Gavin McLellan
Head of Christian Aid Scotland

Where our greatest gladness meets the hunger of the world

Your greatest calling

“is the place where your deep gladness

and the world’s deep hunger meet.”          Frederick Buechner

With this quote uppermost in our minds we set out on our second solo.  Much shorter, just an afternoon till dusk.  Much colder.  Damper and darker.

 I return to the forest stream.  To reflect more deeply on the need to rebalance things. 

 Seeing the view again I’m more struck with the symbolism of the summit ridge, taking me far away from the homely forest bank in my life.  How can I stay more ‘in sight’ of it? How can I find more time? Use less resources, need less stuff, share more?

 Perhaps here is the way to find that ‘greatest gladness?’  Maybe finding it needs me to kick back against giving in to the prevailing cultural structures that push us too hard to provide.  I need to reposition myself in the economic and ecological landscape, much closer to family and keeping work in line of sight, in calling distance.

 Applying what I think I now understand is receptive consciousness; drinking in details from around your immediate environment and finding their realignment to what you know intuitively, was a very clarifying experience.  I wasn’t learning anything new.  I’ve known for ages that I need a more balance in my life.  Projecting my needs into the environment just gave it a potency that I hope will spur me into action to begin meeting the hunger of the world.

Let’s look through the Wilderness shaped window!

 ”What do you see?”  Was the question given by my paired partner Emily, on settling at the place found by natural inclination and gut instinct. Well, I saw a stream, mossy banked, at the tree-line edge facing up to steep escarpments of Glen Tilt, it was very inviting, the ‘babbling brook’ was calming, and the Scots pine trees enveloped and created a sense of security. 

“What insights does it give for your life?”  Well, it gave me a picture of a re-ordered life.  Frequently I am at the summit ridge, possibly over the horizon, away working, providing for my family in the forest brook.  The glade spoke to me about home, a place of canopied security, sheltered, a source of comfort and nourishment, yet I wasn’t within sight of it often enough.  I need to find a way to stop ascending ridges of work pressures and pressing on to the next career summit and find the will to stay closer, within sight and calling distance of the valley, the tree line, and the homely bank.

The Big Conversation

Start with a blank sheet of paper.....

Ahead of this second wilderness outing in Glen Tilt with Natural Change I was reading ‘Utopian Dreams’ by Tobias Jones. Thinking about what needs to change in my generation and how renewed ideals can be translated into action, I came across this quote;

“the generation that came to maturity after 1989 have minimal idealism. There might be micro-beliefs, and single-issue-sacred-cows, but there’s no macroscopic, universal, cosmic creed..”

Our group conversation on Friday evening soon began to put that to the test. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, we wrote on it everything that we wanted to change in the world. Poverty, injustice, war, prejudice, ignorance…….Then we linked them together, those that impacted one another, soon revealing a web, none discrete or isolatable, instead a vortex of problems.

At this point it was easy fulfil the ‘minimal idealism’ forecast by Jones. But thinking about the quality of relationship between these interconnected things and that it could be positively redirected by every one of us I felt I could begin to see a universal creed come into play. This creed embraced several themes that could be summarised as:

• Quality relationships: individual, family, community, national
• Overcoming; fear, trauma, instinctive drives that are negative
• Structures that perpetuate status quo and need overturned
• Living a balanced life
• Spirituality driven; our collective consciousness, intentions, faith

We’ve all had those pub conversations when we put the world to rights; this was the ultimate, yet without the alcohol. I didn’t last till 3am but wish I had.

Why is road all the rage?

The homily in the the number plate whilst gridlocked.

More than a month since the ‘wilderness experience’, the solo day, and the reassessment of where I am in the world I still find myself in traffic jams. Gridlocked is surely one of our most pernicious solo experiences. Harmful to the planet, wasteful of time, energy and human emotion.

In the last jam I found myself in (2 1/2 hours Edinburgh to Glasgow) I tailled this number plate B3 CAM for ages.  I’m sure its owner could never imagine that it would find itelf blogged as an example of a homily on life adjustment and adaptation to climate change! Especially a Range Rover!

But I found in it a message that not only assuaged the road rage but made me think about finding more calm in my life.  Why are we always rushing?  Why is it so hard to find the compromise between time and convenience?  What is driving us to make these choices?  How do we break out of the rat race and assert the need to slow down?

As I tailled along and tried to ‘be calm’ I was reminded of the book I read by James Gleick ‘Faster: The acceleration of just about everything.’ He gives a nice contrarian view of the notion of time saving and instantaneity of everyday life (”instant coffee, instant intimacy, instant replay, and instant gratification”) I particularly liked the accounts of “hurry sickness” suffered by the first passengers on the first early railways of the industrial era.  Breaking the 20mph barrier for the first time was too much for some and debates ensued about why they needed to travel that fast anyway! And so for us too about a hundred years later feeling the same symptoms when arriving, for example, at an airport gate at the last possible minute an obsession ironically matched by endless waits on expressways and runways. “Gridlocked and Tarmacked are metonyms of our era,” writes Gleick, “…to be stuck in place, our fastest engines idling all around us, as time passes and blood pressures rise.”

There is so much in the media about stress and the costs of absenteeism, ironically due to presentism. What drives us to sacrifice so much of ourselves and our families?  Why are we suckers for it? Now the Christmas lights are coming out.  People are saying ‘what credit crunch?’ when they see the spend-like-no-tomorrow shoppers.

When will enough be aspirational rather than more and more? When will taking the car be as socially unacceptable as smoking? I remember my first economics lecture at university. “If someone were to say to you, do you want a rolls royce?  and having got one, do you want another?.The answer always is well, yes. …Human wants are insatiable”  That’s what drives the market.  Not the benevolent ‘invisible hand of self interest’ as theorised by Adam Smith.

