Thought for the Day - Alastair McIntosh

Dates forthcoming 2010: Radio Scotland Thought for the Day - 23 Sept, 12 Oct, 19 Nov

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

There’s been a flurry of media excitement as an archaeological dig on Westray in Orkney has yielded up a second five-thousand-year-old “Venus” figure - like one found last year locally nicknamed “the Wife of Westray.”[1]

Peter Yeoman of Historic Scotland was quoted as saying that, in a European context, these “well-endowed ladies”, as he delicately put it, are “generally recognised as images of deities” that might “start to allow us to consider the spiritual life” of our distant ancestors.

Marija Gimbutas, a controversial Lithuanian-American, professor of archaeology considered that in prehistoric Europe the deity was a feminine, egalitarian and peace-loving life force … until violent men developed the horse to extend the reach of war and re-cast God in their own patriarchal image.[2]

Most archaeologists consider that Gimbutas overplayed the feminist hand. Yet I have to say that as a man concerned with gender justice, something inside me closes down whenever I hear God referred to exclusively as male.

What I find inspiring is the Biblical tradition that we’re made in “the image of God” both male and female;[3] that the Holy Spirit in Hebrew and Greek is gendered feminine;[4] that chapter thirty-eight of Job twice pictures the womb of God as bringing forth the wonders of Creation;[5] and that Jesus identified himself with woman wisdom,[6] and with the tender image of a mother hen sheltering chicks under her wing.[7]

We may never know what the Orkney Venuses really mean, but something ancient and untameable stirs in me to hear that they’ve surfaced … a reminder, perhaps, that God is not just male, but female too … for God is the essence of what gives life.

[1] http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/orkneyvenus & http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/figurine-found-on-orkney-could-shed-new-light-on-life-in-2500bc-1.1042095

[2] Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess and other works. I explore the abuses and uses of Gimbutas on pp. 119-121 & 130 of my book, Hell and High Water. See also

[3] Genesis 1:27.

[4] Hokmah (Hebrew), Sophia (Greek) – gendered feminine and translated as “wisdom” or sometimes “woman wisdom”, as when personified, e.g. in Proverbs 8.

[5] Job 38:8, 29.

[6] Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:35.

[7] Luke 13:34.

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

Yesterday was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Live Aid. Looking back, it felt like a leap not just in technology, but in human consciousness - lighting up the planet as a one-world village.

It was actually Genesis that Live Aid set before us. I’m not meaning the performance on the day from Phil Collins. I’m thinking of the question implicitly raised from a much older set: the original Genesis 4 acid-test question - “Am I my brother’s keeper?”*

Millions gave their answer by sending money for Ethiopia. But charity without justice is hollow. To tackle poverty we need both.

It’s the Genesis question again: what does it mean to be our “brother’s keeper”? To me, figuring that one out is like listening to the lyrics from the namesake band. You have to go beyond the literal words and into the poetry: into the music and the metaphor.

It’s about more than just the story of Cain and Abel long ago. It’s also about justice in our relationships as women and men this very day, and when it comes to food, right relationship with animals, and with the condition in which agriculture leaves the very soil that is the face of this Earth.

What would it take to be able to see our “daily bread” as something … “sacred”?

These are the thoughts for the day, a full generation on, with which Live Aid leaves me.

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 29 June 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

As the G8 summit closed in Canada this past week, Oxfam issued a statement saying, “No maple leaf is big enough to hide the shame,” of the rich world’s failure seriously to tackle world poverty.

For me it brought back memories of the G8 Scottish summit five years ago. Nearly a quarter of a million of us filled the streets of Edinburgh demanding action on climate change and a fair deal for Africa.

Thousands then headed off to Gleneagles as George Bush and Tony Blair helicoptered in. I took winding backroads passing near derelict farmsteads where I know from locals that an absentee landlord had forced his tenant farmers out.

It made me think that poverty happens when people lose their asset base. What sends Africa to the G8 isn’t a million miles removed from Scotland too.

This came back to me last Thursday when the New York Times ran an article reporting that 71% of those buying such likes as landed estates come from outside of Scotland.

But what rankles most is its description of Scottish property as, “a trophy, for the bankers with their big bonuses … back on track after 18 quiet months.” And it recommends buyers that if you “visit only a few weeks a year” you can always “hire a couple of local people” to “generate enough cash to cover costs and to look after the wildlife.”

There you see it. The land that should support whole communities boils down to a housekeeper and a gamekeeper.

To me that’s more than just an economic issue. It’s also spiritual. As the prophet Micah said: “Woe to them that …covet fields … and houses, and take them away: so they oppress … even a man and his heritage.”*

The dispossessed need justice, not handouts from the G8. All I can say is thanks to the New York Times for showing us why Scotland’s land reform legislation needs to be kept - on track.

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 25 June 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

Here in Glasgow this is the start of the school holidays, and all across the land the festive spirit of summer is breaking out.

I myself will be heading down to Wiston Lodge near Biggar this weekend for something called the Solas Festival.

It’s a new idea for round here - a weaving together of the arts, a passion for justice … and faith.

Music from such bands as the Peatbog Faeries will vie with talks from radical Christians, serving politicians, a prominent Muslim leader and a Jewish climate change activist currently standing trial for blocking the runway at Aberdeen airport. And there’ll be, dancing!

Too often in Scotland’s past there’s been this grim idea that dancing and religion don’t mix. You’ve heard it before: we fear dancing lest it leads to sex … and sex lest it leads to dancing!

Yet Jesus himself had no time for such upright uptightness. In the gospels of both Matthew and Luke he challenges the emotionally cold and religious, quoting to them: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.”

And he tells how John the Baptist fasted and was T-total, yet they did him down. But when Jesus himself came “eating and drinking” they were just as small-minded, saying, “Here comes a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”*

Well, I don’t think there’ll be too much gluttony and drunkenness at Wiston Lodge this weekend. But there may be tears at some of the talks about the state of the world, and if I get on my feet to the music, there’ll certainly be amusement: as an old girlfriend once told me, “you dance like a spider in labour.”

Oh, what a long way some of us Scots have yet to go! May our summer festivals loosen us up. That’s the kind spiritual abundance that would be welcomed – at least by my wife.

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 12 May 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

On Monday night my wife and I had a friend who’s a Buddhist monk round for dinner. Not so long ago we’d have had outlandish conversations where I’d be looking for some crazy way to subvert his teachings, and we’d all tumble into laughter.

But in recent years he’s developed Parkinson’s disease. His hands now shake uncontrollably and his voice has become so soft that together with my need to wear hearing aids we must have looked a right pair struggling to have a conversation.

His condition’s been improving, but he said that during the worst times he’d felt like both his body and mind were being progressively closed up inside a box.

Such medical conditions force the question: are we just physical entities – egos on legs – here today, gone tomorrow? Or is there more to life than that? Do we also have a soul that’s outside of any box? And my friend and I just laughed because such realisation, so often stirred by adversity, is precisely what the spiritual journey’s all about.

Then, yesterday morning I caught the edge of a radio debate about party political compromise. A politician was clinging to what she called “the spirit of the manifesto” – the box of her own party’s set ideas. But the interviewer was pressing her on what he called “the spirit of fairness” - the need also to do politics from outside of the boxes in which we might have become trapped.

And I thought about my friend with Parkinson’s – and how one way or another we’re all boxed in whatever our station in life – and that the only way out is to seek a deeper way through … and perhaps that’s a lesson for us all from my friend the Buddhist monk.

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 5 May 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

By this time tomorrow it’ll all be over and the electoral dust will start to settle. One thing is sure. In the wake of the credit crunch the winner is going to have to take some very tough decisions. Political courage will be needed, but values too.

It’s a question that hit me forcibly last week. You see, I’m a Commissioner on Scotland’s Poverty Truth Commission. It brings people who struggle in life face-to-face with those who have some power to make a difference, and it has support from all of Scotland’s main political parties.

One of the Commission’s subgroups examines the links between ingrained poverty and violence. We’d been invited to meet with some community leaders in the Cranhill and Ruchazie area of east Glasgow.

They told us how little there is for the youth to do, and how much they’d love to have a football pitch.

After the meeting I left with my friend Paul Chapman who’s a clergyman from New York. Sitting outside on the steps were four girls waiting for their youth club to begin. We paused to say hello. They asked where we were from and immediately pressed Paul with questions about New York’s bright lights and celebrity culture.

They were just twelve to fourteen years old, dressed like any other teenagers … but something bothered me. Three of the four of them had profoundly furrowed brows.

It looked like all the burdens of a weary lifetime had prematurely etched their mark. I came away angered, and thinking, “So, this is the human face of poverty in Scotland!”

I just hope that whoever gets in tomorrow might pause a moment and centre their values before deciding on whom they will have to turn the heat. Jesus simply said, “Feed my people,”* and so … recall those four wee Scottish lassies, and read what is written on the foreheads, of our most hard-pressed youth today.

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 4 February 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

According to the website apocalypticmovies.com, 2010 is a bumper year with nine end-of-the-world films coming out, starting with The Road released in January.

The Road is about a father and son fleeing from some unspecified disaster. For me it was disturbing, not out of fear of apocalypse, but for how it portrays humanity - as the father elevates his gun to a fetish-like status with a dog-eat-dog stance towards others on the road.

Is this really what people are like? Or is it more a film-maker’s projection of individualistic North American gun culture?

One answer came just four days after the movie’s release as the Haiti earthquake struck. Camera teams rushed in, many expecting footage of barbarous infighting.

But that initial media angle is now being criticised. The reality, as the Disasters Emergency Committee told me yesterday, is that “The vast majority of Haitians responded with enormous dignity and patience, not fighting for food but helping one another.”

What’s more, Obama swung into action with ten thousand American military mobilised, and here in the UK we’ve so far voluntarily given sixty-seven million – more than a pound for every person in the country.

The word, apocalypse, is a theological word, with a double meaning. It means catastrophe, for sure, but also, revelation. Only when put to the test is it revealed who we are as human beings.

Right now, the vast majority of Haitians are revealing to the world just what they’re made of.

Who knows what would be revealed if a similar catastrophe were to strike Scotland, but there’s one thing of which we can be sure. Every time we act decently towards one another we strengthen resilience in our communities and with it, our capacity to cope with whatever happens.

That survival skill counts for more than any gun, and we don’t have to wait for calamity before it pays dividends.

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 28 January 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

I’ve been thinking this week about how we celebrate Robert Burns, and broadcasting to you as I am from the BBC’s studio in Govan, about that famous local philosopher, Rab C. Nesbit, who’ll be on the box again tonight.

According to his script writer, Rab’s life in this new series has changed: he’s finally had to sort himself out, and give up the bevy.

