Category Archives: Creativity

Cherry Picking: A Story of Community

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Sitting in a business meeting, first one back from a summer pause,

enormous heavy rectangle of wood makes circle conversation a challenge.

As is our practice, my partner invites a check-in,

“Share an experience of community.”

Talking piece chosen.  Stories begin.

 

Hearing five thousand international drummers and pipers play on the field in Glasgow.

Having her picture taken dozens of times on the Great Wall by scores of Chinese students, and loving it – this photo shy, tall and fair haired woman.

Witnessing her neighbor’s family bring an experience of “Canadian cabin county”  to the recently settled Syrian family.

Celebrating every summer weekend festival our Festival City has on offer.

 

Mine, a simple tale – embellished here – of walking in my neighborhood and the moment of community that unfolded. 

Usually accompanied by our Annie dog, these past weeks I’ve gone solo as she’s been at dog camp, running to her heart’s content over the prairies.  Depending on our route, I can pass by a bungalow with a beautiful cherry tree in the front yard.

Spring time, my attention is caught by its bursting white blossoms, their soft fragrance adding to the gift of our encounter.

Weeks pass, I’m lost in my thoughts, or noticing the shift of clouds, or the remarkably early tulips and lilacs and forsythia.  Not much happening on the cherry tree I notice, giving it a passing glance, until a few weeks ago.

Suddenly this elegantly shaped tree is now lusciously full of glistening scarlet globes nestled among emerald green leaves, a regal standout against the azure sky.  Evans cherries, a prairie-hardy sour variety, rediscovered a few decades ago just north of here.  Wished I’d had my phone to take a picture. Wished I had an invitation to pick some for a pie.

Then a week ago, just that happened.  I had my phone and poised to snap a picture I heard, “Do you wanna pick some cherries?”

Hand shielding my eyes from the setting sun, I hear before I see,  Janet, the owner of the tree.

“I have a ladder and could help you, if you want to pick the rest of these.  I have my fill.”

Well, I tell her, I’d love to, in fact, this is a dream come true as I’d thought of knocking on her door to ask if I may.  I take her phone number and promise to call before coming over the next day.

Loaded with a dishpan and couple of pails – whatever I could find as good enough cherry containers – I made the three-minute drive and there was Janet, ready to help me pick.

Not like saskatoon berries, or strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, where you could eat as much as you pick, this tart fruit tempted only an occasional taste as we filled the pails, as I filled on Janet’s stories…

…of the old family homestead an hour east of here, and the inherited section she still farms.

…of recipes and tips for cherry soup and jam and jelly and pie.

…of her husband’s short lived retirement because, when all is said and done, he thrives on his work.

…of her daughter returning home with her grandson and loving having him close by, happy to provide refuge for them both.

…of being a traditional prairie daughter, wife, sister and mother who loves her life.

 

When we finished, with fruit still on the tree,

and me as full as the pails,

with love for this woman’s generosity for sharing the bounty of her tree, her life,

I asked to hug her my thanks and my good-bye.

 

And as we embraced, I knew this to be the feeling of community

as she sweetly, wondrously whispered,

“I think I just made a friend.”

Tending with Grace

Quote

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Sisters of the heart, my heart.

Each a sweet heart, dear heart.

 

Life

challenging them to dig down deep

inviting them to reach up high

for strength, and courage, and tenacity, and hope,

for clear heads and open hearts, when

 

Cruel concoction of cancer genes crushes newly hatched dreams.

Life long disease debilitates body, mind, speech and spirit.

Wave upon wave of endings tosses family like flotsam.

 

Sisters of the heart, my heart.

Each the eldest.

Knowing what that means, 

responsible, and caring, and achieving, and sensitive, and

 

Juggling onerous professional obligation

with overwhelming personal need

an attuned sense of balance for what is

right and true

good and beautiful

centred and aligned

for thee and thine.

 

I watch, and listen, and wonder

How does she do it?

Tending with grace, the near impossible.

 

How would I do it?

 

“…the ultimate touchstone of friendship is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

 

Tending with grace, my sisters of the heart.

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Quote from “Friendship,” in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, David Whyte, 2015.

