Many Paths

While an undergraduate student, I attended a presentation by a visual artist who was speaking about some of his work. A member of the audience commented to him that he noticed there were a lot of star images in his paintings and he wondered if there was any significance to them. The artist commented that he liked stars including how all the points lead to the same centre when drawn figuratively the way we often do. I have never forgotten that line. Further, it became a metaphor for me of a philosophy I hold about wellness and about people's life journeys (for example, of growth, healing, transformation): there are many paths.

I believe there are  many paths that can support the same centre or movement toward it. Sometimes we alight along one that is just the right one for a particular thing. Often in the bigger sense of our journeys and life, many elements and angles support our growing, rather than one, and these can include seeming contradictions: movement and stillness, opening to and closing from. 

Finding Your Own Rhythm

This morning, I went lane swimming alongside a feisty aqua-fit class. Really, the class was inspiring. There was potentially a wide range of ages in attendance although my quick scan indicated seniors heavily dominated the class and rocked, I might add, with their earnest and energetic participation. Of course, mostly I observed the class from underwater out of the corner of my eyes. I saw a multitude of legs running on the spot, legs jumping forward and back, arms pushing "weights" into the water, building endurance and strength. I was impressed. I was also distracted. 

It was not the jumping legs that had me distracted. It was the music the legs and arms were pumping to. If I were to be exact, the music itself was not really the problem either. The music was lively, fun, and fine. It was that the music's pace and rhythm was not my own (at least not for swimming) and for a while, it was so loud that I couldn't hear myself breathing or my body moving through the water: I couldn't connect to those indicators of my own rhythm and pace. This jarring or "rhythm interference" did not prevent me from swimming but it did make it harder to feel like I was settling into some pace or to even decipher what my pace and rhythm was, to hear it and find it. 

And so the expression, finding your own rhythm, visited me while swimming, turning over in my thoughts as my arms turned over, one following the next in repetitive fashion. I find I encounter the same type of challenge while running: mostly that for me running and music don't really mix. I like to be able to hear the sound of footsteps predictably tapping, the sound of my quiet breath. It is almost as if I need to hear these. Being able to tune in has an orienting function.

The first song this morning was the most exuberant, and then the sounds softened down so that I was able to tune in and relax into the rhythm--my own--that I found there with the interference substantially diminished or gone.

I have written and talked about this sort of thing with people many times before--about learning about your own rhythm, your own pace, your own needs and proclivities and (for the most part) honouring these. Yet I find I might wish to write about this topic in different and similar ways a hundred hundred plus times. That, and questions of what pulls us away from our most authentic selves and rhythms and dreams, and what helps to bring us back. 

Are you experiencing "rhythm interference" these days or are you nicely in step with your own?

December Greetings

The portion of the days that is filled with light is getting larger. I take comfort in this.

After a few years' hiatus, this year I decided to write a letter of December greetings to send to friends. Here it is for you in nearly unabridged form complete with a few extras. I greet you today, this minute as you visit here, with kindness. While greeting you, the soft light of a candle gently glows from my desktop just to my right and a pine cone someone painted with gold and sparkles unobtrusively shimmers.

The letter:

December greetings,

I am curious: do you enjoy receiving "Christmas letters" folded into the cards that arrive to you, or not? For me, I do enjoy hearing from people and these notes -- thanks -- and I also wonder if sometimes the template Christmas letter can feel a bit, well, I don't know, like something is missing...

With that, I send one of my own.

Oh the glory that the Lord has made and the complications you could do without

I heard a song on the radio recently that quickly drew me in. It was likely these brief lyrics--and the feel of the song--that led me to sit down beside the speakers to listen, to sit on the little wooden rocking chair my grandfather made, to take a gamble that the potato water boiling vigorously on the stove would not rush over the lip of the pot and spill.

The song was Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens. While listening, I experienced a panoply of images and senses combining memory, imagination, recognition: the nice feeling that can come form a neck being kissed; the dense, weighted, and overwhelming energy of sadness that can come when someone dies; images of beauty and wonder and kindness and love and pain and loss. Oh the glory and the complications.

I wonder what kind of year it has been for you? What glory? What complications? Maybe you felt glory in the complications. Maybe not.

