Remembrance of Times Past: How The Living Earth and The White Lodge Saved Me

Thirty years and a couple of months ago I was in a mess.  I had been talking about committing suicide and my parents didn't know what to do so they sought medical advice.

I was taken to see a child psychiatrist who said I needed immediate long term hospitalisation, a range of drugs and ECT. Urgent.  She wanted me placed into the child psychiatric hospital in the county.

Somehow that didn't happen. I didn't want it to even though the psychiatrist had pretty much built up the hospital as a fun place to be.  Hey, fun.  A child receiving ECT in 1985.  Fun, fun, fun.  I realised that the good things she had said were not that good and that the experience would be hell not help for me.  I was totally distraught the next day.  I've cried a lot since that day but probably never as bitterly and uncontrollably.

In a state of complete worry my mother asked some people we had met that year for advice. They recommended that I be taken somewhere that might help me. It was called White Lodge.

The woman I met there was named Judy Fraser and she counseled me and led me to a place where I could lead myself out of the darkness and survive and find a way. There has been a lot of darkness since then but I firmly believe that without White Lodge and without Judy, I would have died.

Plain and simple.  If we hadn't found White Lodge I would not have reached adulthood.  I would have committed suicide.  There is no questioning that.

The cover of this little book shows one small part of the place that used to be White Lodge.

The first time we met I somehow knew I was in a safe place. At the end of that session Judy gave me a few things. I have none of them now. Among those things was a cassette of "new age" music. I played it a great deal. I lost the cassette a lot of years ago but I've thought of it often because the simple, peaceful music helped me in bad times.

This post has arisen from thinking about that cassette.  I saw some CDs by Medwyn Goodall in a charity shop today.  I have some others by him that I haven't played in while and rather than buying more CDs I wondered if his music could be found on YouTube.  It can.  Lots of it.

And then my brain asked.  "What about that cassette that Judy gave me?  That cassette which stayed with me through that deathly dark period.  It was never released on CD.  But is it on YouTube?"

And yes.  It's there. Yay!  I looked a couple of years ago and it wasn't there but someone uploaded it last summer.  Since then it has received 115 views.  Popular music.  But more so than something else I looked up once.  That had received a total of zero views before I looked at it.

It's simple. It's probably nothing special. But listening to it now takes me back to listening to it then.  It's not the best instrumental music ever created.  And there is background hiss from the transfer from a maybe thirty year old cassette.  But these simple notes and melodies take me right back to a place of comfort in my pain and a place where bright light shone into my blackness.

I am grateful for the cassette. Grateful for Judy. Grateful for White Lodge. Grateful that I didn't die at the age of fifteen. Grateful to be alive.  I am so grateful.

And proud too that I have got this far.  Proud that I have got through all the dark years of self hatred, all the years in which I didn't know whether I would make it.  Proud that in the last few years I have been learning to accept myself.

Annie Locke has a website.  http://www.innerharmoniesmusic.co.uk/  The tracks are available to buy.  It's tempting.  Because they are an important part of my own history.

I bought a book of daily readings today too - for fifty pence - by a woman I had not heard of before coming to White Lodge.  I hastily disposed of her books when I became a Christian.  Unchristian!  Unclean!  Satanic!  [yes, I did used to think that way.]  That woman is Eileen Caddy, one of the founders of the Findhorn Community.  The circle turns, the paths lead to the beginning.  I now have many of the books from my White Lodge days again and approach them from a very different place and perspective than I ever could have done thirty years ago.

Eileen Caddy writes, as part of today's reading:

Do what you know you must do because it is something which has been revealed to you from within, not from without.  Always know from within that what you are doing is right; then you can go right ahead and sweep all obstacles aside with real strength and conviction. Know that I AM your compass, I AM your guide, and I will lead you to your goal, no matter how difficult the path may appear to be.

Now that's a challenge.  But it's one that I am increasingly determined to commit to.

A Psychotherapist, a Poem, Pythagoras, and a Publication

White Lodge went by several names.


It was known as The College of Psychotherapeutics.  White Lodge had several aims.  One was to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  Another was to train others to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  The ultimate purpose behind those aims at White Lodge was that they would work themselves out of their jobs, that those jobs would no longer be needed.

As part of the work of White Lodge, a little magazine journal was regularly published, The Psychotherapist.  I received that journal for several years but, as with everything else from that time, I destroyed them, threw them away or sold them in my Christian evangelical zeal.  The journal contained articles from the staff and students at White Lodge, poetry, stories.  Always an interesting read, if issues were still available as a bumper compilation volume or a digital file then I'd get hold of them.

I wrote poems.  I submitted a couple informally to The Pyschotherapist.  Very informally, as I probably had never been intending to submit them for anything.  And I think they both appeared in print.  The short one certainly did - a triolet.

I'd been taking an adult education writing class in the evenings - I'd had to get permission from the school headmaster to take the class because I wasn't an adult.  An entertaining class, we were set homework each week to write very different things in very different formats.  One week had had to write short poems - haiku, clerihews, triolets, and a longer poem, a sestina.

Until this moment I had forgotten the word sestina.  But I wrote one.  I have no idea what the 39 lines were about but seem to recall it had minor merit.  Perhaps this week I should write another.  It's a disciplined form.  Six stanzas of six lines followed by a three line envoi.  The words that end the lines of the first stanza also end the lines of the other five stanzas, but they are rotated to appear in different lines.  Lots of people have written sestinas.  Here's a link to one, The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People by David Ferry.  I'm a poetry ignoramus so hadn't heard of Ferry but am impressed by this poem.