The Moments I Rescue

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August.  That feeling of “one long Sunday night” persists despite being away four years from a workplace governed by the rhythm of summers off, and new starts in September.  That habitual anxiety arising when one thinks of so much to do before the new season is upon us.

Apples ripen, mountain ash berries redden, cottonwoods golden, crows gather, geese honk.  Dawn that breaks now an hour later.  Dark that comes now an hour earlier.  These reliable, predictable portents.

A month or so ago I wrote about that particular morning’s fullness, holding the possibility and promise that comes with the beginning of summer.  The day before, my first “official” mentoring conversation to begin editing my collection of love letters to poets.  This morning, an utter stillness among the trees as I listen to poetry by Billy Collins, he to be included in those love letters.  Hearing “This Much I Do Remember,” I am as inexplicably, as deeply moved today as the first time I heard it.  The moment he had rescued within that poem became inspiration for my collection of moments rescued within this blog.

‘This much I do Remember’ by Billy Collins

It was after dinner.
You were talking to me across the table
about something or other,
a greyhound you had seen that day
or a song you liked,

and I was looking past you
over your bare shoulder
at the three oranges lying
on the kitchen counter
next to the small electric bean grinder,
which was also orange,
and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.

All of which converged
into a random still life,
so fastened together by the hasp of color,
and so fixed behind the animated
foreground of your
talking and smiling,
gesturing and pouring wine,
and the camber of your shoulders

that I could feel it being painted within me,
brushed on the wall of my skull,
while the tone of your voice
lifted and fell in its flight,
and the three oranges
remained fixed on the counter
the way that stars are said
to be fixed in the universe.

Then all of the moments of the past
began to line up behind that moment
and all of the moments to come
assembled in front of it in a long row,
giving me reason to believe
that this was a moment I had rescued
from millions that rush out of sight
into a darkness behind the eyes.

Even after I have forgotten what year it is,
my middle name,
and the meaning of money,
I will still carry in my pocket
the small coin of that moment,
minted in the kingdom
that we pace through every day.

What are the moments we rescue?

Four years ago, that first summer after I finished work, as an attempt to create a threshold ritual, I began reading through three decades’ worth of journals to notice and consolidate patterns and dreams into a single volume.  A decade in and a month later, I stopped, bored with my self absorption, embarrassed by my chronic complaining, pained by pages of self doubt and criticism.  On a fall full moon, I made ceremony, burned those pages, and released the stories I had told myself about flaws and shortcomings, mine and others.

With remarkable synchronicity, four years later, to the day, I resumed reading and noticing, this time bringing more compassion and curiosity to the task.  Still pages of self absorption and complaining, self doubt and criticism, but now mixed with occasional moments of gratitude, appreciation, wonder and beauty.  An occasional subtle shift in perspective from old pain to new possibility.  Even a foreshadowing of futures to be realized, like when I wrote in 2004 that I’d finish work in 2012, that I’d travel to Italy during the sabbatical seven years hence.

I still have several volumes to go and I suspect that less-than-conscious pattern will persist. But today, as I take pen to journal, I choose to be more deliberate in noticing what I notice. To more intentionally – without denial but with discernment – rescue on those pages the moments that reveal beauty, that ring good and true, and that tell a story of a life well and wholly lived and loved.

 

 

Perfume of a Pink and Purple Prairie Summer Morn

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Top Notes

Cool water fragrant with thin slices of near translucent cucumber.

Tender pink of a wild rose petal.

Tiny teaspoon of lemon ice, softened for a moment by the rising sun.

Middle – Heart – Notes

One hour later, brighter, deeper into the dawn

Herbaceous green of freshly cut grass.

Spicy geranium and day lily, subtly turning their sleepy fuchsia and saffron heads to the east.

Bottom – Base – Notes

Earth damp from the sudden thunderstorm.

Dew drops warming, trailing behind an iridescent veil.

Robin, sparrow, chickadee, even crow and magpie song and call, waft across the barely-there breeze, awakening sense and presence.

Close your eyes and breathe.

Open your eyes and see.

