This piece was originally published on 26th October, 2013, at a personal blog of mine which no longer exists. Doesn’t the guy in the picture look sweet? He’s Chöje Akong Tulku Rinpoche, co-leader of Kagyu Samyé Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre in Eskdalemuir. And he’s been dead for nearly three…

We need all of us to create the world we want — Something that’s come up quite a lot recently in conversations I’ve been part of is the importance of diversity of strategy and tactics in our work for social and environmental justice. This is important firstly because a lot of time and energy is wasted in criticising one another’s tactics and…

radical liberation or neoliberal bait and switch? “We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.” Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977 “Identity politics” has come to be extremely contentious among liberals, progressives, and leftists. It is decried as neo-liberal…

Since the beginning of this round of #BLM actions in the USA, what feels like the start of a global reckoning with the impact and consequences of British and European colonialism, and an intensification of state control in many countries around the world, I’ve felt that anything I have to…

I was ordained as an Interfaith Minister on 6th September, 1998. The day before, at our pre-ordination retreat, I and my fellow ordinands sat in a circle together, and witnessed one another’s vows. This, with a couple of tweaks I’ve made over the years, was and is mine: Beloved, I…

In February of 2016, there was a lot of sudden transition in my life. My partner was beginning to make fundamental changes in her life, I had to abandon my PhD, and I suffered a close family bereavement. As part of facing these various upheavals, and the grief that inevitably…

Back in the autum of 2015, I created and told a story as part of a partnership between the Dig It! 2015 project of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, The Surgeons’ Hall Museums, and myself as an apprentice of the Scottish Storytelling Centre. The story was created to highlight tattoos…

I’m what used to be called a polymath. Nowadays, it’s more likely to be called being multi-passionate, or a multipotentialite. I like to call it simply ‘being creative’. I’ve also in recent years come to realise it may also be called ‘ADHD’. Whatever we call it, it comes with a…

In September 2014, two things happened which were important in my world: Firstly, Eskdalemuir Community Hub opened. Secondly, my fibromyalgia symptoms drastically increased. There was no connection between the two, of course, but they happened at the same time, so in my mind they are forever linked. The opening of…