Time, just time?

Time is an odd phenomenon don’t you think so too?  I give my example, but you’ll have yours. Last week I went to the isle of Iona on the Scottish west coast. Cannot remember how long I had not been there, surely calendar years! How could it be, that arriving there, I felt as if I had only left it last month, or even last week? Everything felt so familiar: its sea of the ‘Sound of Iona’, its colourful rocks, its 'Traigh Bhan nam Manach’ the White Beach of the Monks; with the house Traigh Bhan and Robbie, the warm Rayburn, which invites us to bake our own bread and spend lots of time in its cosy kitchen… On Iona time runs differently.

Time slips, time loss or a déjà vu, it’s all so much easier to happen during these days at the end of October and the beginning of November; around Halloween or Samhain, as we call the Celtic festival celebrating the Celtic New Year in the Wheel of the Year; in the Wheel of Time. It is said that the veil between the dimensions is thinner. This would make it easier to connect from our world to the invisible world, the ‘other side’. In many cultures this has been practised: by the Native Americans, by the Celtic druids and even the Christians copied it from the Celts and called it All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  Time to honour the beloved ones who aren’t in a human body anymore.

In our physical world a lot of us believe in the separation: ‘here’ are the living, ‘there’ are the dead.  But maybe we all are living souls and we are not that much separated?  Maybe there are more dimensional shifts. I like to believe that.  My birthday is always in this Samhain time, and I’m interested in this ‘twilight zone’ in which time and sometimes even spaces overlap. Time only seems to exist for observers inside our universe. It is said that even physicists, although having trouble with this ‘problem of time’ or conundrum, cannot ignore it. Who would want to? It’s fascinating! 

I show you here a favourite photo I made of the colourful rocks at the north side of Iona. There is a deep pool or hole inside, maybe to disappear and swim to the ‘other side’?

photo & text © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2014

Being independent or being inter-dependent?

http://www.adrianasjanbijman.co.uk

It might be that coming month Scotland, ‘my’ country — as I live here— goes independent. And maybe not. With joy I received my poll card for The Scottish Independence Referendum

It feels as such an honour to vote for this on the 18^th of September: the choice of independence for a country, without any war needing to be fought first. Having the choice of voting ‘Yes’ or voting ‘No’. The Referendum brings up lots of discussion, also in our Findhorn Foundation Community and I think this to be very positively, whatever the outcome will be. A neighbour’s window, which says: “Hope not fear, Dare to vote Yes”, makes me smile every time I pass it.

I just learned that it is not Scotland’s first attempt to be independent; the oldest surviving document about this fact is from 1320 when the Scots issued a ‘declaration of independence’ to be freed from English aggression and its dominating power and become its own sovereignty. Not far away from Findhorn lies Culloden Battlefield, which is an old wound in the country’s history. But personally I feel this independence moves away from the past and has all to do with wishing to decide its own future, more than Hollyrood (where the Scottish government resides) can do now.

This all reminds me of my own and our inter-dependence. I live alone and although I am not depending on a special relationship and as such could be called ‘an independent woman’ in the traditional sense, in the modern sense I am as inter-dependent as anybody else, as a human being. We all are depending, in the first place on nature, on the Earth.  But we are also depending on our friends, in a light —hopefully healthy— way, as they are depending on us. I am inter-dependent of my customers, friends and acquaintances, people who already know my graphic and photo work, who for instance ask me to do some design work for their business or who buy some notebooks from my studio or a photo book from the online web shop…. We serve each other.

So, if it will be a ‘Yes’, may we become neighbours who service each other well, who realise they are inter-dependent, both part of Europe.

The pictures I chose are about the interdependence in nature like between this intertwined group of cactuses in Jujuy in the north of Argentina.

August 2014, photo and text © Adriana Sjan Bijman

‘Holding the Circle – The Circle Holding Us’

The large pebble stone found on the sandy Findhorn Beach holds a ring, an ellipse, a circle. It is one of the many beautiful patterns nature gives us. Ancient rock formations of different minerals fusing together. Granite, quartz, Lewisian Gneiss, sand- and limestone… Time leaving its marks of ellipses and lines with which every pebble gives us it own story. 

Our beach is full of stories.

Natural circles have been known since the beginning of time, like in the sun, moon, whirls in water or wind. They have been observed and have inspired our civilisation to develop geometry, astronomy and many inventions.

We say that every circle is a magic circle, a sacred circle. In a circle of people coming together an extra energy of spirit is present.

We draw a circle of protection. I remember drawing a large circle during a quest in the Sahara desert to mark my territory; creating a safe space.  At home in the Findhorn community to attune at the start and end of a gathering or job as well as to bless the food we come together in a circle while holding hands.

And the circle is holding us.

‘Holding the Circle- The Circle Holding Us’ was part of a photoArt exhibition in the Blue Angel Café in the Universal Hall Findhorn in October - November 2012 with other canvas photowork. 

Hopeman’s Cove

These rocks are part of Hopeman’s Cove Bay at the north east coast of Scotland. Imagine these rocks once being part of a hot desert, where the Sahara is now and whose sand dunes still are preserved in the colourful rocks. Two totally different rock formations or characters or world citizens banged into each other and became a unity forever. Tracing the hot winds in the white sandrock with my lingering fingers while my feet try to keep sturdy, standing on the battered chilly northern coast……Since the Ice Age the whispers of the burning desert have always won from the battle cries of the north and they still fill my heart with longing and belonging…..