Self Portrait Emerging

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This year I began writing about my current threshold, transitioning from a career to creative oriented life, another of life’s letting go to let come.  A few posts ago, I framed it as the shift from ambition to meaning, and shared some internal signposts that pointed the direction to this new path.

Since then I’ve gotten a good bill of heart health.  And while my crown and bite are still off a bit (the metaphor isn’t lost), I’m optimistic this will resolve in right time.  I’m feeling rested, waking with sweet anticipation for the day like I did those mornings when I lived in Germany for three months, five years ago. I’ve taken up with a flamenco teacher whose “deconstructed” approach to this complex dance form fits better now at this point in my practice.  I celebrated my echoing day in this new eldering decade.  And to celebrate a dear friend’s new decade, I finally found the way into creating the artwork for a story she had written a few years back.  Ta Da…I finished and sent in for a first draft read my collection of love letters to poets.  Right now, I’m participating in a global online dream walker’s course, reviving a practice I know bears fruit, and a couple of weeks ago I attended a most lovely workshop on poetry and photography hosted by local writer-poet, Shawna Lemay.

During the winter interim after registering for BeComing, I read some of Shawna’s work,   her novel, Rumi and the Red Hand Bag (an alluring title with a deep fondness for both) and her latest collection of poetry, Asking.  There, she introduced me to the “poem-essay,” a form  that totally synchs with my way of thinking and writing.  And not a page turned without feeling a quickening of recognition, a jolt to my senses that here is another who is kindred.  When during the workshop, I wrote and recited my quick reflection to her prompt Wabi Sabi, she looked across the room in recognition.  Sources of appreciation and inspiration discovered.  We draw from the same well.  Again the evidence of an earlier realization: everything I need for a life well-lived lies in my own backyard.

Now, a couple of months later, a new invitation to consider this person I am becoming, in response to taking self portraits to see what is evoked, to dreaming images of light and shadow:

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Who is this person I am becoming?

Feet that carry me along the path

Made only by its walking to

God. Knows. Where.

 

It’s been said that by looking at one’s shadow

We come to see the face

We are before

We. Are. Born.

 

A spider crawls upon my hand

To write a web of possibility

To catch a moment of illumination.

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(Not a poem essay, instead a form borrowed from Alice Walker in her collection, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth.)

From Ambition to Meaning

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“Throughout our lives, transitions require that we ask for help and allow ourselves to yield to forces stronger than our wills or our egos’ desires.  As transitions take place during our later years, a fundamental and primal shift from ambition to meaning occurs.”  
Angeles Arrien, The Second Half of Life

41GyeErgUvL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_That simple phase, those four words, “from ambition to meaning,” would sum up the four days’ interior journey of those who travelled with me at Soul Spark in mid February.  As the starting point for our first circle conversation, where each of us, having crossed paths before, now sat comfortably together on sofas and rocking chairs, with the fieldstone hearth and fire taking its place of honour, offering warmth and solace, this excerpt from Angeles Arrien’s The Second Half of Life became our touchstone.  Regardless of age or stage of life, occupation or endeavor, each of us, host and participant alike, found ourselves delivered to this threshold, whether by ready intention or “no-choice” choice.

I’ve been writing about this threshold for the past few months, initially catalyzed by my experiences at the Self as Source writers’ retreat in early December.  From the dark depths of winter solstice, I recognized the need to listen and tend to what David Whyte calls “the great inside shout of joy,” that new life that we must call our own,  helped into being by our preparation, practice, discipline and allies.  Then, almost a month later, inspired by that master of naming and blessing thresholds, John O’Donohue, I gave deeper consideration to my allies, those beings – human and non-human, animate and inanimate, living or passed – whose shoulders we stand on, whose backs shore up ours, whose energy, image and guidance we call upon, who walk beside us to remind and help us call forth our resiliency, talents, and wisdom.

In between: a straight forward dental procedure reactivated some Bells Palsy symptoms that emerged almost three years ago, and still has me in irritating distress with a “not yet quite right” bite.  An irregular EKG for which cardiac consultation and testing has occurred.  Hearing that several younger colleagues have suffered strokes, heart attacks and brain injuries.  The passing in January of those iconic musician-artists, each in what is now my decade.

