“.....Another person I met was Rose Farrington, an initiator of the New Games movement. These are games designed to play together creatively, with harmony and joy, and without anyone “losing” the game. In these games everyone contributes in their own way as the action of the game evolves, and everyone “wins” just by being in the game.
She told me of how it came about that she first had ideas for these games. It was in summer of 1973 in San Francisco, and she had been feeling very discouraged about the state of the world and of the human race, with all the violence, and hunger, and drug abuse, and environmental pollution, and corruption in government. One grey foggy Sunday, in a matching grey mood, she walked into Steinhart Aquarium. As she came down a dim corridor with lighted fish tanks on either side, she saw at the end a huge plate glass window giving view into the side of a tank that was open to the sky above. It was at that time populated with three dolphins. She stood at the rail watching through the glass.
”I saw the grey and white flashes of the graceful creatures of the sea,” she wrote of her experience. Suddenly I was beyond the rail, leaning my anguished face against the cold panel of glass. I thought how inhumane we humans are. ‘You beautiful creatures, don’t men understand that they have separated you from your families? They pen you up, feed you dead fish, and view you as curiosities.’ Grief wracked my body.
“Then words begin to flow back into my mind. ‘We are ambassadors from the sea.’ The three dolphins began sliding their bodies against the glass where my face was...’we are love and cooperation...play is the answer you are looking for...’One of the dolphins rose gracefully to the surface and brought back an eighteen inch piece of orange yarn, and began to dive, glide and twist, while the piece of yarn danced on flipper, tail, beak and body.
“Joy began to pulse inside me. I laughed and clapped my hands at the delicious creature’s play. A second dolphin joined the game, and then the third. The three dolphins romped in the water forming patterns, then changing them. Words came to me. ‘...bring people together...play together...cooperate...play...peace on the planet...’ “ I was deeply changed, radiant and hopeful, full of energy, shooting synapses through my nervous system with joyful explosion.”
She went away and thought often about what she had experienced, spoke about it with many friends, and began to form plans for using her new ideas. Two months later she was hired by the producers of the Whole Earth Catalog to help organize the first New Games Tournament. This event took place in October, 1973 at Marin Headlands, and was a tremendous success.
She says, “We bring people together to play cooperatively, erasing if only for a brief time all barriers of race, age, sex, size, ability, socioeconomic background, belief structure. Creating the rules begins the game, choice and freedom get activated, then there is spontaneous group interaction where laughter dances over fields of grass and skips high into the trees, teeth flashing, hair flying, an earth-choreographed dance of expressive bodies. There are shouts of surprise and delight, each person a part of the game’s magical body. Everybody plays, everybody wins. They share a common experience, but retain individuality. Each person has much to contribute to the group, and cooperation creates a gentle forum for personal participation, realizing one’s own strength and sharing that.
“It can be a design for future living: individuals coming together from personal strength to a cooperative process for the generation of a quality shared experience. “ I played with the theories, testing them in systems: education, community organizing, business, government. My world was filled with pictures of groups of smiling people, actively participating, differences celebrated and shared, information developed on how to create positive solutions.
“I began to realize that I was learning from the dolphins a form that unites people, who then create a positive electrical field that appears to attract more people, in a comfortable space by-passing the usual initial awkwardness of interaction. It is a process that we can carry with us - to the back yard, to a meeting, to a picnic - in our minds. Simple games that can start with one person and expand to include hundreds.”
She was invited to an international community education conference in Mexico in 1975, where the new games attracted much interest. From there she was employed to go to Australia, where she shared her new approach, and now hundreds of thousands of people in many countries have enjoyed this lively and nourishing experience of discovery. All beginning with some dolphins at play together with a piece of yarn.
She says, “In the years that have followed, New Games grew and spread and evolved. Microscopic worlds of graceful interaction, smiles, hugs and peace in action. The dolphins and I talk often. We celebrate the small: inspiration, commitment, and joy for the continued task, the realization that we are one family on earth.”
This brief dolphin story emerged from a rich well of cooperative activity that includes realms like Aboriginal One -Planet Drum- Mother Earth's Heart Beat, Mayaland-Incaland - Eqypt-Atlantis-Sirius; Dolphin and Whales of the Sea; Bears - Eagles-Dogs, Whole Earth Catalog, Indigenous People of Earth. All knowledge and events in communication as Sirian representative via Whales, Dolphins, Australian Aboriginal One, Buddha, Albert Einstein, Buckminister Fuller and other such twentieth century genius.
Manifestations of a few cycles of these Dolphin Dreaming Times were the games as mentioned above; participating in council to develop and implement a dream map to fulfill an indigenous prophesy of empowerment rather than enslavement (of humanity); a state voter registration project and 18 year old vote activity with Common Cause, a 1972 California ballot initiate: from hippie to 1968 California college studentbody president in less than 6 weeks to connect student power to an around the Earth web of folks creating a Bright 21st: the list is longer. The games were actually played in 110 countries, the books sold over a million and There is a statement on Commonwealth of Australia stationery that reads: "After 1975 Australia was different, New Games........."
Another time the Cachelot Whales walked me though a 30 day hunger strike with history of the World using a Sumerian perspective. A favorite was when they took me into the Hall of Records and then to a room that will open in the seer-able future. Years later, I found that exact story in Bob Frizzell's Book, Nothing In This Book Is True And It's The Way Things Are.
That Dolphin source of power has moved me for 63 body years. Always to a next step of learning and gathering renewal resources and tools to continue to build a foundation for fulfillment of a prophesy. That prophesy, linked to unfold at the time of a shift is showing it's fulfillment in exquisite and exact detail, now, July to October 2001 and opening at an accelerated rate.
The Dolphins and Whales? Joyous clarity and impeccable intention in their relationship with humanity. Are we blessed? Yes.
I would love to hear from you. sincerely. rosePat Farrington
