Coming home was the feeling that emerged for me in pondering last month’s event marking Claymont’s 50-year existence.
Not a coming home only for those who have been away. But also, for those of us who never left or who returned years ago. Some who came may have aged beyond recognition, but people still recognized a shared experience of the Work and of Claymont.
Laying the Foundation
J.G. Bennett had a premonition about the future of mankind. Finding and setting up the purchase of Claymont, an historic Washington-Family estate, was his final material act. In his book, Needs of a New Age Community, Bennett sounds the call that brought many of us to Claymont. However, Bennett’s “vision” that this four-hundred-acre property in the sheltered Shenandoah Valley would become the Noah’s Ark of a new age, has been both a promise and an albatross.
I say albatross, because Claymont has not become the self-sufficient agrarian community of families it was “expected” to become. Like a stone around its neck, this has translated as a failure of mission, a need for a new “vision.”
Building the Ark
On the other hand, what is promising, is that Claymont has become a home for spiritual work. Be it Fourth Way or any number of meditation, body, or other compatible groups. At the same time, the “community” of Claymont has spread throughout the area. These people, too, have been “coming home” by finding ways to be connected via food production, helping on the land, or supporting the seminars. This behind-the-scenes involvement was felt, if not seen, during the 50th Gathering which was outlined in last week’s blogpost.
At one point during the 50th we broke into small groups and spoke about how we saw the future. Helene’s devastation of Asheville informed my sense of the coming disaster to humanity that was at the core of JGB’s vision of an Ark.
I found myself suddenly speaking to the relevance of getting solar panels on the roof of the Great Barn. Instead of beating ourselves up for what had not been achieved, I wanted to focus on what we could do now.
Coming Home
Bennett’s vision, that the earth and humanity are entering a new era, with catastrophic consequences, AND that there is a great opportunity for humanity, is still relevant. How I respond to the call is my work. I am the one with the hands that manifest and the inner training that opens me “to what is being asked.”
I believe it is not a new vision but a new “listening” that is needed to fulfill the Call. When I came home to Claymont, that is what I found.