Heroes Not Zombies

I noticed these autumn leaves when I was out on a walk recently. What caught my eye was their colour. Look at the variety of shades of brown, yellow and red. Aren’t they beautiful? Together they really capture the idea of autumn, don’t you think?

I love how they have gathered together in this little hollow in the tree. Of course, not a single leaf made it here under its own steam. Each was probably simply blown in the wind. I wonder, did they arrive separately or did they travel together through the air, a tiny handful of individuals lying together on the forest floor, whisked up as a group by a gust, and blown into this hollow?

It makes me wonder about randomness and chance. Nobody looking at these leaves still growing on a tree, could’ve predicted that they would have ended up here. There are just too many factors involved in creating this event, for anyone to calculate and predict. Yet we fool ourselves into thinking that’s possible, don’t we? We think that if all the “relevant data” were collected then we could invent a computer to make exactly this prediction.

It’s not true. We humans are not capable of knowing absolutely everything. So much about Life and the Universe is literally unknowable. Unknowable and unpredictable.

So maybe it’s time we changed direction and stopped pretending we can control Nature and use everything we encounter as a “resource”.

How might we live if we approach the world, not as a resource to be consumed, but as a living planet to be experienced? Each day filled with wonder, each day to be savoured……filled with experiences and events gathered together by forces and circumstances which will never be fully known.

Read Full Post »

I love art in nature. It’s always a surprise and when it’s installed in a forest, an old quarry, along the banks of a river…..it just seems to more than double the pleasure for me. It’s as if the creativity of nature and the creativity of a human being multiply each other.

My understanding of the Christian teaching of a creator God who forms human beings “in His likeness”, is that we, too, are creators. But whatever your religious belief it isn’t difficult to see that this universe in which we live is a creative one. Creativity is at the heart and core of evolution. The trajectory of the universe is towards ever greater complexity and diversity….in other words creativity.

I think a lot of people think of creativity as synonymous with art, with music, sculpture, dance, literature and poetry. Well it does lead to all those wonderful activities but every one of us is creative every single day. Every one of us expresses our uniqueness moment by moment. We constantly adapt, we repeatedly solve problems, we never cease to be the heroes of our own stories.

Creativity – it’s what we do.

Read Full Post »

I love to see a reflection like this. It’s beautiful. It also makes me think…..because when the reflection is as vivid as this we can’t see what lies beneath the water’s surface.

When I know there’s something there but I can’t see it I think of the invisible.

We are surrounded by, penetrated by, made of, three flows….material, energy and information. Only the materials are visible, and those only on their surfaces.

We can see the food we eat, the water we drink, but not the molecules from which they are made….at least not unless we use a microscope.

We can’t see the flows of energy which vibrate within us…the electromagnetic energies, the Life Force, the energies we call “vibes” which we can pick up when we walk into a room.

We can’t see information but our bodies detect it in several forms all the time, using our senses. We process all the information constantly, passing it through our bodies, our heart, our gut, our brain.

Most of what happens in our body and our brain, moment by moment, is invisible. We say it occurs unconsciously.

Crucially, and this is something we routinely forget, our entire experience of life is invisible. Only I know what life is like for me. Only you know what you are experiencing. We all live as subjects, and the subject never reveals itself as an object.

We know each other, subject to subject, only by getting in tune with each other, by resonating with each other. Saint Exupery put it best…It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Read Full Post »

I came across this yew tree on my forest walk at the weekend. I understand it’s pretty difficult to know the age of a yew tree but I felt I was in the presence of an ancient being.

Yews are estimated to live 400 – 600 years but one is Scotland is thought to be 2,000 years old. These figures are simply astonishing. We humans have a life expectancy of around 80 years, a figure which has shrunk somewhat in the last few years. There are some famous billionaires who are investing heavily in “life extension technologies”, but it seems to me that whole ambition is poorly conceived and remains well in the domain of science fiction. I can’t see human beings living to an average 400 – 600 years any time soon!

