Monthly Archives: October 2025

Fear and loathing in Los England…

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Flags flying in front of York Minster

I am just back from York, where I was attending an Iona Community event. I have started the two year discernment process towards becoming a full member of the community, and this event had two parts- firstly time spent with other new members examining one of the four ‘rules’ that form the basis for membership-

Working for justice and peace, wholeness and reconciliation in our localities, society and the whole creation.

(By the way, if you are interested in the work of the Iona Community, let’s have a chat.)

After this came a day with around 80-90 of the existing full members as we heard from Paul Parker, Recording Clark of the Quakers in Britain. The Quakers don’t have a ‘leader’ – rather Paul’s role is to seek to create good processes for the 450 worshipping groups of friends. He spoke powerfully about quiet diplomacy and the Quaker colective process of testing concern together to develop collective courage. He contrasted the ‘prophet’ role (calling out injustice) from the ‘reconciler’ (seeking to listen and love) role- how they sometimes need to be employed in different ways and in different circumstances. In other words- the two hands of non-violence, in which one is the hand held aloft to say STOP, and the other is open to say ‘I love you, can we talk?’

This discussion inevitably makes me think about the divided and splintered shape of our society just now. How do we engage – as either prophets or reconcilers? Where are the spaces in which either of these things are possible?

And even if we find these places, how will I find the courage?

Meanwhile, there is another fear project going on at full tilt. Fear as a political instrument to create division through hatred and scapegoating of the outsider.

As you might expect, I have been trying to explore some of this through poetry. Here is what I am working on…

Be not afraid

I know you are afraid love -
Who can blame you? This broken world
Wobbles so hard it might
Shake us all off.
And all those purple-faced men 
Looking for someone else to blame -
If they run out of brown people
They might wave their flags at us.

We should beware my love
For there are those for whom your fear spells opportunity. 
They nurture it in toxic tubes, so
To spore the very air they feed us, and
None of us are immune because 
Even those of us with those lumps in our throats
Must still breathe.

So, forgive my riding high on this highest horse 
Because I need to tell you this;
If we always fear of what you do not know
It will rob our future of hope
It will tuck us up in defended spaces
Seeking only safety
Watching the world through narrow arrow slits
Flexing that persistent itch in our trigger fingers
But if we always fear the stranger
How will we ever make new friends?

I know you better my beloved -
Your heart beats beauty on your sleeve.
I know you would mend the broken if you could 
With that clever glue called kindness.
I know you would never eat alone
When someone close was starving.
I know you were never made for hatred 
When  the core of you is love;
When the heart of you is love;
When at the bones of you is love;
When in the mess of you;
Is love.

So love.



New proost poetry podcast with Samara Pitt…

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One of the delightful things about our Proost project is that it enables us to walk the edges and find others that are doing the same. We try to gather some of this edge walking via our two podcasts- one that has a more general focus (and includes trying to do Proost ‘buisiness’ out in the open), the other one gathering poets and poetry- as this seems to have always been a strong and important strand of what we are about.

Today I was delighted to listen and share this conversation;

Where does poetry go? What is it for? How might it be used in the service of justice, peace and reconciliation? How does this relate to spirituality?

In this episode, our Talitha talks to the poet, musician and activist Samara Pitt about her practice, her songs and her love of words. In particular, she describes a process of turning poetry into song – an almost magical process…

Samara describes herself like this;

Samara is a 7th generation coloniser-inheritor living on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri Woirurrung people in the hills outside of Naarm/Melbourne.

She has lived and worked in several different intentional communities, most recently at Gembrook Retreat where the community invites people on to the land to encounter God in creation and to equip each other to live a soulful life.

She loves singing, singing with others, and putting music to words that help us listen more deeply to Country and to soul. Drawing on the liturgical tradition of sung refrains as a congregational response to the reading of a psalm, she has just started to compose short songs based on the repetition of short phrases, designed to help us dwell with the emotion and beauty of words and harmonies. They are also a grateful tribute and offering to the writers.

You can find more of Samara’s work – and support it – here.

Here is Samara’s account of her poetry choices for this episode.

Butterflies

Shaun Tan is one of my favourite writers and illustrators working in these lands now called Australia. His books are haunting and beautiful. and help me to look at the ordinary through the lens of wonder and imagination. This is taken from his book Tales from the Inner City which explores the mythic presence of the more-than-human world in the midst of our cities.

The hunger

The lyrics come from Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s book ‘Thin Places’, a mix of nature writing and Troubles memoir about growing up in in the midst of violence in Derry and the role of nature in helping her find peace and healing.

The halos and the rocks

Gout Gout is an up and coming Australian sprinter who gave the most poetic statement I’ve ever heard from an athlete in a press conference, when he was asked if he still feels normal. I found another slam poetry style quote from him about how he ‘steps light but presence heavy’, and then added my own line imagining the cycle of preparing for, running and coming down after races.

