Welcome, Desired Guests

Dear all,

A warm welcome back - to the MindLetter, and to a rich range of mindfulness events and resources this academic year.

In particular, note that our mindfulness courses for students and for staff and PGRs are now available to book; the student course begins Wednesday 17th September, so please do circulate to those who might benefit.

Free mindfulness lunchtime drop-in sessions run twice a week at the Chaplaincy in Bristo Square, open to all members of UoE, as well as NHS Lothian and EFI Partners: do join us on Mondays and Fridays at 1.10pm, starting Monday September 8th.

A reminder too that the online day retreats are open to the general public, as well as all UoE members. This term's retreats will be on Saturdays 25^th October and 29^th November. 

For any other mindfulness-related questions, feel free to email me: kitty.wheater@ed.ac.uk or mindfulness@ed.ac.uk.

And...for this week's MindLetter, I gave some thought to what 'welcome' means, and how we might welcome both others and ourselves as the academic year begins anew.

Welcome, Desired Guests

Wilkuma. It is an Anglo-Saxon word, meaning desired guests. It's five years since I first wrote about it, when Covid was more than a cold, and the university was a maze of yellow-green signs, warning us to keep our distance as we straggled through; when students encountered all their lectures through screens, and lecturers juggled meetings with small children unmoored from nurseries and parents isolated in nursing homes. 

Five years on, and my red pandemic joggers are well-worn-in. The yellow-green signs, those that are left, are unheeded. We know that they are from a different time, and university life has grown over them like the grass grows over the summer scars in George Square Gardens. There are probably still more screens in our lives than are good for us; each day is still a juggling act. But here we are, at a different point in time. As autumn descends upon us, a new academic year beckons, and thousands of students arrive in this Athens of the North: Welcome Week comes round again.

To the Ancient Greeks, an appropriate welcome was a serious matter. You extended the warmth of your hearth to guests, even and especially if they were strangers, because any could turn out to be a god in disguise. It was bad luck to shut your door on a tired face, to harm or insult a weary traveller under your roof. Don’t, for example, be Polyphemus, the single-eyed giant who eats his guests alive - and is blinded for penance by a certain wily Odysseus. Instead, feed your visitors with the fruit of your lands, quench their thirst with the goods of your cellars, let them rest in a corner of your great hall free from drafts. These, we are taught in myth and legend, are the tenets of good hospitality towards those who cross your threshold.

And so, you arrive on campus this misty September week, whether you are here for the first time or the fifteenth; you cross the threshold of office or library or lab. Many have trodden this ground before, and legends (if not quite as old as the Odyssey) lie around every corner. The cobblestones and terraces of George Square are marinated in a sense of the antique, the grandeur of McEwan Hall speaks of yesterday’s stature and statuary. Newcomers are often intimidated by and drawn to the fact that the University has been here for hundreds of years, that there are so many layers of sediment in its history. Arriving for Welcome Week can feel like drawing close to the door of the great hall with the dust of your travels on your coat. You hear the clamour within, and you don’t know if you really will be welcome, after all. Carrying aches and pains from the road, you may find it hard to trust that those inside really desire your presence. What is it that is desired, and what must you offer in return?

For hospitality is reciprocal: as the threshold is crossed there is quite literally an opening, the possibility that something hollow on both sides might be fed. A desired guest is not one about whom the host is equivocal; ‘On-The-Fence Week’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it. As students pour in and staff cook up all manner of nourishment behind the scenes, we recognise that we are brought together in a uniquely human hunger: for discovery, for knowledge, interrogating the familiar, and understanding what is strange. To issue or receive a welcome is to acknowledge the urge of this shared purpose, married with uncertainty: we don’t yet know how it will unfold.

Be curious about the hungers that bring you to this threshold, even if you are nervous, tired, or smarting from the road. Not all appetites can be sated in one place, but look around for open doors, sheltered hubbubs loud and quiet, for seats at the hearth that have your name on. Feed yourself with what you find. A guest, by definition, is only here for a short while: what might emerge from your stay, from the hours or months or years we spend together? Will it be an epic poem, an alliance, a homecoming; a promise of good fortune to store away until a darker day? Time will tell, for the winds of change are always blowing. It will be an adventure, nonetheless.

Warm wishes, and see you soon,

Kitty