Namaste – I bow to the Divine in you.

Your soul. I honour.
Greetings from afar.
Words. Of welcome.
Words of friendship.

Echoes. Down the ages.
Voices long gone.
Namaste Dear Reader.
Namaste.

 

Namaste is such a wonderful term. It recognises the soul that dwells within each of us, and the journey from birth to death that we all of us must make. Yet it is so difficult to see the soul in another. It is masked by our perceptions, and by how the other chooses to show themselves. Are they arrogant, self-centered maybe, a braggart, or perhaps good company, honest and caring? They too will have been fashioned by the vicissitudes of life, for better or for worse, which also shapes the face we present to the world.
But it is you and I who decides what to see, how to judge the “other” stood before us. And it is so difficult to move beyond our perceptions.
And this is the challenge. Namaste, to see the soul in another, to see underneath the surface. That does not mean to accept arrogance, or misogyny, or wrong doing, but to remember that, within that persona, there is another soul there, making their way along the same road that you follow.

510 years ago a tradition was born

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It begins at 4.00 am when a flute band plays outside the houses of two of the main participants in the Selkirk Common Riding, a tradition that dates back to the Battle of Floden in 1508. Of the 80 men who left Selkirk to fight for the cause of James IV of Scotland, only one, Fletcher, returned.

Selkirk Standard Bearer setting off on the Common Riding of 2018, accompanied by 300 other riders
But he came back bearing a captured English banner, and that is at the heart of the event. Some 300 riders parade through the town, and most importantly the Standard Bearer and his attendants are at the heart of the event.
The pride of the community in their annual event is tangible, and if that isn’t enough to touch the heart of an onlooker, the sound of the bands will succeed, especially from the bagpipes of the Pipe Band.

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