I have experienced my own version of "the full catastrophe" as Jon Kabat-Zinn has put it with what has felt like more experiences on the draining side than on the renewing. One example: I've had the most incredible experience with a tenant and her father that eventually resulted in her eviction -- they excelled at not telling the truth and at not paying their rent and showing incredible disregard and disrespect. The situation evolved into a long, exasperating saga. It could be said it gave me an opportunity to dig deep and stand up for and assert myself. It could also be said it felt, at times, like it could do me in and was deeply disheartening with respect to the lack of virtues being displayed by the pair. Was there glory in this complication? Right now, I am worn out, angry, likely hurt.

Sometimes, also, I am dancing.

Over the year, I have put out the world more publicly some of my desires. I have taken risks as I try to move toward a balance of work that works well for me on many fronts. I have made some progress. I am not there yet. I continue on the path of trying to take care of my health and the whole of all that that means. I have had some new health complications. I continue to grow and unfold and develop. I have made some "art that works" rather than much in the way of works of art. I have wept deeply, laughed hard at times, and persevered. I have felt moved and touched by many people and many things. I have watched the sun dip below the horizon with the most extraordinary fanfare including lavish displays of colour; the moon fantastically large and orange standing, peering, rising, and glowing; tree roots tangled and woven by years and stories, conversing with the wind and traveling toward deep pools.

I think of a story I heard recently about a young neighbour of mine who is about 5 years old. A few years' ago, I had the opportunity to greet him each day along my walk to work. That autumn, he greeted me in return each day with the gift of a fallen leaf. He would see me coming and start looking for the leaf he would give me that day. I loved those gifts, his enthusiasm, and his smiles. As the more recent story goes: this year or last, he decided to dress up as the wind for Hallowe'en. He would go to people's homes and introduce himself, "I am the wind...whoosh". He would make a whooshing kind of sound. This is a boy after my own heart.

If you are feeling very sad when this note arrives and the holidays descend whether wanted or not, then what? This is a question I think about a lot. If you are feeling very burdened or angry or not, then what? If you are feeling worried or scared? If you are feeling any of these and it was autumn and we lived nearby, I would offer you a freshly fallen leaf, bright and golden. Although it is not autumn and you do not live nearby, I offer one to you just the same. I offer it not because I believe it can remove the weighted weighted weighted complications -- if only -- if only it could -- but because I want you to have it. And I am thinking of you. And I want to reach out across the chasm and say, hello. Also, there is something about a golden or fiery leaf just as there is something about a stone, a shell, a handful of sand or one grain, a maple key or other seed, a landscape of freshly fallen white snow... There is just something about all of htat that makes me want to say, "Here, something for you, to breathe with, to hold...".

And if you are feeling fine, excited, warm, delighted, I offer you also this leaf, and I also say, hello.

I look up

into the faces of stars,

into their deep silence.

--Mary Oliver

I look up into the faces of the stars and I breathe in and out and I offer my hope and my wish and my earnest prayer that you may be safe, that you may be healthy, that you may be happy, that you may be at ease. I offer the prayer that you may have access to the comfort and support of others, to shelter and wonderful food, and to kindness--from others, yes, and also from your own most precious self.

Something opens our wings. Something, and many things.

_______________

* "Something opens our wings" is a line from a poem by Rumi. The lines by Mary Oliver are from her poem (and book) The Leaf and The Cloud. The Sufjan Stevens song is from his album, Illinoise.

Not For The Faint of Heart

"It's not for the faint of heart, is it?"is the exact line someone experienced with such matters said to me recently with respect to being a landlord in the province of Ontario. My response? A compact: "No, it isn't." In that brief exchange and dealing with the near tail-end of the latest challenging situation as a small-scale landlord, did I leap across some chasm into the "people who are not faint of hearts" group? Well, probably not. But the line certainly did stay with me and got me thinking.

I believe that sometimes in life, fierceness is required: a fierceness that is not without reins but is grounded in some deep, wise, and powerful energy that rises up to defend, protect and guide how this should be done. I have not read much about the spirit of the warrior, though the idea and image of a powerful, peaceful warrior has been presented to me many times. I imagine this grounded fierceness as like the energy of a wise warrior, not oriented toward unwarranted menace but toward the preservation of integrity. Perhaps sometimes (if not always), drawing on this fierceness becomes an antidote to "faint of heart". One dons courage and proceeds accordingly.

