is there a way to describe this !
The major memories of this day will be the games ....2 blankets spread on the floor to make a big square. 16 people are asked to think of this as an island they share, poisonous water all around them.
We get onto the blanket huddle together, every one is still comfortable claiming a small space. Next the blanket gets folded, a quarter taken away. Again we come a little closer. I am expecting less space than I have, yet staying on the outside, while the smallest people take up the space in the middle, ...why? ...others are towering over them...they are getting squeezed the most, why would they choose that, unless they are already used to being overlooked ? The blanket gets folded again and again. We come up with spontaneous strategies, lifting our arms, leaning in, grabbing the hands and arms of the strongest while standing on one foot...it works, we work, because we are working together.
Next game: we are outside in a small grassy area. Pieces of cardboard, big aenough for one person to stand on, are placed on the ground one step away from each other, only one cardboard square stays empty. We are bees protecting our hive and honey. A wasp predator ‘flys’ in, she tries to land on the empty card board to eat our honey. We hop on it so she can’t land. In 4 second she has confused us, we can’t protect the honey she gets in ! Then 10 seconds, back to 6, yeah 16 seconds before she lands, one time 22, but after a number of tries we can’t get higher, in fact we score lower and lower ! Why ? I think we have become too goal oriented, we try too hard, we laugh too hard, while Ms wasp just ladi dadi da calmly looks and finds her honey patch ☹️
Many ways to build community, cohesiveness, listening and observing skills, and I LOVE this kind of experiential learning ! Tomorrow I am sure we’ll be back to academia, and I will publish here some of the overwhelming lists that are given to us today, color coded, efficient, and well thought through into the smallest details....
At lunch I meet an Oldtimer, she has been here 20 years, now 86 she was a Waldorf School teacher here at Findhorn, now shares a lovely house with a housemate. I drink of her wisdom !
The afternoon is spent with a walk through the village, while I take a nap exhausted from coughing all day and catching up with jet lag. We meet in the Sanctuary Hall for meditation, then dinner and a slide show of the developing Findhorn over the last 50 years !
Stay tuned...
