ROC(Robert Ogilvie Crombie):
An Appreciation
There are many
ways in which I could appreciate Robert Ogilvie
Crombie. He was a loving and gentle man, an artist,
a thespian, a wondrous storyteller, an embodiment
of the best of Scottish (and Edinburgian) charm.
He was an embodiment as well of the wise old man,
the grandfatherly figure whom children adore and
who guides heroes and heroines on their paths of
accomplishment. He was a man of culture who lived
a spartan life and who had one foot in this world
and one foot in the worlds of spirit and mystery,
a courageous explorer of supersensory realms.
I loved being with him. I loved his humor, his twinkle,
his smile. I loved that he went swimming in the
Moray Firth even on the coldest days of winter.
(I also loved that I did not!) Visiting his flat
in Edinburgh was always a treat. It was a book-lover's
dream, filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling
that groaned under the weight of countless volumes
of the most fascinating lore. He was a self-taught
mythologist, psychologist, historian, and esotericist,
though his early training had been, like my own,
in science. Entering into his living room, with
its grand piano and its comfortable chairs, was
like stepping into a temple dedicated to quiet,
study, and contemplation. I loved it, probably more
now in retrospect as I share my house with four
rambunctious and lively children!
But what I most remember about ROC is not about
him alone but about the Group of Four : Dorothy,
Peter, Eileen, and ROC. Lawrence of Arabia wrote
a book on the seven pillars of wisdom, but these
individuals were the four pillars of Findhorn and
its service to the world. Dorothy, the mystic attuning
to God first, and through the love that came from
that attunement opening a portal into the angelic
kingdom of nature to begin Findhorn's famed experiment
in gardening; Eileen, the mystic pouring herself
into God and opening to the still small voice of
the sacred as a source of guidance and love available
to every person in his or her own way; Peter, the
man of action and intuition and of unconditional
surrender to the will of God in his life; and ROC,
the friend and companion of the elemental worlds
and the nature spirits.
These four sounded the note of Findhorn's central
purpose: to demonstrate the cooperation of the three
kingdoms--humanity, angelic, and elemental--blended
in co-creativity through the love and presence of
the sacred. In the convergence of these four--the
sacred, the human, the angelic, and the world--a
powerful creative and transformative spiritual fire
is released, one that can be birthed and expressed
within each and any of us, whether part of Findhorn
or not.
This is how I most remember ROC, as part of that
convergence of talent, skill, consciousness, dedication,
and purpose that gave birth to Findhorn and even
more significantly, to the vision of a new humanity
living and acting as a spirtual force upon the earth
in service to and in cooperation with all life everywhere.
The greatest tribute we can pay to him--and to all
the founders of this magical place--is to find our
own sovereign way to let that spiritual force, that
spiriutal fire, arise in our lives. It is to find
the ROC within, the Dorothy, Eileen, and Peter within,
the co-creative and sacredself within. The way we
do so as individuals will be uniquely our own and
may look nothing like how ROC, Dorothy, Eileen,
or Peter did it as individuals, but it will share
in the same planetary purpose and the same inspiration
that arose in their hearts and led to this wondrous
and transformative place we call Findhorn. What
they founded in a place, we can find and found in
our hearts and minds.
That is their legacy. It is in that context that
I most remember and appreciate ROC.
David Spangler - November 2002 Findhorn Foundation
top
