Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Earth Awareness Day at Kalikalos

Here is a photo of our third week in this summer session of the Kalikalos Family Experience, each one so totally different from the last, as new people come and those who have completed their time depart. The community here at Kalikalos is a kaleidescope of constantly changing colours and patterns, yet always maintaining its circular shape as we meet in a circle each morning to attune together and create our daily rhythms. Workshop, lunch, beach & swimming, evening jobs such as tending the garden, feeding the baby ducklings, preparing dinner, then all meeting up for a wonderful meal every night under the stars in a perfect climate, 1500 feet up the verdant mountains overlooking the azure blue Aegean sea. Could it be more perfect?


The picture shows Ida from Cameroon with her French husband Gilles and children, Joahhan and Ilse, who all live in Paris; Serena Gaia, an Italian professor of Humanities from the |University of Puerto Rico; and my own kids, Anya, Rose and Michael from Forres. This week we also have the serene and sensitive Giacomo from Italy, Kathy from Omega Institute in NY, Lilian from Norway, Tinna from Iceland, partner Callum from Scotland, Hernan from Argentina, Patch from Glasgow, and of course founder Jock who calls himself a new-age Gypsy. You get the picture! An international holistic summer school inspired by Findhorn principles, in the land of the Heroes & Gods of Greek mythology. We have created our own myths from our life stories and inhabited them with Argonauts, dragons fairies and angels, constructed puppets of super powered creatures and turned them into improvised plays. We sang, danced, laughed and performed a hilarious show at the end of our first fortnight and look forward to the magnificent life size marionette show this final week.

Suffering a slipped disc and sciatica, I came here three weeks ago in a wheelchair with packs of morphine and am leaving at the end of this week, walking, dancing even, and drug free—a testament to the healing power of Pelion, the mountain where the healer Chiron the Centaur brought up Achilles in safety.  As I have healed myself in the sunshine, healthy food and hearty company, we send our invocation for the world to be healed itself. May the healing power of the community we have formed here radiate outwards as in the paintings we made of the planet on Earth Awareness day—pictures of the globe surrounded by love, flowers and healing prayers.


It has been a beautiful time for my own family to bond together in an idyllic setting with the friends they made last year, our own Achilles and others who Facebook each other all year and then arrange meetings in different countries until we meet again and swim, sing and dance together in our family experience, a family ever greater and wider than the smaller ones we were born into. As Rose said, “I don’t feel I come from any country, I just come from Planet Earth.”

Family experience weeks in Kalikalos and its sister community Anilio, will run though the school holidays next summer. Travel here is getting easier ever year as Ryanair and Monarch Air are now serving Volos, and the journey itself is an adventure.  You are welcome to join us!  


Dorota Owen, Forres  

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