The world in a village

Friday 10th July, 2020

I've just picked my second courgette of the season up here in Scotland. We are behind England by about three weeks. The sun was shining at the time and the smell of the courgette and the whole plant was intoxicating. As I did yesterday so for ten minutes I lent against the garden wall and let myself be infused with all around me. There were no dog barks or human voices and the little stone beach was empty with only the quiet ripple of the Tay. The bees were noisier and really hard at work and their buzzing was loud. I remember years ago being told by a Benedictine monk of the traditions of Eastern mysticism. He read a short piece about those bees and birds which seek nectar. They are a flurry of wings and activity until they settle on the nectar when they go still. I recalled the story as I watched the heron on the Tay shore: utterly still, totally silent, absolutely concentrated and focussed on the water. So too I have noticed with myself. When I am absorbed by a painting, a book or even the conversation of another so all extraneous noises, movements are blotted out. If one is truly focussed all else really is periphery, irrelevant and even unnoticed.

However I knew things had changed significantly. Yesterday the First Minister of Scotland had announced new loosenings of the lockdown. I cannot recall the details but somewhere I remembered something to do with travel. As I stood in the garden so for the first time in 14 weeks I was conscious of aeroplanes. Dundee has a very small airport used by private owners on the whole. Private jets do fly in with golfers intent on getting to St Andrews. Today 10 substantial, non private, passenger carrying planes passed over in an hour. Suddenly I realised that the silence of the last 14 weeks had been shattered. Once again the media had told me that pollution was back on the rise. Will we go on as we were before or will we learn and come together to help our planet and each other?

We have so much to give each other, to learn from each other. To substantiate that I have just noted a story about Telemedicine software. Through this doctors can share and the story was of Secunder Kerman. He is an NHS intensive care Consultant in Essex. When not on duty in his hospital he is often on the telemedicine software sharing his knowledge, his advice and being a Consultant to fellow doctors in his native Pakistan.

It was Marshal McLuhan who termed the phrase 'global village'. The phrase 'one world' has been about much longer. Surely we are one race, one people sharing one world or at least we could be. That thought of that is more intoxicatingly than courgette smells.