Category: Uncategorized

Have you ever thought about the importance of perspective? Today I saw flamingoes! I’ve been wanting to get a good look at flamingos for weeks. I’ve seen them wading in the salt flats, as we drove past on the highway, but today the taxi driver decided to take me up on my request.

Byron and I took an impromptu trip to a neighbouring community where the beaches were broader and we were supposed to see flamingos. The internet is a wealth of information, again, much of it inaccurate. Here was no exception. It turns out much of the beach in Uaymutul is private. We were dropped off in a parking lot and found our way to a wide sandy beach littered with seaweed and no way home until the taxi returned. So we lounged for a couple hours, because beaches are lovely here, and headed back to the highway unsure how we were going to get a good look at a flamingo. Depending on how we looked at it, this trip might have been a failure.

Well it turns out not a mile from our house if you park next to the vacant primary school and wind your way past the rubble, you come to a small meadow carpeted in portulaca. They weren’t blooming right now but I recognized the fleshy leaves because it is ubiquitous in flower gardens and planters in Canada. It turns out it grows wild here. It is called verdolaga and while it can be used to treat burns here in Mexico, it is considered a weed. But I digress because once I looked into the salt flats beyond the small meadow was a cluster of white and bright coral birds. What was a simple and a bit ramshackle fishing village became fascinating when you looked at those birds who make their home here. And they looked every bit as exotic as I expected, as I sat in the shade of the wall of the local school. Their pink bodies moved slowly through the flats, the older ones whose plumage had all turned the bright pinky coral we expect, were shyer and moved regally away from intruders. The younger ones, more white than pink, were oblivious to our presence and were preoccupied bickering with each other. Even the birds saw our presence differently. While we looked our fill the cabbie gave us a looking glass to magnify the birds, then proceeded to arrange for a cake for a celebration for a friend. He was not impressed by these creatures he has seen so often.

As I contemplated his indifference, I thought of bears, moose, wolves and eagles that my kids were raised around as the sons of a game warden and who ran unfettered and half feral in the bush of the Northern Boreal that we made our home in. It wasn’t until they left home that they realized how unique and privileged their upbringing was. Sometimes it takes leaving the security of our own world to realize the beauty of it. Maybe only when we lose something may see it’s worth.

This is true of much of this trip for me. I love the exotic gift of waking to the sound of the waves in the morning, though perhaps not the angry howls of the El Nortes. I love the challenge of going about my daily life in a language not my own. I will say, however, that writing has become a little bit more joyful. I am eloquent in English, I am funnier. I make words dance as opposed to struggle through a swamp of unfamiliar to find a way to ask for the simplest thing. The use of a language is vastly different depending on perspective.

And yet again, as I drove by the sometimes crumbling homes of the people who live here, I am reminded of the unfathomable wealth I enjoy compared to here. This place, where food is a luxury and the right to go to school is dependent on the dollar a day it takes to ride the bus. I am struck by how much every person in my home of Canada has, where my middle class lifestyle is wealth here. Where I can be assured help, if I get sick. Where schooling is a right. I have got to know a number of Spanish people recently, and they are a passionate, friendly, opinionated and cynical lot. They laugh at our petty squabbles behind their masks that they wear inside and out and in the lineups for vaccines that are hours long. Where we complain of rampant corruption they don’t go to the police, and even local projects are decided by how much money crosses palms. Their social and political systems are so riddled with illicit money every layer of life is created on foundations of it. Yeah, we have corruption, but our systems are not created and operated on the assumption of it. We are annoyed if we are inconvenienced by it. They are shocked we have so little.

Long after we are long into the endemic stage of this they will be going about their days masked and smiling. Late in the vaccination game their population is only 56 percent fully vaccinated. While we grumble behind our respective walls of opinion, certain this has been the most difficult two years of our collective lives, they are navigating a life that we cannot even conceive. I am humbled and more than a little embarrassed. Their hospitals are divided by poor and wealthy and the difference is obvious. Where $20 buys a doctor, a prescription, a box full of antibiotics and painkillers. Yet the people here don’t complain. Pensioners open doors for pesos, you can buy a dozen buns from the bakery for the equivalent of a dollar. While I live in my rented apartment on the ocean the average family lives in a house no bigger than my living room.

