Words and Wonderings

Words and Wonderings Conversations with present-day prophets

Joy Mead

WILD GOOSE PUBLICATIONS

Copyright Š 2011 Joy Mead Published 2011 by Wild Goose Publications Fourth Floor, Savoy House, 140 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3DH, UK, the publishing division of the Iona Community.

Scottish Charity No. SC003794.

Limited Company Reg. No. SC096243.

ISBN 978-1-84952-071-3 Cover artwork: StephenRaw.com Š 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including digitising, photocopying or any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Joy Mead has asserted her right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Overseas distribution: N. America: Novalis/Bayard, 10 Lower Spadina Ave., Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario M5V 2Z Australia: Willow Connection Pty Ltd, Unit 4A, 3-9 Kenneth Road, Manly Vale, NSW 2093 New Zealand: Pleroma Christian Supplies, Higginson St., Otane 4170, Central Hawkes Bay Printed by Bell & Bain, Thornliebank, Glasgow, UK

Contents Foreword Introduction

9 11

Getting the bread right: a conversation with Andrew Whitley

17

Earth pilgrim: a conversation with Satish Kumar

29

Recognising the gift: a conversation with Julia Ponsonby Interlude: something as ordinary as an orchard

45

59

People: who they are and what they do: a conversation with Colin Tudge 61 Living the dream: a conversation with Maddy Harland Interlude: will you walk with me?

83

103

Walk with me: a conversation with Jan Sutch Pickard Making music together: challenge and celebration: a conversation with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies 131 A festival like no other: a conversation with Glenys Hughes

143

Vision and wholeness: a conversation with Sophie Hacker

151

Interlude: an orchestra larger than life

171

107

Poetry, people and community: a conversation with Lesley Saunders

173

Shaping the sound, colouring the context, making the meaning: a conversation with Stephen Raw 191 ‘It can also be wondrous’: a conversation with Donald Eadie

211

Interlude: community, compassion, connections Walk in my shoes: a conversation with Sister Maire Hayes

227

233

Telling our stories: a conversation with Filda Abelkek Acts of homely earth-keeping: a conversation with Dawn Sanders

6

261

247

the words and wonderings of being alive I am thankful for: insights that show me straight lines are overrated, logic and reason don’t solve everything, the table is round and there’s music in the air; quiet moments, noisy moments, inspiring moments; voices that echo in my mind and become friends; all-sorted conversations; seeds that don’t stay where they are put; my friend’s shoes that encourage walking on air which is not an element for walking on; earth-supported, water-washed, air-blessed, fire-inspired bread and poetry; people who in all their extraordinary ordinariness turn up on the doorstep like parcels of wonderful surprises; connections and process; being and becoming; today and tomorrow, which are different and always will be.

7

Foreword

foreword Anyone who has ever had a decent conversation with Joy Mead knows that it is an always stimulating, often exhilarating, sometimes profound and occasionally slightly alarming experience!

Imagine setting out on a journey with a companion who is passionate, thoughtful, well-informed, sparky, opinionated and popping with ideas; you never know quite where you are going or where you might end up, and in this lies both the exhilaration and the alarm. Joy herself recognises this: ‘Digression is always a highly significant and valuable part of this talking: following different leads to often obscure places, making and understanding connections. Butterfly brains, like the creatures themselves, are beautiful, necessary and to be valued!’ (p.109).

Words and Wonderings invites us to listen in to Joy's conversations with a fascinating and diverse group of people, nine women and six men, who have in common two features. First, they are all makers (what Scots calls ‘makars’) of one kind or another: poets and storytellers, artists and gardeners, musicians and bakers, philosophers and cooks and educators and soulmakers, practitioners in the art of sustainable living. Second, in their making, they all also make connections, discover and create community, in a range of contexts from island to inner city. Their open-hearted sharing of their individual stories is in itself inspirational. Two themes emerge strongly for me: they are all concerned, in different ways, with the value of the real, with what is true to itself, intrinsic, rooted, of substance rather than surfaces; and they all affirm the importance of the slow, of processes and practices that allow for organic growth, creative gestation, time for relationship to mature and for participation to become excellent.

But these are not interviews. They are much richer than that 9

Words and Wonderings

kind of one-sided transaction allows. They are dialogue, proper exchanges of ideas, feelings, experiences, cordial disagreements and delightful concord. The conversations don’t only talk about community and connections, they make them. And in our listening-in, we are also invited to join the conversation, to become a third participant in this exploring of community and connections, and even make our own digressions. Who knows where these will lead us – perhaps also to somewhere beautiful, necessary and to be valued!

