This talk was given at an Advaya event in July 2017. It was part of the 'ReWild' series.
Alastair is one of the world’s leading environmental campaigners, distinguished in his ability to join together the outer and inner life. His book Spiritual Activism explores such paths of reconnection of the inner and outer worlds, which he argues is nothing less than learning how to sustain the flow of life. If we don’t do this, he states, “then our work will fall on stony ground, we’ll burn out or we’ll sell out.”
But how, in practice, can we tap into the healing power of land, its people and a sense of place? How, especially in the modern world? During the course of our evening together, he will speak about a twelve day pilgrimage that he made on foot through his home islands of the Outer Hebrides. “I ventured out to set afresh the compass of the soul,” he says. It was a journey from the city, over moors and mountain passes, and back towards the city once again. It was a pilgrimage into the nature of imagination.
He asks: is the imagination a quality that we privately possess? Or might the imagination be a part of a greater realm that contains the wilder reaches of ecology and of poetry? In the course of our evening, his words will touch on war, trauma and the great work of healing to which we’re called in these our troubled times. It will be a storytelling. A real-life storytelling about burning issues. But one that seeks to raise us up into the joy of life.
Alastair McIntosh is the author of Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, and his sharing with us will draw on his most recent books, Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service (Green Books) and Poacher’s Pilgrimage: an Island Journey (Birlinn). His work has been described as “inspirational” by Starhawk, “a map that leads the right way” by Dr Mary Midgley, “world-changing” by George Monbiot and “truly mental” by Thom Yorke.
ABOUT ALASTAIR MCINTOSH:
Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, broadcaster and activist on social, environmental and spiritual issues, raised on the Isle of Lewis. A Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology, a former Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde, and an Honorary Fellow in the School of Divinity (New College) at Edinburgh University, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the College of Social Sciences at Glasgow University, he holds a BSc from the University of Aberdeen, an MBA from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in liberation theology and land reform from the University of Ulster.
His books include Hell & High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition on the cultural and spiritual dimensions of climate change, Rekindling Community on the spiritual basis of inter-relationship, and Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power on land reform and environmental protection - the latter described as “world changing” by George Monbiot, “life changing” by the Bishop of Liverpool and “truly mental” by Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
For the past 9 years he and his wife, Vérène Nicolas, have lived in Govan where he is a founding director of the GalGael Trust for the regeneration of people and place. A Quaker, he lectures around the world at institutions including WWF International, the World Council of Churches, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the UK Defence Academy (on nonviolence). His driving passion is to explore the deep roots of what it can mean to become fully human, and use such insights to address the pressing problems of our times.
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