What had been ready intention, has now become my no-choice choice of letting go, paring back, or as I said quite spontaneously yesterday to a friend, a necessary “winnowing to essence.”

Angeles Arrien instructs us that when we stand upon a threshold, we must do the inner work of transformation and integration – the treading, turning, twisting and flailing of noticing, releasing and discarding what is no longer necessary or aligned with our essential nature. Noticing its signposts:

  • Work, that while in and of itself deeply satisfies, the preparation and holding for which energetically costs more than can be afforded.
  • Dreams that have silently, surreptitiously slipped to the background of awareness, attention, and need for fulfillment.
  • Tiredness signaling depletion and misalignment.
  • Anxiety and worry that time, at least in this lifetime, is running out.
  • Pressure to keep telling a story that’s no longer relevant, describing a self that no longer feels true.

“Deep in the wintry parts of our minds, we are hardy stock and know there is no such thing as work-free transformation.  We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were to go on from there.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes  

On the eve of our inaugural Soul Spark (now to be an annual mid-winter gathering) during meditation, I suddenly asked myself, “Who is this person I am becoming?” this person who:

  • Is a bona fide seeker of God and the transcendent?
  • Meditates regularly?
  • Whispers words of loving kindness throughout the day?
  • Wakes before dawn to listen to an hour of poetry and song?
  • Reads Rumi, Hafez, Teresa of Avila, Hildegard von Bingen, and other mystics?
  • Several years earlier than declared, is walking away from professional work to embrace a simpler, more creative life?

“Who is this person?” for she does not yet seem to be me.

IMG_0004(1)This is threshing. This is the process of becoming, wherein I am unable to answer, “Who am I now?” because I’m releasing myself from the story and illusion of who I think I am, who I have been.

Yet what I can say is there is a bittersweet sister found in the threshold, and her name is grief-relief.  The grief-relief of noticing, releasing and discarding that which had served but does no longer.

To give myself permission to notice, name, and feel this most peculiar grief heals, makes space for, and helps me recognize the edges of to eventually claim this person I am becoming.  It helps me make choices better aligned with and in support of who is emerging.  It helps me become my own ally in service of living out loud that inside shout of joy.

Fasting From Facebook – My Lenten Ritual

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“The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within oneself.”  John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes (4)

Today is Ash Wednesday signifying within the Christian tradition the beginning of Lent, the forty days of spiritual preparation before Easter Sunday.  A week ago today, The Scientist and I made our way home from our first-in-a-decade warm winter sojourn.  We both like Alberta winters, so it wasn’t so much an escape (especially this year in the midst of an especially balmy El Nino system that’s been wreaking havoc on our city’s winter festivals) as a time for rest and renewal, with minimal decision-making and distraction.

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Packing, I finally decided to bring my tablet to continue work on the project that emerged during my first writers’ retreat in December. (I’m happy to say I did spend a warm afternoon under the cabana’s thatched roof typing away on a new love letter.  Not finished, but the bones have been set and now wait to be fleshed out once I’ve done a bit more research and reading.)  And I did check emails, only to delete spam and non-essentials so as not to be overwhelmed by an inbox of hundreds upon my return.  I’ve learned that’s a sure fire way to quickly undo the benefits of any time away.  Good plan until my little ASUS Transformer refused to turn on.  And then I received the unexpected gift of being unplugged.  Talk about a transformer!

I’ve come to know that not only am I an “adapted extrovert” – deeply introverted at heart but out of necessity and habit have learned to be “out there” and engaging – but I’m also highly sensitive by nature.  Regular doses of silence and solitude are necessary for my health and well-being.  Also, prone to anxiety and worrying, I’ve realized that too much time on computer, e-reader, and cell phone, especially in evening, overstimulate my already finely tuned system and thwart sleep.  If I’m to read at bedtime I need to feel the weight of a book’s good story in my hands to soothe, settle and sleep.