The significance hit me the other night at the Burns Supper of the GalGael Trust, a Govan-based organisation that I’m involved with. It’s best known for building and sailing traditional boats down the Clyde, but our deeper work is about people – tackling unemployment, broken lives and multiple addictions in an effort to rekindle community.

Over the years we’ve had to take on board that it’s not just some of our trainees who wrestle with alcohol. The organisation has also had to develop its policy, and we’ve changed our culture so that drink is no longer normalised at social functions.

What we have learned is that alcohol addiction isn’t something that individuals should have to deal with in isolation. It’s also a social issue for which we need to shoulder collective responsibility.

In GalGael we haven’t found that easy. A dry Burns Supper like the one we held the other night isn’t Scotland’s most intuitive claim to fame. But what many people remarked was how they didn’t feel the lack of a dram. It was really quite something as poetry and song started to pour out from folks who might otherwise have had to exclude themselves.

I’m not a teetotaller, but I do think we need more events that are safe social spaces for everyone – and not just for recovering alcoholics, but also for those who avoid drink for cultural or personal reasons.

In GalGael we’ve found you don’t need to be the proverbial “drunk man” looking at the thistle to see Scotland’s soul. But you do need that deeper solidarity with fellow humankind that Rabbie Burns was all about, and who knows, maybe Rab C. Nesbitt too.

To view a short BBC community video of the GalGael's work click here and then click "Govan" near the top

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 31 December 2009 - BBC Radio Scotland

from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, author and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

2009 will be remembered for the economic crisis, politicians’ expenses, the Afghan war and global extremes in the weather. Even the Queen’s Christmas speech suggested it might be a year, “best forgotten”.

And yet, the current wintery conditions have surprisingly had me thinking about hope, prompted by a story that my mother first told me as a boy.

Such was its impression that I still remember the spot on the road in the car from Stornoway where she told it. But recently, I was thrilled to discover its original source - thanks to a book called Wisdom of the Sadhu - about an Indian holy man, Sadhu Sundar Singh.

Born in the Punjab of a Sikh father and a Hindu mother he was additionally inspired by Islam, Buddhism and Christianity, and even preached in Protestant churches here in Scotland prior to his death eighty years ago.

Singh’s story is that once, when travelling in Tibet, he and a guide got caught in a terrible blizzard. Under bitter conditions they chanced on some poor soul who had slipped from the mountain path and was lying in snow half dead from exposure.

Wrapping him in a blanket, Singh hoisted the man over his shoulders. But the guide wasn’t up for being slowed down by passengers, and set off alone to save his own skin.

Singh struggled for hours with his burden, but eventually the snow let up enough to see a village and safety ahead. But also on the path was another body – frozen – this time, of his guide, who had failed to make it.

Singh realised that he and his companion had survived thanks to the warmth of the physical exertion, and to their sharing of body heat.

This evening, as we leave behind the old year, we too will face burdens on the path.

But as Sadhu Sundar Singh showed, the secret is to transform them in a greater vision, and practice, of becoming more fully human.

Good morning - I’ve been looking this week at the temptations of Christ, and we’ve reached the third where the Devil flies Jesus to the top of the temple and tells him to jump off.

We may live in a world that often denies the spiritual, but power denied is power abused, and spiritual abuse cuts to the marrow of the soul.

For me, these three temptations of Christ are challenges to the three pillars of community.

Turning stones to bread breaks community with the environment, abusing nature’s power.

And to misuse personal charisma breaks community with the divine, abusing spiritual power.

So what might protect us from these temptations? In many traditions the antidotes are poverty, chastity and obedience. Perhaps these loaded words need a fresh eye.

Poverty protects against the abuse of nature; not as hair-shirt self-denial, but as the rich simplicity of a full cup that doesn’t need to be overflowing.

And chastity, which mustn’t be confused with celibacy; for chaste friendship is pure friendship forged in honest empathy, whether sexual or not.

Lastly obedience. Not necessarily to any human authority, but to the calling of our own innermost soul. Like Shakespeare said, “floating … obedient to the streame.”

It’s what the Chinese call flowing with the Tao. To Hindus it’s walking in the Dharma. And to Christians it’s blowing in the wind of the Holy Spirit.

Good morning - Yesterday I reflected on the first temptation of Christ – to turn stones into bread, and so to abuse the powers of nature.

Today I want to look at the abuse of social power - Christ’s second temptation in Saint Luke’s ordering of them – and again to read the story not so much literally, but as metaphor.

So picture the scene. Here’s this young man in his early thirties who’s been fasting alone in the desert for forty days and forty nights.

Days and nights … a reminder that we wrestle with life’s deepest issues not just in the cold light of rationality, but also in the mythical depths of our unconscious.

Here’s Jesus … embodying our all-so-human vulnerability … and then as we might imagine it, with a flash and a bang and a horrible whiff of sulphur … enter the crusty old Devil.

Never mind whether he’s really got the title deeds! But he waves it all about, flaunting the temptations of political power, landed power and crushing military might.

Think what happens when an ordinary person suddenly gets extraordinary power. Where might you or I be, and how might we have stumbled but for the grace of God?

There’s a Persian proverb that behind every rich man is a devil, but behind every poor man are two.

Everybody sees the devil of another’s wealth or power. But when we’ve never been tested we’ve got both the devil we know and the one which, given half a chance, might emerge.

We all have to struggle with our demons. We all have to decide where in the great watershed questions of life we’re going to stand.

It’s rarely black and white, but in the motto of one global company: “Don’t be evil.”

Good morning - In the Bible straight after Jesus’ baptism he heads off to the desert and fasts while being tempted by “the Devil”.

It’s a problematic story to read literally. The gospels don’t even agree on the ordering of the temptations. But read as poetic truth some very deep insights open up.

Here we have the metaphorical “Devil” – a word coming from the Greek, diabolos, like a juggler’s diabolo where a burning spinning disk gets tossed up and down and from side to side.

That’s the deeper meaning of diabolos - throwing something out across the path of another person’s life - traducing them; tripping them up with deception, slander and lies.

So here’s the Devil trying to trip Jesus up … and to turn stones into bread is such a benign and childlike suggestion …

Yet think of its power in a hungry world: precisely the power of industrial agriculture, in which rocks with their minerals, and coal and oil, drive intensive food production.

On the one hand such technology can be seen as a blessing. It’s enabled nearly seven billion people to inhabit this planet.

On the other hand, it’s easy to lose sight of the limits, and so allow wider consumerism to drive climate change - with consequences potentially nothing short of diabolical.

That’s why the United Nations will meet in Copenhagen next week to see what can be done.

… Help us to see that this crisis runs deeper than what politics, economics and technology alone can fix: that it’s a spiritual crisis too - one of right relationship to the powers of nature.

… Help us also to hallow science … where its gifts are used to serve the Earth, and not just to make a killing.

Good morning - People often ask what spirituality is, and how do you open up to it.

One response comes from a medieval mystic called Richard of Saint Victor. For him, spirituality was less about imposing belief systems on the world and more about an ever-deepening direct perception of reality.

He suggested that we have three eyes. The eye of the flesh reveals the physical world. The eye of reason lets us see sense. And then there’s the eye of the soul.

That eye is like the other two. If we don’t use it, if we don’t look … then we won’t see.

But how is the eye of the soul opened? That’s what the spiritual practices of many different paths are about.

I have a morning contemplation that I try to follow when waking up at this early hour.

In my mind’s eye, I’ll slowly scan up and down my body, becoming present to every physical sensation and especially to observing inner pools of emotion.

I’ll then shift attention to the coming day’s activity. I’ll gently look at what’s needing done, and see what’s most calling out for attention. And sometimes it’s at odds with my carefully planned “To Do” list.

Lastly I’ll observe how my life’s being held in the greater life of this world, and open out to just a few of the people, organisations and issues that I in turn help to hold.

And perhaps I’ll hear the Pakistani neighbour scraping off the ice, starting up his grocer’s van and setting off in service to the community.

And I’ll silently wish him safety, and respect, and in his Islamic custom, “As-Salāmu `Alaykum”.

Good morning - Today’s the day of Andrew – the patron saint of Scotland. But for some people – men and children, but I’m thinking especially of women - it won’t be a happy day to wake up to.

It will be a day of nursing last night’s wounds, and in many ways, domestic violence is the most confusing type of assault, because it comes from those supposed to love you.

In the Bible he was the first-called of the disciples. He introduced visiting Greeks to Jesus and the lad with the loaves and fishes, but otherwise he doesn’t do much.

To appreciate how our distant forebears shaped the making of the saint we have to go back to very early Christian writings - like The Acts of Andrew.

These tell how he became the spiritual teacher of Maximilla, wife of the Roman proconsul, Aegeates. She confided how every night her husband came home drunk and forced himself upon her.

Andrew – whose name means “manliness” – encouraged her to treat this with zero tolerance.

Aegeates had him flogged, specially tied to an X-shaped cross to prolong the agony, and crucified at Patras.

Here domestic violence links to the ugliness of empire and strikes out far beyond the home. It profoundly distorts a person’s sense of what’s normal and acceptable.

Recently I listened to a hard-pressed mother telling Scotland’s Poverty Truth Commission how she’d gone from an abusive father to a violent husband. She said, “I was never going to marry anyone who’d be nice to me, because I’d never known anything nice.”

Good morning - Tomorrow is Advent Sunday in the Christian cycle of marking out the year.

When I was small it meant only one thing – the Advent calendars that my granny would send to me and my sister.

You know what I mean… little windows to open each day in the countdown to Christmas, with a big one at the end that contained a square of chocolate.

By that time, of course, Santa was loading up his sledge, and you’d shortly have enough chocolate to last a week.

And in my child’s mind there was no question who came up trumps between Jesus Christ and Father Christmas. Santa was the man who delivered!

You wrote your letter, sent it up the chimney, and the goodies turned up … just in time.

I can still remember the tinge of sadness after starting school when the whispering campaign began, and the magic turned to potato peelings and ashes.

And I kind of sensed that the faerie on the Christmas tree, and gentle Jesus meek and mild might slide the same way too. It was a hardening world.

It took until my own children came along to rehabilitate Father Christmas. The old magic came alive again and I saw that this wasn’t about a literal truth. It was part of the spirit of generosity that is Christmas; the magic of story that goes beyond words.

Over the years I’ve also come to rethink prayer like this. We might be Christians, Buddhists, Jews or people of goodwill with no particular faith.

But there’s something beyond literal truth that maybe starts with words and child-like images, but which points us to the infinite…

I was surprised how pleased I was this week to learn that Holyrood’s Justice Committee has agreed to investigate the display of soft pornography on newsagent stands.

Surprised, because I’m deeply grateful for having been a child of the sixties when at last, sex was liberated from the straitjacket of the upright and uptight.

As the poet Philip Larkin famously said, “Sexual intercourse began in 1963 (which was rather late for me) - Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP” – and that was followed over the next decade by books like “The Joy of Sex”, which completed many of our educations!

