see the lunar eclipse too. When I am seeing it you might be eating dinner, or washing the dishes afterwards, or maybe watching a movie, or walking your dog, and when you see it, I will be dancing around a big bonfire with people in mittens and hats and long underwear and rosy cheeks. And maybe some cold skinnydippers warming by the fire. You should all go outside and watch is so we can both be looking at the same thing at the same time. Wouldn't that be nice?

Love,
Nora

P.S. My mom's birthday is tomorrow. If you know her you should call her up and tell her you love her, because I know you do.

Tea Breaks and Oat Cakes

Dear friends,

Classes have begun and it is a lot of fun so far, though the atmosphere of the program and the mood of the people here has definitely changed. Applied Sustainability was really intense and presented a lot of information about how unsustainable the world is in our first class (which was 6 hours long), which freaked a lot of people out. Our professor is really focused on the importance of community in sustainability which is nice for me because I can understand it better that way, but also nice in general because a lot of people only present knowledge about sustainability and ecovillages in the context of science and food and housing and waste management (which are all important aspects too, and things we will be going in depth into) but there has to be sustainability in the people who do the work and make the commitment as well, and that is created in large part through community. Also when we talk about the sustainability of groups it merges into our other classes. The classes are very well connected which I think will in the end provide an amazing holistic overview of sustainability that I will be able to apply to my life in more mainstream culture very well. Which of course is what this program is about. But anyway, you can read my teacher's blog here (link also at sidebar). I like it a lot. I also like Jonathan because he starts all his emails to us "Dear Friends" which is how I sometimes start correspondences too.

Today we had Group Dynamics and Conflict Facilitation class. This class is really interesting to me because I have learned facilitation skills in an environment fairly different from here, and to learn about essentially the same concepts with a different vocabulary and style is going to be a big, possibly difficult experience for me. Also a lot of my facilitation skills come from groups in which I have been working with other leaders - either in a co-operative sense or in leading conferences to help others develop their own leadership skills (and people here aren't all leaders), and in a community where all the participants share a set of basic beliefs, which is very helpful in group work, and which we don't have here. And finally, conflict facilitation is not something I have done a lot. I have been involved in a lot of group conflict but have only had to facilitate it a small number of times and am very excited to build skills in that area.

On Sunday a lot of my friends jumped into the ocean. I didn't go down to the beach to see this happen but they all stopped by our bungalow (it is the closest one to the beach, about a 10 minute walk, and a 7 minute walk in the other direction to the other bungalows and our meeting space) afterwards and we made them tea and hot water bottles and they sat by our radiators and warmed their pink hands. But speaking of tea, we have tea breaks twice a day. They are close to mandatory and they are splendid. I eat a lot of oatcakes and oranges and apples and drink a lot of ginger and lemon tea and because there isn't very much variety in food here usually we all talk a lot about things we would like to be eating instead of oatcakes and oranges and apples and ginger and lemon tea. But in all honesty I don't know how I survived this long without oatcakes and have carved quie a large space out of my heart for them to nestle right in and I am already planning to take many boxes of them with me out of the free food shed when I leave because if separated from them at this point I will likely go into shock. But if I do tire of them, of course I have the option of a rice cake instead. Or a hard rye-bread thing. Or maybe if I am feeling particularly wild, some cornflakes.

Tomorrow we have creative class and then we are going to see castle ruins with a Scottish bard and visiting a tiny secluded beach-cove (I don't really know ocean terminology) and then I have Kitchen Party (kitchen clean-up after dinner in the community dining hall, we just call it KP) and then we are watching a movie called The End of Suburbia. Probably sometime in between all of those things I will eat some potatoes and carrots and beets and also I will think of you.

Love,
Nora

Photos

Hello all,

The weekend has been pretty slow, we've had a lot of free time, which has been spent mostly by us all laying on the floor in our big group space and doing our reading homework. Classes start the day after tomorrow! Tomorrow is going to be spent doing more group sharing - this time about education history and learning styles, which is really exciting. I can hardly believe that there was time scheduled for this before classes started. I've already been talking a lot about school and learning with people here and a lot of people seem to be coming from a similar place as me, so I know we'll all be able to support one another. How sustainable of us.