twitterinstagramLinkedinI’ve never been a big “tweeter” or “instagrammer,” and seldom go to LinkedIn except to occasionally update my profile or announce an upcoming event I’m hosting, but I really like Facebook, for lots of good reasons.  FacebookSo it caught my attention, when at our family’s Ukrainian Christmas celebration a few weeks back, I heard my thirty something nephew-in-law refer to Facebook as “Facecrack.”  It didn’t matter that I knew I used Facebook as a contemporary form of social activism, to “wage beauty” as an antidote to the day’s grief and terror. (OK, and to save a good recipe or bit of decorating whimsy.) I knew I was hooked.  For all its good, I saw how much precious time I used scrolling and sharing, distracting myself from Life, filling in the pauses meant to restore if left empty.  I felt the extent to which I’d be thrown off my centre, awash with emotions like despair, fear, anxiety, anger, jealousy in reaction to what I was reading.   And while intellectually I know there is nothing wrong with these emotions in and of themselves, the stew they created inside me took more precious time and energy to process or ignore, and then emerge ready to focus on whatever I knew really needed my attention.  So it came to me yesterday morning as I journaled that I’d continue to abstain from social media as my Lenten practice.  I would fast – from Facebook – observing the ritual undertaken by devotees across time and faiths, “to awaken the eternal within.”

I was born on Good Friday in a Christian Lutheran home, so its archetypes, stories and rituals resonate deep within, and I uphold many traditions, though now, woven with the richness coming from the various spiritual traditions I hold dear to my heart and being.  This ritual feels right, now.  I trust how it came so spontaneously, with no pre-thought, appearing in black ink from my pen as I wrote on the white page of my journal.  This is my “sacred duty.”

I look forward to what will come in these next forty days.  I look forward to the pauses that invite noticing. I look forward to time reclaimed to write my love letters, to heeding my heart’s ache that I live my life aligned with its calling.

Annie’s calling.  Time to take my ally for a walk…another sacred duty. 

If you are called to follow a practice “to awaken the eternal within,” I invite you to join me in two spring-time offerings, Lectio Poetica and Painting from Within. For details and registration please go to my website’s “Upcoming Events” and complete the contact form.  I’ll be back in touch via email or telephone.

An Epiphany of Creation

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The Goddess’ Cauldron

Into Sedna’s icy seas

I cast wisps of prayer and blessing for this new year.

From her dark depths

cold crystalline shards of unknown shadows

float to the surface,

intrigued and captivated by the phosphorescent luminous.

All now, swirl and churn, mixed with my morning kiss.

Embraced by its heart and heat

All now, melt and merge.

All now, transformed

into wave and mist, cloud and rain

crashing, soaking, washing

shoreline sands, rocky cliffs, silent forests,

skin and scale and fur and feather.

Time will stand still and breathe anew

into this vow of creative surrender.

(Inspired by this clay plate from Newfoundland artist, Peter Sobal, and spontaneous invocation at the Self as Source Writers’ Retreat, December 7, 2015.)

A Gift To Self

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…Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

David Whyte – from The Winter of Listening

Soon the Winter Solstice will be upon us, the darkest day marking the return of the light and lengthening days.  In the past few years with less pressure to rush out the door to be at an office, I’ve come to welcome the invitation darker days bring, a “hunkering down and in.”  This year especially so as I enjoy our home, feeling new with the completion of a long-awaited kitchen and bath renovation and that fresh coat of paint, all creating a comfortable feng shui flow.  I can’t believe how much I’m loving cooking in our kitchen!

Wendy Townley Aldermarsh

Aldermarsh Skies by Wendy Townley

And I’ve just returned from my first ever writers’ retreat, held the first week of December on Whidbey Island.  Hosted by my circle teacher and friend, Christina Baldwin, and circle sister “travelpoet” Kristie McLean, attending Self As Source was a long awaited gift to self.  I imagined being in the Pacific Northwest in December – with its grey sodden skies, wind and rain, living among the cedars, firs and alders with owls and coyotes singing at night – would be the perfect ambiance for listening within and claiming myself, “writer. “ It did not disappoint.  After several days of preparation with gentle prompts and creative activities, our thirty-six silent hours found me sitting by the window tapping out an almost complete volume of love letters, as the rain tapped continously on the glass.  It was, as David Whyte writes, that “great shout of joy” inside, being born.