So, why do I feel affronted when, like yesterday, I went into a railway newsagent to see a daily paper in full view - its front page showing a young woman in underwear, bent over in the most provocative posture? I asked the sales manager. He said the female staff especially don’t like it, but it’s company policy.

This week happens to be Quaker Awareness Week, so let me tell you how Quakers saw it back when the sexual revolution was in full swing. They recognised that sex can be destructive or creative, but which way round is determined by the principle that: “No relationship can be a right one which makes use of another person through selfish desires.”

And there’s the nub, because sex is about physical sensation, but to fulfil it joyfully, and creatively, it must mutually give expression to the heart. And that’s what’s lacking from pornography, because it uses people for money.

That’s why I welcome Holyrood’s cross party investigation of what gets to be normalised on our newsstands. This is about much more than just what children happen to see. This is about so-called “adult” material that degrades sex itself. It’s about our humanity, because that’s what pornography defiles.

It’s a year ago today since our banking systems were very nearly engulfed following the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in America. And I bet I’m not alone in wondering what if our own government’s financial bail-out had not happened and succeeded.

Not only might the hole-in-the-wall have stopped talking to us. But our globalised food supply system could also have been thrown into chaos, because without the banks doing their bit you don’t get the deliveries coming through.

I’ve thought a lot about this recently while working with an Edinburgh University student seconded to my supervision.* She went up to Stornoway and interviewed people about what happens when the Ullapool ferry fails to sail because of bad weather.

She learned that the supermarket shelves quickly go bare, and it’s not just panic buying. It’s also because restocking is on a just-in-time basis, and so there’s no slack to make up for any disruption in the system.

For the sake of comparison she then went on to interview people who could remember the six week long seamen’s strike in 1966, that forced Harold Wilson to declare a national state of emergency.

Most people said they’d avoided hardship because crofting was still vibrant. They had their own potatoes, hens, sheep, and maybe a cow for milk or a fishing boat moored in the loch. But above all, they had an ethos of sharing.

This gave the local economy the resilience by which it could stand up to knocks. But in contrast, today we have greater efficiency, but it’s also a more brittle system – like the banking crisis could very nearly have taught us.

The lesson is that economic efficiency is vital, but only if matched by the community resilience that makes for true security.

That’s why such principles as Fair Trade, farmers’ markets and local entrepreneurship are all so important.

They remind us that the economy should be not just about money, but also about the human handshakes that reflect right relationships … for they’re what counts when the ferry fails to sail.

* - She is Lauren Ashley Eden, a Canadian student of Ecological Economics at the University of Edinburgh. Her master's thesis submitted in September 2009 is entitled: When the Ship Doesn’t Sail: Measuring Socioeconomic Resilience on the Isle of Lewis.

It’s been a washout summer for most. Dumfries and Galloway saw its wettest August on record and last week’s floods have left Moray Council with a five million pound mop-up bill.

Science doesn’t have the certainty with which to blame one-off events like these on climate change, but it does say that the finger increasingly points that way. Scotland as a whole is now 20% wetter than it was fifty years ago.

People say, “But we thought climate change meant warmer weather, in which case, bring it on!”

But it doesn’t work quite like that. When you heat up the Atlantic Ocean, it’s like turning up a saucepan on the stove. More water evaporates, and when the clouds hit Scotland, they burst with a vengeance.

That’s why our MSPs have voted unanimously to try and cut the carbon-based greenhouse gases that drive the problem.

But tackling it needs a wide-ranging approach, perhaps what we might call “3Cs and an S”.

Second, consumption must fall, because manufactured goods embody greenhouse gases.

And thirdly, conception; so that every child that comes into the world is not only wanted for its own sake, but has parents supported to give time and love that far outlasts the fleeting substitute of consumerism.

But to make progress on these 3Cs – on carbon, consumption and conception – we also need an S. We need spirituality.

That means deepening our inner connection, so that we touch the fire of what it is that truly gives life. In a troubled world it means more than just politics, economics and technology, but a deepening of our humanity. For come-what-may in the come-to-pass, we must build that resilience into our lives and communities.

And so, not just the 3Cs, but an S as well. It won’t compound false optimism, but it does hint at hope.

I’ve just finished reviewing a most beautifully produced volume from a small Stornoway publisher.* It’s about the “Norse” mills of Lewis. The ruins of these stone-built corn mills are all around. You see them lining the banks of streams from where they drew water power to grind the oats and barley that were once the mainstay of a self-sufficient way of life.

But those days were numbered. During the 18th century landowners auctioned off the rights to build commercially-run mills. Their owners were empowered to break village millstones and thereby force people into a market economy.

I thought about this when I heard Tuesday’s news that CalMac, the state-owned ferry company, had suddenly announced Sunday sailings to Stornoway as from this weekend.

To traditionalists this disables the Hebridean Sabbath’s function as a community blessing. It breaks it like a millstone beneath the hammer of progress.

If such change was clearly the settled will of the community, then so be it. But at present the question is very far from settled. The local authority is strongly opposed to the sailings, though some councillors are probably divided between their private views and political necessity. And amongst island opinion generally, there are many with principled positions on both sides, and for that matter, each side can count both secular and religious supporters.

As the Mills of God grind slowly on, one thing for the record is sure. It has never been the island’s clearly expressed wish that this ancient stone be broken.

Far from being a quaint Hebridean custom, it touches on something we maybe all need....

… for the rhythm of the working week to be punctuated by a time of togetherness.

And in that stilling of the world’s outer clamour, a space to listen within. For how else can we ever hope to hear the Spirit’s voice?

I’ve just come back from a 12 day walk in the Hebrides – what I jokingly called a “poacher’s pilgrimage” on account of the fishing rod with which I traversed mountain passes and remote glens.

The less said about the fishing the better, but I had a rich time exploring ancient sheilings on the moors, drinking from long-since venerated wells, and pausing at both pre-Reformation and modern Presbyterian centres of worship that stretch from the southern tip of Harris to the Butt of Lewis.

Friend and stranger alike invited me into their homes. Never would I leave without a full belly or a newly laid clutch of eggs. Not having seen the newspapers I’d ask what was fresh. The General Assembly was dominating national news, but the burning local issue was the renewed threat of Sabbath ferry sailings to Stornoway.

While opinions are sharply divided, a great many people, including the local authority, are staunchly opposed. It’s a marker of cultural identity as well as a religious issue; one that ought not to be imposed from afar, but decided through the settled will of the local community.

Personally I’m not a rigid Sabbatarian, yet having been raised on Lewis I do find myself touched by some of what radiates from the Hebridean lighthouse. As a self-employed writer and academic I’ve got choice over my use of time. But the concern on Lewis is for the impact that delivery lorry and tourist arrivals would have on low paid service workers. For these, not having to work on Sundays is a form of employment protection that safeguards family and community life.

We live in strange times, and since the credit crunch meltdown many are starting to question the 24/7 hubris of economic life. And so, who knows. Could it be that the Hebridean Sabbath is actually a treasure of cultural diversity that Scotland should cherish?

Maybe there’s a baby in that bathwater at risk of being thrown out – and He’s not just looking back, but pointing forwards.

As we take stock of the mind-boggling sums being spent on bailing out the nation’s economy, many must be wondering who’s going to pay. Will it be those who stuffed their pockets in the boomtime years? Or might the axe fall cruelly on the poor?

That question will be with me this evening when I go to an event in Easterhouse in Glasgow. An old friend, the poverty campaigner Cathy McCormack, is launching her autobiography. It’s called “The Wee Yellow Butterfly,”* and the title refers to how she once broke down in a community workshop.

She’d been told to imagine being a caterpillar, transforming into a butterfly. But Cathy thought: “Butterfly? What chance had I to become a butterfly?”

She’d spent twenty years fighting official indifference about damp and mould-ridden housing in her community. But finally her work achieved recognition and she was sent on a fact-finding visit to Nicaragua.

It was here that she became inspired by liberation theology, including the idea that God is on the side of the poor – but God has been misrepresented by the rich to keep the poor down - while the wealth gets creamed off.

We’re talking here of Biblical passages about which few sermons are preached, like in Luke 6, where Jesus says: “Woe to you who are rich … for you have had your comfort.” Or as Islam also puts it: “He who eats and drinks whilst his brother goes hungry is not one of us.”**

But far from writing off the rich, liberation theology is also about their humanity … found by entering into solidarity with the poor. As Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian father of the movement who spoke in Stirling in 1995 has said: “to liberate” means, to give life.

I’ve just read a remarkable new report with the challenging heading of Prosperity Without Growth?. It’s on the website of the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission and argues that more and more economic expansion cannot fix the problems of the world.

According to the economists who wrote it, ‘The myth of growth has failed us.’ Instead of cultivating human qualities like trust, love, and community, we’ve tried to buy the stairway to Heaven. Consumerism’s therefore at the cutting edge of both the short-term credit crunch and the long-term crunch of climate change.

The world economy would need to expand by fifteen times for everybody to catch up on our level of materialism by 2050. But the Earth already can’t afford the profligacy of the rich, so what can we do? And how can the poor at home and abroad get their fair share?

That’s where this week saw heart-warming inspiration from Provost Bill Howatson of Aberdeenshire Council. Instead of choosing to be driven on official duties in a Jaguar, a Bentley, or a Daimler, he’s opted for a fifty-five-miles-to-the-gallon Skoda.

Asked if the status loss bothered him, he replied that he was, “pleased to be seen in an environmentally friendly car that will be more economical to run and cheaper to purchase. It reflects the vision of the council.”

And there’s the nub. A Biblical proverb reminds us that, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The vision needed to tackle consumerism is voluntary simplicity like that taken on here by Provost Howatson.

What’s needed now is a mindset shift for us all. We need to drop our admiration of the grandiose and maybe even quietly start seeing fancy status symbols as badges of shame and insecurity.

The Prosperity Without Growth? report calls for “underlying human values” and a seeking of “the common good”. When I get to see the Aberdeenshire provost’s new car, that’s what I’ll be admiring.

Yesterday vandals attacked the home of Sir Fred Goodwin, former boss of the Royal Bank and meanwhile, caught in an economic tidal wave, the Dunfermline Building Society is having to reach out for a government lifeline.

These two institutions have a different basis. The Royal Bank exists to maximise profit for shareholders. The Dunfermline, on the other hand, is a mutual society. It seeks no profit beyond running costs to link up savers and borrowers.

Put like that it’s easy to point the finger at banks like the Royal and Fred the Shred for having played casino with our money. But let’s remember, most people never questioned matters when their house prices and pension portfolios kept rising. Silence was the voice of complicity.

Money works only if we have confidence in it. That word, confidence, comes from the Latin, con-fidere, meaning “to have faith together.” The canonisation of greed undermines that faith. It worships a false god that ultimately betrays our society.

