A sea of people

Gravir church

I was in the congregation at our local church today.
Two of the kindest, most generous and welcoming people passed away together and the church was completely full for them.

The service was mostly in English, but as is normal with the Western Isles Free Church, there was some psalm singing.
I have not heard so many voices joining together to sing Gaelic psalms before and the effect was quite literally moving.
Psalms don't seem to follow the same rules that other group singing has.  It is usually led by someone with others joining in, in what sounds like their own interpretation of the same song.  The pace seems to vary from person to person and people move from high to low notes in different places.  But it literally sweeps you up like waves in the sea.
Imagine wading out into the sea to shoulder height and feeling the rolling waves pulling you in different directions, tugging at you and carrying you off your feet.  This was what being a part of the service felt like today.

When we first moved to Lewis, amongst a sea of new faces, Boy & Maureen stood out.  They were the very first people we met on the day we arrived - they ran the local post office and we stopped to ask directions for the house we were staying at.  When Mark took over as their postman 10 years later,  they became a part of his everyday and over that year they all got to know each other not just as colleagues but as friends too.

They supported every local group and always attended every event.  They talked to everyone, whether about the latest news in the area, or with a heartfelt story from the past.  I cannot think of one person living here who didn't know them.  As Mark said in his own tribute, everything they had, they gave.

They will be very missed when we all finally believe that they are gone.

Halloween in the Hebrides

An important occassion on the calendar, Halloween has become, most certainly, the scariest night of the year in our area.
As my boys have grown older, their costumes seem to have crept closer to the border, from chilling to disturbing. This year, Austin was the butcher of Kershader....

But this is not what makes it the scariest night of the year.  For me, the frightening part is when all the parents emerge from their separate houses and congregate together for the annual Halloween party followed by trick or treating. 
It is always a brilliant night, lots of fun, the kids have the best time ever, running from house to house in the dark collecting bucketfulls of sweets, but the pre-party nerves make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up alarmingly.
(This year Morris peaked too soon, having already been out guising somewhere else the night before, he had a melt down and refused to go to the local party.  A parental nightmare, the indecision of whether to force your child to join in, or let them just be - horrific.) 

Some villages are hyper organised, they plan times, meals, drops off points and are joyous in their togetherness.

My village and the one next door are often at war with each other for a large part of the year, have no communication skills and have the largest amount of children to appease. 
But again this year, it all worked out for the best in the end!

I think the root cause of the Halloween fear, sadly, comes from friendship.

When people are on committees - as they often are here, there is a committee for something nearly every night of the week - people know their roles and purpose and everyone feels generally comfortable with this.

But when we have to go to a 'party', have 'fun' and be ourselves..?  I don't always know where to put myself, so after years of Halloween parties now, I have learnt to just follow the lead... of the kids!

Our children are taught in school how to behave with their classmates to always get along.  They know it is not right to have petty squabbles or take offense at someone else's behaviour just because they are different to us.  They are learning to be tolerant, patient and understanding.  Adults aren't always as well behaved - and ironically in our villages, it is often the adults who are teachers that are the most naughty...

But when you see the kids all running around together, jeering and joking, egging each other on and telling each other off like equals do, it makes you realise us adults are just crap at being friends sometimes.

Never mind - with Halloween night closing for another year, we can now all look forward to the next community occassion - Christmas...! 

 

People trees

Lewis and many of the Hebridean islands are known for being low on trees.  It has come from a history where the people were evicted to make way for sheep farming. Though now fenced in the sheep are still abundant and graze down any new shoots that may self seed.  Add to this that the soil is quite shallow so any larger trees that reach maturity are often blown down in our winter gales, their roots not able to reach down very far to anchor themselves.  It is what gives Lewis, particularly, the unfair label of 'bleak' - visitors used to the lush green fields, hedgerows and woodland of southern England, do not see past the expanse of the moor.

The benefit however is that the landscape stretches out before you, with nothing in the way to interrupt the view. It allows you to see for miles and gives you that feeling of being a giant, or as free as a bird - a far away view is good for the soul.

