The Blanket Song

This week, I had the pleasure of listening to a recently posted concert of Canadian singer-song writer, Karla Anderson, which you can find on the CBC Concerts-on-Demand website by clicking here. While listening to the beautiful song, “What else can I do?” I thought, with caring, of my friend who is sick and my friends who are both excited and anxious in the face of current changes. What else can I do but bring a blanket for you…lend my shoulder to you…share the silence? Follow up listening with the song, “Gentle Kindness,” and, if you respond like I did, you’ll find yourself taking a deep, satisfying breath, maybe even feel a tear.

Thanks, Karla, for sharing your gifts.

Bloom

Sometime between when I went to bed last night and when I awoke this morning, these daffodil blooms opened in my yard. I wondered: did they open during the cool and dark of night, or this morning, when the first sliver of sunlight reached out in to the day?

Be Like My Cat...Or Not: Picking and Choosing

A friend listed for me what was in her lexicon of memories of my cat based on stories I have told her over the past year that she has been collecting. It was not the most flattering list. Near the top: Sadie trying to squirm her way up into the housing of the left front tire of my car with me trying to accomplish the opposite, hands firmly attached to her torso, pulling and coaxing…pleading. Thankfully, I was more successful than she. (This did not really seem to be a case of warm, collaborative, compromise.) Then there is the story of Sadie staying in virtually the same position under several layers of blankets on a bed for a period of likely about 19 hours one day while we were visiting a cabin. I didn’t think she had died but did check on her tentatively more than once with this possibility in mind. Thankfully, au contraire, she was likely there for such a long time because she was warm, comfortable, and also a bit scared: her new-found burrow offered comfort and a sense of security. The rationale: if I stay here, I will be safe, I will be okay, nothing bad (or worse) will happen. Alternatively: I won’t have to deal with what’s out there and what’s out here feels too difficult to face. I would check on her and she would stare back, sigh, stretch, continue to dwell in her burrow.

This morning, she was at the side door enjoying a favourite warmer weather pastime of hers: with her nose scrunched right up to the screen of the open window, she sniffed the fresh spring air, attending to every little movement and sound, eager for what this sensory input in this moment and the next would be bring. Attending to each moment with such interest, noticing this and this, can hold her attention for hours–or, well, at least, quite a long time until she is ready for possibly her most favourite pastime of all regardless of season: napping–and of particular enjoyment, napping in a patch of sunshine streaming in through a window. Wherever the sunshine lands makes for Sadie the perfect place for a spontaneous bed. If logistically, only one ear can get into the sun, that’s okay; that will also do. I imagine she lies there in the spirit of savouring: how good the quarter-size patch of sun feels landing on her ear. She soaks that good feeling up.

As I watched Sadie eagerly sniffing the air, listening, watching, tail poised in wagging position (yes, cats wag their tails, too), I thought we could learn a lot from her, take a page from her book where values she lives by such as mindfulness, savouring, focus, and relaxation can be found. Then I remembered the tire climbing story and I thought, well, we can also pick and choose. It is important to do that anyway, to reflect and to pick and choose what feels best for us right now, what works for us, what makes sense or is meaningful. In working as helpers, I believe it is important that we support others in their own picking and choosing, too, rather than dictating. It’s okay to offer ideas but not to command.

It seems to me picking and choosing involves knowing ourselves, being in tune with who we are. We consider: What do I like? What do I need? What do I value? What is important to me? Also, what helps? It is possible that there are lessons for all from my long-haired white cat, aging, and with sagging belly. Everyone needs love, for example; everyone needs and deserves that. (I might add here that by extension, my sense is that we need to find ways to give love to others and to ourselves as fully as we can in the ways we can at any given time, acknowledging this may mean sometimes more, sometimes less depending on circumstances, present-moment abilities, limitations, and other needs. By doing this, we do our part to help meet this need for love that each of us has.) There also comes into play, the picking and choosing. What specific thing works for one person or is imbued with meaning is not necessarily the same as that for another. Nor are likes the same, among a multitude of options of likes which cause no harm. Sadie’s interest in sniffing catnip, batting a toy mouse (or a live one for that matter), and chewing on grass is not my own–though perhaps in these, we share values for play, pleasant sensory experiences, nourishing food.

If I were to offer you an invitation today, perhaps it would be this: to connect with that realm of things you pick and choose–those things you deeply value–and take stock. If something you value hasn’t gotten attention for a while, what’s one thing you could to today or this week to give it some energy and attention–even if only in a very small, five-minute, grain of sand kind of way? I am thinking here of the post, Make Small Resoulutions (And Dream Big), of the value of small, and how the small things can really add up.

On the Chalkboard April 13, 2008

In conviction let me be kind;
In anger let me…burn bright;
In surrender let me be rekindled by pure love.

–Judy Collins
from a preface page in her book, The Seven T’s: Finding Hope and Healing in the Wake of Tragedy, (c) 2007.

Why Black Umbrellas?