All three of the Abrahamic religions accept money’s primary role of being an IOU system, but they challenge its secondary role of making money out of money by charging compound interest. Today usury usually means excessive interest, but originally it meant any form of return that insulated the lender from the welfare of the borrower.

Jewish law banned usury within its own community. Jesus urged lending without the expectation of getting a return. And Islam condemns the charging of interest because, in the words of the Qu’ran, it “devour[s] men’s substance wrongfully.” *

Next month the G20 leaders of the world meet in London. Will they simply re-spin the casino economy’s roulette wheel? Or might they consider a more mutualist basis for wellbeing? We shall be watching, for where a politician’s heart is, so our money follows.

* Scriptural references: Exodus 22:25; Luke 6:35; Qu’ran 4:161. For background on the history of usury prohibition see my paper with Wayne Visser here.

This month has been a critical one in the history of our nation, one that historians will look back on as a cultural watershed.

Our faith in money has been shaken and earlier this week Gordon Brown promised a “central mission” of doing “whatever it takes” to spend a way out of the economic black hole.

At the same time and almost lost amongst the economic headlines, the UK Government took a courageous step towards tackling dangerous climate change. It now matches Scotland’s aspiration by having raised from 60 percent to 80 percent the target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.

But setting targets is the easy bit; achieving them is harder. And there’s the rub. Both the economic bubble now bursting and global warming have one driver in common: consumerism. Our conundrum is that we need more consumption to save the economy, but less to save the planet.

Spending our way out of a recession is therefore only a stop-gap measure. It’s methadone for our planetary heroin addiction.

We simply feed the habit if we think that today’s problems can be tackled at conventional political, technical or economic levels. If we’re redefining our “central mission”, we must press further.

Technical fixes are certainly part of the solution. But I’d put it to you that the deep work must be this: to learn to live more abundantly with less, to rekindle community, and to serve fundamental human need instead of worshiping at the altars of greed.

The crisis of these times is therefore spiritual. It calls for reconnecting our inner lives with the outer world - an expansion of consciousness. And that’s an opportunity that we neglect at our peril, for as I once heard an old Quaker woman say, “It is perilous, to neglect one’s spiritual life.”

It’s the time of year when school leavers are thinking what to make of their exam results. Yesterday when buying my morning paper I was talking to a young Scot whose parents came here from Pakistan and who’s presently wondering how best he can serve the family business. Is it by helping his Dad from behind the counter, or should he go and study accountancy so that he can also do the books?

You know what it’s like at that age. It’s hard to see the wider of picture of what your life might become. Mick Jagger once said he’d sooner die than still be playing Satisfaction at forty, but for many of us, the Great Cosmic Conveyer Belt of life long since passed forty and still hasn’t run into the buffers.

That’s when you start weighing up where you’re now at in relation to how you saw yourself away back then.

And that’s also what I find so interesting about obituaries in the newspapers. A good obituary lets you see somebody’s life as a completed work of art.

Although I live within hearing distance of Ibrox, I happen to have no interest whatsoever in football. And yet when I read my paper yesterday I delighted in an obituary for Bob Crampsey, described as “a gentleman, a scholar … and a Scottish footballing legend.”

Here was a man who had quite clearly become a priceless work of Scottish art. Here was a role model whose life combined not just a passion for sport, but also wide-ranging learning, and the qualities of a thoroughly decent human being.

You know, I don’t believe that success in life is about what you possess or how much you earn. But I do think it’s about making choices that allow the unfolding of all-round potential. That’s what a good Scots education has always aspired towards, that’s the richer meaning of wealth, and at the end that’s what allows others to look back and give thanks … for a life fulfilled.

Summertime is here, and with it the season of weddings. Scotland is one of just six countries where humanist weddings are legally recognised, and figures just out show that these were up by sixty four percent to seven hundred and ten last year.

Most humanists believe that rationality should be the factor that determines our human affairs. As such, they say that we don’t need spirituality, and we can do most decisively without “God”!

Marriage poses fundamental questions about what it really means to be in profound relationship with another human being. You may, like Bertrand Russell, think we’re no more than what he called, “the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms” … here today and gone tomorrow.

But what grabs me more is all those songs about true love being “forever and a day”, or, as Rabbie Burns put it, lasting “till a’ the seas gang dry … and the rocks melt wi’ the sun!”

These hint that we’re only partly of the material world. Our greater selves connect beyond space and time, uniting us as members one of another, like the branches of a tree sprung from a taproot in eternity.

And so, while I’m glad that Scotland can honour the rich diversity that includes humanism, I’d also want to say that, for me, there’s been times when God, or whatever name we want to call it by, has shone out like a shaft of light through dark clouds.

That leaves me wondering if the poets might have got it right. It raises the possibility that marriage is not just about working things through in the material world. One foot for sure belongs in the here and now. But I believe the other foot reaches out to the source of our deepest longing, and that’s the point where love meets eternity.

Thought for the Day – 0723 30 June 2008 - BBC Radio Scotland

A report from Scottish Widows that was in the news yesterday reveals that a third of us are not paying sufficient into pension schemes for a comfortable life after work.

Those saving enough are – wait for it – most likely to be male, over 50, and earning at least thirty thousand.

Ever since Thatcherism upped the ante in privatising the provision for old age I’ve found something profoundly disturbing about this idea that we can buy future security by placing faith in Mammon – the god of money.

I happen to have a financial MBA so I know it’s all very logical. And we nearly all dabble in it to varying degrees. And when it’s just the way the world’s gone, there may not seem to be much choice.

But ultimately we have to ask how best to provide for our security in old age. Do we all have our own little stash hoarded away? Or do we try to build a social community that accepts being our neighbour’s keeper?

Why can’t those of us working now simply pay enough tax to support the present generation of pensioners and then be looked after in our turn? Why not cut out much of the bloated financial system? Do we really trust it more than we trust one another?

After all, money is simply the power to take a bigger slice of the common cake. Globally it’s not going to protect us from energy shortages or climate change driving up food prices.

Long ago a crazy man called John the Baptist said, “Whoever has two shirts must share with who has none, and anyone who has food must do the same.”

And John’s best friend warned against seeking security in gold and possessions. Both men placed their investments in the community. And as far as we know, that best friend, whose name was Jesus, never saved … in a bank.

On Monday a major report was published on the future of Scottish crofting. Yesterday Mike Russell, the environment minister, said that “radical change is needed to reverse years of decline,” and happily this seems to be a cross-party consensus.

When I leave this studio shortly I’ll be jumping on a train to Inverness where, this afternoon, the Scottish Crofting Foundation and the University of the Highlands and Islands will be taking matters further. They’ll be asking whether crofters merit the same special cultural status as indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world.

That actually raises a question about the identities of all Scots. What kind of a people are we, and what values signify who we are?

Now, I have to travel a lot in my work, and regular listeners may remember that last week it meant presenting Thought for the Day from Belfast. I don’t know what it sounded like at your end, but I can tell you, I wasn’t at my best!

The previous evening I’d left my Filofax in the Wetherspoons Bar at Glasgow airport. It had nearly a hundred pounds, credit cards, driving licence, and my diary.

As you might imagine, I didn’t sleep too well that night, and I could have done without having to set off for the BBC studio at the crack of dawn.

But to my relief once back at Glasgow Airport’s lost property office, I found that an honest waiter had done the decent thing. And I asked the woman behind the desk how often such valuables are recovered.

“Oh you’d be amazed,” she told me. “Nearly everything gets handed in. There’s a lot more honest people out there than you’d imagine.”

And so, back to this afternoon’s crofting seminar and the question: What kind of a people are we, and what values do we hold in common?

It’s easy to open the newspapers and to think that society’s gone to the dogs. But I can tell you, when I got my Filofax back and learned that such honesty is “normal,” I felt proud of the values of the Scottish people.

I’m talking today from the BBC’s Belfast studio. I’m here to discuss climate change, and whether religion can help to tackle it.

Later this morning a cross-section of faith leaders will be sitting down at the invitation of Friends of the Earth in Northern Ireland.

Even as they gather, the official death toll from the cyclone in Burma will be rising by the hour. Over 22,000 are now confirmed dead and the British Ambassador estimates that the final figure may be nearer 50,000.

We must be careful not to suggest that the Burmese tragedy was caused by climate change. Natural disasters always happen. But most informed scientists believe that extreme weather events are likely to get more frequent because of global warming. It’s the same as heating a saucepan – the more you turn it up, the more it blows off steam and boils over.

So what can the world’s religions do about this? I’ll tell you what I’ll be saying this morning.

Most experts consider that global warming is mainly caused by human impact on the environment.

The relatively rich trash the planet, and the poor, living in vulnerable places, are most likely to suffer the consequences.

That makes climate an ethical issue, which is why it’s relevant to religion. You see, human impact on the Earth is driven not just by necessary consumption, but also, by unnecessary consumerism.

The power of marketing has misled many people into thinking that fulfilment comes not from who we are, but from what we have.

In religious language, that’s idolatry. It pulls us away from life’s chief end and fobs us off with things that can never last.

That’s what makes climate change a spiritual issue. We need to balance our outer lives with a rekindled inner life.

It’s not just the outer climate that needs attention - it’s the inner one too.

Thought for the Day – 0723 17 Mar 2008 - BBC Radio Scotland

There’s been a lot recently about Road Equivalent Tariffs that will further subsidise ferries to the Outer Hebrides. I think it’s wonderful, but it’s expensive, and therefore raises an old question about give and take between Scotland’s urban centre and its rural periphery.

One answer to the question struck me last September. I was at the John Lennon Northern Lights festival in Durness – Scotland’s most northerly village - where Lennon used to spend family holidays.

In a field by the hotel where the bands were playing there was an old crofter was making stooks from his harvest of oats. I watched as loads of people stopped and he generously gave them all the time of day.

I too paused with a question. Did he think that the ‘improved’ modern strains are as hardy as the oats we traditionally grew?

“Not at all,” he replied. “Most modern varieties are bred in the South. But we used to bring our seed down from Orkney. That way it worked for our conditions.”

And then he added something. He said: “We used to say, the seed must move from North to South.”

I walked away feeling like I’d just been given ‘The Parable of the Northern Seed’!

It’s true - the economic powerhouse of the Central Belt does subsidise remote parts of rural Scotland.

But then you look at all those visitors, mainly from the South, and you see that, like John Lennon, they go back uplifted by the spirit of the place they’ve been to.

As such, the hidden exports of remote areas – whether in the North or elsewhere - are cultural and spiritual qualities. Alongside economic wealth, these are what provide social cohesion and a welcome to the stranger. These are what bind us as nation where the things that count are more than just what can be counted. And that, it seems to me, is the Parable of the Northern Seed.

