Newsletters

 

January 2016

Happy New Year!

It’s the time of the year to look back, look forward and to stand still between past and future.
Finding the still point between past and future is the most difficult thing to do.

The Celts (amongst others) wrestled with the question of when precisely does a new year begin? Clearly not at the same time as when the old year ends. If the very last moment of the old year and the very first one of the new coincided then there would be a moment which belonged to both years and this could not be right. It seemed obvious, then, that the first moment of the new year must come immediately after the final one of the old. However, this also raised a problem. If these are two distinct moments then they must be separated. What separates these two cardinal moments has to be a tiny gap, a gap which comes after the last moment of the old and before the first moment of the new year. It’s a gap, then, which belongs neither to the old year nor to the new year: it’s a gap in time.

For the Celts (and others) this was a worrying insight.  The gap offered an opening between our world and another universe, one outside time, and they feared what might enter from that timeless place. Loud bangs; blinding flashes: fireworks might frighten the timeless beings from entering the world of time.

We celebrated Hogmanay untroubled by such thoughts. There were no fireworks at Chisholme, just music and merriment. 

He is the Last, the First. And the timeless place, the present, is something to be sought not feared, strange though it is to look for something you can’t escape. 

When I moved into the Summer House I found the lyrics of a song hanging on the noticeboard in the kitchen. The song is Anthem by Leonard Cohen and it contains the refrain, “There is a crack, a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”  Perhaps not just what Leonard was referring to, but that’s how I see the gap between past and future: as a crack in time, and you don’t need to wait for next Hogmanay to let the light in. Enjoy what it illuminates now. 

Looking forward to welcoming you to Chisholme in 2016. 

Richard Gault
principal@chisholme.org

December 2015

Written by Richard on December 3rd, the day he and the six-month course students left for their study trip to Turkey.

Journey to Turkey meandering via Paris

Je pense ….

Words can grow and unfold.

I muse on the word man: it’s a short, simple word but full of resonance.

I add two letters at its begining and produce human. For the orthodox linguist perhaps hu is not a prefix but I would like to think that it is.

A suffix appears at the other end of a word. Ity is a suffix as in modernity. Itty-bitty means extremely small but when human grows to humanity something very large emerges.

Humanity: a word that is both a name and a quality. 

As a name it is what we all are; as a quality we can show it to one another.

Still there can be growth. Growth can be cancerous.

As a quality humanity has an antonym formed by another prefix.

Inhumanity: it should be an oxymoron but it is not.

Man has grown to inhumanity.

In Paris on Friday the 13th of  November man displayed shocking inhumanity to man.

Inhumanity cannot, however, be a name. Humanity alone can prevail.

An unthinking reaction to inhumanity is fresh inhumanity and there have been distressing examples of this since 13 November.  A truer response is to reaffirm, and with renewed conviction, our common humanity.

In Paris on Monday the 30th of November 195 countries came together. Their leaders are now more aware of their responsibility to the one humanity they together represent; the chances of the Climate Conference achieving success has been enhanced because of the misguided inhuman actions two weeks earlier.

Vital as the deliberations of leaders are they do not absolve the rest of us. We too must act.

Today 3 December the Journey to Turkey begins for the students of the Six-Month Course. The question has been asked: should we go? Is it safe in this disturbed time?

The answer is - no, it is not safe if you mean: is there no risk? But placing the risk in perspective we are less likely to be the victims of inhumanity in Turkey than we are of being involved in a motor accident on the way to the airport here in Scotland.

However, it's not that we are going ahead with our visit to Turkey because the risk is small. We are going ahead as an affirmation of our belief in humanity. We will not let those who have gone astray succeed in separating us.

Divide words if you must, hu-man-ity, but do not let them divide humanity.

Je remercie ….

Richard Gault
Principal, the Chisholme Institute