Maya Angelou's poem, Still I Rise, keeps running through my mind as I type about this topic this morning. I suspect it is because there is a tremendous strength in the words, a grounded fierceness, or warrior kind of energy to be sure. A few excerpts:

You may write me down in history

with your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

but still, like dust, I'll rise.

...

I rise

I rise

I rise.

If you haven't read it, or would like to read it again, a google search should lead you to the poem in full.

There is also no doubt the poem speaks of courage. Likely, courage and grounded fierceness go hand in hand. As I've previously mentioned, a question Peter Block's poses in his book, The Answer to How is Yes, is "what courage is required of me right now?" (p. 21). You could ask, what courage does this situation or feeling require of me? What wisdom? What grounded fierceness? Sometimes, it might be to speak up, to stand up, to stay the course, and sometimes it might be to change routes. It might be to work less, or less at certain things, to do more of something else, to breathe, to stay quiet, to be very gentle with yourself, or to be more still. What is your sense of this for your own life right now--a situation or feeling you may be experiencing?

If there is a poem or book you really like that comes to mind as you read this post, please share it by providing a comment to this post. (You can, of course, comment on other things as well!)

Staying In Your Own Lane

Over the week and perhaps especially today, I have observed myself drawing on scenes and interviews I’ve taken in of the Olympics and using them as grist for the reflective and metaphoric mill. The ideas of “focusing on your own game,” “running your own race,” and “staying in your own lane” were popular ones from my reflections over the past 24 hours and seemed to weave themselves into conversations I’ve had with others. These ideas come in part from an interview I listened to yesterday where strategies for running the kind of track races in which each person is assigned to and must stay in their own lane on the track were discussed. The interviewee explained how the athletes have practiced these races so many times, how they “know their times” (that is, how fast they can run), and that their task now, at these types of events, is not to worry about what other competitors are doing but to focus instead on their own lane, running their own race, aiming to perform up to or compete with their own personal bests.

This leads me to mention a book I’ve been reading this summer, The Answer to How is Yes, by Peter Block (2002). In it, he asks one to consider first the question “what matters?” rather than to bypass it and immediately jump to the question how–how do I do this or that, achieve this or that, solve x or y or get from point z to n? It is not a book against problem-solving and action but it is a book that encourages one to consider questions such as: is this the right problem to be trying to solve? Is this meaningful or important (and to me)? What is meaningful and important? What matters? What do I value?

Coming back to the race strategy, we might ask: am I running my own race or someone else’s? What do I want my race to be? What is my lane about? We might also remember the journey we are taking in our lane is ours. It is real and it matters.

At one point, Peter Block mentions the questions: “What is the transformation in me that is required?” and “What courage is required of me right now?” (p. 21). Also, “what measurement would have meaning to me?” (p. 23). I have heard some athletes speak of having faced significant challenges over the past four years–whether because of significant personal injury (such as broken bones) or interpersonal tragedy or loss. For some, getting to the Olympics was measurement enough, a meaningful accomplishment; aiming for a medal, though desirable, was not highly meaningful or the only goal or source of satisfaction. What measurement would have meaning for me? is a question I really like–not because I am gung-ho about measurement and certainly not about valuing people based on particular scores or number oriented results but because it invites each of us to consider, again, what is meaningful to me, in the context of everything else.

Sadly, I know that what can feel meaningful to a person can also lead them into all sorts of problems and traps. I am thinking of students I have worked with who have believed that a mark of 90 or more and no less is what has meaning to them. The trap here is often though that their belief, fear, and sometimes experience, based on how they have been treated by others, is that without the achievement of that marker, they are not of worth or value. The question of what measurement has meaning to me gets us closer to considering our own lane, assessing our values and directions and being guided more by that than swept along by what other people say or are doing in their lanes but it can still, of course, have pitfalls for us depending on our experiences thus far and vulnerabilities.

For those of you who have been watching–or participating–in the summer Olympics, I wonder what reflections you have had? What metaphors and ideas may have been presenting themselves to you?