In Aberdeen tomorrow there’s going to be a gathering of some fifty organisations concerned about the state of Scotland’s fishing communities. Fishing means a lot to me. When I was a boy on Lewis, the old men would take us out in their boats. We’d let down hand lines baited with mussels and usually pull in a good haul of ‘haddies’ and whiting. As we shared them out in the village we learned the meaning of community. It was a well-mentored rite of passage for us young men into the responsibilities of adult life.

But much of that came to an end in the 1970s. Technical developments and political trade-offs changed fishing from a way of life to a capital intensive industry. The resource was steadily ruined and fishing communities died from within.

Tomorrow’s conference has been organised by the Economic and Social Research Council. It aims to help the Scottish Government explore ways of re-kindling fishing communities. Past polices have treated fishing just like any other industry. But it’s not just another industry. It’s a whole way of life based on the relationship between people and a wild natural resource. It’s about community in the fullest sense because it integrates marine biology with economics, culture and even spirituality. Fishing teaches us that everything is interconnected. You can’t pull on just one loop of a tangled hand line without finding it joined to all the other loops.

The Aberdeen conference will report back to St Andrew’s House. The outer doors of that building bear an inscription. It says, “And I will make you fishers of men.” And there’s the answer to saving Scotland’s fishing communities. It needs to be about people, and their being empowered to take responsibility for their own resources. In other words, it’s like land reform, but for the sea.

(Information on the ESRC and Scottish Government conference, Change and Continuity in Scotland's Fishing Communities and the conference papers (posted from Tue 11th March) can be found via this link.)

It must have been disturbing for people on that Air Canada flight to Heathrow this week when the co-pilot had to be restrained by his colleagues and forced off the flight deck while yelling out that he wanted to … ‘talk to God.’ Apparently he’s now in a psychiatric hospital with his wife looking after him, and the airline has responded in a very level-headed way, saying that: ‘The captain and crew followed correct operational procedures when the co-pilot fell ill.’

Well that’s all very reassuring, but the story raises wider questions about religion, questions that account for the fervid headlines in many of the hundred and eighty three newspaper reports of what happened that can be found on the internet. You can just imagine Professor Richard Dawkins rubbing his hands at yet another crazy case study of what he calls ‘the God delusion.’ And it was the philosopher Bertrand Russell who said that, from a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who drinks much and sees snakes, and the one who eats little, and sees God.

Indeed, God gets a bad press, and there’s maybe a good reason for that. As I once heard a priest say, ‘God gets what man rejects.’ God gets the poor, the broken, the lonely hearts and the mentally ill. None of that belittles the seriousness of what happened on Air Canada Flight 848. But it does raise the consideration that if people are at their wits end, then maybe it’s not surprising if they issue the Mayday call of last recourse and send out an S.O.S. to the ground of their deepest being.

This morning a Canadian airline pilot is under recovery, and God, yet again, is back in the dock. What’s your verdict going to be? Are you going to condemn God? Or will you, like God, send out your heart in solidarity with those who suffer?

The BBC website has a page that tells you which news stories get the most hits, and top of the league on Tuesday was one with the heading, “‘Cruel’ taxi fare dodger hunted.”

Seemingly a guy with a Scottish accent had got into a Newcastle cab and gone all the way to central Scotland. It was the festive season and the driver trusted the customer’s sob story that he’d be able to get the £200 fare on arrival, but instead the man ran off.

As Inspector Paul Fleming of Central Scotland Police said: “This was a cruel act to play on somebody who was trying to make an honest living and who is now considerably out of pocket.”

As cruel acts go it’s hardly in the bigtime league. It was a commonplace con, yet it sparked many people’s indignation. It certainly did so mine, and for two reasons.

First, as Inspector Fleming said: it’s the meanness of cheating a person who serves society through an honest job. But on top of that, here we are in Burns Week. We’re celebrating Scotland’s generosity of spirit and somebody amongst our number has given a trusting English cabbie cause to think the worst of us!

It damages the reputation of the Scottish people, and as Robert Burns said in his Paraphrase of the First Psalm:

Well, it’s no good just moaning about insults to the national dignity but whenever I hear a story like this it really rankles me. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I get a modest fee for presenting Thought for the Day. It’s only a fraction of the unpaid taxi fare, but today that’s being offered to the cheated driver from Newcastle. It might at least buy him a good dram when he comes off duty … and may the spirit of Robert Burns endure, for with it Scotland is truly blest.

Well, the long dark nights have arrived, and as nature settles to rest so we, too, have the opportunity to shift from outer busyness and rekindle our inner lives.

Our ancient forebears held their bardic schools and ceilidhs during winter. They knew that poetry and music inspires the people and renews the community. That’s why I’m thrilled that Scotland is to mark the next two months as a Winter Festival. It starts this Friday on St Andrew’s Day and finishes with “Burns season at the end of January” – which, of course, brings it up to St Bride’s or Brigid’s Eve, and the symbolism of returning light with spring’s new hope.

When announcing the Winter Festival, First Minister, Alex Salmond, spoke of St Andrew’s Day as “a chance to enjoy the multi-cultural Scotland we have become.”

So what does St Andrew stand for? If we accept the Biblical version, he must have been into welfare, for he played a pivotal role in feeding the five thousand. He also arranged for visiting “Greeks” to meet with Jesus, which suggests interfaith dialogue.

The idea that Andrew died on an X-shaped cross comes from early Christian traditions. These say he was put to death for persuading Roman soldiers to disarm, and for helping a woman to say “no” to repeated sexual exploitation by her drunken husband.

We can dismiss these stories, but if we do, we lose the spiritual importance that Andrew, the “fisher of men,” still holds for a modern nation. For me, his Saltire symbolises the sharing of plenty, welcome to the stranger, nonviolence, the rights of women … and now, dare I say it, the start of a Winter Festival that squeezes every last drop out of Rabbie Burns’ revelry until St Bride returns the light of spring in the turning of the seasons once again.

24. Thought for the Day - 0720 Tue 30 Oct 2007 - BBC Radio Scotland

This Thought can be listened to at this link. And to hear a Sally Magnusson BBC Radio Scotland interview with Ewen from 7-10-07 click here.

Good Morning ... The continuing crisis in Burma has dropped off our front pages recently, but the protests seem to have had some effect. In a remarkable development last week, Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader, was shown on state television meeting with a government minister. This Thursday the City of Glasgow is expected to confer its freedom upon her, but individuals have also strikingly expressed their solidarity.

A month ago I was contacted by an Edinburgh teacher by the name of Ewen Hardie. He’s a former student of mine and he’d been shaken by the events unfolding in Burma. Ever since I’ve know Ewan he’d worn dreadlocks. But now, as an act of witness in solidarity with the monks, he’d shaved them off. What’s more, he’d discarded his shoes, and pledged to carry on bald and barefoot until it either threatens his health or democracy comes to Burma.

Last week the story was picked up on by an Edinburgh newspaper. It has one of those websites where readers post their comments. Some people dismissed Ewen’s protest as “completely pointless” - “a disgrace” that sets “a very bad example … to the youngsters” at his school. The youngsters themselves seemed to think otherwise, and somebody drew parallels with Gandhi, pointing out that “personal sacrifice lies at the heart of all successful civil rights campaigns.”

But most telling of all was a response in broken English by Aung Naing - a Burmese refugee in Sydney who suffered under the dictatorship.

He said, “I would like to mention my great thanks to Mr Hardie on behalf of Burmese pro-democracy ordinary people, regardless of how long he can hold his pledge…. It impacts a great support to the people who are … imprisoned and tortured in this moment.”

Violence works by torture, fear and killing. But nonviolence is the power of love that comes from courage in the heart. We might dismiss the monks in Burma, Ewen Hardie in Edinburgh and even the city councillors of Glasgow as hopeless dreamers. But if we do, it is the spiritual power of witness in solidarity that we dismiss, and without that, there would be no hope for freedom.

Good Morning … and if I might try saying it in the Gaelic, madainn mhath … because my attention was caught this week by a story from the Isle of Lewis - about something that used to be totally ordinary: a mobile grocery shop.

It seems that after 44 years on the road, Murdo and Norman Macleod have finally decided to retire from rising early every morning to take essential supplies round the villages.

And essential they certainly were! There were several such vans in business when I was a boy growing up in Lewis, and I well remember the excitement when one would stop near Leurbost School, and we’d all run out for penny toffees and gobstoppers.

We’d fidget in the queue as the driver made sure that every housewife wanting tea or bacon, and every old bodach after his tin of tobacco, was properly given the time of day in passing on the island’s news.

This was no depersonalised retail therapy of mass consumerism. Instead, these grocery vans embodied the flesh and blood relationships of real people in a real place who knew the secret of finding happiness in service to one another.

That’s why the retiring van driver, Norman Macleod, could say this week that he’d loved his work, and had a great relationship with his customers because, as he told the press, “they are the greatest people on Earth.”

We live in an era of brash celebrity where bigger is better. The arts of marketing may fill our lives with things, but they can never give us one another.

What so touched me in this Parable of the Grocer’s Van was the honest-to-God dignity of ordinary people doing ordinary jobs but with an extraordinary attitude. That’s what transforms the commonplace. And that’s the love that infuses the sacred into everyday life.

The prophet Micah said this doesn’t take rocket science. “Here is what the Lord would require of you,” he said: “to act justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”.

22. Thought for the Day - 0720 Fri 20 July 2007 - BBC Radio Scotland

There’s a passage near the end of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina where the hero, Levin, meets a peasant who contrasts two different types of men.

One type “just stuffs his belly” and “lives for his own needs”. The other “lives for the soul” because, the peasant says, he “remembers God.”

“Everybody knows how -” replies the peasant. “By the truth, by God’s way.”

And as Levin takes his leave the peasant’s words grow on him. He senses that this honest insistence on truth challenges worldly wisdom. The reasoning powers of the world are often proud and even stupid precisely because they render truth negotiable.

This past week the BBC launched an inquiry into fake phone-in competition results. The director-general said something very interesting. He said, “A group of people has taken it upon themselves to keep the programme on the air by what they might have regarded at the time as a white lie” – and he went on to condemn such behaviour as totally unacceptable.

Yet, it’s not difficult to understand how easy it must have been for hard-pressed staff to take short cuts. We all live in a society where so-called “little white lies” often lubricate social reality. Lying is almost normalised, as when the secretary says that the boss is “out” when they’re simply busy. And yet, each little white lie distorts the surrounding social fabric. That’s the problem - the “little” is deceptive because it panders to a fear of telling the truth.

The stushie at the BBC is bigger than just the misdeeds of a few employees or sub-contractors. It’s about us - all of us - and the world we live in. Maybe every one of us who has told white lies needs to own a share in the BBC’s embarrassment. Compromising truth is a slippery slope. As Tolstoy’s Levin discovered, there is no alternative; none, but “living for the soul, by the truth.”

