Gavin McLellan
Head of Christian Aid Scotland

New bottom line

“[We need] to embrace a “new bottom line” in which corporations, social practices, government policies and individual behaviours are judged rational, efficient or productive not only if they maximize money or power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, enhance our capacity to treat others as embodiments of the sacred and to respond with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur of the universe.” - Rabbi Michael Lerner

At North Third

Dawn’s colours greet me

Pinks and oranges welcome.

Total stillness

Solitary cygnet patrols close

Ice film thin meets the edge

Where I am by yellowed brittle reeds,

crisp to touch and sound that

frame dawn’s rosy fingers reaching

above the escarpment of North Third.

A solo hour goes by and winter’s steely sheen

Has taken command, banishing pink promise,

A breeze rises and the water takes on a white-noise ripple

Taking this rhythm busy geese circle

and squawk in a commuters formation,

landing again, “ee uck uch whoo”

Watching that routine I wait for insights

Thoughts ripple like the water

Every look up from the paper

Sees another shift in light, tone, colour,

details previously unseen,

constant natural change.

Sheep come to watch

A moment’s reverie from grazing

Just in a five-minute interlude

a honey-er light pulses from the clouds.

Like the tiny adjustment of a dimmer switch

The loch surface glimmers more rapidly.

A celebratory shimmer.

At last the sun appears

Above the pine ridged crag

Immediately I am infused

Fractionally warmed.

Enough to help me stay on

See this thing through

So hard to stay in one place

The lemony luminosity makes a difference

Soon a solid silver bar glares across the water

And I have a feint shadow but no degree of warming.

Its man made I realise, warming, and this water

An alteration to the landscape,

A carved out resource

for consumption elsewhere

An improvement surely

And undeniably beautiful.

Soon its glint and glare

erase the features of the escarpment

to a dark canvas and I

Remember I should be thinking about ‘what next’

For me, my family,

their futures,

This project, many futures

For the country I live in

“the world and all that is in it”

A shepherd passes

With six sheepdogs no less!

His quad bike punctuates the stillness

But having the landscapes permission.

Some things still need doing as I lie here

Sheep need herded.

Methods may change

From crook to quad

But fundamentals don’t

“all like sheep have gone astray”

good shepherds are still needed

as paths unsustainably weather away.

Something about that care and nurture

In tending the flock

Not just to understand

Or be safe and comfortable

But to not stray and atomistically scatter

Breaking what should be shared in community

Something about remaining together

A flocked community

Gently guided

Maybe like shepherds

We should be searching

For wandering hearts and minds

Selecting people for change

Like Jesus did

As this project did.

These are hardly new thoughts

Completely unoriginal

Second hand revelations

A stretched analogy

Weak minded symbolism even

Clichéd insertions into a well worn debates

Yet a shepherd’s intervention

Is not about persuasion

Or communication

It’s directive, but not aggressive

Firm and decisive

Yet compassionate.

Is that what’s next?

To prompt, direct, intervene?

The shepherd doesn’t randomly go out to field

but with deliberate chosen timing.

As we can in our circle and sphere

gently bring into the fold

those over grazing sheep

who are ready

for paths of change.

Giving Evidence

PHOTOGRAPH(C)2004 SCOTTISH PARLIAMENTARY CORPORATE BODY.

Today I was giving evidence.  Not in a courtroom. Not to a legal hearing, although in a sense it was, to our lawmakers.   How do I find myself at the Scottish Parliament’s Committee for Transport Infrastructure and Climate Change giving oral evidence on Stage 1 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill? I am asking myself that question as I reflect on my journey.

The opening question for my panel was something along the lines of “why are you [international aid agencies] involved?”

Why are you involved?

To respond with a question; how could you not be?  Just being a resident of Scotland, UK, EU, industrialised North, you and I, us all are inextricably involved.  Almost everything we do emits.  Except walking, cycling, hanging out the washing,..  [insert your suggestions here - or in the comments!]

I answered with a soundbite; ” Forget about making poverty history. Climate change will make poverty permanent.” Nazmul Chowdhury, Practical Action, a Christian Aid partner.  Then from there led into the impacts being felt now; increasing floods, droughts, much more here:

http://www.christianaidscotland.org.uk/issues/climatechange/facts/index.aspx

After that onto historical responsibility and capacity to act, on this point I’m always struck by the fact that 75% of global CO2 emissions have happened in my lifetime.

I had a little childhood flashback as I expressed that point.  I remember very clearly P3, aged maybe 7, the lessons about switching off the lights and saving energy.  Big stickers around the light switch exhorting ‘turn off the light.’

My little epiphany in that moment, in the committee room, was the climate change ‘lock in.’ I realised that all that impact stuff, the urgent action needed now, is down to the impact of the emissions made when I was in Primary 3, just 30 years ago.  30 years ago!  Turn off the lights. Now.

Enough!

Met my boss-before-previous today, quite unexpectedly, he wanted to see me.  He’s been made redundant….

Tonight I found this…

The great financial upheaval we’re experiencing is no momentary bout of bad luck, it’s the direct consequence of looking at the world as an economic engine that runs on money rather than a living organism nourished by natural and human resources. By learning that lesson, we’ll know everything we need to create a sound global economy that sustains everyone.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009298.html

Stranger in a strange land

“To sleep under the stars, and drink nothing but well water and to live chiefly on nuts and wild fruit, was a strange experience for Caspian after his bed with silken sheets in a tapestried chamber at the castle, with meals laid out on gold and silver dishes in the anteroom, with attendants ready at his call.  But he had never enjoyed himself more. Never had sleep been more refreshing nor food tasted more savoury, and he began already to harden and his face wore a kinglier look.”