Ebb and ____

Here we have a quick photo from today–strategically angled not for artistic merit but to avoid getting the dead squirrel into the shot–although coming to the end of writing the post and reading back through, I am wondering now if maybe I should have aimed to leave it in, to embrace that, too.

I share the photo here with thoughts in mind about cycle, rhythm, season, change, ebb, flow, swell, recede, wax, wane. Of the latter, it’s as if you cannot say one without the other: ebb pulls out from the tongue flow, wax attracts to pen wane. Try conjuring up rise without fall landing right behind on the runway; say up and in comes down. Scroll back a few posts and you will find a photo of daffodils in my yard that had just begun to bloom. Today the daffodils have long-faded from view and astillbe and sweet william, among others, are at center stage. This moment-by-moment changing, rising, falling, bursting, sag and wilt is always happening, always present, always everywhere. So I think it is with our journey: the ebbs and flows, rises and falls. It is all a part of the way.

I learned with much sadness earlier this week that Oliver Schroer died July 3rd, 2008.

There is life then death and also there is death then life.

I am thinking of the falling times people go through, the quiet times, the wilting times–and the emergence that so often comes after that: times of going inward, then going outward–the waxing and waning that David Whyte so powerfully talks about. In his talk, The Poetry of Self-Compassion (a cd I would highly recommend), he invites the listener to embrace it all: both the waxing and the waning, the highs and the lows, our strengths and all our seeming imperfections–and he suggests, essentially, that there is something very powerful in doing that. It seems to me that to walk with it all is the lifeblood of authenticity: to walk with acceptance, honesty, and tenacity leaning into pain, loss, confusion and into the richness of who you are, the wonder that is around you, and the deeply personal and positive contributions you can make.

I am holding in this moment Oliver’s death, the reality and inevitability of death, the plant in my yard I’ve longed named, Droopy, who is just beginning to bloom, and the laughter of a child.

Welcome June!

Today is the first day of June. We are now well into spring and will arrive in summer before the month is through. I have found myself drawn outside repeatedly over the past month, wanting to be outside sitting sipping tea in the sun, eating meals outside, playing, hanging out laundry, or working in the garden. Some days have been so beautiful, they have felt intoxicating–in the delightful, non-alcoholic sense of the word. I enjoy and love aspects of all the seasons: fall, winter, spring, summer; and I am currently really enjoying spring: the resurgence of colour into the visual landscape, the wonderful sights and smells of plants, bicycling again, and wearing skirts (at least, on occasion, … we’ve still had a lot of chilly days). When I look at the current state of my garden or the state it was in two weeks ago, with the tulips in full bloom, the forget-me-nots’ dazzling iridescence, I have reminded myself to enjoy it exactly as it is right now and to try to settle into that, instead of residing more in the realm of anticipation of the next interesting thing to come. There is nothing wrong with the latter, that excited and interested antcipation; however, I am also acutely aware that the garden season can feel very short, that before I know it, I’ll be observing the last blooms of the year, and eating local farmers’ fall harvests, so I would like to also make sure I that savour each morsel of the experience, and to aim to experience the full experience of the garden and the season as it is today, as it is in the moment I find myself in.

Sitting in Spaces

For those of you who follow the blog semi-regularly, you may have noticed my lack of activity on the site: no chalkboard quotes or writing for a few weeks. I was away for a week taking an expressive arts course, and since, have been sitting in all the silence, sounds, and spaces that have followed.

Yesterday, I began re-reading one of David Whyte’s books. Today, I’ll share the following excerpt:

In my experience, the more true we are to our own creative gifts the less there is any outer reassurance or help at the beginning. The more we are on the path, the deeper the silence in the first stages of the process. Following our path is in effect a kind of going off the path, through open country. There is a certain early stage when we are left to camp out in the wilderness, alone, with few supporting voices. Out there in the silence we must build a hearth, gather the twigs, and strike the flint for the fire ourselves.

This can be a frightening time.

–David Whyte, The Heart Aroused, p. 87

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.