21. Thought for the Day - 0725 Tues 12 June 2007 - BBC Radio Scotland

In a couple of minutes I’ll be leaving Glasgow and heading North for celebrations on the Isle of Eigg. It’s exactly a decade since seven generations of landlordism there came to an end. Ten thousand donations from around the world brought the island into community ownership, and a sea change rolled in to Scotland.

I vividly remember how a journalist asked a farmer’s wife what it felt like. “Yesterday,” she replied, “I had a house, but today, I have a home.”

And for me, that sums up the importance of Scotland’s land reform. It deepens people’s sense of belonging. It gives folks something to take responsibility for, and that stimulates businesses, social housing and nature conservation – all of which strengthen a sense of community of place.

Ten years ago in a marquee symbolically pitched on the ex-laird’s tennis court, Brian Wilson, then an MP, got up and declared “game set and match to the people of Eigg!” He also announced setting up the Community Land Unit within Highlands and Islands Enterprise. So far this has helped over 150 communities to bring a third of a million acres under their control – and that’s an amazing two percent of the entire Scottish land mass!

But as Eigg celebrates, let’s also remember Scotland’s pioneering Victorian land reformers – Mary MacPherson, John Murdoch and the Reverend Donald MacCallum - to name but three.

They understood that land is about more than just agriculture or economics. It’s also a bond that is psychological, cultural and even spiritual. As the Bible puts it, “The profit of the Earth is for all,” and as Dougie Maclean sings, “You cannot own the land; the land owns you.”*

That’s the historical character of Scotland’s land reform, and I do believe we need that spiritual depth just as much for the future - or else, quite literally, we’d risk - losing the plot.

[* Ecclesiastes 5:9 in the King James (Authorised) Version; Dougie MacLean, Solid Ground]

I’m sure that all of us have felt haunted this past month at what Kate and Gerry McCann must be going through in searching for Madeleine, their abducted four-year-old daughter. This kind of tragedy robs every parent of peace of mind. It challenges the whole of society as to how we can protect children without mollycoddling them.

Probably the first reaction of many parents on hearing about Madeleine was to think what folly it was to have left children alone in a hotel room. Well, it’s easy in such awful situations to put the head before the heart and leap to judgements.

But I’d be surprised if most of us didn’t then start, with the benefit of hindsight, to reflect on the things we’ve done in life. Things that, but for the Grace of God, we might not have got away with.

I can remember times with my own children when, if the unthinkable had happened, I might have struggled to forgive myself. And if we think of those of us who drive cars, I just wonder how many can honestly say that there’s never been a time when a careless manoeuvre combined with bad luck might not have resulted in blood on the road and a shameful summons at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

If what they told the BBC last week is anything to go by, they’ll probably tell him that ‘no-one will ever feel as guilty as we do.’

I’m not a Roman Catholic, but I do wonder what the Holy Father might find in his heart to reply. And I know what I’d love to hear him say.

I’d love to hear him reassure them that the sacred heart of Jesus is always open.

That forgiveness goes without saying – it’s what the Christian vision is meant to be about - and so, walk on with faith into the journey of the rest of your lives.

And that bad things happen to good people in this world because God gives everyone the choice of good or evil. It has to be that way so that our love can grow in freedom.

Last night BP broke the news that owing, it said, to Westminster procrastination on funding, it is to abandon the pioneering proposed Peterhead power plant. This would have returned waste carbon dioxide back underground, thereby fighting global warming. Over millions of years, the Earth stored up carbon as fossil fuels and limestone. Such geology tamed the climate by creating an atmosphere that supports advanced life. But when we release carbon by burning fuel in power stations, or industrial processes like cement-making, we upset the balance of nature.

BP say they’re disappointed, but let me tell you a good news story from another industry - the cement sector –that accounts for some five percent of total carbon dioxide emissions. Some years ago I was amongst the many Scottish people and organisations that locked horns with Lafarge, the biggest stone and cement company in the world. They wanted a so-called “superquarry” in the National Scenic Area of South Harris - but we saw them off.

However, for me that wasn’t the end. Lafarge came back and said, “It’s all very well to criticise, but on average each person uses ten tonnes of quarry products a year. Will you help us to think about minimising the impact of this?”

We all have to own up to using corporate products in our daily lives, and so I became an uneasy, albeit unpaid, member of their Sustainability Stakeholders Panel that offers environmental advice. And I’ve watched how they’ve reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 14% per tonne of cement from 1990 levels.

I have to admit that my “auld enemy” has earned some grudging respect. This week they even became the only construction materials company to achieve a top forty FTSE4Good listing by the Financial Times for best European environmental practice. That won’t save the world, but it’s better than doing nothing, and it forces competitors to wake up.

Frankly, I despair at decisions like abandoning the Peterhead power plant. But when I do see financial resources being mobilised for change as with the cement industry, it at least gives a glimmer of hope for the human condition.

(For reports on my terms of reference and engagement with the Lafarge panel, click here)

… from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology at Strathclyde University. [This piece can be listened to here ... albeit at rather a cracking speed!].

As Alex Salmond became Scotland’s First Minister yesterday, Labour’s Ewan Aitken of Edinburgh Council spoke of a “new political reality” that seeks “common purpose and agreement” for the greater good.

But how do you do that? I was in Southern Ireland last week and it was amazing to see the warmth with which their press hailed Mr Paisley as “Big Ian”. And I remembered how, six years ago, my wife and I had taken our students of human ecology to Ulster.

After a day on the Garvaghy Road visiting Catholic groups eloquent with hospitality, we went to the Portadown Orange Lodge.

The atmosphere there was awkward. It was difficult for our contemporary students to grasp the religious worldview of the two senior Orangemen who had generously given up their evening. But then a historical key turned.

“You know, folks,” I said. “Our hosts are rooted in John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion – a book described as ‘the seedbed of democracy.’ Whether we agree or not, these men understand Presbyterianism as the root of political freedoms that we now all take for granted.”

It was like an emotional dam burst open. The Orangemen smiled and stretched out their legs. We even ventured a joke, asking how come such resolute egalitarians have such fancy titles as grand masters of grand lodges … and everybody laughed.

They could see that we were now seeing their humanity from within and not just as caricatures projected from the outside.

And that’s what a politics of respect does. It gets to the heart of the matter through engaging with the heart. It challenges, yet honours that which is great in the other.

As a Quaker, I move with a spiritual tradition that has done consensual decision making for nearly four centuries. What makes it work is discernment – reaching beyond ego and vested interests for the spirit of truth and right action. You don’t try to agree on everything at once. Just seek out points of unity from which to build trust. And who knows, if even Gerry Adams and Big Ian can achieve such a new politics, hopefully Scotland can too.

17. Thought for the Day - BBC Radio Scotland & BBC Radio Ulster - 1 December 2006

This "Thought" was part of a special Radio Scotland tie in with Radio Ulster, and was broadcast over both networks. The text in Green was added to the Northern Irish version, as it is longer... . from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker, Visiting Professor of Human Ecology at Strathclyde University and guest lecturer in Leadership for Sustainable Development at Queens University , Belfast .

One of my hats is treasurer to the GalGael Trust based in Glasgow's suipbuilding area of Govan. Set up by local unemployed people, the GalGael helps folks to reclaim pride in heritage, to discover beauty in the natural environment, and to celebrate community.

Over the past decade we’ve developed training in a vast range of traditional skills – wood carving, weaving, silversmithing and even boat building. Many of our participants received poverty as their birthrite, but there’s still an inbuilt “buoyancy of the human soul” that enables even the most damaged human being to bounce back.

Returning from a GalGael day-trip recently an adult woman wept in the minibus. Why? Because her childhood dream had just been fulfilled – to see Loch Lomond . But GalGael’s most daunting journey was when Down District Council in Ulster invited our crew to the Magnus Barelegs Festival. They crossed the Irish Sea in boat they’d built from windblown timber out of Glasgow city parks. What a thrill when our “urban clansmen” beat off even the Northern Irish police rowing team, and sailed triumphantly home with the trophy!

It was exhilarating for them to see the River Clyde opening out onto the Irish Sea . For the first time they saw these waters not as a source of division, but as a superhighway, that once united our peoples. And what hospitality was shared! As Colin Macleod, the GalGael’s founder said, “We got a real sense of how spirited the ceilidhs must've been when the clans of Ireland and clans of Scotland visited each other by travelling the same route.”

There’s a Celtic proverb that says “The bonds of milk are stronger than the bonds of blood.” What counts most is not our lineage, race or even religion, but whether the milk of human kindness courses in our veins.

Recently I went to the Isle of Iona and sat in St Oran’s Chapel, where an altar candle shines constantly southwards through a window facing Ireland . And in reading Adomnan’s 7th century Life of Saint Columba, I noted that our Irish-Scottish missionary had once blessed a pauper for sharing what little he had, but admonished a wealthy miser who, in the words Adomnan attributes to Columba, had “rejected Christ in pilgrim visitors.”

That’s the only religion that can unite us – the religion of kindness. That’s what can heal the scars of historic division and it’s a sacred gift to us all.

Another Remembrance Day has passed - yet another grim November’s reminder that, for some, the winds of loss forever blow a lonely course. Back in the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, a BBC reporter put a question to Gabriel Habib, leader of the Middle East Council of Churches.

“God,” said Mr Habib, “is on the side of the suffering.” Always, on the side of those who suffer.

This year’s Remembrance Day with further loss of life on both sides in Iraq left me with a deepening sense of foreboding. Largely gone is the optimism of when the Berlin Wall came down with talk of a "peace dividend." Instead, we see renewed nuclear tensions and the fear of terror at many of our airports.

It feels a bit as if the world is in the grip of powers that are greater than our capacity to deal with. It’s as if our humanity itself is being put to the test. Whether it’s war or new threats like climate change, it’s hard to see ready solutions, and I for one have no easy answers.

But I am touched by one thing. The Islamic, Jewish and Christian traditions all teach that despair is a sin. We may not have a quick fix, but we can at least kindle an attitude that holds open the doors of hope and dignity. There is only one antidote to despair, and that comes from the human heart. By opening the heart in our daily lives each one of us can play our part.

The French Jesuit priest and scientist, Teilhard de Chardin, saw such transformation as nothing less than the next step in human evolution. “Some day… ,” he said, in words that rebuke despair: “Some day after we have mastered the wind, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.”

In the past week Hungary has been rocked by its Prime Minister’s disclosure that his party lied to get elected. Meanwhile, our own politicians hammer out policies at their various party conferences, but I have to confess a certain sympathy with the challenges they face in trying to reconcile electoral demands with the ability to deliver.

I’m reminded of one of those stories where a famous politician dies and goes up to the Pearly Gates, only to meet St Peter and the Devil.