Every time I travel to another country, and I’ve been determined and fortunate enough to have done a fair amount, I am always so grateful to get back home and so grateful for all that my home has. And this time is no different. I am so grateful for the wealth and security of where I live. I’m grateful for the schools and the hospitals. I’m grateful for the system that allows even our poor to eat and have a place to live. Where people with addictions have an opportunity for help. Where we have a system that functions, if not perfectly. But so too am I humbled as I see life from another less privileged place. Where they still continue on with generosity and kindness and patience for their neighbours.

So this year not only will I be grateful but I am determined to be a lot more patient when I return. Patient about how I navigate whatever is still to come. Patient with the people who feel differently than I do, though I still may be more patient at a distance. I’m not sure how I’m going to navigate it entirely. Because I will also be a little more patient with myself.

It has been raining here in BC. It is pervasive, daily and, at times, a deluge. I avoid complaining about the weather, it seems so pointless, but now, after weeks of it, I am getting annoyed.

So I move to gratitude. Sometimes, I am overwhelmed with it. It swamps me in its intensity on occasion and I feel so in awe of what I have. But other times, like today, it is a decision. And at those times, as I look at the weather app desperately looking for a day where the sun is out long enough to dry the deck and the night is warm enough to let the stain dry completely overnight and I sigh. Nope, yet again, I can’t finish the job I started last year before I left for the summer.

But I look around me and notice the evergreens tipped with a lighter green buds, and trees draped in bright flowers of every color imaginable. Last year, we were already on fire watch. Today, the fog keeps everything but my yard draped in mystery.

So I closed my eyes this morning, first thing, before Byron rose, before even the dog stopped snoring, and my meditation prompt read into my headphones.

‘If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.’ No wonder Dolly Parton is such a good songwriter.

And I let my mind catch and let go of the people in my life going through difficult times. God has them in the palm of His hand. I accept that I will be preoccupied with the wedding preparations. But I let those go because right now I’m enjoying the peace of the morning. I listen to the soft sound of rain and I welcome the grace.

And when I do open my eyes I catch sight of the birdbath that Irene gave me before she died, now filled with rocks I’ve collected and had gifted to me, where water pools and the birds drink. And, somehow, the rain is perfect and still. I smile remembering her strength and her laughter.

I think of the fires last year that had already started by this time. I think of the budding trees and the Saskatoons which we didn’t even see bud last year because it was so dry.

And then I sit quietly with my coffee, watching the hummingbirds gorge and wonder if their nests are full yet.

And I remember that the rain has a reason.

And for this moment, in this life, I am overwhelmed again with gratitude.

I found myself in a familiar place this afternoon, sitting among the brilliant gold leaves, still mostly clinging to the aspens, watching the river. From my perch high above, I pondered recent events in my life. Leaves littered the ground like pirate’s treasure. It is a place I have returned to often when the world is uncertain or I need an island of calm. It is a place that reminds me of the beauty of the world around me. I’ve seen this valley on horseback. I’ve visited in the green of summer and cooked hotdogs with boys I thought came only for the food; when their noise still could not overwhelm its peaceful beauty. I’ve visited it coated in the white of winter when we turned off the roaring machines that brought us, and let the snow swallow the sound in gulps, leaving the silence echoing across the valley.

My boys called it ‘The Quiet Place.’ I dubbed it “The Pines” after the trees that grew from it’s sandy soil.   I’ve come here and laughed with loved ones and I returned when their loss seemed unbearable.  I’ve come here to listen to the echoes of voices long gone but still part of the earth around me.   This spot has seen and heard everything my heart had to offer, and taken it into itself with infinite acceptance. 

I came today, to this gold drenched place overlooking a wide and powerful river that cut its way through the banks, to reminisce. I sit here watching the wind rustle the leaves clutching tenaciously to branches. I am grateful for their determination. This golden time is too short. It’s a balance and a breath in time. The summer has drifted off but her perfume still lingers and winter’s harsh beauty is expected, but not here yet. It occurred to me how this spot and this time is representative of my life. I retired months ago, and my husband will follow in a month, at which time we will both move from one idyllic place in Northern Alberta to another in Southern British Columbia. As much as I love this season, my home, and this special place in the pines overlooking the Peace River, it is all temporary. It is still familiar and comforting, but the place, like my life is stalling at the top of a breath, ready to begin the next phase. We are both in pause. And I in this moment am full of expectation, gratitude, excitement, nervousness, and grief.