A Great Question

Tell me the most important thing that’s going on in your life right now. I heard this quasi-question posed on the radio last weekend and I thought to myself, “what a great question”. The source was Stuart MacLean in an unexpected phone conversation he had with a 15 year old man one day when Stuart dialed a wrong number while recording his radio show. You can hear the conversation that ensued via the January 8th, 2008 podcast of the show, The Vinyl Cafe. (Click on the link, scroll down until you find The Vinyl Cafe, then click some more.)

I imagine, if we were to review responses from a whole bunch of different folk, they would speak to the highs, lows, neutral times, miracles, tragedies, and sufferings that can be part of a person’s life. This makes me think a bit of the art project “PostSecret” where people are invited to create and send in a postcard anonymously, on which they share a secret. There is a wide range of secrets shared–some funny, quirky, happy, others troubling, some very sad. Is the most important thing going on in your life right now public, private, known by many others, a few, or by none?

Tell me the most important thing going on in your life right now. Perhaps here is a reminder of a gift we can offer to people we encounter and that others can offer to us: the invitation and opportunity to share something of significance right now–a great question and a willingness to listen well.

Make Small Resolutions (And Dream Big)

Happy New Year!

For those of you celebrating New Year’s at this time, perhaps your thoughts have drifted to the topic of new year’s resolutions or things you would like to change or continue to work toward. Perhaps your reflections have looked forward and back like Janus, the mythical king of early Rome who had two faces–one on the front of his head that looked forward and one on the back of his head that looked back (see link). Perhaps a combination of this double-looking, as well as time spent absorbing the present moments as they are has led you to a resolution or goal or continued commitment to something you’ve been practicing and aiming toward already.

Rather than new resolutions, I largely fall into the camp right now of continued perseverance with what is already on the go, perhaps with a few extra twists. I had the luxury of spending time over the past few days with friends at a cabin in the woods. I brought up the word conviviality in the context of a book I’ve been reading and enjoying. This led to a discussion of what the definition of conviviality actually is and one friend looking up the word on the dictionary on her mac laptop, to which she found: “[of an atmosphere or event] friendly, lively and enjoyable; [of a person] cheerful and friendly, jovial“. Another friend then summarized this as merriment. In my mental-emotional lexicon, I’ve held conviviality as involving nourishing time spent with excellent friends–perhaps over tasty food, drink, conversation, games–enjoyable, lively, friendly, and with lots of room also for the real challenges people face, including pain. Among those “resolutions” already on the go, I wish to continue to foster, celebrate, and inspire the spirit of conviviality.

You may have heard the expression, “go big or go home.” I want to emphasize here that there is nothing wrong with dreaming big. Indeed, dreaming big is something I whole-heartedly support. Nevertheless, I have been thinking about how sometimes people make new year’s resolutions that fall into the “go big” category, and of how sometimes the resolution’s largeness makes it too hard for the person to maintain, or even to begin: it’s largeness can be intimidating, even discouraging, and the person is not able to get their feet off the ground with it. It isn’t always this way, of course. Sometimes, going big works. Nevertheless, I’ve been revisiting the theme of valuing the small and thinking I would like to extend the invitation to myself and to you, to dream big, yes, and to make a “small resolution” that supports your dream; that is, to aim to make a small change first, then another small change, not a large one all at once.

As one example: perhaps you would like to get more exercise. Making a small resolution might be to commit to getting 5 more minutes of physical activity each day, which might mean walking to the end of the block or lane and back once or marching in front of the tv set on a few sets of commercials or walking up and down a few flights of stairs. It could mean making a goal of going to one fitness class per week instead of four, or swimming (or dancing, skating, running, snow shoeing, or anything else) two times per month. If you did any of these things, at the end of one year you would have either:

• gotten 1825 more minutes of physical activity, which equals almost 30.5 more hours simply by adding in 5 more minutes each day, or
• attended 48 fitness classes of your choosing minus 4 weeks over the year when you were unable to attend, or
• gone swimming, dancing, running etc 24 times over the year!

It seems to me that is significant. It counts. Not only that, if you are able to pick something small that is manageable, what you create is also something lasting–until you decide to make another change. Nothing has to be set in stone. We could take Stuart MacLean’s theme for the Vinyl Cafe here–”we may not be big, but we’re small”–and adjust it slightly to say, It may not be big, but it’s small. The small matters. It counts.