Joy Mead in conversation with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies © Ian Mead

Kathy Galloway

10

Introduction

introduction The tripartite understanding of community is the root, trunk and branch of right relationship. It is how love becomes incarnate.

Alastair McIntosh, Soil and Soul p.2801

This book is a celebration of people and community, of gifts and gifting, of the earth and all living things, of relationships and living together and of conversation itself – shared words which are also gifts. It’s an affirmation of what we value and how we express what we care about.

These are not interviews or discussions of issues. They are meetings of hearts and minds – what happens when two people meet to talk, to express, explain, develop, exchange, their thoughts and sometimes their deepest feelings about themselves, the community in which they live and the wider world.

They are not carefully set up so they will also demonstrate the value of digression. Digression is a significant part of any conversation. It’s about remaining open to and aware of passing details; for God, and the devil, are in the detail. Discernment is a vital tool.

The conversations may not always appear to be about community but I think they all give insight into what it means to live wholly with others, what different gifts bring and what trust and faith mean in that diverse context.

Sharing stories in conversation is complex. It’s about who or what I am, and how do I know? It’s about trusting my vulnerability to another. In communion with others is where people discover their creativity. A conversation is a connection between reason and emotion in which personal, political and social issues interact … much as they might in a piece of music.

The conversations include the unsaid – that reaching 11

Words and Wonderings

towards something inexpressible which a reader may sense because this is a conversation. Understanding what makes a conversation is vital. It involves relationship, paying attention fully. It requires generosity of spirit.

No amount of group activity will bring people into closer relationship one with another unless they communicate at deep emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels. We might talk about the importance of objectivity, of remaining objective, but it’s impossible to escape ourselves. Keep a discussion purely objective, stick to your carefully selected list of questions and considered answers, don’t let your senses respond to what the other says and you won’t have a problem walking away and getting on with your life. But you won’t have been transformed by your communion with the one you’ve met, you won’t understand on your whole body what meeting one with another means.

It is sometimes said of more eminent writers than me that she or he misses the big issues of the day, and it’s true there’s not a lot of direct talk of death and destruction, poverty and suffering, oppression and abuse in the pieces in this book. But I find it difficult to understand or follow any differentiation between personal and political. The personal is always political. So when, for example, I’m writing about something as ordinary and local as walking, I know the impact of placing and moving my feet on the earth: on others elsewhere and on the earth itself – and that’s political. On the whole this is a hopeful book, which to some extent comes out of my deeply felt awareness of injustice and suffering, personal, social and global … and a lifelong love of poetry.

So this is the poetry of conversation that is vital to community life. It is opening up ourselves to what is beyond belief, dogma, doctrine or duty.

So there’s not much talk of God, but if you do not find some 12

Introduction

sense of whatever you might recognise as God within each conversation perhaps you might like to think about whether you are generally missing something profound about the life force that runs through all things. God-talk – theology – isn’t the domain of academics or clergy, etc alone but is where all may explore their understanding of the depth of our humanity and humanness. There is no way except to talk of life and experiences: how you experience the word G-o-d, discovering the story you live by; how you connect: to other people, to all life, to our earth … where you belong. Understand that and you will be released to join poets and painters, artists and scientists … and all people talking to one another in their own creative languages.

We all know that learning to communicate openly and without fear is essential to creating true and real communities and a sustainable world. So what does community mean beyond the meaningless jargon of community cohesion or the ‘Big Society’?

Is it even possible to find words for our living together? I’m not sure that it is and I’m not sure it matters much. What matters most is wonder: be it at the sunrise in the morning or the food on our plates, the intricacy of a grain of wheat or the diversity of people. Markets, bread baked and broken, gardens, orchards, kitchens, poetry, painting, music … or simply being are part of the way good communities make themselves and value their distinctiveness.

There is no definitive purpose or ultimate aim in this book.

The words all begin a process towards what can’t be told but can be shared, towards recovering that sense of wonder at our earth and one another, which is what justifies our being alive.

Thank you, as always, to Wild Goose Publications, and in particular to Neil for his care, understanding and unwavering encouragement. Thank you also to friends both old and new 13

Words and Wonderings

who contributed to this book. They gave their time and themselves with grace, enthusiasm and generosity. I enjoyed our conversations immensely and hope they did too. A special thank you to Steve Raw, not only for the beautiful artwork on the cover but also for generosity, support, encouragement and friendship.

