Archive for the ‘philosophy’ Category

Flying Cloud is fundamentally about two things:

1. connecting with nature and
2. connecting with each other

That means playing in the forest, and making new friends.
It means learning local plants and animals, and learning how to listen and share.
It means recognizing the hazards in nature, and recognizing how we can each grow in our relationships.
Connection to nature brings us inner peace and connection to each other gives our lives meaning.

Today I want to share with you a golden nugget of counseling wisdom that we’ve been working with this summer at Flying Cloud. There’s an organization called the Arbinger Institute that does work around Peacemaking and helping people and organizations enhance their self-awareness. Central to their work is an idea about how we each are in the world. They call this our “way of being” and argue that, we can only have a heart that is “at peace” with others (and nature) or “at war”. This breaks down to a question of whether, in our relationships we’re seeing the other parties as people or as objects, and how we treat them based on that choice.

I’m writing about this today because this is a challenge that everyone faces. It’s human. We all have days where we can’t see another person’s humanity, but instead get caught up in just seeing them as a problem, or as something less then ourselves. The work we’ve been doing this summer is around trying to see when that happens to us as counselors and work to address it. The result is that we try to focus more and more of our energy on building strong relationships with campers. We try to get to know them as deeply as we can, and to know their friends and the other relationships that they value. We work hard to listen to their stories and to learn from them. When we teach, we try to explain why we’re teaching as we are, and why we think it’s worth learning, and on the occasion where we have to correct a behavior, we try to do it while constantly maintaining an awareness of the other person’s struggles, dreams, fears, hopes, passions and emotions.

We’re not perfect, and of course we stumble in this process. Who hasn’t answered a question a bit more shortly than they wished they had? Who hasn’t said something they regretted later? The point isn’t to be perfect, but to be trying, and to continually push towards seeing everyone as human and therefore just as important as we are. In our efforts to achieve this, a book called the Anatomy of Peace has been profoundly helpful, and I want to strongly encourage each of you to get a copy. If reading an entire book is too much, I totally understand. At a minimum I ask that you take twenty minutes to read through this short article focused on parenting called “The Parenting Pyramid”. I believe that you’ll find it useful and I hope that you’ll be able to apply it with your son and with others in your life.

If you do read the book and it touches you as much as it’s affected many of us, we would love to hear from you about your experience. It’s proven challenging to try to live this way, but it’s also been really amazing, and I personally can see it touching many of my relationships with the FC staff and campers this summer.

    Well, campers are coming home from trips today, and that officially wraps up week two! Soon I’ll get you a few of the stories from the Conn River Canoe, Silverlake Climbing, Little Rock Pond Hiking, and White Mountains Hiking trips, as well as from the FC capstone Flagstaff where older campers spend a week hiking and canoeing around Flagstaff Lake in Maine

Though a whole lot happened this week, I want to focus on just one special event: the first Naming of the summer!
The Naming is a very special event for members of the FC community in that it’s a time to recognize and honor our new members with a name.
The Flying Cloud name is meant to represent many of the best qualities of a person, as well as to connect them to the local area and one another. One unique FC aspect of the name is that we try to avoid saying our own names. Since they represent our best qualities, we feel it would be immodest to state those attributes ourselves, and instead we have one of our Flying Cloud brothers make the introduction for us. As a result, your son or friend will have to wait to share his name with you until someone who knows it can introduce him. Don’t worry though, if you really want to know, you can always ask me or even better, there’s a master list of all the FC names EVER in the office.

At Flying Cloud we recognize that in addition to being a way to recognize someone’s best self, the gift of an FC name is also a way to mark an important rite of passage in anyone’s life. As such, before someone receives their Flying Cloud name they must go on a twenty four hour Solo. During this time those about to receive their name are taken deeper into the forest, away from the FC clearing to allow them an opportunity to reflect on themselves, their life and their experiences at FC. For most people, the Solo is a challenging experience. They are discouraged from communicating with their Solo brothers, or from eating or drinking. By placing these challenges before themselves, those about to be named have a powerful opportunity to look inside themselves and see who they are and what beliefs they hold most strongly.
Upon returning to the community, the Soloers are given a night of rest before the Naming Ceremony day. For many campers, the Naming Ceremony is one of the most vivid memories of their experience at FC. The campers spend the entire day building a fire and cleaning the Naming circle, with the knowledge that as dusk falls we’ll be having a serious party!
As the sun sets, the guests are seated in the Naming circle and the Flying Cloud campers line up in their FC blankets to await the lighting of the fire. For this first Naming, a gift of summer rain whispers away as full darkness falls to allow for a beautiful moon rise. As the first sparks fly upward, the drum beat begins and we raise our voices in song….

Hang on for now, and perhaps later in the summer this story will continue….

Hi everyone!
We’ve just finished up the first week of camp, and what a week it was…. Here are a couple of highlights:
Campers arrived on Sunday, which was a wonderful chance for me to meet lots of you parents out there, and finally put faces to names. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it up!
On Thursday we did Work Projects, including such efforts as sprucing up the pond, building steps on our entrance path, and digging stumps out of the trail on the way into the Naming circle.
For your enjoyment, here’s a photo of the new stairs, nearing completion. By the time you come to camp we hope to have a big wooden sign hung over the entryway saying “Welcome to Flying Cloud!”

Thursday closed with a conch stalk as an evening activity. This is one of my favorite wilderness skills training activities, and for many participants the experience can be life changing.

