Words and Wonderings

Joy Mead

Description

Through conversations and connections Joy Mead explores the true meaning of community - beyond the jargon of 'community cohesion' and the 'Big Society'. Includes conversations with Satish Kumar, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Lesley Saunders, Julia Ponsonby, Stephen Raw and others.

Sujets

• Christian mysticism

Informations

• Publié par: Wild Goose Publications
• Date de parution: 18 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849521895
• Langue: English

Extrait

Words and Wonderings is a celebration of gratitude, kindness, mindfulness, truth and the love of beauty through the gifts and giftedness of poets, artists, musicians, gardeners, bakers and many more, who discover their creativity in communion with others.
Through conversations and connections Joy Mead explores the true meaning of community - beyond the jargon of community cohesion and the Big Society .
But what matters most and is central to this book is wonder - be it at the sunrise or the food on our plates, the intricacy of a grain of wheat or the diversity of people, bread baked and broken, gardens, orchards, kitchens, poetry, painting, music or simply being a part of the way good communities make themselves and value their distinctiveness. The words of this book 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.
Joy Mead is a member of the Iona Community and the author of The One Loaf , A Telling Place , Making Peace in Practice and Poetry and Where Are the Altars? She leads creative writing groups, and is involved in development education and justice and peace work.
www.ionabooks.com
Words and Wonderings
Conversations with present-day prophets
Joy Mead
Copyright 2011 Joy Mead
Published 2011 by
Wild Goose Publications,
4th Floor, Savoy House, 140 Sauchiehall St, Glasgow G2 3DH, UK.
Wild Goose Publications is the publishing division of the Iona Community.
Scottish Charity No. SC003794. Limited Company Reg. No. SC096243.
www.ionabooks.com
ePub: ISBN 978-1-84952-189-5
Mobipocket: ISBN 978-1-84952-197-0
PDF: ISBN 978-1-84952-196-3
Cover artwork: StephenRaw.com 2011
All rights reserved. Apart from reasonable personal use on the purchaser s own system and related devices, no part of this document or file(s) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Joy Mead has asserted her right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1998 to be identified as the author of this book.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Getting the bread right: a conversation with Andrew Whitley
Earth pilgrim: a conversation with Satish Kumar
Recognising the gift: a conversation with Julia Ponsonby
Interlude: something as ordinary as an orchard
People: who they are and what they do: a conversation with Colin Tudge
Living the dream: a conversation with Maddy Harland
Interlude: will you walk with me?
Walk with me: a conversation with Jan Sutch Pickard
Making music together: challenge and celebration: a conversation with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
A festival like no other: a conversation with Glenys Hughes
Vision and wholeness: a conversation with Sophie Hacker
Interlude: an orchestra larger than life
Poetry, people and community: a conversation with Lesley Saunders
Shaping the sound, colouring the context, making the meaning: a conversation with Stephen Raw
It can also be wondrous : a conversation with Donald Eadie
Interlude: community, compassion, connections
Walk in my shoes: a conversation with Sister Maire Hayes
Telling our stories: a conversation with Filda Abelkek
Acts of homely earth-keeping: a conversation with Dawn Sanders

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.
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 soul- makers, 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 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!
Kathy Galloway

Joy Mead in conversation with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies Ian Mead
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.280 1
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 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