Joy Mead

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Introduction

might it be called wisdom?

It’s as we approach old age, I think, that we see at last the loveliness of things once overlooked.

There are moments minor epiphanies not remarkable in themselves that lodge in the memory to be recalled long afterwards.

And still I know neither where I am nor why nor does it matter.

15

earth pilgrim

a conversation with Satish Kumar

Words and Wonderings

if If I am always surprised at: the intricacy of the smallest flower, the fragility of a grain of wheat, the eternal light in the eyes of a child, the unspoken story in the lines and folds on an old woman’s skin, the way each year the beech leaves unfurl in spring with colour that is beyond any description of green, and the way a dandelion might some days outshine the sun.

If I walk the making, the celebration and allow myself to be shaped by the sound of the wind and coloured by a slant of sunlight.

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A conversation with Satish Kumar

If I look into another’s eyes and see a life fully lived in moments unremarkable but lodged in the memory: a story that is other than mine yet is also mine.

If I greet each day knowing that what happens is the chance that something might.

If I begin to grope towards what can’t be told but can be shared then I can begin to feel that beauty will save the world and know that I am alive.

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Words and Wonderings

earth pilgrim a conversation with Satish Kumar Satish Kumar became a Jain monk in India at the age of nine. He left the order at eighteen to become a Gandhian environmentalist and, driven by love, worked for land reform. Then, inspired by Bertrand Russell’s stand against atomic weapons, he left India on a peace walk to the four atomic capitals of the world. He settled in London; and later he became Editor of Resurgence magazine, set up the Small School in Hartland and was a member of the group setting up Schumacher College, named for E.F. Schumacher (Small is Beautiful) and founded on the conviction that a new vision is needed for human society and its relationship to the earth. Satish is still Director of Programmes at Schumacher College. He is the author of several books, including No Destination: An Autobiography and You Are Therefore I Am: a Declaration of Dependence.

I talked with Satish in the appropriate and appealing setting of Schumacher College.

Joy: I have been sharing with a diverse group of people: bakers, artists, poets, gardeners … thoughts about what holds a community together. With you my thinking begins to open out to community in the ecological sense: different species living together in the same space – a sacred space not ours by right as humans but belonging to all the life of that place.

Please could you tell me about Schumacher College and the way reverential ecology, based on a relational world view, makes a difference to thinking about and being in community – how the vision is being made real.

Satish: Schumacher College is a community of learners. We are learning to live in harmony with ourselves, with our fellow 32

A conversation with Satish Kumar

human beings and, particularly to start, with our fellow learners.

First of all, we must see the human body as a ‘community’.

We have to be in harmony with ourselves: our senses, our spirit, our mind, our body, our heart, our feelings, our knowledge, our intuition, our intellect, our consciousness. Unless we are in touch with ourselves we cannot move outwards.

We flourish in relationship with others. Here at Schumacher College we have two kinds of community: people who are here longer-term: staff members and students who live here for one year, between 15 and 20 people; and the enlarged community created regularly when another 20 people come on courses, for one, two or three weeks.

Joy: What is the shape of your day here?

Satish: We start the day with meditation between 7.15 and 7.45 – a community activity. But meditation is more than sitting in a quiet room for half an hour in the morning. Throughout the day it’s being attentive and aware, being mindful of our speech, of our thought, of all our activities … Mindfulness permeates the day … so that meditation becomes a way of life.

After breakfast the whole college community comes together at 8.30 for what I call a ‘community meeting’ when we think about new guests coming, activities happening, announcements, who is doing what, who is coming, who is going.

Then from 8.45 to 9.00 we do what we call manual tasks, manual work, because it’s not just an intellectual thing we are pursuing. We have to be in harmony with our own place, and in order to create a sense of place we have to look after it, we have to maintain it, so we will spend 45 minutes working in the garden, or working in the kitchen, or sweeping the floor, or cleaning the toilets, tidying, washing up. Whatever work is needed, together we do that work mindfully.

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Words and Wonderings

Then we have half an hour to wash, change and get ready for classes at ten o’clock. We have three hours of study with a teacher, but there is conversation and mutual learning. At one o’clock we share lunch together. It’s a sacred meal, a gift of the earth we receive with gratitude.