Today there was a craft fair put on by the Ecovillage Training (EVT) group, who are 30 people from around the world who are here for an intensive month-long course to learn about ecovillages and how they work. A lot of them are involved in some sort of sustainable program or community at home, and are here to bring the knowledge they gain back to that group. I got two really beautiful necklaces there, and had some good talks with some of the EVT people. We've been doing our dances (the sacred dance and the ceilidh) with them, but haven't had a lot of time to get to know one another. After the craft fair four of the EVT members did presentations on their communities from home. It's really inspiring to be around all these people who are so committed to sustainability. Later, our teacher for "Applied Sustainable Ecovillage Living," Jonathan Dawson, gave a presentation about the Global Ecovillage Network (he is the secretary of this organization, I think), and talked about different ecovillages around the world and what they are like, and showed lots of pictures. I learned that in Thailand, people ordain trees as monks and tie yellow cloth the color of a monk's robe around them so that people won't hurt them or cut them down. He also talked about how two big ideas that come out a lot in ecovillage living are the reclaiming of power from professionals (through things like construction of one's own dwellings), and also the preservation of traditional skills and knowledge (in virtually any field) because it does no one any good to rely on methods of production that could potentially become obsolete were we to run out of fuels, which is basically on of the big assumptions that ecovillages are running on (that we will run out of oil and other fuels at some point). I am not doing a very good job of describing all of this, but it's fascinating. Just tell me if you ever want to talk about it, I'm sure I'll get better at explaining it all after I have lived here longer.

I've put a little link to where my pictures are on the right side of this blog, but you can just click on this too. Right now a lot of them are of the people I am here with, but I promise I'll have more pictures of The Park and Cluny and everything as I get more settled.

Love,
Nora

P.S. Probably one of the most exciting moments of my entire life occurred earlier today when I realized that Dolly Parton had a tour date in Glasgow in a couple of weeks. It's sold out though, which I think happened in a matter of days. I had no idea. I'll just have to wait to see her in a more reasonable place, like the USA.

Terms Explained

Finally! I am going to explain angel meditations and sacred dance. And other funny things we have done.

Angel meditation was a process we did in order to find some guidance for the semester, both individually and as a group. It is a big part of the Findhorn community, and it is done by all work groups and other groups and individuals at the beginning of the year, or at the beginning of any project or time together. It is basically a longer meditation during which a person will focus on 'angels' or guidance or anything really, I guess, and at the end are invited to chose an 'angel card' that has a little picture and a word written on it (it is kind of like attunement, the idea is to be drawn to a card but that doesn't happen for everyone). The word on the card is something then that is focused on throughout the experience, or year, or semester, or time spent in the work group. Maybe it is something you need to work on, maybe it is a quality that will guide you, maybe just a word to remember and come back to throughout. The word I chose (I'm not really very comfortable with angels) is strength. I think that probably a person could find a connection to any word in the deck (of 72 cards) but this one fits very well for me right now, as I am getting through having mono, which is making me weak, I am coming back to school after a long hiatus, which is a struggle for me, and because living here is stretching and big and different. The group angel is beauty. We all agreed that we are especially beautiful people, and we will have to wait to see what else this card means for us other than that we are attractive. I think my favorite part about angel cards is that the "intention" card has a little picture of an angel playing golf. What?

Sacred dance was something we did the second or third day we were here. It was with this other group of people who are studying here for a month, to learn about ecovillages and sustainability. Kind of like we are but all ages. The dancing was really fun, a lot of music and traditional folk dances from different European countries. Mostly circle dances. Yeah. Sacred dance sounds a lot more out there than it actually is. We attuned before and after it. We always attune. Tonight we had a ceilidh, which is I guess the name for a big Scottish party with traditional Scottish dances. I laughed so hard it hurt to laugh. We had to polka, but no one had ever polka-ed before. There was a lot of spinning and circling and prancing and jumping and clapping and trying to make figure eights, which I was really bad at. It was incredibly fun.

After the ceilidh we walked to Findhorn village, which is separate from the Ecovillage, and about 15 minutes on foot, to the pub. All the non-drinkers/people who didn't want to drink got yelled at to drink something by a very angry man, but we didn't want to drink anything! So we had to leave. I guess you can't be in a pub at all unless you buy something? I had no idea. I guess maybe that is because I have never been to a pub or bar before but maybe this is just a rule in Scotland? People seemed to think it was strange. So my housemate and I came back to our bungalow and drank tea instead and now here I am, writing to you.

We've done a lot of intense sharing and bonding and getting to know each other and the community, which has been a lot of fun. Findhorn has so many secrets! I guess not secrets so much as lots of history and intricacies and processes that take a long time to understand or know about. This program is doing a really good job of giving us the opportunities to figure them out though. Today we met our teachers for our classes, which start on Monday. It's strange to think about going to school because we've all been lulled into this state where it kind of feels like we're on a vacation (a very busy vacation), and also because the idea of going to school in a place like this is just alien. I just don't associate places like this with classes and papers. The "experience week," as everyone's first week here is called, is completely necessary as coming here I think most people would probably experience some sort of culture shock and starting classes would potentially be very difficult. The teachers look really great though, as do the classes. You can read about the them on the Living Routes website (I link it on the right side of this page), to see what/who they are, because I think that would be easier, but I will be sharing a lot about them in here later.

I'll write more when I'm not exhausted from intense folk dancing and late-night walks and days full of community-agreement-making (our other big activity today) and mono. Be safe and stay healthy!