What does it mean to live hundreds of years? Not as a human, but as a tree? What do you think? Can you imagine what it might be like….for a tree?

There’s something I find strange about evolution. Clearly it’s not all about selecting for survival. There are unicellular creatures which have lived way, way longer than trees. If survival and longevity was the essential principle of evolution why do we have more complex, multicellular organisms such as, say, trees, or human beings? The more complex the creature, the shorter the lifespan, apparently. Is that true? Correct me if I’ve misunderstood.

Clearly the direction of travel of evolution is towards complexity and more highly developed consciousness. It’s towards beauty, truth and goodness. We are on a path, it’s just not the narrow path of life expectancy.

Read Full Post »

I took a walk in the woods today, up Gillies Hill, on the edge of Stirling. I went in search of autumn leaves to photograph but, actually, I ended up mostly taking photos of fungi.

The strange beauty of these fungi is utterly compelling. They draw you down onto the forest floor and pull you in the get as close as you can.

This is the time of year when a whole underground world becomes visible. These incredible fungi are only the above ground manifestation of the astonishing network of fungi which live among, along, and within the roots of the trees. We know now that this network of connections sends materials and information from tree to tree, turning the forest into one great organism, every element of which is in constant communication with the rest.

Welcome to the “wood wide web”.

Read Full Post »

Burrs a method of seed dispersal. Once these little hooks attach to a passerby the seed head is off on its journey. It might drop nearby, or it might be carried a long distance. There’s no way to know.

It strikes me there’s a life lesson there for us. We connect to others and travel with them, sharing some time and space together, not knowing in advance where that relationship will take us, or how long it will last. In fact we can’t know the answers to either of those questions in advance. How long will we be together and where will this relationship take us? What’s important is that we make a good connection, that we commit.

The little hooks provide another function too, don’t they? They protect. The previous seeds are well protected inside, surrounded by these jaggy spikes.

I’m not suggesting we all need jaggy spikes to protect ourselves but we do all need secure defences which protect us from harm. In any relationship it’s important to connect and to preserve a distance, a difference.

I think there’s this apparent paradox at the core of Life. We all need to connect, to belong, to interact. And we all need to preserve our uniqueness, to know our differences and accept and protect them.

The need to connect, and the need to protect our uniqueness. I see that in this little burr, this little life lesson from Nature.

Read Full Post »

This is my experience in life – the default, routine, normal way that people live is kindness and caring.

When that’s not the case, something has gone wrong – they’ve either been traumatised and are still suffering from those wounds, or they are living in circumstances which are brutalising, dehumanising.

Ok, I accept, that’s probably too black and white, probably an example of two-value, binary, either/or thinking of which I am always wary. But I want to place it this way as a starting point.

This is where I start.

I expect people to default to kindness and care, and again and again, it’s what I experience in an ordinary everyday. But when I encounter the opposite, unkindness and selfishness, I feel my defences rise and become aware of an instinct to withdraw and distance myself.

Of course there is a lot of cruelty, violence and injustice in the world, but that tells me something is wrong with how we live, because the fundamental instincts of humans are of kindness and care.

I don’t deny that there are also strong human selfish, even greedy instincts, but I think it’s a bit like the old Native American story of the two hungry wolves inside us, and which one do we choose to feed. If we organise society around selfishness and greed, glorifying power and riches, then no wonder the bad Wolf becomes the dominant one.

Even in this late stage neoliberal capitalism i still find that kindness and care are the default instincts of my neighbours, my patients and my colleagues. The narcissism and greed which is despoiling our little planet seem to dominate mainly in those who gain power, whether through politics, wealth or violence.

Are we ready to recognise that the system brings out the worst in the elite, and that there, trickle down really does happen (as is not the case with wealth), stoking division, greed and selfishness throughout the population?

Are we able to imagine and create a society based on kindness and care? I think we are.

Read Full Post »

I took these three photos on a recent trip to the village of Sancerre. Aren’t they wonderful? There are several large black and white photos placed on walls and buildings throughout the village. I imagine they represent life in these streets in the years gone by.