Saturday was set aside to celebrate our interdependence on one another, and the F&W spin on Independence day. After a nine mile hike to Timberlake for dinner, all of F&W gathered together to sing songs, dance, eat ice cream (or soy-cream!) and have a big bonfire. Much fun was had by all.
Interdependence Day is a very special one for Flying Cloud, because it allows us the opportunity to recognize and talk about the value of living in community, and how important all the other camps are in allowing us to live as simply as we do. Without the logistical help from them, and Saltash Mountain Camp in particular, FC would struggle mightily to exist. Our heartfelt thanks go out to everyone.

More next week!
From the clearing with love,
-VZ

I just want to take a moment to talk about a series of principles that have been popping up in my life recently.
They’re called the Peace Principles, and though their origins are a bit cloudy, they really ring true for me, and I think they relate well to Flying Cloud.

1) Work for Peace.
This means simply that we must each work for peace, in every sense. It is our duty to resist war, but more importantly, we should be working each day to be at peace with ourselves. Quite simply, this means loving ourselves and taking good care of our mental and physical health. By extension then, we must also show the same love and respect for those around us. By following this simple principle, we can make our own lives and the lives of those around us better.

2) Work for Unity.
This principle is integral to life at Flying Cloud, and fundamentally means we will each set aside our feelings on how something should be done for the sake of the group. Rather than block consensus during a discussion because we want something done our way, a true FC-er will recognize that there are many ways to do anything, and as long as the outcome is in line with our goals, it’s okay if it’s achieved differently than we might personally do it.

3) Carry a Good Message.
This principle requires that we each go out of our way to spread positivity. Wether it’s complimenting someone on a job well done, or taking the time to appreciate something in the natural world, at FC we must all work to spread a positive view of the world.
In practice, this can mean many things. First, we all have to try never to say anything bad about anyone, either ourselves or other people. Another good guide for this Principle is that if you find yourself talking about a problem you’re having with someone more than once, it’s probably time to go to that person and deal with the problem one on one, even if it is hard.

These Principles are truly essential to life at FC, and they’re also really hard to stick with. As we each work toward adopting the principles fully into our lives, we’ll each make mistakes, or forget what we’re doing. That’s okay. When you slip away from these principles, just recognize that it’s happening, and begin to turn yourself back onto a good path. And as brothers in the Flying Cloud community, we can also help one another to stay on this path.
It’s been said that it takes a month to form a new habit. Well, hopefully this summer during your time at camp you can form the habit of living by these three simple Peace Principles. Good Luck!

Written by He Gives a.k.a. Sunshine Mathon for summer 2000

Simplicity and Isolation.
Flying Cloud’s simplicity and physical isolation have many, many facets, both subtle and overt. All provide a deep strength and value to Flying Cloud’s core. Living structures, de-structured time, clothing, simple diet, physical work, roofless kybos, secluded locale, fire, woods skills, silence. Fire, burning with wood collected by our hands, warms us, nourishes us, and lights our way in the dark. The bones, the frames of our living structures are cut and shaped by our hands. Without clocks or calendars our sense of time narrows and re-focuses, our existence endures in the moment. We live with the sounds of our laughter, with the pure tone of the conch that calls us together, with the calls of the robins, jays and woodpeckers. Our simplicity and physical isolation allow us to define the terms of our existence, our own unique culture. This freedom removes us from the everyday, negative societal pressures we all experience in our broader lives. It provides an opportunity for us to step outside our normal roles, to find a clear expression of ourselves.

Respect and Community.
Many claim Flying Cloud embodies respect and community, or at least approaches these ideals more completely than anywhere else they’ve experienced. Flying Cloud causes us to respect ourselves, to respect each other, and to respect the natural world. It helps us recognize the whole of which we, as human beings, are individual constituents. There are many ways Flying Cloud facilitates this: imbuing young people with an honored voice, freedom to be and express ourselves, responsibility to and dependency upon each other, holding hands in circle five times each day, encouraging cooperation over competition, freedom to clothe ourselves as we wish, and honoring the humility of the individual as an element of profound community participation.

Common Gender.
Prominent among the social pressures mentioned above is the societal portrayal of what it is to be male. Living in a community of all men and boys does not, in and of itself, provide any particular value. Such a community existing within a context of respect, simplicity, and an honoring of the land and the spirit, however, presents an opportunity to consider deeper definitions of maleness. The boys and men at Flying Cloud engage each other in non-traditionally masculine ways – with nurture and care, with patience, with non-violence, with community awareness. Flying Cloud’s all-male community also provides a powerful opportunity to challenge typically male prejudices, in particular homophobia and misogyny. A great deal of fantastic work has been and will continue to be done to confront such prejudice and its role in society’s depiction of what it is to be male.

Honoring the Land.
There is nothing like living close to the earth that so exquisitely inspires respect and appreciation for the natural world. Toes chilled and awakened in the morning dew as we walk to circle, owls conversing across the clearing as we lay our heads to sleep, stained fingers from moist berries on the branch. We experience the depth of life that we do at Flying Cloud because we embrace the woods as our home and caretaker. This vibrancy saturates the entirety of our lives at Flying Cloud, highlighting everything we do with the precious hue of life and spirit.

Honoring the Spirit.
Flying Cloud is a spiritual environment – one replete with ceremony, mystique, and a persistent appreciation for our numinous existence. Our individual connections with the earth and with the life surrounding us, including each other, matures profoundly during the summer months. This development would not be possible without the enveloping presence of the spirit throughout Flying Cloud. Although a spiritual essence can be found in almost every aspect of life at Flying Cloud, certain occasions have unambiguous spiritual overtones – Naming Ceremonies, Friendship Fires, and Solo’s for example. As well as offering their own value and teachings, these spiritual facets of Flying Cloud broaden and strengthen all other aspects of the program.