In the afternoons there are field trips. We learn from each other, from our teachers and also from nature, the great teacher.

We observe the generosity, beauty, integrity and harmony of nature. Nature is the greatest source of learning and you can’t learn from nature unless you are in nature and with nature. So we take our students out to the moor, to the sea …

Dinner is at 6.30, and after that another class where students participate, teach each other, give presentations.

Joy: And of course you cook together, don’t you?

Satish: Yes, I meet with a group of students in the kitchen and together we learn how to cook mindfully: relating to each other and the ingredients. We are going to feed the community so our feeling for the community goes into the food. The food serves not only to feed the body. It creates a bonding and a belonging.

Joy: But there’s more, isn’t there, to making community, more than the bonding process of doing things together?

Satish: Yes, I’ve told you the shape of the day but we have to enlarge our sense to a larger human community and then enlarge that sense even further to a vision of earth community of which humans are a part. One of our inspirations is Thomas Berry. He says: ‘The earth is not a collection of objects, it’s a communion of subjects.’ And when you are a communion you can form community.

Earth does not belong to humans, humans belong to the 34

A conversation with Satish Kumar

earth, so our great reverence and love for the earth, for nature, for life becomes our driving force. Our ecological lifestyle isn’t about fear or doom, gloom and disaster, but love of community, love of earth.

Joy: So, here at Schumacher College, ecology is affirming.

People take hope back to their own communities. Do you hear from them again?

Satish: Very much so. We have what you might call a community of around 1000 people who have been inspired and moved by the work we do here. They go home and start projects: organic farms, schools, NGOs or new university courses. We are training leaders here and they become catalysts for change in their own communities. We stay in touch with them and they come back whenever they need re-energising and there’s regular communication at all levels. People who have been here know one another, so when visiting other places they stay with one another. When I go to other places I write to people from that area who’ve been here to say that I’m coming. This way there is a network of people supporting one another and sharing ideas.

The sense of community is very strong.

Joy: What you are describing has similarities with what happens within the Iona Community and on Iona.

Satish: I stayed on Iona with the Iona Community. It’s a very strong community. I used to know George MacLeod. We were good friends. I was working for peace and disarmament and he was a peacemaker so he was a great support and inspiration to me when I started The London School of Non-violence. He came to speak there.

George MacLeod and I met many times and I went as a 35

Words and Wonderings

volunteer to Iona when the Abbey buildings were being restored and helped with the building work, carrying stones and things like that.

Joy: And have you been back since then?

Satish: In 1986, when I was 50, I travelled around Great Britain for four months, walking 2000 miles as a pilgrim, and Iona was my deep north. I stayed in the Abbey which I’d helped to restore. I spoke to members of the Community about my pilgrimage and I wrote about the experience in my book No Destination. I love the earth and feel that earth is my home – that is how I walked to Iona, as an earth pilgrim.

Joy: Please tell me a bit more of what that word ‘home’ means to you.

Satish: When I’m in human communities: cities, towns, I don’t feel at home. I feel I’m an exile. When I’m in mountains, hills, forest, moorlands … then I’m home.

Joy: How did you feel when you arrived on Iona?

Satish: I walked there but even if you go by train, take the boat to Mull, then bus across Mull, then the Iona boat, you begin to feel that you are arriving at the edge of the world … and it’s so peaceful, quiet, serene. There is no sin at Iona. Iona is pure and if you go with pure heart your fear, anxiety, anger and pride melts away. These things do not last at Iona. I felt at home at Iona.

Joy: Yes, but with that there is the social and political awareness so significant within the Iona Community. You don’t cut yourself off from a world where there is oppression and suffering 36

A conversation with Satish Kumar

and a need to work for justice and peace. You come to the island with awareness of things that are wrong, of what needs to be said and done, struggles that are going on.

Satish: That’s right, it’s not retreat. It’s a peaceful place but not a passive place. It’s an active place where you can be renewed, invigorated, inspired to communicate with the world, to go back, whether to Glasgow or London or wherever you come from, to work for transformation, for justice and peace, for equity in the world … all that George MacLeod stood for. I feel personally that when I went to Iona I was re-energised to be on the front line.

Joy: Does the renewal, the energising, come from a sense of peace, of homecoming, of solidarity – or all of these? Is the peace of home a place or something you carry within you?

Satish: Home for me is under a tree, home is on Dartmoor, home is by the River Dart.

