On Monday 12th November the NFA and FF are together launching a series of community building activities to strengthen the relationships between all members and organisations within the community, as we transition into a Village of Light. Please read the document below. Click here to see the poster advertising the launch event Attach:LaunchPoster.pdf
Gordon McAlpine, 3rd November 2007.
Village of Light
Dear Community,
In August, the NFA Council and FF Management met together for a morning to discuss how we can work together to strengthen the community as a whole. We set up a joint subgroup (Fabien, Brita, Ana Rhodes, Gordon McAlpine & Lisa Mead) to reflect on how we can co-operate together on more consciously manifesting the overall purpose of this community. Out of this came the insight that greater unity will only be achieved if we strengthen the relationships between all the organisations and all the members within the community. This then led us to propose a series of steps in which the whole community can all work together on the visions and challenges that are up for the Findhorn Foundation and Community at this time.
Our community began as a handful of people who followed the call of Spirit. We have grown into a world-renowned spiritual education centre anchored in a vibrant community that shows a way forward for the world - a holistic, spiritually-based way of life. And now it feels as if the Community is poised on the edge of a major transition - a transition into a “village of light”.
In our reflections, we didn’t see the city or village of light as an end result - but as a process - a journey of awareness. Building a village on the physical level is a big challenge in itself, but we believe our primary challenge is in the awareness of saying: we are a village of light. For it feels as if this sentence has a different vibration to it. It requires a deeper level of awareness. It requires Spirit to flow through us and between us. We believe one of the places where the village of light will show itself is in the way in which we interact with each other, how we live together, how I, you, we welcome our diversity, as well as our similarities.
We have observed that issues such as land usage, land ownership, rent, parking, inclusion/exclusion, difficulties in cooperating and power struggles are present at the moment, along with the issue of purpose - why we are here? Is it still for spiritual service & co-creation with nature? Or is this no longer the case for all of us? We have been dealing with all these issues within the structures of our various organisations. We want to acknowledge and appreciate that many individuals and groups are already very consciously working on these challenges and also how interwoven and interconnected we all are. And so we would also like to create spaces where we can address these issues collectively, in wider forums and particularly in the context of our individual and collective spiritual growth, in a field where we are more conscious of our oneness.
Invitation to Community Building
Over the years, as we have grown and developed into a larger and more diverse community, various organisations - such us FF, NFA, Duneland, Ekopia, THA, CDC - have been created. But who has created them and who belongs to those groups? Well it is Us - not them. It is us who are together on a journey - in the same boat. We want to invite you all to a series of gatherings over the next year - meetings, adventures, celebrations where we explore our similarities and differences, our common vision as well as our challenges and conflicts between organisations and between individuals.
Our intention is to start off by gathering everyone together to launch this process. And to celebrate our past and present, our growth and growing pains, our unity and diversity. To meet each other in dance, song and play. To inspire each other through words, music and images. To strengthen our relationships and to reflect on the questions we have outlined above. We'd like to encourage all community members to participate in this process in your own unique way, so that the full diversity and richness of our community is represented.
Then, we will hold a series of events, using skilled facilitators, where we explore where we are right now, with all its challenges and opportunities for growth and moving forward. Where we welcome in our conflicts, differences, and disappointments and bring them out in the open and learn from them so we grow as individuals and as a collective. How can we aim for a sense of oneness as we hold and respect the different parts? From there we will plan a further set of steps to ground whatever specific visions and aims arise from this collective process.
So please come and join us at the launch of this community building initiative:
Monday 12th November at 19.30
in the Universal Hall
To download the above click here: Attach:BuildComm.doc