St Peter tells him, “We’re going let you make up your own mind where you go,” and he presses a button so the politician gets to see a preview of himself sitting on a cloud, playing a harp for all eternity.

“Hmmm,” he thinks. “… but it could be a little boring. Maybe I’ll just see what the other chap’s offering.”

And so the Devil shows him a land of sumptuous restaurants, fabulous theatres and casinos where everyone wins.

The politician’s eyes light up, and before he can even speak his thoughts two demons drag him downstairs and hurl him into the Lake of Fire.

Later on the Devil passes by. "Excuse me," the politician cries out, "But I thought you promised sumptuous restaurants, fabulous theatres, and….”

… Of course, it’s an old joke, but it’s worth asking: why are we so vulnerable to campaigning promises? Is it possible that, like the politician with the Devil, most of us have learned to sit a little too comfortably with lies, because they may seem to comfort us?

If we want our politicians’ integrity to be able to shine through, maybe we, the electorate, need to examine our integrity too. Maybe we need to work on building a culture where truth is more the norm.

And that starts not in the realm of national politics, but with the intricate relationships of our everyday lives.

It’s been a sombre few days as Britain comes to terms with its heaviest military casualties since the Falklands. I find myself looking at the lost men’s pictures and seeing, in each one of them, the profound humanity of somebody’s son, somebody’s father, somebody’s lover.

It might seem strange, but as a Quaker and therefore an active pacifist, I annually guest lecture at Britain’s foremost military staff college.

Over 9 years I’ve addressed more than 3,000 senior officers. Generally we agree on being willing to die for our values; the debate is whether also to kill for them.

I can tell you that most of these men and women are not warmongers. They too see peace as their business. I carry with me a little card that the Army gave me which lists their Core Values: “Loyalty – Courage – Integrity – Discipline – Respect for Others – and, Selfless Commitment”.

I once asked a general why they let me loose on their campus, and he said, “You make us think.” It’s not rocket science, but I seek to uncover the roots of conflict, and that means exploring how issues like poverty, prejudice, and being unloved all feed into wider patterns of violence.

Spirituality then becomes important, because it is about the antidote - about love. In most world religions, love implies that human beings are profoundly interconnected, and that interconnection is the wellspring of community and its regeneration.

That’s why I find hope in a conference organised today in Glasgow by Communities Scotland, an agency of the Scottish Executive. Leading politicians and activists are to explore the idea that spiritual values can shed fresh light on urban and rural regeneration.

I believe that such innovate thinking at home can have knock-on effects much further afield. I’m left moved by the deaths in Afghanistan this past week, but proud to see Communities Scotland striking a light in the darkness.

My youth was during the Vietnam era, and I have to confess that as a hawkish young man I found war rather exciting. I remember going to Aberdeen University and seeing a poster that said, “War is not good for children and other living things,” and it irritated me for its naivety.

But there were rather a lot of posters like this, and, worked on by my valiant if few-and-far-between girlfriends, I gradually started to think in new ways that chipped away at the armour round my heart.

One of the most influential poster voices was a Brazilian archbishop called Helder Camara. He’d come out with things like - why is it that “When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. [But] when I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.”

I wonder how many of today’s politicians realise that when talking about the “spiral of violence” in the Middle East, they’re drawing on Camara, who published a little book by that name in 1971?

He observed that violence builds up at three levels in a society. Primary violence is the everyday effect of structurally ingrained social injustice. This generates secondary violence - the revolt of the oppressed. And that in turn provokes tertiary violence - repression by the powerful to secure their privileged position. And so the spiral of violence tightens.

After years of being out of print, Archbishop Camara’s little book is now going on the web. It culminates with an “appeal to youth”, saying that wars happen because of the egotism of adults, and he urges the youth to, “provoke discussions [and] force people to think and take up a position: let it be uncomfortable, like truth, demanding, like justice.”

Whether Lebanese or Israeli, war is not good for children and other living things, and the children are always innocent. Camara’s last word is for them: “With you I must remain young in my soul,” he said, “and keep the hope and love I need to help all humanity.”

(Dom Hélder Câmara's text, Spiral of Violence, can be downloaded from this link).

I read yesterday that the British Army have told soldiers to limit bagpipe playing to under half an hour because it’s as bad as a chainsaw for the hearing.

My own ears always pep up at such reports because I’ve had impaired hearing for the past 5 years. It’s probably genetic, though I’d rather add it up to a misspent youth on Stornoway’s disco scene. Whatever the cause, hearing loss is affecting people in growing numbers. According to the General Household Survey, 20% of men and 15% of women report difficulties in later middle age.

In Scotland we’re blessed by state-of-the-art NHS audiologists. My own consultant is himself in a wheelchair, and I asked him which he’d prefer: to have a hearing or a mobility issue. He said, “mobility”, because as Helen Keller who became both blind and deaf put it, “Blindness cuts you off from things; [but] deafness cuts you off from people.”

That’s the galling bit. For me, diminished hearing is a social disability. Mind you, it can have an amusing side. I remember once lecturing to a church group and being asked a question by a man who introduced himself as a “bigamist.” I answered as delicately as I could, only to have him loudly declare: “I said I’m a botanist!”

You can never fully correct permanent hearing loss, but modern digital hearing aids do a pretty amazing job. When I first got mine my biggest obstacle was embarrassment. Would people stare? Would my wife still fancy me as much? But then I realised I just had to rise above such self-consciousness. I needed to think of these new attachments as being like spectacles, but for the ears rather than the eyes.

Thankfully, hearing loss can never destroy your sense of humour! The story’s told that towards the end of his life an increasingly deaf Winston Churchill revisited the House of Commons.

In yesterday's Thought for the Day, Bob Kernohan asked what we individuals can do about the crisis in the Middle East, and he ended with the quotation, "Ask not to see the distant scene; one step enough for me."

There's something about conflicts in the Middle East that touches most of us very deeply. We know they can hit us in the pocket as some petrol prices touch a pound a litre. But there's also something much deeper. As the poet, John Donne, put it, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

The Middle East has been called "the Cradle of Civilisation" and for many people in the West, it symbolises the cultural heart of the world. It was the mythical home of Eden, yes, but also of Armageddon. Conflict there spills out from such countries as Lebanon, Israel and Iraq and into our own hearts.

That's why, as Bob Kernohan suggested, it matters to take steps within our own lives. For me, violence in the world is like a jigsaw. Consciously or unconsciously we all carry the pieces. If you and I can start dealing with our complicity in it, then we help to improve the whole picture.

Recently I saw a conflict between two recovering heroin addicts in a hard-pressed quarter of one of our Scottish cities. They'd been set against one another by malicious circumstances and one understandably became so inflamed by the spirit of violence that he procured the means to do something terrible to the other.

But then a wonderful thing happened. Little by little, he softened his anger with a counter-balancing spirit of restraint. At first he was only able to postpone doing his damnednest on an hour-by-hour basis. But gradually, these little steps got longer, and now both men have made it up with neither going to jail nor hospital.

If ordinary people can find the strength to resolve potentially murderous violence, is there not hope for us all? The Cradle of Civilisation in the Middle East may be engulfed in strife, but that doesn't mean we should lose faith in humanity.

A strange thing happened last week. I became temporarily mistaken for a football fan! It was in the columns of that wonderful community newspaper, the Stornoway Gazette, and somebody had written in having a go at me for supposedly attacking Jack McConnell’s lack of support for the English football team.

As it happens, the letter writer had muddled me up with somebody else, and they’ve now graciously apologised. But for a few days, I felt myself uncomfortably thrust into a debate that normally holds no interest for me. You see, I was useless at football in school and spectator sports are just not my religion. Even though I live close enough to Ibrox to hear the cheers go up, I rarely have a clue who’s playing.

But the experience of being publicly mistaken for an English supporter last week set me thinking about the passion that the game generates. For those of us who lack the fans’ gene, it’s easy just to dismiss it all as crowd madness or sublimated aggression. But ask football supporters what really matters to them, and some very positive human values emerge: ones that speak powerfully to the need we all have for a sense of identity, a place of belonging, a focus for loyalty, and, in a nutshell, community.

Most of us today live in a world where our anchors of community have dragged. We have fewer and fewer shared experiences out of which to forge a group identity. But football seems to offer this, and perhaps that’s something it can teach those of us who aren’t its natural fans.

Maybe in all walks of life the name of the big game is to learn how to stand our ground and support our own side, yes, but also to keep the heart open with some empathy for the other side too. After all, they’re only expressing the same needs and values as we have.

For humanity to shine through we have to become big enough to respect our opponents. That’s the measure of our greatness, and it’s the measure of any nation too.

.... and with power struggles rocking the world of politics one thing we can be sure of is that conflict will dominate this week’s headlines.

And that’s not just in the big scheme of things. Few of us will escape conflict in our own homes, schools and offices. Indeed, the big political fights are probably rooted in the fact that any fool can live in conflict, but it takes guts to live in peace.

I’m especially interested in Scottish communities undergoing land reform - to achieve security of tenure, for cultural cohesion and economic development. Type “land reform” into the internet and we’re the first country to come up, even ahead of Zimbabwe! That’s because a quarter of a million acres of Scotland have now been taken into community ownership, and it’s happened bloodlessly!

But there’s a downside to such freedom. Some communities rightly worry that land reform may lift the lid on simmering local troubles. And that’s why conflict resolution skills need to be put at the heart of community empowerment.

The first and most liberating fact about community conflict is that it’s normal – provided it’s not just for the sake of stirring things up it’s a healthy sign of folks finding their voices.

Conflict becomes most toxic when it has stagnated – going unrecognised or left unprocessed. That’s when it turns to corrosive hostility – more the withering hand of passive aggression than the open fist.

And this is why everyone who cares about other people must acquire the courage to sit fearlessly in the fire of conflict! We must insist on exposure to truth and to a no-nonsense empathy that’s gives real meaning to trying to love one’s neighbour.

In these ways conflict’s stinking mess can compost into rich soil from which new life can grow. And remember, it all starts with the disarmingly simple but radically powerful realisation - that conflict is normal.

… from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker and Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology.

Growing up on the Isle of Lewis I used to work summers as a ghillie on the salmon lochs. These were fished by masters of the universe – aristocrats, magnates and military - and as I’d row the boat about there was nothing my youthful mind liked better than to cast out a line to the retired generals and try to catch a real-life war story.

I remember asking one general what was the greatest bravery he’d ever seen. “This will surprise you, Alastair,” he said, “but it was the Friends’ Ambulance Brigade. They were Quaker pacifists who showed incredible courage in rescuing the wounded of both sides from the front line.”

Yesterday saw the freeing of Norman Kember from a Christian Peacmaker Team that had included the murdered American Quaker, Tom Fox.