Turn towards the darkness

I found these lines in a book by Chris Anderson called ‘Light when it comes’. Based on the spiritual practice of ‘examen’, these words suggest that we turn to face darkness rather than flee from it.

Seatree artist retreat- help needed…

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For years now, we have been trying to get a project over the line. It has often seemed like it was never going to happen, but now we are finally on the cusp of making it reality.

When we moved to our house, we were not looking for lots of land. Our brief was simple – a smaller house, with room for a pottery studio in which we could work and run workshops, and a small vegetable patch to grow as much food as we could. The aim was for a simple lifestyle, as environmentally sustainable and low impact as possible. Things did not quite work out in the way we planned…

Firstly, we ended up buying a house that came with a large area of overgrown woodland. When we moved, it was impossible to explore most of it, choked as it was by invasive rhodedendron and buddleia. I felt the responsibiity to care for this land keenly – to take out the invasive species and let the old oak trees breathe. I have since spent a long time and lots of hard work trying to do just that – and slowly it has started to transform the woodland back to what it always should have been- a pocket of beautiful oak rainforest, perched above the Clyde estuary…

The other thing that did not go to plan was that we had an unfortunate brush with officialdom. When we moved to our new house, we asked a series of questions of Argyll and Bute planning department about what permissions we needed to obtain to work from home and run pottery workshops for members of the public. We were told (by e-mail) that we required none. Accordingly, we built workshops and pretty soon a third of our income was made up of people paying for pottery workshops.

Unfortunately, following a complaint from a neighbour about us running a business from home, the planning department conducted an investigation, and decided that although our activities were not in breach of planning, the building we had erected as our workshop was not deemed to pass building regulations for recieving members of the public. We appealed, on the basis that we had previously been informed by e-mail that building regulations were not required, but to no avail. Conspiracy theorists might well enjoy the fact that our beloved council deleted all documents and e-mails relating to our enquiries, meaning that the ombudsman was not able to rule in our favour. Such is life. We adapted and moved on…

My mum died. Here she is, sitting in a garden, her favourite place in the world. She never got to see our new garden, here in the Clyde, being too ill to travel north. When it came to a share of the small amount of inheritance from the sale of her house that was coming to us, I wanted to make something that might form a lasting memorial.

Could we use it to build a new workshop? Something that enhanced the woodland, built from sustainable materials and using low impact construction methods?

Even better, could we make a space in the woodland that might become a haven for people – for artists and makers to spent time creating and recharging their passion?

Fortunately, we have a friend who runs a company who have the skills to make something like this happen. Without Stuart and his company Fynewood, we would have given up long ago as we have tried to navigate the labyrinth of planning. Along with Ronan (who handles design and planning) we came up with something…

We now have planning consent to put up two small buildings – one a micro-lodge with shower and amenities, the other a workshop with disabled access loo. We intend to make the whole site fully accessible to people in wheelchairs by putting in a graded pathway and decking.

We will then use the premises in a number of different ways;

  • A place for people to make artist retreats. People will be able to book both the accommodation and the workshop for either four, seven or eleven nights.
  • We intend to make some slots available at low/no cost to artists who would otherwise not be able to participate.
  • Our own workshops. Pottery, retreat days, poetry and writing days.
  • Guest workshops. Working with our network of artists and creatives, to host a wide range of arts, crafts and writing.
  • Bookings by other artists to run their own events.

As you can imagine, the costs of making this happen is a real challenge – particularly as these costs have been rising constantly, making everything much more expensive than when we started this process. Conditions imposed by the planning department have raised these costs further – we are still negotiating some of these conditions.

Despite this, we are pressing forward, determined and very grateful for the support of Fynewood.

But now we need your help.

Firstly, there is this survey.

If you are an artist, and you have ever taken, or would like to take, an artists retreat, then we would love to hear from you.

If you have undertaken workshops, would like to start or attend more, we would love to hear from you.

If you have run workshops yourself, we would love to hear from you.

Crowdfunding

The next way you might be able to help is to support this project more directly – specifically with the accessibility side of the project. Feel no pressure, but if this project connects with things that you find important and you have some spare cash to put towards it, then we would be most grateful.

Back in 2020, we were amazed when our crowdfunded ‘shop shed’ was so well supported. We decided to reach out once more to our wonderful supporters.

We have set up a new crowd funding portal, with a set of rewards as before – both physical things, but also the opportunity to book in advance as a way of investing in the future.

You can take a look here.

Creative Scotland have a system of match funding crowdfunded donations (up to a combined total of £10K) so your contributions might count for double!

Help us make this plan a reality. Help us create a space for hospitality and creativity, Let us bring good things out of this good ground, together.