This is a question I ponder from time to time. How has it come to be that on dark, grey, or otherwise overcast, rainy days, so many people are in the habit of pulling out their black umbrellas? Why not red, or purple, or yellow, turquoise, sunny orange, or that gorgeous spring green? I wonder, what might be the impact of adding more drab to all the drab that already exists on such grey days? Of course, for those who do give consideration to this, perhaps sometimes a black umbrella just feels right, maybe reflects some heavy weather in a person’s heart. If this were so, and people consciously chose a black umbrella for occasions limited to when their cells were laden with sadness or suffering, then perhaps, it could be a kind of signal to others–to send some extra comfort or love or warmth their way, for others to offer an encouraging word. For times when suffering or sadness is dominant but we are trying to hold hope, too, maybe a black umbrella with a small spot of colour or colours would be fitting, with the colour acting as a reminder or declaration in faith that there is also colour or the possibility of that–whether we can feel it or believe it that day or not.

Yesterday, was one of those rainy, grey days outside off and on. At one point, I noticed a group of about four people walking together, a unit of people. What I noticed first was their umbrellas. There were red, yellow, blue, and purple umbrellas (or maybe it was green?) huddled happily together as in a bouquet and bopping along. No black. I wondered if this was intentional among them, if they have considered this umbrella quandary, too, and decided to take rectifying action.

A few weeks’ ago, I observed a phenomenon that had a similar effect and was undoubtedly completely intentional. It pertained to a group of joggers running along a city side road one grey Saturday morning. Each one wore a different colour of jacket; all were vibrant in hue. After allowing some traffic to pass, they moved into formation, lining up side by side across the width of the road. There was, in sequence: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple–a complete rainbow. How wonderful, I thought. This buoyed up my spirits and made me smile. I am very curious to know the story behind the jackets and the group. If you know, do send the story along!

You Make A Difference

A colleague sent me the following link today. It is to a short movie well worth watching. I offer thanks to my colleague for thinking of me and sending this along, thanks to the creators of the film–and to each of you, I offer a blue ribbon.

http://www.BlueRibbonMovie.com

Turning Points

A initial title idea for this week’s post, “The Snow Is Melting!” came to me earlier in the week as a lot of snow transformed and receded from view (and my sump pump worked over time in response). This morning, though, after rereading the quote now on the chalkboard, the idea of “turning points” settled in, such that that is what the title (and theme) of this week’s post will be. I suppose there can be a relationship between these two, with the melting snow feeling as a kind of turning point.

Of course, depending on where you live, you may not have snow, or the snow you have may not be going away. I heard briefly on the radio this morning that northern Ontario is forecast to get up to 25 centimeters of snow and that a winter storm warning is in effect for the region. I wondered how I might feel today if I was facing a few hours of snow shoeveling ahead of me? Hopefully, I’d take it in stride but I can see that as the snow is melting so is my winter activities mindset. I wonder if this will be the last post for a while in which I mention snow? Yesterday, I did a small amount of work in the garden (cutting back old stalks). It wouldn’t surprise me if these sorts of things become a “regular guest” on the blog for a while.

In my work, I have the opportunity to witness over and over again turning points in people’s lives. I find this deeply moving, something very special and almost beyond words in its impact. I see these turning points in my own life, too, and in friends and others around me when given the opportunity and having the awareness to see. When I speak of turning points this morning, I am thinking of the full range from those that are very subtle to those quite clear and overt, from those that may seem more temporary to those that may seem more permanent (although I might add here I am reluctant to describe things that way). I am thinking also of the things that can contribute to a turning point. These can be virtually anything really: something a person notices on the street, a line they read in a book, a health issue, a song, something a friend or stranger says, the way a tree bends and how it speaks to them, a trip, a physical challenge or activity, a loss… on and on the possibilities go. Sometimes, the things themselves are subtle. We can’t quite put our finger on what they were. There was just something…

When I first read the line a month or two ago that Bill Schefell wrote in Loving Kindness Meditation (2003, p. 10), of how sometimes just to remember loving kindness can support a turning point within us, that is exactly what happened. It connected me again to something very calm and loving and that deep desire to love. This would be an example of a turning point on a small scale, one of the thousands of these inner shifts that can occur in a day, a week, a lifetime. In a small scale but no less poignant way, it offered me renewal, and, in a sense, nourishment for my conviction.

I would love to hear about things that have contributed to a turning point within you. I envision a collection of stories gathered here to inspire and give goosebumps–potential “turning point material” to another as needed. Please feel free to provide a story, a quote, a song, and thus build this collection, by adding a comment to this post.

May you have turning points of hope and renewal this week, exclusively or amidst anything else you may be facing or may come your way.

On the Chalkboard April 5, 2008

“Training in loving-kindness helps us remember it when we most need it. And sometimes, just to remember it is enough to create a turning point within us.”

–Bill Scheffel, Loving Kindness Meditation, (c) 2003, p10.