Love,
Nora

Love

I'm not quite sure where to begin because even though I've only been here five days or so, an almost unimaginable amount of things have happened. I already feel like the five people I'm living in my bungalow with are my family, and I'm no less close to many of the other people here. It's wild. The greater Findhorn community is really interesting, we all have a lot of questions every day and I think we'll continue to learn new things about it until the last day we are here.

But to start.

Our group has eighteen participants and two focalisers. We are all from the USA except for Anna, who is from Sweden, and Melissa (one of our focalisers), who is from South Africa. Everyone is wonderful. We have done a lot of bonding work and getting settled work. It's all at once very different and very similar to YRUU (Young Religious Unitarian Universalist) things I have done before, which is a challenge for me because I am used to things being a fairly specific way when I am doing intense community work. I think I can describe Findhorn as YRUU's older relative. It's like this because a lot of the people here are older; a few years ago there was even talk of it becoming a retirement village (but then a lot of families had babies and a lot of younger people moved in). So a lot of the practices aren't designed for youth or based around youth needs, and a lot of the Findhorn group agreements or practices are ways of doing things that I think I see so far as more mature than the way YRUU does a lot of things, maybe based on a deeper respect and understanding. Though I think YRUU does some things in a way that works better for me. I'm not sure yet whether it is good or bad or neither to compare YRUU and Findhorn as much as I have been. I think it's natural because YRUU is the only other community experience I really have, though it's strange because I haven't really even thought about YRUU very much in the past year, and I definitely didn't think I would be talking about it this much or at all in this journal. Either way, it's very interesting to me to see the similarities and differences.

One of the things we have done the most often is attunement. Attunement is a process that is done at the beginning of every organized group activity here. We all hold hands in a circle and the focaliser of the group leads us in a short meditation-like moment. We know it's over when the focaliser starts a hand-squeeze that travels around the circle. It is, for me, a really great way to focus my attention and energy into the activity or work that is about to happen. Attunement is also done at the end of most activities (everything so far but meals), and at the end of work shifts sometimes we all yell "HOORAY!!" and it is really great and joyful. The other time we have used attunement is to choose our work departments. It was basically a longer version of the tune in or out we use for activities, a focaliser led us in a sort of meditation on the choices of work departments, and we were invited to see if any option leapt out at us or if we felt any special connection or pull to any of the departments she named. We were also advised to not worry about making the "right choice" and just to trust in ourselves. I think attunement is really neat in general. Our house did it after a house meeting last night, and sometimes there is a suggestion to attune together after we have intense conversations when we are just hanging out. It usually ends up silly when we do it on our own, and it's silly a lot of the time when we do it with focalisers, which has also made it a lot easier to get used to.

Anyway, I chose/attuned to work in the Cluny Hill gardens, which means I work on the grounds, in the vegetable and flower gardens, and with the bees at Cluny Hill, which is a hotel and community that is part of the Findhorn Foundation but is a ten minute bus ride away in the village of Forres. It's a beautiful old place, with a totally different feel from the Park, which is where we are most of the time and where we live. It's sleepy and quiet, and while the Park isn't a bustling city or anything, Cluny certainly is more chill and relaxed. And whether or not it happened by attunement, I definitely feel like the gardens there are the right place for me. It's great to have a chance to get out of the Park and see more of the area, and I can already tell the work will be fabulous. Sverre (?), the garden focaliser, is a man who has a lot of wisdom to share. On our first day he took the four of us (me, Sarah, Seth, and Caitlin C.) around on a tour and told us lots of great and inspiring stories and things about gardening with love and his experiences in how working with plants with love makes a difference. The 'motto' of Findhorn is "Work is love in action" and it's so apparent in the landscape, in the people, in the energy and feel of the whole place.

I still need to tell you about sacred dance and angel meditations and some other things but it's pretty late here and I'm getting up at seven thirty for yoga in the morning so I'll catch up a little later. I hope the weather's gotten better at home since I've left and you're all doing well.

Love,
Nora

P.S. The food here is sort of surreal. There are beets EVERY DAY! and I ate the best potato of my entire life today. This is a really big deal because potatoes are my favorite food and I have eaten a lot of them in my life. I'm not eating any sugar (that's not from fruit or other whole foods) or wheat while I'm here to see how that affects me mentally and physically and though I'm kind of experiencing some withdrawal and cravings it's just not as hard as I thought it would be because the kitchens (staffed by people who have attuned to work there) are just so flexible and have so many options, all well-labeled for people with different dietary needs. A lot of people on the Living Routes trip are taking this as a time to experiment with their diets and try out new ways of healthier eating so we are all supporting each other and it's really exciting and fun and is making all of our bodies feel really great, or at least really interesting.