‘Prince Caspian’, C S Lewis, 1951

Seeing the Prince Caspian movie again last Saturday with my kids reminded me to find these words. The description of finding himself taking refuge in the simpler, hardier world of the forest after being expelled from his familiar comfortable world, resonates with the solo experience on this project.  We all recently had a catch up together to check in, and all of us spoke of a point of departure.  We’ve left some old self behind and now find a newly hardening self forming.

But its confusing. Its troubling.  It’s not yet refreshing or enjoyable as Caspian found in the deep forest exile.  Although there are foretastes of it.  It feels that I am more open and tolerant of nature yet maybe more intolerant of those who dont.  I feel that my sense of time has shifted a little. Took me a while to grasp this notion of ‘being present, be aware.’ Yet what a gift of time it bestows. Things that would have troubled me a lot more in recent times have less power over me.  So my sense of time and pace has expanded, and maybe actually my ’sleep is more refreshing’ after all.

Simplicity beckons.  So much more attractive than ever before.  The Apostle Paul wrote to a young Timothy of having ‘just food and clothing’ and being content with that.  I am not yet anywhere near that.  Not ready to be the sojourner, itinerant, unsettled, living by my wits, in extreme faith and wing and prayer. No do I think that is what’s needed.  But some kind of transcendance is.  An elevation from excess want, finding satisfaction in ‘well water…nuts and fruit,’  There’s quite a few things I cant be bothered buying anymore. Not feeling the pinch in the recession because the wants reduce themselves to needs.

Being hardier isnt that hard at all.  Just do without..that CD, that IKEA item, garment, thing, and things for things!  Find other comforts, discover, look around, walk, cycle.  Feels corny but as Mother Theresa said, ‘live simply so that others may simply live.’

A kinglier look is harder.  Its about our dominion and responsibilities.  Finding a way to discharge them fairly, with no entanglement with injustice, no taint of compromise, seems a way off.  We kings and queens of the new strange world are hemmed in by structures that we try to resist Canute like.  Caspian overcame it through new alliances,  a new community, but before that a period of living in the exile of the stranger.

To sleep under the forest....

I am NOT a tree hugger!

But I am embracing nature……..

Funny I remember a session from our time in Glen Tilt in the trees near the house.  We all did the ‘tree breathing’ exercise - you’ll find this in the research/taster section of the site.  It was really quite lovely and certainly  reconnected me to a sense of interdependence and mutual exchange with nature.

Amazing coats of lichen that I’d never seen.  I asked about this and why we didnt see this on urban trees, the answer seemed to be related to air quality, funny that.  What else are we missing?  What else can we retrieve?

Sanctioned Sanctuary

In Birmingham late last November I took this picture of two temples; the church and Selfridges.

The steeple seems to be teetering and wispy in the face of the hulking, brooding retailer’s temple.  It strikes me as an image of the times; out of proportion, overblown, and bloated on credit.  Yet what both of these places of worship now have in common is a sense of living on borrowed time.

In this time of conflating crises; global recession, war, climate change, where do we take sanctuary? Retail therapy or spiritual retreat, ……..the wilderness?

My fellow bloggers have spoken of ‘enough’, that there is to be found, or sought, peace and sanctuary in contentment.  Perhaps neither are available at the church or Selfridges?  Probably a discontinued line.

Where do we find sanctuary?

Did we find ‘enough’ in our festivities? Was contentment unwrapped in our giving and receiving? Did our resolutions, if we made any, sanction ourselves to do less?

Split off from the rest of the universe

Found something that connects a bit with Emily and Emma’s posts about stress and non-action but which also frames what we’re doing together, or maybe trying to resist in the in the current crazy jolly season.

“I think Christmas is about that point where we as humans split off from the rest of the universe and become prisoners of ourselves instead of being unselfconscious and free like the animals and birds.  Yes, we received cars and jets and Hollywood pictures, but we also got saddled with calendars and time - the fact that there’s either too much of it , or too little. And we also got saddled with the knowledge that we can either make use of time doing worthwhile things or fritter it away….”

‘Bethany’ in, The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland, 2007

Quantum of humanity

Well I’ve seen the latest Bond movie. The recipe has changed; mixed much more quickly, faster fight scenes with lots of bone crunching sounds, no gadgets, no humour, no black and white, no fantasy island evil empires, just brutal, clinical despatching of whoever gets in the way of the grudge, his ‘duty’ and a hunger for revenge.

Bond has never been warm or human. He has never been so efficient. He has never faced a corporate eco-terrorist before. This Bond wears his glamour like work overalls, which seems reasonable enough because it’s dirty stuff his duty requires.

He does show a quantum of humanity. Which is this; a drive to find the right order of things, a drive to find love, to find acceptance and approval. There is a residual trace element in the 2008 Bond of these traits of humanity.

The portrayal of omnipresent corporate greed, acting almost as a sovereign empire, carving up the world, for a shadowy elite isn’t that far fetched. It’s worryingly accurate.

What was also very accurate was the need to be aware, standing where you are in the moment, to sense the danger and act, and act decisively, with intelligence and strategy. As Bond becomes Bourne we see more of the frailty and humanity in the face of abuse of power.

We will never have superhuman fighting abilities, or drive Aston Martins to destruction, or play out our battle across continents and in exotic locations. Our struggle against power structures, inequality, environmental destruction is much more mundane and domestic but no less real. Our weapons are wisdom and compassion but are we accepting the assignment?