July/August 2008 Spirituality
Findhorn:
Spirituality and the Practice of Gardening

by Christopher Raymont

I have just come in after a couple of hours hoeing a field of recently planted cabbage and broccoli seedlings at EarthShare, which is our local community supported agriculture (CSA) project, feeding nearly 200 families in northeast Scotland.

I find some questions coming into my mind about this morning's work: "How was this experience a spiritual one," I ask myself and, "In what way does my spiritual life support the work?"

The most important thing for me is the recognition that every experience is not just potentially - but actually is - a spiritual one. The only question is whether I am open to the spiritual aspect of the experience. I guess the answer is sometimes more, sometimes less.

The task is then clear: how to become more open. In this case, how to connect into the eternal and unitary nature of being while performing the immediate task of identifying and eliminating the weeds from the crop.

I suggest that there are two essentials in becoming more open. The first is concentration. Only when I am fully focused on the work will it carry me to the place beyond the work where I may begin to experience the sense of the divine.

The second is to develop a part of myself that stands a little aside. To observe what I am doing, to enjoy the feel of myself doing it, and to practice gratitude for all aspects of the experience - the soil, the plants, the weeds, the tool that I am using, my companions human or otherwise, and the whole environment.

I notice that the description above about my second task took a lot of words, but the first, the task of concentration, only a few. All the same, concentration is the crucial one. If I do not find the concentration first and the sense of flow that follows from it, any attention I give to wider observation will only distract me from the task, and then God help the little seedlings!

How an Ecovillage Grows

The Findhorn Community was founded in 1962 by Peter and Eileen Caddy, and Dorothy Maclean. Out of work with little money, the Caddys moved with their three young sons and Maclean to a mobile home park in the Scottish seaside village of Findhorn.

Feeding six people on unemployment benefits was difficult, so Peter Caddy decided to grow vegetables. The land in the park was sandy and dry, but he persevered. Maclean discovered she could intuitively contact the spirits of plants, which she called devas, who gave her instructions on how to make the most of the fledgling garden. From the barren sandy soil grew huge plants, herbs and flowers, including the now legendary 40-pound cabbages.

Soon the original group of six grew into a small community, committed to their spiritual path and to expanding the garden in harmony with nature.

In the late 1980s, the Ecovillage Project at Findorn began with an energy producing wind generator and the first of the community's eco-friendly buildings. An ecovillage is defined as a community that is sustainable ecologically, economically, culturally and spiritually. In the mid-1990s, the community opened a biological sewage treatment plant called the Living Machine. Findhorn is a part of the rapidly growing Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), which links ecovillage projects worldwide.

In 2007, a study by GEN-Europe found that the Findhorn Community has the lowest ecological footprint recorded among permanent communities in the industrialized world. Compared to the average citizen in the United Kingdom, the average Findhorn resident consumes less than half of the resources and generates only half of the waste.

Source: Findhorn Foundation, www.findhorn.org.

On the other hand, when I first give full attention to the task until it is established fully in my body and mind, after a while I can practice holding that concentration a little more loosely and be open to a larger consciousness. The parallel with meditation is clear where the task takes the part of the mantra or focus on the breath.

Now let's look at how our spiritual connection can enrich and inform our practice of gardening. To garden is to act on the natural world, to change it through our human agency. We are changing the world to meet more effectively our human needs whether for food, beauty, meaning or hopefully all three at once.

We want to be effective in meeting those needs, and we want to meet them in such a way that the natural systems we are working with are enhanced, not damaged. This is already a great step forward from the extractive habits of humanity over the centuries and even more so in the present.

For a start, it requires a well developed understanding of applied ecology. We can go further however, when we bring our spirituality into the process. We can recognize that we have a true partner in this dance, the land and all the elements with which we work. The work becomes a collaboration of the human and non-human aspects of the divine, not merely a well informed manipulation.

When I work in the Findhorn Community garden in Scotland or listen to its cofounder, Dorothy Maclean, I am struck by this insistence on partnership. The expression partnership seems to go beyond cooperation in its recognition of equality between different aspects of the divine.

If the fundamental human task is that of consciousness, of the earth learning to know itself in a new way through us, then gardening becomes a journey into a deeper knowledge. Much knowledge can be gained by studying a phenomenon but when we engage with it as partners for a specific purpose, a whole new depth of knowing can arise. It's a bit like the deepening of a relationship between a man and a woman, which can occur when they decide to have a child together. If there is not a truly shared intention, at this point it can also be the moment when everything goes wrong and the relationship shatters.

Many people have begun to trace back the destruction of nature by the human species to the invention of agriculture, but I believe it would be a mistake to see our destructive ways as an inevitable consequence of purposeful interventions in the landscape designed to meet our reasonable needs for food.

In fact, if we allow a spirituality that celebrates partnership with non-human nature to inform our gardening, I have no doubt that its practice can only deepen our sense of unity, protect the Earth, and fill us with gratitude and a common sense of togetherness.

Former dairy farmerChristopher Raymont has cared for the main vegetable and flower garden of the Scottish Findhorn Foundation Community for 15 years. In 1994, he was involved in setting up EarthShare, the local community supported agriculture project (CSA), and is a teacher/trainer in the local Food Apprenticeship Scheme in Moray, Scotland. Visit www.findhorn.org.