Finally

I am at Findhorn now. I made it! Here are some stories from my journey:

I started out my travels on February 15th, in the afternoon. That morning, I got a phone call from my doctor saying that I had mono. There was talk of me not being able to travel until later, or to not go at all, but I guess for me those just weren't options I could consider. I'd put a lot of myself into getting ready for this experience so I decided to just head on as planned. So I ate a cupcake and headed to the airport. Healthy.

It was pretty smooth sailing, minimal delays, and I met some extraordinarily interesting people on my flights. On the first one, from Indianapolis to Chicago, I sat next to a girl around my age who was an "urban pop" singer. She was going to Russia to perform (she was Russian and Romanian), and spent the entire flight glueing little crystals onto her cell phone. She showed me a picture of her pet chihuahua, Lil' Romeo. I tried googling her, but I don't think she's famous enough yet. Her name is Vika though, if you want to try. On my second flight, from Chicago to London, I sat next to a woman who was going to visit her father for his 89th birthday. She told me about growing up on her family's farm in India, and also talked a lot about dolphin therapy. It was really fun. We exchanged addresses and she promised to write me in 4 months.

Anyway, I made it through customs in London easily, and landed in Inverness, Scotland at 1:30 in the afternoon, on the 16th. After some confusion (the place we were all supposed to meet up was not actually called what we were told it was) I took a bus into town, and luckily met right up with Marga and Ashley, two girls on the program. We walked around a bit and got some food, but mostly we waited on this town square-like monument next to a shopping mall (I could distinctly see the Claire's store inside, it was very strange to see such an American store there) with our big bags as the rest of our friends slowly trickled in. I think about eight of us showed up by five (it was surprising to me that the weather was nice enough to sit comfortably outside for 3 hours), and then we left for Findhorn with our focalisers, Erin and Melissa.

Focalisers are what in most other communities would be called leaders or facilitators. I think the word focaliser is used because ecovillages usually have a spiritual aspect. Findhorn definitely does. I thought I would be much more uncomfortable with this, but I think I was imagining it to be a lot more New Agey than it actually is; so far I've been very comfortable with everything we've done. Though I must say that because I'm very skeptical about these sorts of things I have been preparing myself for a long time to be able to do activities like sacred dancing, angel meditations, and attunements (all things we have done so far) with an open mind. I'm fairly certain that if I had come here without that preparation I would be in a very different space right now. And don't worry, I will explain all these activities. It's okay if you think any of the things I'm doing are creepy or weird. I'm sure I'll be doing things that push my comfort levels, and I'll probably do things I think are creepy or weird too. But I'm hoping to keep as much of this openness as possible.

It's late here now, so I'm going to head to bed, but I'll get you all updated soon, I promise. There's a lot going on and I really want to try and convey as much of this as I can to you, at least at first, so you can understand the basis for what I am doing as and the place I am in as well as possible. This experience is a lot different from most study abroad programs, and I think it will be hard for me to get anything across without saying a lot. So I'm sorry if it's hard for you to get through a lot of words, I know I use a lot of them. I'll hopefully have pictures soon too, if you're more into that.

See you later!

Love,
Nora

I Blog

I leave for Scotland in two days, if the snow will ever stop falling, my bags will arrive from FedEx, the Dell man will make it up my driveway to repair my computer, and the doctors will call me to tell me I don't have mono. The snow is really the only thing that might stop me, but golly, a lot is riding on my Wednesday.

Now I have a blog. I have actually made two other blogs before now. One was a livejournal, which I've had since I was fourteen years old, and it's hidden, because it's embarrassing. I think there might be poems in there. The other is one I share with my friend Becky, and if you want to read it just let me know. It's really silly. I don't know yet if I'll be embarrassed about it in five years. This blog, however, is just about me going to Scotland to live in the Findhorn Ecovillage (see links at side for more information about the program I'm traveling with). It's about me going back to school (modified school, as all travel abroad programs seem to be, but school) after a year and a half, living with 17 other students (and many more ecovillage inhabitants) in this weird and incredibly cool place where, 30 some years ago, some people made 40-lb cabbages grow by praying. As the legend goes.

Also, after my semester at Findhorn is over, I'm traveling with my partner, Nate, for 3 weeks around Europe (thank you Mr. and Mrs. Redman), so I will try to write about that too. And since we aren't going to Finland, those 3 weeks will probably mostly be about me trying to convince him to go with me to see this in Italy. We've never been to Europe so if you have any suggestions of what to do there, please let us know. My plans so far include pretending I'm Lilliputian and taking a nap in the ear of the giant knitted rabbit, but I just don't think that can keep us occupied for 3 weeks.

Anyway, I'm happy to be going, happy to be doing something that feels really right. It's big and a little scary to be venturing out into a whole other continent all on my own but it's the kind of stretching I need to be doing right now and I'm glad I didn't wait one more second to do it.

So thank you for reading, friends! I love you all in a big way.