News From the Hill

Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

It’s the end of December and so the nest calendar year is almost upon us. For me the new year really begins at Winter Solstice and I am already enjoying the lengthening of the winter days. We are having a wet and warm Christmas season in Ireland, quite a change from last year’s extreme winter weather and a welcome change for most people I think.

I have to admit I really enjoyed last years cold and bright Christmas and I miss the cheer of the snow, this year didn’t feel as festive to me and I have to also admit that I am becoming very tired of the mud that the almost constant rain has brought around my door.

Despite the unseasonal warmth (warmest Irish Christmas on record apparently) we still need to keep our fire lit. I have spent the last hour in the timeless chore of cutting kindling, emptying the ashes from our small stove and laying down the fire-start, I am sure every stove owner has their own way of setting the fire-start depending on what fuel they burn. We burn a mixture of peat briquettes and our own white-thorn wood, cut from the overgrown hedge earlier in the year. My partner and I even have our own ways of setting the briquettes, kindling and paper to start the fire and each is equally successful.

Some days my favourite part of starting the fire is cutting the kindling. At the moment we have a few wood-piles lying between the sitting room and the kitchen in our new house. We have a pile of saw-mill cut timber there which we have used for framing the walls, this pile is dwindling as we run out of wall framing timber (because happily it is in the walls) and the pile of cut-offs has grown. Some of the cut-offs will still be used in various jobs about the house however some pieces are destined to become kindling.

Every few days on of us goes out and picks a piece of wood that looks unsuitable for anything but kindling and we chop it up with our small axe. The chopping block is currently in the bathroom, incidentally that’s also where this year’s Christmas tree is. Doesn’t everyone keep their Christmas tree in the bathroom? Perhaps not. Our tree actually consists of a few Pine boughs that I cut the day before Christmas Eve and tied in a decorative fashion to a framing timber on the wall. I then decorated these with our small stash of Christmas decorations, I couldn’t find the stored box of decorations from last year so it was a bit improvised, none the less it is very pretty.

So the bathroom is very central to our activities this Christmas. The chopping block is a 2foot length of wood, 9x3inches, a cut-off of a roof beam. I enjoy chopping kindling. You really need to focus as your fingers are never far from the axe blade when you make that first incision that grips the piece of wood before you proceed to split it by hammering both the wood and the axe together down on the chopping block. It’s a very satisfying job, mark, split, gather the pieces into a basket.

Ever since axes have been used people have performed this task of making kindling for the fire. Perhaps it is the time of year that made me think of the generations of people, across the world, that tend to the cooking or winter fires, to warm and feed their families. Gathering and cutting firewood in some places or cutting turf, drying it and bringing it home as generations of Irish people have done over the centuries. Storing the winter fuel to keep it dry, ensuring it is not too far from the door especially in snowy or wet winters. For some people now the fire is no longer a necessity, whether or not it is essential the hearth has still a special place in many homes.

   Now at the turn of the year I wish you

  the warmth of a brightly burning fire

  as these lengthening winter days pass.

  I wish for you health and contentment in the coming year.

I subscribe to the mailing list from the FIndhorn community because sometimes what I receive is simply lovely, as it is today -

Be very, very simple, very un-complex, very natural, like very small happy children, undisturbed by what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow, but living and enjoying the ever present Now to the very full. Never try to possess anything, never try to hold on to anything, because when you do, you cannot be simple and childlike, for you are full of fear, you are afraid of losing that which you are trying to cling on to. When you can open your hearts and share all the good and perfect gifts, which I pour down upon you, holding on to nothing, then you know the true meaning of the freedom of the Spirit and you really are free. When all is out in the open and you have nothing to hide, what a glorious feeling it is.

One of the co-founders of the Findhorn Community, Eileen Caddy, received guidance from the “still voice within” and shared it with others in the community for more than 40 years. Today they continue this tradition by printing her guidance in the community’s weekly newsletter and by sharing it with the wider world through a mailing list.

If you feel inspired just go along to their site and sign up for the newsletter, you will get a little good news in you inbox every now and then.

I don’t tend towards exageration however I have to say that we are on the edge of environmental disaster here in the North West of Ireland. We are about to allow a few large shale gas mining corporations, using hydraulic fracturing drilling methods, to waltz in here and destroy our watertables, our aquifers – in fact we have given them licence to do just that, we have given them a licence to frack our local environment.

I know that we have been asleep, these licences were given some time ago and most of us never noticed. I know now that in many parts of the world ordinary people have had their lives disrupted, their farms destroyed, their livestock sickened and their own health damaged by shale gas extraction in their areas.

Rivers, streams, ponds and lakes have been damaged so that fish and other aquatic wildlife die. Watertables are damaged so that drinking water wells are now unusable, people are having to buy bottled water in order to cook, wash, water their vegetables, water their livestock etc. In some areas the tap water has become inflammeable – you can light it on fire!

