Hi Friend,
I'm delighted to bring to you this podcast with an old friend and inspirational figure, Alastair McIntosh.
I first met him in a Quaker meeting house in Brighton, in southern England, when he was giving a talk on his then-new book, Soil and Soul. I still recommend the book - it's a powerful story about Land Reform in the Scottish highland, and how the Isle of Eigg became completely self-reliant, energy secure, and ousted some big corporate powers. It's a story of ordinary people who made an extra-ordinary difference to garner self-governance and sovereignty; of spiritual activism; of small miracles and big hearts: a story of encouragement amongst a world where such multi-pronged success stories are all too rare.
Listening to him over a decade ago, I thought, ah, that's what I want Quakerism to be. That's what I want Christianity to be about.
Happily, he was quite willing to hang out with an American, and through various ways, we stayed connected, and I helped to host him for his first US visit.
His name came up again in my last podcast with Dougald Hine when we were talking about the future of education, and how to do education differently. Which led me to invite him to be on the podcast again. Touching in with Elders is so important!!
Instead of creating a list of questions, I wanted to let Spirit lead us. As we share a Quaker tradition of listening to Spirit in the Silence, I decided to start with that. Silences don't usually happen on podcasts, but I think this one works - it certainly led to a beautiful emergence... including an old Scottish song, from which this episode gets its name.
One of the things that came out in our conversation was Alastair sharing some about Donald Trump's maternal Scottish lineage, and how the people of the village from which his mother comes from now see him. It's a cool story, and one that Americans (and really the world) rarely hears. We got into some Jungian analysis, historical trauma, and what is this moment that America is in, as seen by a Scottish land reformer and philosopher. We didn't really get into any kind of Jungian analysis of any Democratic presidential candidates - perhaps that will happen in some future episodes.
I hope you enjoy this episode!
- Sara Jolena