Now home to full weeks of deep listening to school leaders – helping them create inner space for the grief they hold for students and community whose memories of Christmas are painful; hosting the first of several leadership training circles for the staff of my local women’s shelter; tending to business matters left waiting during two quick trips to Whidbey Island; and making Christmas preparations, my love letters wait, much as our gentle Annie waits for me to rise from my desk and take her for a walk.

Each of the fourteen women in our circle realized that claiming time to write – to listen and tend to that great inside shout of joy, that new life that we must call our own – takes what we experienced in retreat – preparation, practice, discipline and allies, those who support us in doing what we know we must do, and yet…

I can’t keep those letters waiting, any more than I can keep Annie waiting.

It has me wonder:

What great inside shout of joy is waiting for you?

What new life needs the preparation, practice, discipline and allies to have you call it your own? 

While not Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest, Strawberry Creek Lodge in the aspen parkland an hour’s drive south of Edmonton has a similar warm ambiance for hunkering down and in.  There, I’ll be co-hosting Soul Spark with my friend, work mate and circle sister, Beth Sanders.

Soul SparkSoul Spark … An annual intimate winter retreat for ten people to step into the fire of doing the work and living the life they long for.  Whether you are in your early, mid, or encore career, here you will have the time and companionship to discern what and how to move forward.

Soul Spark … Strawberry Creek Lodge, a warm log cabin with quiet sitting spaces, a cozy fireplace around which we gather each day, silent walking trails, and delicious home cooked meals.

Soul Spark … February 16-19, 2016

Soul Spark … You are welcome.  Your place is waiting.

Wishing you the warm embrace of winter’s Solstice and Christmas and a new year full of promise.

 

Stepping into a Legacy of Learning

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CP HostsIn late September I had the privilege of co-hosting with local friend and colleague, Beth Sanders, The Circle Way training practicum with founders and master circle practitioners, Ann Linnea and Christina Baldwin.  Seventeen people joined us, from Germany, Indiana, Minnesota, British Columbia, together with a strong local contingent.

Strawberry Creek Lodge welcomed and held us for the five days, providing nourishment for body and spirit, its simple and natural beauty – with acres of glowing golden aspens and towering spruce and pine, leaf-covered trails, beaver, moose, coyote and bird – creating the larger container into which we created our circle of intention, learning, curiosity, and compassion.

P1010046It was the second time such a circle had been called.  In 2011, the day before I departed for three months abroad, I emailed Ann and Christina wondering if they’d come to Edmonton to teach circle.  Then, too, seventeen of us gathered at Strawberry Creek Lodge in the glorious splendor of fall of 2012.  Then, intent to bring circle more fully into my personal and professional work, hardly would I have imagined this manifesting as co-teaching with Ann and Christina during their final off-site training.

In the weeks prior to this circle, in the moments between “skippering” our home’s renovation, I felt anxious, apprehensive even.  In counsel with a wise woman, she offered that of course, such would be the response to stepping into a legacy.  Relief with having been so deeply heard, with having received the “frame” for understanding and navigating this new role and context.  My choice of token to bring to the opening circle’s centre, the solid pewter sea urchin, its circular shape and surface covered with tiny circles, its weight signifying the gravitas of the occasion for me.

Kana Ishii Paszek Photography, 2015Together, we four held well the circle’s directions, energies, and teachings.  Together, we were both present to and in a grief that came in with this circle – supporting, shepherding and stewarding, with clarity, focus and compassion, several momentous transitions.  Together, we practiced and modeled a cornerstone Circle Way agreement: “ask for what you need, offer what you can.”

And in the end, after a mid-night of Northern Lights that shimmered in the brilliant sky, clear after a day of blustery wind and steady rain, the torches passed, marked by the green and orange “Glassy Baby” candles, gifts from Ann and Christina to Beth and me.

Now Beth and I mark our own stepping in to create a pattern of learning experiences for the next phase of our lives.  We hope you’ll join us for circle practicum trainings next spring and summer, and our newest (ad)venture, Soul Spark: Step Into the Fire of Doing the Work You Love to Do. Soul Spark