CHE Graduate Gerri Smyth was one of the lucky attendees at Findhorn's recent Positive Energy conference...

Gerri writes: Recently I was one of over 150 folk gathered together at the Findhorn community in Moray, to spend a week seeking “community responses to the challenges of climate change and peak oil.” My personal highlights follow but for those who would like a fuller day by day account of the conference it can be found on the Findhorn Foundation website.

After the usual coming together and introductions, Joanna Macy, now 78 but with no visible loss of vigour, spent the best part of two days cycling through the 'work that reconnects.' A particularly poignant moment was a ritual called 'the bowl of tears.' We  named and grieved our losses, then washed our tears in symbolic water. We passed the bowls through a human chain to rejoin the water of the pond at Findhorn, accompanied by a wild snow storm. 

Richard Olivier then introduced us to Mythodrama. We became players in Shakespeare's <em>As You Like It</em>, identifying ourselves with characters or scenes in the  play. He worked with the metaphor of the forest as an alternative culture, a place to educate the heart and experiment with new ways of thinking and doing, before choosing whether to return to the 'court', a metaphor for mainstream culture. 

This seemed a complex and richly co-creative group process, but I had by then caught a chill. I chose to sit quietly at the play's start, before the hero embarks on his journey, characterised by Richard as the 'Unendurable Present.' Shivering away, bundled up in coat and scarf, I concluded that we cannot all 'escape to the future,' the present is all some us have, and it must be endured. This was a gift, as it enabled me to connect with  those most impacted by rising fuel and food prices. I realised I was missing the voices of those whose silence often resounds around the green movement in this country. I brought my cold home, as a visceral reminder, and also an intention to reconnect with those who will 'sit the cold hearth.'

We moved into a space of sharing our learning; about community owned energy and community supported agriculture, eco-village and co-housing initiatives. There was a real sense of the growing momentum of the Transition Network; how its founder Rob Hopkins is catalysing a powerful re-localisation movement. We especially celebrated the announcement of 'Transition Ambridge' as 4 million Radio 4 listeners were introduced to the Transition Town concept via the longest running radio soap <em>The Archers</em>,  broadcast as we gathered.

Just in case we all got too carried away on our wave of positive energy, on the last day we listened to Richard Heinberg, the Peak Oil author. A modern day Cassandra, he was described to me as 'the sobering voice.' His message: The road ahead is going to be bumpy. The 'Powers that Be' are unlikely to change course until hit by a major crisis, which could be environmental or economic. We need some 'disaster planning' for the time of crisis.  He urged those developing alternative approaches at community levels to be ready to answer the call, to see crisis as opportunity, to step in and step up. To build and ensure resilience we need to think now about how we could scale up and mainstream what will remain 'alternatives' for some time to come. He made it clear that we need strategic and critical thinking as well as sock darning skills. I came away thinking that MSc in Human Ecology might come in handy!