This will likely be the last fall I take the time to enjoy here. The last time I will have opportunity to just be and watch the time pass and the leaves fall. The last season I will watch the light play games with the horizon leaving everything bathed in golden warmth. When I return here to visit, if my experience is to be believed, I will be in a rush of people, stuffing our lives into a small envelope of time. But for right now, I get to say goodbye a season in a place, that while it is remote, and ordinary, it is miraculous and beautiful in a way only a dear old friend can be.

This retirement thing is a challenge. I feel like I am in a waiting room for an audition for a play. That play that is the rest of my life. It doesn’t quite seem real. I fill my time with teaching English, learning Spanish, and cleaning closets and windows. I fill time and enjoy my solitude, as I must, in this weird time when socializing is something to be avoided. Byron is a month away from joining me, so my days are spent rattling around in a nearly empty house that looks like a college kid’s dorm. Cast off furniture populate spaces without the clutter one would expect of a home that I spent a quarter century in. A home that raised two boisterous and busy boys. It is our home and yet it is not. The chaos and love that filled it no longer echoes in every room. I’ve drawn that energy back into me in preparation for leaving. It is a building now, contemporary grey walls instead of the riot of color I loved so much. Most of our belongings are already gone. The walls are bare. It is not sad, so much as quiet and still, like a photograph of a memory.

I’m leaning into this new time in my life.  Filling it with things I’ve not taken time to do.  There will be travel, sunshine, whimsy and mostly time in my future.  Time for family, time for writing, time for the things I love to do but rarely had time for. And while this seems like a space between episodes it doesn’t feel as empty as I feared it would.  Because right now, I’m sitting in gratitude for the slice of heaven this place represents and the people who have shared it with me. Like the leaves around me it and this gold saturated afternoon.  I am simply being here with the leaves, and the breeze and the smell of summer fading into fall.

 

 

 

A friend created these canvases.  They keep pouring out of her like water over a precipice.  At times I wonder if she feels chained to her easel, they come so rapidly, and she has confessed sometimes she does.  They are inspired by the comments of a politician irritated by a woman who refused to be silenced.  “We told her to be quiet but she persisted.”  The woman, Elizabeth Warren, has persisted.

It has become a battle cry for women, some who proudly define themselves as feminists, some who find the word has negative connotations, all whom have found the condescension inexcusable.  But what has amazed me, is how this event has had the unexpected result of not only inspiring action on the part of many previously quiet or perhaps complacent women, but that it has also inspired this radical and relentless creativity on the part of the artist, Louise Gallagher.   In her blog http://www.dareboldly.com she explores acts of grace during challenging times and right now she is exploring persisting as a woman.

The idea that creativity is a gentle muse that inspires great works in the quiet recesses of your mind is a bit ridiculous in my mind.   For some it is true I suppose.  However, for me Creativity has always been a bit of a nag.  She’s relentless.  She’s brutal at times.  And yet she is always with us, demanding that we work out the issues we have creating.  For some of us it is building a machine that solves a problem, for others, it is healing from old wounds changing old patterns.  For still others, its the creation of art or writing.  But each time we move from the familiar into new territory, our muse has us in her wake.

The other thing I am realizing about Creativity is that it rarely exists in the familiar.  It is a product of us stepping out of the familiar and purging the expectations.  It is learning to play with color, with words, with our intellect, with the familiar,  and bending it.  Right now Louise is in the grip of societies expectations for women and she is bending them.  Each canvas has the messages women in particular, but men also, hear every day.  She then asks what would we do if we weren’t told these insidious lies and where would we be?

We wouldn’t be here.

Here is the comfort of the familiar.  What are societies’ expectations for women and for men for that matter?  They are comfortable, they are safe.  They define who we should be, what we should do, how we should act.  What they don’t do, is ask who we are, who we want to be, what we want for ourselves, what fascinates us?  It doesn’t ask what needs to change or be expressed.  It doesn’t want us to play in the unknown.  It wants to define the familiar.

Most of all, Creativity asks us to have faith.  It asks us to risk the path to the unfamiliar and dance along it without fear.  It asks us to try the untried and see what happens.  It asks us to risk making others uncomfortable  and see if our creations resonate with anyone.  We have to jump into the unknown and pray for a landing that won’t hurt.  Sometimes it does you know.  This jump into the unknown can be uncomfortable, even painful. Sometimes it rubs a spot raw.