So answers are sought on the path to enough, more time, calmness and balance for people and planet.

Autumn dog walk

Now, when I take my dog for her walk along the usual pathway route on the Kelvin Walkway, I make sure I don’t miss all the little details. So much outdoor stuff. Where once there was: mud, grass, trees. There are now so many autumn berries; hawthorn, elder, cotoneaster, alder buckthorn and blackberries. So many trees, shrubs, I must learn them. My illiteracy of nature in my locality has really surprised me.

So I have been making a gallery of images to try and capture the wonderlets of autumn just minutes from my home. Revelling in the aesthetic is all very well and as I have been doing this I realised the dog’s view may be different. Although the level sensory appreciation available to dogs is denied us (probably just as well!) it struck me that what dogs see may be besmirched by our lack of regard for the environment. Here are some of the dog’s findings.

Re-entry damage

Two weeks have passed. Just two weekends ago I was learning to slow down, to open up my senses and allow myself to be cradled by the earth, to find my place and remain in it.

In the first week back I did not stand still. I have taken planes, trains and automobiles London, Edinburgh, Newcastle. I’ve realised none of these were as important or impactful upon me as ‘my place’ that spot by the rowan tree, in Gleann Meadail, Knoydart.

I have discovered a row of rowan trees behind my house, bordering the road, and I needed to go to the last wilderness of Scotland to notice them. I’ve lived a decade in ignorance of the natural world around me.

I listen better too. The deep listening experience of the solo day has stayed with me. I’m not a good listener. Perhaps the clatter and din of the urban life, of which I am now more acutely aware, has progressively desensitised me, with regard to the earth I’ve been almost deaf to it.

I see more sharply, noticing more things, like my neighbourly rowan trees. Such visual acuity I can’t imagine living without now.

Maybe I’m in a culture shock of sorts. The guilt flight back from London City to Glasgow really was disgusting. Cramming ourselves in a pressurised tube, hurtling together at hundreds of mph, breathing one another’s breath, sweating one another’s sweat. Scrambling for phones, pda’s and laptops, ordering cabs, grasping bags of duty free.

I was dismayed by the pace and wastefulness of our consumption culture, now I am more disgusted. So what am I going to do about it? What do I do next? What do I not do next? Apart from the obvious - not flying (have cut this down already folks) What’s the next most obvious thing? Then what are the subtle changes, cultural ones, and life structural ones, ones that will shift the herd culture? Steps that need taken to avert the precipice tumble of human lemmings?

Re-entry and descent

Elation goes with you

Yet layers will come slowly

Like blankets, layer on layer

But expect

Do not fight them

Accept.

But take something with you

Totemic not tokenistic

Source of the story

Reservoir of the passion

Touchstone and talisman

Anchor to the authentic

Naturally distinctive

I’ve struggled a bit to bring a distinctly Christian faith perspective to the group. I was fearful of giving any perception of being preachy. Yet so much of it easily bridges to Christian faith and tradition. The earth prayers, the sharing of dreams, the acceptance of signs from nature such as a bird showing the way. These seemed so remarkably similar to the experiences of people hearing God and sensing His presence in nature.

 Discussions about religion, history, conflict and capitalism have swirled on the sidelines. Ideas of identity, destiny and insignificance in the face of the timelessness of the earth have engaged our minds around the picnic table in the garden. What bothered me was how insignificance was appreciated by others in the group. I felt this was a little dangerous.

I felt that embracing insignificance was morally hazardous.

Whilst in a context of timelessness and planetary scale our short three score and ten is certainly insignificant we live in a time when rich industrialised lifespans make deeper impacts on the earth. So there is a rebalance to be struck around historic responsibility for emissions and a recognition given to reparation and justice for those facing not insignificant impacts on their lives now.

Feeling insignificant is not motivational. Rather finding belief in change and empowering others to change flows from understanding your significance in the circle of influence available to you and linked to that connections locally and globally.

There is much significance in living for compassion and justice, going the extra mile, and fulfilling a destiny that delivers natural life affirming change.

Powerful stories

All stories are held in a ring of confidentiality

The singing bowl bell chimes to start a new story

Storyteller beings’ This is my story’

Storyteller has ‘power of speech’ no interruptions

Silence held after to reflect

Then reflective responses given back to storyteller, beginning ‘I heard a story of….’

Responses are uncritical, unjudgemental and not drawing on knowledge outside the story.

Encircled in the tepee we shared. Here is mine, the confidence is mine to break….

Tepee storytelling

Each story potent, moving

Of overcoming fear,

Making connections;

bonds with family, the earth, the cosmos and the past.

Stories of inner strength and resourcefulness

That lanced out deep anger and grief

Yet found humour for survival

And in adversity a release from limitations

Songs of praise

Openness and being

Natural changes in a powerful day.

 Wrestling with…….

All of us on the project have had powerful spiritual experiences that have stretched and taken us beyond ourselves. The beginnings of inner change that needs released to lead into personal action and societal change.

As faith based NGO’s in development have documented and experienced the regenerative power of faith in individuals and communities the Natural Change project can harness this power too.

In preparation for this we heard about the ‘value action gap.’ The situation we face is this: people have a wealth of information about climate change, awareness is high but lifestyle change is low. The model of straightforward rationality isn’t working. Social marketing remains nascent and unproven in its effectiveness. Something deeper, intuitive, reconnected to the earth may be needed to re-establish bonds of care and a reorientation towards a sense of planetary dwelling that is sustaining self, community and future.