Joy: It’s where you feel the earth, the rhythm in your feet?

Satish: Yes, and the birds and animals are members of my earth community, but I get my renewal, ideas, inspiration from being in communion with people.

Joy: And what about Resurgence?

Satish: Resurgence is an informal dispersed community of readers who share ideas and interests. It’s a strong community because we are in touch through correspondence. We have weekends and summer camps where readers come together and share thoughts. There are also monthly Resurgence local groups.

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Words and Wonderings

Joy: So activism can be through writing? For example is a poem that works for transformation a form of activism?

Satish: Pen is mightier than the sword! Many activists, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King … use their writing to wake people up. Resurgence, my books and my talks are all part of the way I try to wake people up. I’m an activist for the weak, the oppressed, the exploited, and my speaking and writing give me energy to stand with them.

But it wouldn’t be the whole truth to say that I write, therefore I am a writer. Writing involves much more than just being able to think and write. It is as much true to say that you are a reader, therefore I am a writer. The relationship between the reader and the writer, the paper and the pen and the publisher and the subject matter are all equally important aspects of writing. This is linked-up or joined-up thinking. It is a participatory, relational, connective and integrated way of looking at life and seeing it whole.

Joy: And this energy is what might be called the spirituality, isn’t it? So many people say they have no spirituality, they have no faith. I find this puzzling. I wonder what is meant by the words ‘people of no faith’. People go to bed at night in faith that they will wake up in the morning. People plant seeds in the ground in faith that plants will grow. Everybody has some sort of faith.

Satish: It has become fashionable to say: ‘I have no faith.’ People no longer trust their own senses: their ears, eyes, nose, and they don’t trust their hands. René Descartes questioned the existence of the world and then said: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ For goodness sake, it’s all about more than the mind. You can hear, see, smell, taste, touch … you can love.

Joy: And hasn’t Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’, his dualism, 38

A conversation with Satish Kumar

his denial of interconnectedness and interdependence, led to fragmentation, separation, alienation and isolation?

Satish: Yes, and Cartesian education is still in fashion. All the universities, all the schools more or less discard anything other than scientific, rational, objective knowledge. What you cannot measure does not exist. So love, faith, trust, compassion do not exist because you can’t measure them. I don’t know about soul, intuition or consciousness because I can’t measure them. What can’t be measured doesn’t seem to matter.

Joy: It’s taking reason and logic to extremes, isn’t it?

Satish: To extremes, yes. Logic has a place. Reason has a place.

In our bodies we have a mind. We need to use it. But we also have a heart. We have intuition and insight. We have love and feeling. We are holistic beings. My existence is a network of influences. I exist in a web of relationships: in reciprocity, mutuality and community. I am because earth, air, fire and water are.

I am because my parents, teachers and my friends are. I am because Buddha, Krishna and Christ are: they are part of my thinking. Shakespeare is, therefore I am. Beethoven is, therefore I am. Van Gogh is, therefore I am. Gandhi is, therefore I am. You are, therefore I am. So I embrace intellect, logic, reason but not at the exclusion of love, intuition, spirit, faith.

Joy: And wonder too.

Satish: Yes, wonder and mystery: when you look at the natural world and say ‘Wow’. There is a coherence in the earth and that coherence is something you can trust, so I would say there’s no dualism between reason and faith.

Joy: I feel it every time I make a loaf of bread: I measure the 39

Words and Wonderings

ingredients, I know the science of how it works … but I still wonder at the result.

Satish: Exactly!

Joy: Now we’ve wandered through all sorts of ideas. That’s what happens in a real conversation! But let’s go back to George MacLeod. He talked of ‘the demanding common task’. What do you think is our ‘demanding common task’? We who have no abbey to rebuild! Is it renewing relationship?

Satish: The demanding common task at the moment is to reconnect with our earth, with humanity, with all life – to understand how nature works and to understand how human society can live in harmony. We have become disconnected. This disconnection is our greatest problem, and the cause of our social, political, spiritual, ecological crises. Whoever we are … we breathe air, drink water, eat food from Mother Earth.

Joy: We all have the same basic needs.

Satish: The moment we realise the connections we will begin to understand that there are no problems which human ingenuity, imagination, creativity and spirit cannot solve. At the moment, we think all we have are politics and weapons …

Joy: … and money.

Satish: Yes … and making money.

Joy: Perhaps this would be a good time to ask about Slow Sunday.