But maybe the reason it rubs raw is because the old doesn’t fit any longer.  What is familiar will strangle if it is left too long without adjustment.  It cuts out light, cuts off circulation, and kills off the most vibrant urges in all of us.

Maybe who we are is not defined by other’s expectations but by our own urges, our own aspirations. Yet in those spaces we are undefined, unsure and simply playing.  As adults we don’t play.  We follow menus, patterns, and instructions.  We don’t boldly go into the unknown as Creativity demands.  If  we want someone to confirm our direction before we go, Creativity will get irritated, maybe leave in a huff.  She wants us to play with her, if we are willing to explore.

But what if we weren’t so tied to the plan or curriculum for our day?  What if we sat, unsure before an empty easel, or an empty page and just had faith that our playmate would come.  What if mud pie could be seen as inedible but having value?  Could our next creation be fusion of barbecue and thai?  What if the empty page beckoned and didn’t scold?   Or if we interpreted Creativity’s banter as teasing?

I think too often we see a stumble in our creative process, as a threat.  What if we could reach out past our fears and try something new.  We could recreate our days, renew our lives, find parts of ourselves we didn’t know existed.  Maybe that faith in ourselves and the entity that drives us all was not a taskmaster with an agenda but an angel inviting us to play?

Every culture has a story behind creation yet most of us, as individuals fear Creativity.    Most indigenous people of North America consider North America itself, Turtle Island, where an unseen hand created beings from the mud on the bottom of the ocean. It implies a creative force that loves to play and to make something from nothing.   Christianity would say God created the world in seven days and seven nights. And then there was light!  He didn’t say, “Then we trudge on.”   Egyptian myths say that the world was created out of an ocean of chaos.  We all believe that Creation is inspired by the spirit to renew the world. Yet we often see Creativity as a threat.  Something we should fear.

I think though that Creativity is often driven by making order out of chaos, at an individual level.  What if out of our chaos comes beauty?  What if when we struggle, we see the fellow soldiers in our battle?  Because I’ve often found at my darkest times comes a blink of light, a play of words, a description that resonates.  And if I let myself run, if I let it whisper along my arms, it somehow becomes hopeful and even joyful.

So Louise’s collection of women who are defying the constricts of society are playing in the chaos.  Each one was awakened by the noise and relishing in the women dancing with her.   She has not only persisted, but she defied the resentment seething against her.   She is teasing society, she is laughing with her playmates, and she is affirming her worth.  Creation is an act of faith that what we know in our hearts can manifest in others.  It’s sharing our story, sad or joyful, knowing what we are, is part of the greater story.  It is fearless, it is relentless, and it is being human.

Source: The Breath

A box that no longer fits.

Within the heart lies a chest,
Secrets and treasures
We keep only for ourselves.
Stored where the dust cannot touch,
And light cannot inspire.

Inside that darkened prison,
That benevolent wasteland,
Lies dreams too fragile to be realized,
Memories too precious to share,
Secrets too dark for the light.

In this casket sealed tight as a tomb,
We hide what no one else may see.
That place where dreams and demons are interchangeable.
Sealed by expectation.
Trapped by fear.

In the treasure box of expectations
Lies the battered soul
Of someone long forgotten,
Of a life lived, trapped by farces,
Played by unseen puppeteers tangled in strings.

Unfulfilled dreams press out from between seams.
And muffled music plays out.
The refuge becomes the prison.
How did the haven we agree to,
Become a prison we cannot escape?

We might let the rain saturate the walls.
Wash like cardboard down sewers,
Or float away like leaves, on rivers of change.
The sky erupting with storms,
Or gently soaks with life.

Or maybe light the cartons with inspiration,
Matches hidden in our pockets,
Waiting for just such an adventure.
We burn away boundaries and borders,
As phoenixes rise from the ashes.

Or we might simply leave by the door we paint on the wall.
Or slice into the ramparts with knives
Honed by courage and desperation.
Light streams into the burrow
And we raise our faces to the sun.

What happens when the box no longer fits?

 

 

 

 

In the quiet of my own heart

I hear the whispers of knowing

No longer drowned

By the din of day to day.

 

Who I am destined to be

Need not be “found.”

It need only be stripp…

Source: In the Quiet