Like the Friends’ Ambulance Brigade, these men had chosen to stand in the way of unthinkable violence. According to the Christian Peacemaker website, their witness included advocacy for families whose loved ones had disappeared into the chaotic jails of occupied Iraq.

Professor Kember and his team understood the risks. Like soldiers, they were willing to die for their beliefs, but the difference was that they refused to kill for them.

Jesus was their inspiration. When the soldiers of the Roman occupation arrived for the final showdown, Jesus said, “Put away your sword, Peter … we will have no more of this.”

Many will question whether Professor Kember was not just a well-meaning fool. They’ll ask if his ordeal achieved anything.

Well, recent months have seen Christians, Jews and Moslems alike praying and campaigning for his release. They’ve included the Muslim Association of Britain, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and those Britons released from Guantanamo Bay.

Is that not something beautiful in the sight of Allah, of God? Does that not point towards the path of reconciliation? Perhaps in these ways the seeds of peace are sown.

When I was at school in the sixties, history was simply about chaps and geography about maps. We had one particularly dour history teacher with a fetish for ancient battles of a ferocity equalled only by his own sadism. When we failed to memorise dates by rote he’d pull out the belt like a gun from its holster and thwack our trembling hands. Little wonder I migrated from chaps to maps at the earliest opportunity!

But it’s very different today and yet history’s being dropped from some school timetables. This week members of the Scottish Association of Teachers of History met MSPs to explain their concern. Modern history teaches children how to evaluate evidence. Pupils are taught to ask questions about what counts as a valid source of information. Who was behind it? Were they interpreting or reporting? And what axes were being ground?

Such questions show children how to think clearly. They’re skills that transfer far beyond the history class and are of equal importance to the court lawyer evaluating witnesses, or to the ordinary citizen trying to understand what’s behind conflicting ideas and traditions in the world around them.

Even deeper than that, historical insight shapes our sense of identity. It reveals stories that speak of our past and these shape vision that guides our future. When I talk to young men I find that many are desperate for an identity that can give them values and pride with which to navigate that future. Just yesterday I spoke to one in Govan who said he used to be up to the eyes in sectarianism. “What changed you?” I asked, and he said, “I simply learned there was a bigger world than a bigoted one.”

History well taught can give an identity that’s strong precisely because it’s self-critical and has empathy for others. That’s why Scotland’s youth needs history, and if its axed, the nation will suffer.

.... from Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker who regularly guest lectures at military staff college.

The same time this week as news broke about the death of the 100th British soldier in Iraq, the world also learned of the moving on from this life of Mrs Coretta Scott King, widow of the American civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King.

I once spent several days with a close co-worker of the King family. He was a white American who’d held special responsibility at civil rights marches for training people in nonviolent defence when they were faced with aggressive police and lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan.

“What exactly was the role of white folks like you in those marches?” I asked him.

“We took on being the human shields,” he told me. “When we saw a black marcher getting beaten up, we’d run and lay our bodies over theirs. Then others would come and place themselves over us so that the kicking got shared.”

He said that it undermined the very spirit of violence. It confused the racial stereotypes and turned the bravado of the violent into cause for shame. It made them turn and think again.

When Coretta Scott King was phoned to say that her husband had been assassinated, she said it was a call she’d subconsciously waited for all their married lives. But did she feel bitter? No. She said, “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than the hated.”

And she set up the King Center for nonviolent social change, aimed at exposing the links between the structural injustice of poverty, and violence in streets and homes … breaking the consequent spiral by which violence feeds further violence like petrol on a fire … and healing the wound by substituting love of power with the power of love.

She said, “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” That’s the message left by this great black woman today. And with a middle name like “Scott,” let that be her message to Scotland.

As the year draws to an end my thoughts turn to those for whom this has not been a good year. On a world scale, it was as if the whole planet shuddered as the tsunami receded, New Orleans went six feet under, and the poorest of the poor endured the Pakistan earthquake. It all made me think about a fable that speaks of keeping going.

An old man in ancient China had tamed a wild horse. It was his pride and joy, but someone left the gate open and it ran off back to the herd.

Everybody in the village came round saying, “We are sorry, old man. What bad luck.”

That night the horse returned, bringing with it the entire wild herd. Someone quickly shut the gate, and the village awoke, thrilled to find there’d be horses for all.

“What good luck you’ve had, old man,” they said. And he said, “Good luck, bad luck; who is really to know?”

Later on, the old man’s son tried breaking in a noble stallion. But it threw him off and broke his leg.

And the old man smiled thinly: “Bad luck, good luck; who is really to know?”

In the wee small hours that night the village was awakened by the Emperor’s men. They press-ganged every able-bodied youth to fight a terrible war from which most would never return.

But the son with the broken leg was spared. And so, good luck, bad luck … and when life hits any one of us with its ups and downs, we can never really be sure of deeper meanings.

All we can do is try to keep an open heart. And when we’re totally confused and faced only with darkness, remain open to possibility; and seek an opening of the way.

I’m not given to having nightmares, but the other day my wife and I stayed on Iona, and I found myself having one that went on and on for longer than I’ve ever before experienced.

I was looking east from Glasgow. In the far distance was an industrial complex and houses including a couple of tower blocks. Suddenly the complex blew up and moments later the tower blocks and everything else cracked and collapsed, like in those horrendous images of the Twin Towers attack.

Something massively terrible had happened and I knew that social mayhem would follow. I tried to find my wife to escape, but she was gone and there was no escape.

As I woke up, the vivid intensity and duration of the dream left me unsettled. I told my wife I even wondered if something had happened in the world. It was another 24 hours before we heard news of the Pakistan earthquake. The dream had taken place pretty much simultaneously.

Now, there are plenty of times that dreams have only an imagined connection to reality. It’s safest to assume they’re just coincidences. But at the same time, in many parts of the world a dream like I’ve just described would seem unexceptional.

It’s only our modern minds that see human beings so individualistically. In other worldviews, humanity is profoundly interconnected. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” We’re members one of another, branches on the vine of life, and such is the spiritual basis of community.

As we dig deep into our pockets this time for Pakistan, it’s easy to feel compassion fatigue. But just consider the possibility that all humanity is joined like the fingers of one hand. This is what love implies, and this is what opens the heart to wash compassion fatigue away.

2. Thought for the Day, BBC Radio Scotland, Thursday 29 September 2005

Multiculturalism has become such a hot issue because today’s world has shrunk so much. People of diverse cultures and religions live side by side. But that doesn’t always mean that they experience equality. For example, across Britain Moslems have an unemployment rate that is three times higher than the national average.

This past week saw the launch in Scotland of a new study, the Dream Job Report. It asks this question: can every Scot, no matter where they originally come from, aspire to their “dream job” and so fulfil their human potential.

The report is full of eye-openers. For example, devout young Muslims from Glasgow Mosque say that, yes, they must have time to pray at work, but this is precisely what helps them to be honest, hard-working and loyal employees.

Here in Scotland we’ve long believed that what matters more than where you come from is a man’s a man for a’ that. This, surely, is the way forward. It allows us to hold fast to our traditional anchor points but equally to be open to the whole world.

There’s a wonderful passage by the late Iain Crichton Smith that reaches to the core of such common humanity. Although he’s speaking about folks displaced from the Isle of Lewis to the city, it could equally apply to any one of us, whatever our ethnic origins. Here’s what he says:

(Quotation from Iain Crichton Smith's essay, Real People in a Real Place, in his essay collection, Towards the Human, Macdonald Publishers (Lines Review Edition (also, Saltire Publications)), 1986, pp. 13-70).

1. Thought for the Day, BBC Radio Scotland, Wednesday 31 Aug 2005

I was on a train in England last week when a complete stranger sat down and immediately started talking about the need for radical government action on climate change.

“Ah … I’m from Tornado Land,” he replied. “You see, I’m one of those people who had their roof blown off by the Birmingham tornado!”

Now, it would be bad science to link last month’s tornado or this week’s American hurricane directly to the effects of global warming. All we can say is that many scientists consider freak weather will get more and more the norm if we continue pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

We need to tackle the root causes of climate change with greater intelligence, with better public understanding of science and with tough political will. But we also need greater compassion to face the suffering. And of course, there’ll be many who ask, “Why does God allow it?”

But if we believe that God unfolds this universe, do we really expect a paternalistic hand to intervene in the weather and geological processes if they clash with how we live?

Should the voice of the Almighty have boomed down over New Orleans, instructing city planners never to build below sea level?

Or is the real spiritual challenge to develop the courage and intelligence that can face crisis, suffering and death? Is it to open our hearts, expand our minds and deepen our humanity, so that we get wise?

Perhaps it’s a living spirituality and not just good buildings insurance that’s needed to cope if the roof blows off.

If you want to print a specific piece from the texts below without having to print everything on this long page, I suggest you select and copy the required text and either "print selection" or paste it into your word processor and print from there. BBC Radio Scotland programmes can be listened to online for up to a week after the broadcast. If you want to hear the actual words as spoken, or if you've accidentally landed on my website while looking for somebody else's Thought for the Day, here's how to go about hearing them. Go to the Good Morning Scotland website. As of June 2010 it was located at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074hf7. That will give you a listing of episodes of Good Morning Scotland with "listen again" available for the most recent. Each day's programme will usually be posted up around 9.15 am, but sometimes it's a bit later. Click on the date of the programme you want and, when it opens, click on "listen". If your computer works like mine, your screen should then open up the BBC's iPlayer Radio Console. Assuming your computer's sound is turned on, you should, after a few moments, hear the programme start playing (usually with music initially) from just before 6 am. Since Thought for the Day is usually on at about 7.22 am, move the slide at the bottom towards the right until the console shows that you're 1.22 hours into the programme. You should find Thought for the Day round about there. If you get a current affairs report, you've maybe not gone far enough. If you're getting the sports report, you've gone too far. In a few cases I've captured the broadcast on my computer and given an audio option alongside the text (above). Enjoy!

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 29 June 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 25 June 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 12 May 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 5 May 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 4 February 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 28 January 2010 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – c. 0723, 31 December 2009 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – 0723 30 June 2008 - BBC Radio Scotland

Thought for the Day – 0723 17 Mar 2008 - BBC Radio Scotland

24. Thought for the Day - 0720 Tue 30 Oct 2007 - BBC Radio Scotland

23. Thought for the Day - 0720 Thu 2 August 2007 - BBC Radio Scotland

22. Thought for the Day - 0720 Fri 20 July 2007 - BBC Radio Scotland

21. Thought for the Day - 0725 Tues 12 June 2007 - BBC Radio Scotland

3. Thought for the Day, BBC Radio Scotland, Wed 12 October 2005

2. Thought for the Day, BBC Radio Scotland, Thursday 29 September 2005

1. Thought for the Day, BBC Radio Scotland, Wednesday 31 Aug 2005