On our croft we have tried to plant some trees to provide some shelter and some interest, with varying degrees of success.
After trying for years to have a line of Ash along a track, one ash has finally survived rabbit attack, sheep attack, wind and frost and this year is about 5ft high.  But I'm not used to something interrupting the curve of the hill, so every time I am working in the area, I catch sight of it out of the corner of my eye and for a moment I think it is someone standing there.  I wonder if this is how some of the old myths and stories of the trees being alive came about.  Perhaps Tolkein was working in his garden and a new oak tree kept grabbing his attention.

Treebeard

The green man is an old pagan image of fertility, symbolising the circle of the seasons and rebirth in springtime.  He is usually portayed as a face intertwined with leaves and vines.  He is not unique it its occurrence in Britain and is found all over the world with similar meanings.

Trees have been with us for millenia, they are important not only for shelter, fuel and food but offer us some anthropomorphic comfort too.  Pre-civilisation, you can see how they would have been given deity status. 


We have one area on the croft we call the magical forest. After years of trying to cultivate the native Scots pine in pots, with not much luck, we noticed that the patch of wind damaged, fallen over pine trees was actually self seeding.  The trees are know to grow in a crack on the side of a rocky crag, they don't need much vegetation to get on.  So in all my efforts to feed and tend to the saplings, it seems they are just better when left alone in the environment they know and call home!

Newcomers, self seeding pines

Everyday People

I took the boys to a funeral today.

Our next-door neighbour James died, unexpectedly while on holiday from a heart attack.
We weren't close in the category of 'friends' but actually by being physically close to them in space, his death has affected us all just as much.
He wasn't 'an old friend' , 'a pal from college', 'an army mate', but just by living next door for 5 years, he was an un-noticed part of our lives.  We took this relationship forgranted, so that now when it has suddenly been removed, it is a shock that I just can't quite get my head around.

His daughter would come to our house before school in the morning, while her Mum & Dad left early for work.  As she is only 1 year older than Austin, they have been at school together for most of their lives, up until the break to senior school happened last year.  I lost my own Dad when I was 18.  She is just turning 13.  I know she will handle it ok, she has lots of family and caring folk around.

The funeral was great - he was typical Scot - you can't go round the house without sharing a drink, so after a chapel service and visit to the resting plot, everyone went to the local pub. 
Everyone was stunned, but also knew he would want there to be drinking and friendship. 
Wouldn't we all.

Community

Sometimes we get a holiday from our Scottish island community.  We have been welcomed into our new life so thoroughly by our neighbours and new friends, that now going back to England, my old life and the places I grew up in, is more like being a tourist.

This year we also visited my Aunty on the south coast and were treated to a beautifully hot couple of days in Worthing.  After a day on the beach, we walked along the sea front and into town for something to eat and it was just like being on holiday in the med.  People were out sauntering along, roller blading and cycling on the walkway and hanging out on the beach. Very continental.

We ate in a traditional Italian restaurant, opposite a gellato shop where a large Italian family were having a get together.  Sitting on the pavement, listening to the sounds of foreign voices in an English seaside town I was struck by how important it is to have a mix of communities in an area.
The gelato shop had cordoned off its pavement tables, so that all the Italian guests were packed into a tight group which only seems to liven the party up even more!  Small children had broken free of the barriers and were chasing balloon animals around the pedestrianised streets.  You couldn't help but be caught up in their happiness and togetherness.

British culture doesn't seem to nurture community that well.  It's connecting branches seem more based on class and wealth than on extended family bonds reaching out further to lifelong friendships.  Its a shame that the British feel connected by talking about people in their community, but not by sharing events with them on a regular basis. We see our families to share life events, and enjoy spending time with our loved ones, but we feel awkward about inviting friends outside of that circle, even if those friends have been there for as long as our family members and we love them too.

