The Spiritual Practice I didn’t Plan For - Parenting in the Findhorn Community
Written by Kate Waring
My name is Kate and I’m a parent living in the Findhorn community, raising my five year old daughter together with my partner, and discovering daily that parenting has become the most demanding and revealing spiritual practice of my life. Alongside this, I support the team with the admin and coordination of the morning online meditations, helping to keep things running smoothly behind the scenes, while most of my time is spent keeping pace with a five year old who has her own ideas about how the day should unfold.
Our family: Abi, Kate and Rudolf
What I thought my spiritual practice would look like
I first came to Scotland in May 2019 for an Experience Week at the Findhorn Foundation, drawn by a longing to live more intuitively and in deeper connection. Within a few months I found myself moving north and into Cluny, a former Victorian Hotel in Forres which at the time was part of the Findhorn Foundation’s accommodation for members and guests. I imagined my spiritual life unfolding through meditation, community living, service, and inner work. What I didn’t realise was that within a year, I would be learning presence, humility, and surrender in a far more immediate way: through becoming a parent.
A very special Zen Master landed in our life - and I am not talking about the Buddha :)
What my spiritual practice actually looks like
Parenting has a way of bringing everything into the present moment very quickly. Before my daughter arrived, I thought I knew what hard work was. I’d spent long days doing practical service like homecare, gardening and KP (after dinner clear up or ‘Kitchen Party’), work that asked for stamina, attention, and a willingness to show up for the collective. It taught me a lot about service and love in action; and then I became a parent which heralded a welcome to every emotional trigger I didn’t know I still had, arriving daily, without warning, and often before breakfast.
Abi’s first trip to the sacred Isle of Iona, enjoying a family bonfire on the beach.
Parenting is relentless. It’s like attending a community meeting every single day where everyone has a different point of view and they’re not afraid to express it, only the facilitator is five years old and insists on starting with an urgent discussion about toast.
When the bathroom becomes sacred space
It’s no wonder Eileen Caddy (one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation) spent so much time meditating in the loo. These days, I see the bathroom as sacred space too. My partner and I treat toilet trips like mini retreats: five minutes of silence, a few deep breaths, possibly a quiet sob, then back out to face the small but mighty Zen master we’re raising. Did Eileen go into the toilet for divine guidance? Absolutely, although I also suspect she just wanted five minutes where nobody asked her to cut their apple a different way.
People often say parenting is a powerful opportunity for growth, and it is. Mostly for your ability to remain vaguely coherent while sleep deprived and calmly explaining why we can’t keep slugs as pets. Children will ask “Why?” approximately ten thousand times a day, dismantle your worldview before you’ve finished your (almost certainly lukewarm) cup of tea, and call you out on inconsistencies you didn’t even know you had.
Planting Abi’s cherry tree, a tradition at Ecovillage Findhorn where each child born here is welcomed with a tree of their own, to grow alongside them.
My daily spiritual practice: Parenthood
Children are natural born initiates: messy, chaotic, and deeply wise, and this, I think, is the spiritual practice. Not the books, the workshops, or even the precious moments of silence, although I do miss those. The practice is the daily dance of patience, surrender, and presence. It’s learning to stay open hearted while someone has just weed on your only clean socks. It’s discovering that spiritual principles don’t mean much until they’re tested at the end of a long day by a small human who absolutely refuses to stop jumping on the bed and go to sleep.
Parenthood strips you bare and breaks your heart open; it asks you, again and again, to meet another being with compassion, curiosity, and humility. It teaches you, whether you like it or not, that love is not an abstract idea, but something expressed through care, attention, and showing up when you’re exhausted. And of course, parenting rarely happens in isolation, it unfolds in relationship, with partners, with friends, with other parents, with children who are not our own, and within the wider fabric of community.
This is the most recent pic of us two enjoying cup cakes…
Parenting within our Community
Being a parent here within the Findhorn Ecovillage community is, in many ways, similar to parenting anywhere else. There are still the tough moments that come with raising a child wherever you are, the exhaustion, the uncertainty, the daily negotiations with small humans. And yet, there is also something quietly wonderful about parenting in this community.
Abi has been gardening with her community friends from an early age
It is a beautiful and safe place for a child to grow up. Where we live there is forest, dunes and the sea. There are also open communal gardens on our doorstep, and it feels natural for my daughter to take herself outside, knock on her friends’ doors, and disappear into play. There are shared spaces, familiar faces, and a steady rhythm of community life unfolding around us.
As she grows older and her physical world widens, I trust that she will be held by more than just me, because so many people here know her. That, too, shapes the practice. Being witnessed, supported, challenged, and occasionally undone by one another adds another layer to the practice, one that continues to stretch and surprise me.
Seasonal Community Celebrations with kids: dream vs. reality
I feel very privileged to be held within the circle of mum friends I have here. Among them are people fluent in things such as permaculture and traditional crafts. Women who know how to light a fire when all the wood is wet and who know their solstice and equinox rituals in the same way most people know the words to a favourite song.
Practicing ‘Work as Love in Action’ at Cullerne Garden seems to be much preferred to an Imbolc Celebration
A couple of months ago, one of these friends organised an Imbolc gathering for us mums and children: making Brigid’s crosses together around a firepit in the woods next to our house, which, on paper, sounds idyllic. In reality, my daughter absolutely did not want to go. She did not want to make a Brigid’s cross, did not want to sit by the fire, and did not want to participate in what I clearly thought was a very wholesome community moment. I felt that familiar flash of frustration rise up in me, followed closely by the quieter recognition that this, too, was part of the practice. Another invitation to notice what had been triggered beneath the irritation, to stay with it long enough to understand it, and to meet it with a little more curiosity and compassion.
The spiritual path of the parent: BUT HOW?
If you’re a parent, you’ll already know the emotional ups and downs of parenting, the devotion and the doubt, the fierce love, the moments of deep connection, and the days that feel impossibly long; you’re living it after all, probably with toast in your hair and a small person shouting “BUT WHY?” on repeat. For me, this is where the practice becomes very real. Parenting doesn’t just reveal my triggers, it gives me endless opportunities to meet them. Over time, I’ve found that the only way I can stay present, compassionate, and resourced is by slowing down when I’m activated, turning towards what I’m feeling, and meeting it with honesty and care. Sometimes that means simply letting the feeling fully rise whilst quietly observing it to see what’s underneath, rather than pushing it away or smoothing it over. Nothing elaborate, just attention, patience, and a willingness to stay with myself so I can stay with my child.
Abi helping to dig the foundations of the new Light of Findhorn Sanctuary
For now, I’ll simply say this: parenting may be one of the most demanding spiritual paths there is, but it is also one of the most generous. It offers us countless invitations to soften, to grow, and to remember what really matters: invitations that often arrive disguised as a small person who has absolutely no interest in whether you’ve finished your tea or not.
How about you?
If you feel inclined, you might notice where this path of seeing everyday life as a spiritual practice is already alive for you:
✨ Where does everyday life quietly become a spiritual practice for you, not in theory, but in the middle of things as they are?
✨ Which relationships are stretching you, teaching you, asking something of you right now?
