Hello dear readers, and welcome back after the short break in Voice for Arran communications! We return with a full edition for you and while the weather may still be on the wintry side there is much that is warming in the following pages.
As I am often reminded when getting an issue of the Voice together, despite our diminutive location on this small corner of the earth, on Arran we are never far from wider global issues, past and present. Whether that connection is born from the current impacts of climate change, learning about the island’s place in geological time, or reflecting on a sense of our shared human experience.
And our opening pieces from Sue Weaver and Rupert Spira speak directly to some of these themes. In People on the Move, Sue writes of her experience working at the Refugee Community Kitchen in Calais where she spent time as a volunteer in January. Amidst the practicalities of chopping vegetables and serving hundreds of meals, Sue and her co-volunteers came face to face with the deeper concern of connecting in a meaningful way with the people who arrived there. People from Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Chad, fleeing from a diversity of lived experience including war, famine, flood and drought.
Acknowledging the seemingly enormous (cultural, social and economic) differences that stood between them, yet aware of a ‘human kinship’, Sue writes, “In the evenings, my housemates and I grappled at length with the question of how to meet each person, how to stand in a place of respect and humility in the face of their courage and their suffering too. All in the 15 seconds it took to fill a plate and move on to the next person.”
This kinship, or perhaps essence of being, is the focus of a recent blog, Beyond the Paradigm of Separation, by philosopher and spiritual teacher Rupert Spira, and it provides an inspiring message of hope and peace. Spira says that generally our relations with one another are based on a “presumption of separation”, on an understanding of ourselves as finite and temporary beings, which we solidify into identities of ‘man,’ ‘woman,’ ‘rich’, ‘poor’, ‘Muslim’ or ‘Jew.’ All the disharmony and conflict, “between individuals, communities and nations, and the exploitation and degradation of the earth” can be traced back to this and to the “violation of a single principle: the fact that we share our being.”
Spira continues, “Each and every one of us knows our own being before we know anything else. Before we know ‘I am a man’ or ‘I am a woman’, ‘I am Muslim’ or ‘I am Jewish’ or ‘I am poor’ or ‘I am rich’, we know that ‘I am’.” So that finally he writes, the implementation of this understanding, whereby we relate not to a man or a woman, or a Muslim or a Jew, but to the essence within them, “is not only the direct path to peace and happiness within ourselves, it is also the foundation for resolving conflicts between nations and restoring our relationship with the earth.”
Overlying these deeper more contemplative issues, there are many rejuvenating events to enjoy in Arran in the coming weeks. There is a Dawn Chorus meeting early in the month at the Cordon Community Garden, an array of plays, films and concerts, including an incredible evening of Klezmer with Alba Challah, and a meeting at the end of the month with the recently re-formed Women in Black peace group. For more details on all these head to the Events page. We hope you enjoy the issue and wish you a wonderful month! Elsa