Satish: Yes, if we want to connect with ourselves, with one another, with the earth then we have to slow down and develop an attitude of mind that encourages living naturally.

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A conversation with Satish Kumar

Sunday is a good place to start. Sunday is a day of rest when we can be in touch with the soil, we can garden, we can walk, meditate, paint, write poetry, bake bread, sleep. We can do things that take time. When God made time, he made plenty of it. Why are we in a hurry? Where are we going in a hurry? We can’t have speed and connectedness.

Joy: It seems simple enough but is there the will or even the desire to do it?

Satish: My suggestion to the world is make Sunday a Slow Sunday to mitigate climate change – if we don’t rush, don’t shop, don’t go to petrol stations, don’t fly on Sundays, then at a stroke we can reduce 5% of carbon emissions – and also for our own sanity, to give ourselves space and time to live. Resurgence has launched this idea – inspired by Schumacher’s ‘Small is beautiful’ and Gandhi’s ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ – that we take part in actions that symbolise a rejection of commercialism, a passion for the planet and a desire for change. We believe that big change is possible through small meaningful actions at a local level. It is only by changing our immediate environment that we can pave the way for change on a larger scale. Resurgence has launched the Slow Sunday idea not only as a religious imperative but as an ecological, personal, social, family imperative.

Joy: Is wholeness or salvation actually about doing less and being more?

Satish: We are human beings not human doings. So our doing should emerge effortlessly, naturally, harmoniously out of our being, like breathing, hearing, seeing, talking, tasting …… without thought of goals but with thoughts of delight and joy.

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Words and Wonderings

Joy: And how much does beauty matter?

Satish: A great deal. Our culture is starved of beauty. Beauty is food for the soul. So beauty is central to all my teachings. My mother used to say: Do not make anything, do not have anything, unless it is beautiful, it is useful, it is durable.

Joy: That’s William Morris, isn’t it?

Satish: William Morris – the same. So my mother’s wisdom and William Morris’s wisdom are the same – a common sense universal perennial wisdom. Beautiful, usable, durable. Beauty is the window through which we can reach out for a balanced, socially just, ecologically sustainable, spiritually fulfilling lifestyle … all through beauty.

Joy: In the grounds of Buckfast Abbey where I stopped off earlier, and found some time to make a few notes about beauty, I discovered a little Methodist chapel and I talked to the Methodist minister who happened to be there. He told me something of its history: that the chapel was there on a country lane before the Abbey was built. It had then, and still has, a modest and enduring beauty.

Satish: Yes, it has humility, harmony and sense of coherence.

You can be very simple and elegant – that’s beauty. So whether it’s your food, your clothes, your house, simplicity is essential for beauty. A flower unfolding, a child … these are beautiful.

Joy: So how do we make beautiful communities?

Satish: Only through following the path of humility … out of humility will grow a sense of relationship … and grace. Grace is part of beauty. If you are gracious then community is stronger 42

A conversation with Satish Kumar

and more beautiful. I don’t live in a community for my sake but for an opportunity to serve others, to share. A family, a college, a business, even a magazine can be a community. Where there is a sense of service, that is community. The House of Commons could be a community if it only had a sense of relationship and service, but today governments, businesses and so on seem to have lost their sense of humility, mutuality, relationship and service. Beauty and community go together. If a community has no beauty then it is not a community.

Joy: So a sense of community isn’t about bonding activities but about a basis of relationship, compassion, humility and sharing.

Satish: A community has to have a communion, which basically means sharing and participation. Then you transform ordinary into extraordinary. Every meal shared becomes a sacred meal. If there’s no communion, there’s no community.

Joy: Thank you, Satish. We have covered a lot of ground in a way that wasn’t planned but was imagined – not discussion but an exchange of feelings going where it wishes!

Satish: Yes, a conversation … not an interview.

Find out more about Schumacher College at www.schumachercollege.org.uk, or read Holistic Education: Learning from Schumacher College, by Anne Phillips (with contributions from Satish Kumar, and others).

Find out more about Resurgence and Slow Sunday at www.resurgence.org Books by Satish Kumar are available from Green Books: www.greenbooks.co.uk Also available, Earth Pilgrim: A Spiritual Journey into the Landscape of

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Dartmoor, with Satish Kumar, a BBC DVD (available from Resurgence), and a book published by Green Books, 2009.

If you would like to buy a copy of Words and Wonderings, please return to the information page for this book on our website:

www.ionabooks.com