The threat to our environment is overwhelming in scale and I am having great difficulty in coping with this new element in my life. In the past I was a very angry teenager and young woman, in my twenties and early thrities I was able channel that anger through involvement in certain environmental and community activism. To be an activist I found that the anger I felt was put to good use, it was useful to be angry, it gave me the energy to be commited in campaign work, it helped me to feel motivated and I was passionate about the issues in which I was involved.

Everything changed in my mid-thirties, my life was thrown upside down and I began to work on myself, I began to heal the anger. It was a long and hard journey at first and as anyone who has been on a recovery or healing path knows – nothing remains the same, the pain eased and the anger became explained, I could see why it was there and I could work on not needing or feeding it anymore. I am still on that path, I still work hard at being emtionally healthy, having healthy relationships with myself and others.

Now I have a life partner and we are making a home for ourselves in a beautiful unspoilt part of rural Ireland. We are building our home using our own hands and constantly learning new skills along the way, both life-skills and building skills. I am fortunate in having soul sisters (the word friends doesn’t quite cut it), with whom I have very good relationships and we support each other in very honest and gentle ways- that took hard work too. I have a life that I never dreamt possible, it’s a simple life, it’s not easy, we have very little money and face many challenges and I would not change it for all the money in the world.

It has changed now.

These changes are outside my control – as life is. I need to find a way to challenge what is happening to our environment without loosing myself. I don’t want to go back to living with anger in every cell in my body, I have to find a way to live with what is happening and how I feel about it without becoming lost in it.

I have a lot of work to do…

I am just playing around to see if I can feed my blog posts into Digg. There is no good reason for doing this, it’s raining and I am sitting here playing so I just thought that I would give it a go…

I don’t use Digg however I thought I might learn to and if I can set twitter and digg to talk to each other then I could have a party……… I do like parties, I can bring cakes and buns and digg can bring the fizzy drinks and twitter can bring the conversation………. there now, we are all set… party at my place… http://digg.com/scribhneoir

This article is posted to highlight a sad story. The Women For A Change Community have been supporting the families of the young people who have been imprisoned so harshly in Iran.

On 26th July last year, Emily – a UK student of Arabic – married Basel – a Palestinian artist.

They had a beautiful fairy-like wedding in Damascus, Syria. You can see it here:
http://womenforachangecommunity.ning.com/profiles/blogs/last-night-in-syria-sarah

Emily was helping with the Iraqi Student Project, teaching refugees at Yamouk. Her friend Sarah, from the US, was a volunteer there. Sarah came to Emily’s wedding, with her lover Shane, and their friends Josh and Shon.
Sadly, the fairy-story quickly turned into a tragedy.

The following day, Sarah, Shane, Josh and Shon set off on a much-needed holiday.
They lived their lives determined to correct negative misconceptions of the Middle East and to help repair damage done by the US government, in cultural relations. (They wrote many blogs and articles to this effect).

Their holiday took them to the mountains and waterfalls of Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the most peaceful regions – also staggeringly beautiful and increasingly popular with tourists.

On the 31st July, Sarah, Shane and Josh were hiking on a tourist trail and, it is not known what happened, but they disappeared after a brief phonecall from Shane to Shon (who was back at the hotel) to say he needed to call the US Embassy.

2 weeks later, Iran broke the news that Sarah, Shane and Josh were in Evin Prison, Tehran, on suspicion of being spies who, they claimed, had hiked across the border into Iran…

So, sadly, this beautiful wedding video now tells a very different tale.

We are working closely with the families and friends of Sarah, Shane and Josh, especially Sarah’s mother, Nora, and Shon, the ’4th Hiker’. We have also, over the last 2 weeks, come to know Emily and Basel, who generously have allowed us to share their wedding video with the world, in order to help show dispel any last doubts that Sarah, Shane and Josh could be spies.

You may have seen in the media, 2 weeks ago, footage of the mothers visiting Sarah, Shane and Josh for the first time in Evin Prison.
In which case, you may know that Sarah and Shane announced their engagement to their mothers. Shane had woven Sarah a ring out of his shirt threads, in Evin.

‘Last Night in Syria’ shows a deeply-moving scene of Sarah and Shane dancing together.
Sarah is now in solitary confinement, and sees Shane – so we are told – for an hour a day.

Emily and Basel’s story does not yet have a happy ending either… They are also embroiled in governmental policies which means that, nearly a year later, they still live thousands of miles apart while Basel awaits permission from UK immigration authorities to join his wife in the UK.

With today’s shocking news about the Israeli governments knee-jerk reaction to the Flotilla, the two love-stories in this film become yet more poignant and symbolic of how governments and politics impact on the lives of peace-loving civilians.

For me, personally, there is the added personal element that, this day last year, I was on honeymoon in Tel Aviv. We had just spent 2 weeks with Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian friends, and made many more new friends along the way, all of whom said they wanted to be free to get on with their lives, and – importantly – to get on with each other…

Please help to share this video as widely as you can, in any way you can…
On your websites, blogs, the media, women’s magazines…
BBC Persia has already expressed interest in using some of the footage, and ABC7 in America.
further suggestions welcome.

Love, peace and gratitude to all,
Chris

Chris Crowstaff, film-maker