For JoAnn

Though you may not be able to change it, you can handle an ugly situation beautifully.

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Alchemical Wisdom

What calls us

The way to maintain one’s connection to the wild is to ask yourself what it is that you want. This is the sorting of the seed from the dirt. One of the most important discriminations we can make in this matter is the difference between things that beckon to us and things that call from our souls.
~ Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

No rain on this parade!

Ottawa’s Pride Parade yesterday was an ecstatic explosion of vitality. It’s laughable how the presence of evangelical fundamentalists loudly denouncing the “abomination” of same-sex love unwittingly bumped up the celebration of the richness of our human expression. Spotting the guy with the “Are you ready?” cross, groups of marchers in the parade broke into a rhythmic chant: “WE ARE READY, WE ARE READY.” No abomination. Just a huge embrace.

All the children who are held and loved…will know how to love others. Spread these virtues in the world. Nothing more need be done.
Meng Zi, c. 300 BCE

Dare to…

Run from what’s comfortable.
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
— Rumi

The golden now

after a swim

Death can come at any minute, in any way. We do not know what is in store tomorrow, or, whether there is a tomorrow, or even a tonight! But still, we have the golden present. Now we are alive and kicking. What should we do now? Love all, serve all.
— Sri Swami Satchidananda

Who are we fooling?

In the world to come I shall not be asked, “Why were you not Moses?” I shall be asked, “Why were you not Zusya?”
— Rabbi Zusya

Life and Art

Lorne Cardinal & Margo Kane, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, National Arts Centre

I once naively asked a playwrighting coach of mine whether plays were supposed to reflect the real world or what we might wish the world to be. She answered with a little smile, “A bit of both.” Michel Tremblay did just that in his play For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, which I saw recently. It’s an affectionate tribute to his mother, in which he replays conversations from his childhood up until the time he was a young man witnessing his mother’s death. But the son presents his mother with an outrageously beautiful surprise to relieve her suffering–a fantasy he could not possibly have given her in reality. What a joyful celebration of their relationship and her pivotal contribution to his creative genius and dramatic expression. I left the theatre suffused with tenderness, reminded of the relationship a wonderful uncle of mine had with his mother, my French-Canadian granny. If we are creating our reality, investing our lives with meaning as we go, why can’t we marry “reality” with wonder, fantasy, magic? I believe life can imitate art. We are the artists!

Tribal thinking

Groucho Marx said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” We are all selective in our own way. In the days when I was still seeking truth in churches, I was led to a very liberal parish where it seemed Everybody was accepted with open arms. Wow. Awesome, right? Except that I started getting this niggling feeling, hard to put my finger on. I realized it was the first time I had ever “belonged” to such a non-exclusive club, and I had to do a little soul-scouring to get to the bottom of my discomfort. The “us/them” norm dies hard. I think it’s our tribal DNA. But this hardwiring is a survival tool that’s not really serving us any more. (Just turn on the news.) C’mon, Groucho, we’re all in this together.

What if there is no “right” or “wrong?” What if it’s not just “black” and “white?” What if such judgments are just a way for your ego to get all self-righteous and make itself “superior” to others you deem “less than?” What if your attempt to label people or actions with judgments and criticisms is just a way to reinforce your illusion of separation that leads you to falsely assume that we are NOT, on some energetic level, all ONE? Even more so, what if it’s not your job to judge anyone? What if it’s your job just to LOVE MORE, judge less?
— Lissa Rankin, Inner Pilot Light

(Source: http://www.reallifecoaching.net)

What’s in front of you

Last night my husband and I were having a crabby time in the supermarket. You probably know the drill–impatience at the tedium, a sense of not being in the right place or the right time (probably the same idea as not being comfortable in your own skin, which I’m also familiar with!). When we finally got in the car to drive home, a line from an old song popped into my head: “These are the good old days.” In six months or two years or ten (!) years, we’ll very likely feel nostalgic about these days. (“Remember when we went grocery shopping at the Superstore?” “Yeah, that was fun, and then we went home and fed the cats and watched the news on TV. Shucks.”) The point is, if we’ve had the experience of looking back fondly at even our most pedestrian activities, maybe we should open our eyes to these moments while we’re living them. And get fond of every single thing in the right now, even what we strive to change about our selves, our career, our friends. For that matter, why not permanently blur the line between the secular and the sacred? Okay, on that Zen-like note, I wish you a sacred good old day!

Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each separate fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God.
–Fyodor Dostoevsky