The sestina is lost.  If it did turn up I'd probably be very embarrassed by it.  But I still remember one of the clerihews.

Pythagoras, Pythagoras,

You'll never quite catch up with us.

Most of your rules are out of date,

But your rule of the triangle still works great.

Very silly - but that's normal for clerihews.  Some are much more clever than mine - but I was only sixteen.  That's my excuse anyway!

And I still remember one of the triolets.  It's not exactly to the level of Thomas Hardy's triolet but, as I plead, I was sixteen.  And I'm not a poetic genius.  So this is the triolet that turned up in the pages of The Psychotherapist.  Since that time I have rarely written poems.  The only poetry I've tried this decade has been written in the last six months and is already on this blog.  And since that time I've certainly not been a published poet!

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

If I did, people would cheer.

Why am I here?

Why won't people hear

When I talk and I cry?

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

I knew depression.  I knew about feeling bad.  And a memory came out as I wrote.  By the time I wrote it for the class and then took it to White Lodge I was happier and did not want to die.  Later the school English teacher set us homework to write a suicide note.  We had such joyful school lessons!  Fortunately the teacher didn't turn out to be an evil cult leader, "Bring in your suicide letters children, and then we can enter into the spirit of things."  I began my note with that poem - and my note received an A+ grade.

My experiences of depression were awful.  Later experiences were worse.  But I can't claim it's all been worthless - they did at least give me good marks in an English lesson.

(This has been written without aim or plan and without any conscious memory of words like sestina)

The Pilgrim Hymn of Dedication (A Half-memory Restored)

I haven't written of White Lodge yet.  That will happen soon and put this post into some context.

In my teenage years I took a couple of courses at White Lodge.  After that I converted to an enthusiastic form of Christianity that quickly became narrow in its outlook.  That's not a surprise - a teenage convert swallows whatever preaching they are exposed to, no matter how odd or extreme or even abhorrent it may seem to the non-convert.  In joy, in zeal, in the thrill of new meanings, the convert can forget to think - or even be encouraged not to think.  Sadly my experience of embracing things I now regret is a common one.

To digress, by leaping forward to this morning:

I popped into the local Christian bookshop.  I'm not quite sure why as there is very little there that appeals to the person I am now.  But I picked up a book called "Christian Philosophy."  A good title.  An exciting title.  I hoped the book might be as intelligently written as something by Aquinas or one of the more modern Christian philosophers and it might be a stunningly challenging read.  I was quickly disappointed

The book contained nothing that I would call philosophy and nothing that any philosophy student or teacher would recognise as part of their subject of study.  Instead it was a book that promised to tell us "This is what the Bible means."  Worse, the author didn't start with the Bible and honestly seek to ask what the Bible is.  He started with a preconception and so explained "This is what my preconceived notions say that Bible means."  He had a literalist, fundamentalist preconception - so creation happened in six days and there is no evolution, homosexuality is great evil, without personal faith in Jesus you're doomed to Hell, and so on.  I was the teenage convert who swallowed teaching like that.  At least for a while.

Returning to the topic.  I took courses at White Lodge.  At the end of each course all the students gathered in "The Galilee", a chapel there, with the course tutors.  Each of us received a personal blessing, a couple of paragraphs, from one of the tutors.  I wish I still had those blessings but in evangelical post-conversion zeal they were destroyed.  We had a service.  And we sang.  I have never since experienced anything so warm, so love-filled as those services.

At the close of every course at White Lodge a particular song was sung.  It was written by Ronald Beesley, the founder of White Lodge, a man I never met as he died some years before I first visited.  The words at that time were printed on a sheet that I'm semi-sure said "Words by Ronald Beesley and The Dalai Lama, written on the shore of Lake Galilee."  We sang it to the tune of the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  Just in case anyone doesn't know it, here's a version from The Proms.  (You do know it - even if you don't know what it is)

  


Those little services of blessing were a wonderful experience.  Pretty much everything at White Lodge was a wonderful experience.

So why am I writing about this?

This year I've found myself singing the hymn.  Regularly.  As I've wandered around it has kept coming to my mind and I've started singing - sometimes out loud in the street!  But all year I've been faced with a frustrating problem:  I only knew the words to three-quarters of the first verse.  I'd get there and be stuck, either getting annoyed or just starting again.  The words have been quite prominent in my life, especially in the last six months.

Last week I asked online - there is a small facebook White Lodge group.  Does anyone have the words?  And yes, someone did.  The words were posted within hours and then someone posted them with the original tune they were sung to.  I am so thankful for those people and for those who still store the archives of White Lodge - though White Lodge itself is no more.  I am so thankful that I can finally finish singing the song that I've been singing for months.

 The Pilgrim Hymn of Dedication - White Lodge

      Oh, teach me Lord to know Thee,

      Thy wisdom to reveal,
      And place Thy mantle o'er me,
      And guide me how to heal.
      Thy footsteps I would follow,
      Thro' rock or barren waste,
      To dry the tears of sorrow,
      Thy Kingdom here to haste.

      By Galilean mountains,
      By shore and quiet sea,
      O'er stony paths and desert,
      You paved The Way for me.
      I would my Lord and Master,
      A Galilean be,
      To share Thy Hands in serving,
      And set the prisoners free.

      My life is Thine to do with
      Such as Thou would'st name,
      From now I am Thy servant,
      Thy blessing I would claim.
      To serve the need of others
      As Thou hast done for me,
      For all men are my brothers,
      To serve eternally.