Well! What a wonderful day! There were about 18 of us and we were truly blessed in lots of ways for our day together, a brilliant sunny autumn day, the beauty of the world around us, lovely food provided by the community, really creative planning, a true sense of community among ourselves, and lots of laughter.

Our theme for the day was sustainability in the widest sense, not only the practical problems of living sustainably but in living sustainably in our relationships with others and through finding joy in our lives. We were asked to write postcards during the day, to hang on a branch from the garden, of how we found ways of sustaining ourselves.

We started with a short meeting for worship, and introductions to one another. Doug gave us a great start with a document ‘All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten’ by Robert Fulghum, which made us think about our core values, as well as making us laugh a lot!

We had two relaxation/meditation sessions through the day, led by Janey and Fiona. These balanced really well with the more active bits of the day,allowing space for reflection, rest and recharging. One of the more active parts of the day was an intriguing and very funny song with hand movements which Doug had learned at his community choir, and had us all in fits of laughter.

In the middle of all this, we had a wonderful meal, beautifully prepared with love by the community members, a lot of it grown in the gardens. I think the sharing of this meal was a joy to everyone and we were all truly appreciative of the effort put in to make this meal for us. It was great to meet the members and to hear them describe their hopes and aims for the future. We hope our visit was sustenance and support to them in their endeavours to build a new sustainable spiritual community. It is a big task and their courage and commitment shone through.

Olivia brought us to a conclusion with an exercise involving choosing blind an object from a bag to describe and relate to the theme of our day and our experiences. This was often moving and often very funny too. I think we had a lovely mixture of serious and thought provoking things with lots of fun and lots of getting to know each other in different ways. Altogether a very successful and interesting day.
Deirdre