Saturday there was a food festival at Cawdor Castle, the castle that Macbeth was set in. The Dowager Countess Cawdor is a big supporter of local and organic food and hosted a Slow Food event called Living Foods on the grounds. Local vendors and producers all gathered to show off their wares and give a sense of what is in the area. I ate a ton of free samples(it was £4 to get in) and also got to view the gardens and the castle itself. I did take pictures of the gardens and the outside of the castle(they wouldn't let us take pictures inside) and will post them soon, I'll get them on my computer before the weekend at least. There was a tent at the festival with music and I got to listen to some jigs and reels, although they did play some American Civil War songs as well. All in all it was worth the £4 and more.
The rest of the weekend was spent trying to read The Consciousness Revolution for my Worldviews and Consciousness class. This book is a conversation between three men, Ervin Lazlo, Stan Grof and Peter Russell. Over two days they discuss how the world is shifting and were our consciousnesses are and need to go to support this shift. It is an interesting read, although frustrating at times. It's just an edited transcript of a conversation, so when you want one of them to back something up, they don't because the other two know what he's talking about. An interesting read however. I hope to read it in more depth at some point, instead of cramming it in before a deadline.
Monday we did a session of Nonviolent Communication, which released a lot of tension about the subject for me. I've had some frustrating experiences with NVC in the past, where people I've been talking to in this process seem more interested in the process itself than communicating with me. Leo made the process come alive by including us in what we wanted to learn in terms of of NVC and expressed the spirit without enforcing the form. I found it very helpful and fun.
We have a paper due on NVC this Friday and I wrote it directly after lunch on Monday. Feeling super productive, I made my way to Cullerne for LES. We weeded chard and rocket(arugula) and some other greens all over the garden.
Tuesday we had our colloquium on The Consciousness Revolution. It was a difficult format for me as we each only have 12 minutes to speak and discuss the issues that we wanted to bring to the group. Some of the discussions fizzled quickly and others were just getting started as time ran out. Very frustrating, however it reminded me of the symposia we held a couple of times at Bennington. I liked those better, but I was also not being graded on those...
Tuesday afternoon was very exciting. We got to Cullerne and the bus was there. We took a field trip to Cluny to pick up boxes and then to Earth Share to help harvest chicory root. It was an amazing afternoon. It was cold and definitely the most Scottish weather I think I've experienced here. Pouring for ten minutes, then bright, sunny skies, then rain again....they were right. This does make New England look fairly consistent in terms of weather patterns.
Tuesday was quite a long day. After the morning colloquium, working at Earth Share(we got cookies at tea break for going....awesome), we met at David's house to discuss Ken Wilber's book A Brief History of Everything. The discussion was very frustrating for a some of us as those dominating the conversation were more interested in talking about Wilber and his writing style for this book than the issues themselves. We have a paper due Friday on his book and the discussion could have been so much more helpful (I have pretty much finished the paper now despite the convo). Our frustration came out in a decision to discuss the issues the following day at dinner. It also came out the following morning in attunement.
Our attunement was a process of opening the space to conflicts that may have arisen but not been spoken since we arrived. It took the form of a fishbowl, starting with david, stacie and emma discussing the fact that there seems to be a feeling of tension and discontent bubbling beneath our surface although we put on the face of true happiness. For me, part of it is that we keep saying that we're compassionate people, and we are, but I think that we're a bit stuck in the idea of everything being wonderful. We need to allow anger and frustration into the circle. However, a lot of people were very upset by the format and felt that we were being forced into conflict that might not be there. But by saying that, I think that those people were shutting out the possibility that some of us might have had something to bring to the group or wanted the group's support in resolving. Although many people came out of the session very upset, I actually felt a huge sense of relief that the issue of conflict had come up, even if it seemed forced to some people. It opened a space for me to feel comfortable bringing up conflicts that I may have.
We ended up with Wednesday afternoon off. It was supposed to be a student led learning session, but instead we spent the time processing the morning. I knit with E.Vail, went to the Blue Angel and drank cappuccino(rare for me, but very tasty) and talked with Emily and Callie about home and here and basically it was a fun afternoon. We did have an evening session with Elliot, who works in the garden. He talked to us about NextGEN, the next generation in the Global Ecovillage Network. Check out the website, it's a really cool network.
Thursday was a full day of creativity. We started in the morning with creative writing. We worked with poetry. I wrote a bunch of poems including a list poem of gratitude and a few poems on grief. I might post some of them, but we'll see.
We spent the afternoon collecting willow to make baskets. We also started the bases. I'm pretty excited about this. I find basket making really interesting and I'm glad to add that skill to my repertoire.
Today was also the Cullerne Harvest festival/30th birthday party. I missed the afternoon festivities, but they had a harvest dinner in the CC with lots of veg from the garden. There was also a sharing(open mic) in the Universal Hall with songs, stories, history, poems and dancing. It was a lot of fun to hear everyone's connections to Cullerne and the music and writing that people shared.
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