Posts tagged with "knoydart"

Heavy Weather

I just checked the synopsis weather chart for the next five days. There’s a huge depression off the south west coast of Britain.

This made me think about the mysterious nature of Natural Change, how the whole programme is built around the unique emergence of a personal and group process. Essential to this is the ‘ground’ of Knoydart –  the mountains, rivers, trees, shore… and the weather conditions. Within this is the social environment – the ‘container’ the group create for themselves in which their experiences of the ‘ground’ can be openly and authentically explored.

Before we start, there’s no guarantees at all that any of these elements will come together. My experience tells me that what needs to emerge, will emerge – but like the weather, unpredictability is the only certainty there is! It’s this ‘Mystery’ – the unknown and unknowable – being accepted, held and engaged with from the ground up, that holds the primary power of the process.

Behind the low pressure system, a nice ‘high’ is building into the week… I wonder what will happen.

Dave Key

Beyond Dualism

Today, thinking about what we have shared together over the last two days and how we have shared it, I offered this text to our new students. It is from an essay by Jeanette Armstrong called ‘Keepers of the Earth‘.[1] She is a Native American from the Okanagan peoples and writes the essay from this perspective.

‘The emotional self is differentiated from the body-self, the thinking, intellectual self, and the spiritual self. In our language, the emotional self is thought of as the part with which we link to other parts of our larger selves around us. We use a term that translates as “heart”. It is a capacity to bond and firm attachment with particular parts and aspects of our surroundings. We say that we as people stay connected to each other, our land, and all things by our hearts.

As Okanagans we teach that this is an essential element of being whole, human and Okanagan. We never ask a person “What do you think? Instead we ask, “What is your heart on this matter?” ‘

I make a wish for their future:

“I hope your heart goes first.”

I make a wish for myself in Knoydart:

“I hope my heart goes first.”[2]

[2] With acknowledgement to Junction 25 for one of the best performance titles I know.

Orientation

On the 28 September we had our ‘orientation’ day at the Scottish Book Trust.  So, I have been thinking about orientation and beginnings.

A definition: orientation

Pronunciation:/ˌɔːrɪənˈteɪʃ(ə)n, ˌɒr-/

Noun [mass noun]

• 1 the action of orienting someone or something relative to the points of a compass or other specified positions
• [count noun] the relative position or direction of something
• Zoology the faculty by which birds and other animals find their way back to a place after going or being taken to a place distant from it
• 2 a person’s basic attitude, beliefs, or feelings in relation to a particular subject or issue
• 3 familiarization with something
• (also orientation course) chiefly North American a course giving information to newcomers to a university or other institution

We have lived at The Lint Mill for one year on October 1^st.  We are beginning a new year.  I am working with first year undergraduates at RSAMD.  We are beginning a new year.

The last of the swallows nesting in our stables have gone but now every evening thousands of pink-footed geese are flying over our house in noisy battalions.  They have found their way back.  In my class we talk of beginnings, we think about where we have come from.  We are in a distant place trying to find our way forward.

Next week I go to Knoydart.  I’m hoping to orientate myself from a distant place.  I’m hoping to find my way back.