I preface this next bit by saying I have not yet read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell; however, it is a book that was one among the collective travelling library my friends and I created while at the cabin; one of the people there had brought it along. While browsing it, I came across the following:

We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that sometimes big changes follow from small events, and that sometimes these changes can happen very quickly. (p. 11)

This made me think of examples like deciding to go to an event or activity and meeting someone there who ends up becoming a lover, or life-long partner, or best friend; the relatively small event that led to the creation of you and me and each and every other person you see. If I am recalling correcting, Malcolm Gladwell writes that we are trained to think that big changes only come from big events yet this is not always so. Small events, small changes, small things can also have a significant impact.

Remembering that there is nothing wrong with dreaming big, or making big changes or goals per se, in the spirit of also valuing and honing in on the small, is there a small change or resolution you might have made or be making? I would love to hear about these–my curiosity and interest is primed–and I’d love for others to be able to hear as well. If you are comfortable, please do share by adding a comment following this post.

Previously on the Chalkboard: Doing What Is Possible, Creating Possibility

A friend of mine and her housemate have a chalkboard outside on their front porch that is situated near the street. The chalkboard is mounted roughly at eye-level to any average-adult-height people walking by. The words written on the board change from week to week and usually include an excerpt from a poem or other writing. I love the idea of this chalkboard and how it brings a bit of creativity to the street and commented one time that I might try to further the trend by having a similar feature at the front of my home as well. For some logistical reasons, I don’t as of yet so for now, I will satisfy this interest with a cyber-board and call the blog’s quote of the week space something like “On the Chalkboard” with a weekly (or so) rotation of collected words.

I was thinking that it would also be nice to have an archive of these, so I will also add the weekly quotes into blog entries that can easily be found by clicking on the “on the chalkboard” link at the right under categories.

The first quote of the week that aired on this blog was taken from a card I came across one evening in a card shop during the time that this blog was coming close to fruition. The card read: What is possible should be done right away. What is impossible might take a little longer. (See reference below.) As I mentioned in my first entry, this blog was born at a time when I was very depleted physically and emotionally. For some reason, this little card offered me a spark. It connected to a core inside of things I believe in and that have pulled me forward over and over again as I have stumbled and persevered along toward various visions and goals.

The task is to create possibility in the face of impossibility. I heard someone say this once many years ago and I have never forgotten. At the time, they were saying it to me in direct application to my life. It was my task to persevere when it all seemed quite impossible. I have done that with the help of others (known and unknown) and continue to aim in that direction. I have also been thinking about how this has become one cornerstone of my work helping others. There are many times when that’s what the people I am working with are doing, what I am doing, what we are doing–bit by tiny bit, creating and working to create possibility.

I realize I have a thing for this: I have a thing for the small. I also hold a kind of powerful knowing and belief that it is in the writing of one word, then one more word, then another that leads to the writing of a poem, an essay, a book; it is in the laying of one brick, the entry of one computer programming code, the planting of one seed, then the next that leads to the development of a larger whole.

One of my neighbours who is about 84, if I recall correctly, impresses me regularly. She’s out shoveling snow, out for daily walks, busy baking, growing food, praying. Early on, I sometimes experienced her as a bit more forward than what felt completely comfortable to me but I have since come to see her as quite amazing and lovely. One day, perhaps two summers ago when I was dealing with some significant and very stressful house problems –perhaps as the worst of it was coming to an end–we were outside and she put her hand on my shoulder and said to me in an encouraging, empathetic, and kind way, an Italian phrase that I did not understand. Then she translated, effectively saying, Rome wasn’t built in a day but brick by brick. Yes, I knew that was true and still know it deep in my heart–though sometimes I have wished something could be built or change or come about much faster, sometimes for myself as applied to my own life or circumstance and sometimes for someone else, for example, when they are experiencing so much hardship or suffering or stress.

So the little, beautiful card, made me think of all that–or conjured up one feeling or thought, that connected and conjured up another, that led me to tune in again to certain kinds of information and ideas, and so on.

The card with this blog’s first quote of the week comes from a Canadian owned and operated family business called “Heritage Gallery Designs” and the painting the card was based on is by Emily Filler. To explore these gems further, visit www.thegentlepath.com and www.emilyfiller.com.