Healing Displacement & the Scottish Art of Holding Opposites with Alastair McIntosh

Oct 27, 2025

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

In this episode of The Holy Wild, Scottish author and activist Alastair McIntosh explores the spiritual, historical, and ecological roots of our collective crisis of belonging. Grounded in the history of the Highland Clearances, he offers this chapter of Scotland’s past as a lens for understanding global patterns of displacement, from the enslavement of African peoples to the colonization of Indigenous lands and the refugees of our own time. He reveals how being unsettled from land fractures psyche and soul. Mcintosh invites a path toward compassion through the Scottish wisdom of Caledonian antisyzygy, the capacity to hold opposites. He weaves insights on complicity in capitalism, the moral paradoxes of renewable energy and wild land, and the call to reconcile inner and outer divisions. McIntosh calls for a re-membering of what has been dismembered- to rekindle community, restore reverence for the Earth, and awaken the soul of belonging in our time.

Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, academic, and activist raised on the Isle of Lewis whose work spans spirituality, community, land reform, and ecology. An honorary professor at the University of Glasgow and currently serving as director of the GalGael Trust, he has been instrumental in Scottish campaigns such as the Isle of Eigg community buy-out and the defense of the Isle of Harris against a proposed mega-quarry. His most recognized book, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, stands alongside his most beautiful work, Poacher’s Pilgrimage, a twelve-day walk through the wilds and villages of his home islands of Lewis and Harris.

Connect with Alastair:

Mentioned in the episode:

Book: The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9
Academic Journal: Theology In Scotland

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
07:59 Interview
09:47 The Spirituality of Place
10:26 The Land Who Raised Alastair
12:59 Community Sense for Sharing
14:31 Communitarian Identity
17:38 The Unsettling
22:27 Mary Anne MacLeod
24:44 Antisyzygy
29:15 Dissecting the Scottish Wind Farm Conversation
33:52 Returning to Local Thinking
35:20 The Promise of Being Placed
37:47 Connection with Soul
39:04 Practical Expression
42:58 The Darkest Times Is When the Human Spirit Comes Alive
44:59 A Privilege to Live in Difficult Times
45:52 The Rubric of Regeneration
47:25 Alastair’s Current Work
50:35 The Bronze Snake
53:02 Palestine and Scotland
58:31 Wild Invitation
60:42 Credits