Summer Celebration 2016
It was one of those perfect summer days, with a high blue sky and that rare British experience of the air being warm even in the shade. So somehow the day seemed to fully complement the love and warmth being celebrated in our little wild wisdom community as we gathered, some of us after one year and some after two, of learning together. We often speak in our meetings of holding a warm welcome for both ‘dark and bright knowledge’ – for what seems difficult as much as what seems delightful – and here it was manifested in a summer celebration.
We were also blessed with a perfect place to meet, in the summer gardens and beautiful old barns of Jan and Henry’s lovely home. There were many highlights for me across the day, each like snap shots of the sweetness of people sharing… good food, good conversation and more… and all of them set within a lovingly restored and cared for home and garden, from its ancient red earth cob walls to the the most recently opened rose.
Here are a few of the pictures that still shine within my mind and heart:
Seeing several generations of people, who didn’t know each other even a year ago, tucking into the crisps and Jan’s home blended Pimms on arrival…
Listening to Henry’s elderly mother laughing gleefully with Abigail, while we danced and chanted around them and the fire…
Tucking into a delicious home cooked feast surrounded by the buzz of lively conversation at the long lunch tables…
Feeling the cool touch of the water which flows through the gardens, meeting the sleeping bats, admiring the veggie garden, smelling the sweet scented lavender and roses…
Glimpsing little knots of folks finding magical places to talk, or rest, or wander…
Squeezing altogether into the shade of a very small tree to drink tea, read poetry and watch an impromptu play offered by our youngest members…
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- small ford at the farm
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- deluxe chicken house!
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- just enough shade…
and more than I can describe!
I’m not sure when I was last so happy for so many hours and I got the impression that others were feeling similarly, for as the sun started to sink, we all found it noticeable difficult to leave, lingering beside the cars for one last conversation and yet another hug.
It strikes me now, as I write, how very challenging life can be. How easy it is to feel lonely, to feel despair, to feel disturbed by all the genuinely distressing things that unfold in our own lives and in the wider world. It’s easy to focus on all the ways in which us humans are destructive towards each other and the natural world… and yet, we also have this incredible capacity to create, to build community, to love and to learn and this summer celebration, co created by an incredibly diverse group of people who were once strangers to one another, is a small token of what may be possible when we truly do extend a warm welcome to the dark and bright knowledge in us all.