I feel sad that the British are leaving the variety of the European Union,  I think it has sent an awful message to our neighbours that we think we are better than them, better off without them.  It makes our culture appear arrogant and selfish and we aren't.  I want to make sure that in my family and in my community at least, that we don't become polarised by the Brexit vote and that we continue to learn from other communities around us, whether they are across the water, across the border or across the planet.

Belonging

 

The old Kershader village boundary

In traditional gaelic culture it is common to ask 'where do you belong?'.  It is not just a question about where someone lives, it is something that the individual will say of themselves as part of their identity 'I belong to Kershader'.  It suggests to me a deep connection with the land, similar to the way sheep heft to a particular area.  Or perhaps it is not just Kershader as a collection of fields, but a greater whole, including the people who also live there that the individual belongs to.
 
In mind of this importance placed on community and land connection, there was a historic celebration last weekend, when the people of Pairc formally celebrated buying the estate from it's landlord.

No longer will the land in the area of Pairc be owned by a someone who does not live here.  The Pairc Trust - a committee of elected members - will now have control over what happens to the area, be it sheep farming, wind farming or anything else that will affect the residents.

It has been a long and emotional battle to get to this point.  It has divided the community, cost hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees and a final sale price and the repercussions are still being felt.  It is not simple to explain all the detail, it is hard to know what is fact, what is legal jargon, what are lies and what is just gossip.

On paper it seems positive for a community to jointly own its own land, but I do not know if it has done anything to strengthen peoples feeling of belonging.  Like a bitter war, I think many people still feel sad about those that have fallen and were injured by the battle, to join in the celebrations at this time.

It has come at the same time that the UK has decided to leave the European Union, a decision that I feel was the wrong one - and so did the majority of people in Scotland.  The 'Leave'-voting majority were from England and Wales and included members of my family.  It highlighted to me the stark contrast between where I am now, who I am now, and where I came from.  One of the reasons I left where I grew up was because I didn't feel I belonged there, the dominant mindset just didn't appeal to me.  Nowadays however, whether it is a feeling of belonging to Kershader, or more that I belong to my new family (as they in turn belong to me), I realise that this is such an important factor in our wellbeing.   We must all feel that we are in the right place, that we fit with our environment, to become happy. 

Another piece of old gaelic culture which has it right.

The road ahead...

Time to Remember

'When God made time, he made a lot of it'.
I first heard this idea when we had just moved onto this quiet, Christian island and I immediately knew that this was a place where it could be true.

The main reason we moved from the rush-rush-rush of city living was to have time to spend with our children.  Faced with a short, year long maternity leave (at best) and the expectation to immediately return to who I was before the life changing event, the decision to opt out was simple to make.

We have been so lucky to have been present at almost every event in our boys' growing up. From babies, to toddlers, to primary and now into secondary and teen age, we have always been there alongside them for every milestone.  We have those memories stored and no one can take them away from us...

Many women enjoy the luxury of spending time watching their children develop, but by moving away from mainland society's expectations, Mark too was able to build up a vast repository of positive memories and bond with his sons.  I think he felt the social pressure and guilt more than I did, but thankfully we were committed to our ideals and we were happy to make the sacrifices necessary to go on with the way of living we believed to be correct.

As the boys have got older, we have been able to build up a working momentum again, rather than just being thrown back into the mix.  I am only now, when the boys are 10 and 11, starting to feel the challenges of balancing work and childcare.  The idea that I would have had to do this during the precious times of them being toddlers fills me with depression.  What a waste of time, to work for a bit of money or career advancement, rather than to grasp the one chance I would ever have to see my boys grow up.

Modern living makes us so disconnected and distracted from our memories and aren't they what make us who we are.   Our own lives and past's are what gives us meaning in the present and what is a life without meaning?

I hope to always be able to remember precious times and have those feelings again.  I think I will, so long as I have time and space to remember in the future.  Call it praying, or meditation, it takes a bit of practice but then its a bit like traveling back in time, but in your own mind.  A pretty good life-skill to develop I'd say.