Mayflower
Camps UK

Communion and Community

 
    On the Field we tend to use the word community as a pointer to a state of being as well as a collectivity. I now think this is served well by using the word communion to indicate a oneness of self such that the love of itself extends and sees itself in the world and others. My words may not be yours but this experience is universal.

    There are practical aspects to camp and circle life that in themselves enable and encourage community. Living and cooking around a fire is a way of sharing hearth and creating a sense of shared home. Fetching water and keeping the fire, cooking and tea making, keeping things tidy and trips to town; all are ways of meeting, helping and being a part of.

    We each experience the Camp very much on the basis of our ongoing relationship with ourselves. It would seem that as we relax and become more at home in our whole self, so does the living community flower.

 
    Camps are an invitation to Be and the degree in which we explore or take initiatives is a matter of personal freedom and responsibility for each and all. We are founded in a sense of trust in life and therefore ourselves.

    No matter how many camps anyone has done or shared together, each camp is unique, and everyone starts at the beginning in a process of community building that often if not always involves some willingness to hang in with, or find a way through, difficulty.

    Far from making Camps problematic, this is part of what brings us, as a community, into a beauty and simplicity that might be hard to believe if not already experienced!

    The beauty of the ordinary moment is a touchstone of our camps. Random moments of simple joy arise from a willingness to relax into the moment as it is.

Copyright Brian Steere 2004

HOME / CONTACT

INFO

MORE

OTHER