I am very keen on words….texts, the spoken word, stories and poems. But I’m also a very visual thinker. I have dozens of notebooks filled with mind maps and diagrams I’ve drawn to help myself think. I’ve given many talks and presentations and have always used as many photos, paintings and drawings as I can as the core of each talk.

I’ve had a love for photography since I was a boy, and I’m always keen to explore a gallery or two when I visit a different city. So, it was natural for me to decide to make each post here with, first, a photo I’ve taken, then below that some writing inspired by that image.

I suppose my favourite images are ones which make me think. I like a photo which stops me, just as I like a flower, or a tree, or a butterfly which catches my attention and makes me pause.

My hope here is that the photos I share do that for you…that they catch your attention, make you pause, and inspire some reflection.

Enjoy!

Read Full Post »

Where do we go when we die?

There’s a question we don’t get an answer to until we get there, I suspect. But I have a couple of ideas nonetheless.

If you subscribe to a formal religion you’ll have some teachings which suggest (or maybe even insist on) a particular answer. I don’t subscribe to any formal religions.

If you are a materialist you might think only of the body, and it’s pretty clear that after death the body is broken down into separate parts. It no longer exists, at least, not as a unitary body. Perhaps you can think of all the atoms dispersing, to be gathered later with others to create new forms of life. After all, atoms don’t go away. We are made of star stuff, atoms from exploding stars millions of years ago. Most of those atoms remain here, on Earth.

That’s not enough for me. I’m not a materialist. If we reduce a human being to mere matter we lose the human being.

Life flows through us, until it doesn’t. Despite a life’s work as a doctor, it still amazes me that in one moment someone is alive and with you, and in the next, they’re gone.

Individuals are all unique to me. No two people ever share identical bodies, hearts, minds, souls. No two people ever share the exact same set of relationships and experiences. No two people have the same story.

That’s where I get whatever level of answer I have to my question. We continue in the hearts and memories of others. We continue in our creations which live longer than we do. We continue in the stories told, first by those who knew us, then, later, by those who knew them, down the generations.

Ultimately I see us each as a wave on the ocean, our individual expression of consciousness appearing briefly on the surface, before returning into the greater ocean, the greater consciousness, the all-that-is-greater-than-us.

Reabsorbed into the World Soul, the Divine.

Read Full Post »

The late great English philosopher, Mary Midgley, wrote brilliantly about atomisation. She was highly critical of Thatcher’s claim, “There is no such thing as society”, which was based on the idea that we humans live together as independent, autonomous, completely free and unconnected individuals – social atomism.

It seems the latest version of Toryism to come to power in the U.K. draws its view of the world from this same neoliberal ideology. It’s highly critical of welfare, Public services and spending, and redistributive taxation. In fact, this flavour of capitalism has become the dominant one globally for some time now.

In the face of this we are witnessing greater social division, family breakdowns, worsening mental health, increasing prevalence of chronic illness, climate change, loss of species and habitats and pollution of land, rivers, oceans and the air we breathe. Crisis piles on top of crisis and a pandemic exposes extensive vulnerabilities.

Are we in the best road? Is there a better way to view the world and a better way to live together? I think there is.

If instead of atomism we see the world as a whole, a vast interconnected web in which each of us emerge briefly and live our lives, if we understand that we breathe the same air, drink the same water and eat food from the same soil, if we see ourselves and hardwired for social connection, then we will adopt a different set of values.

We can shift from consumerism to a society based on nurture and care. We can build on the instinctive behaviours human beings have to act decently, fairly and with kindness. We see those behaviours every time there’s a natural disaster, a flood, a forest fire, where strangers put their lives on the line for the sake of others.

We can insist on the power of human collaboration, building relationships and connections within communities and across borders. We can insist on the value of diversity. We can delight in sharing, in beauty, truth and goodness.

We can live differently by awakening from the delusion of atomism.

Read Full Post »