• Bear With Me

    • December 15, 2009 8:16 am

    Dearest Readers,

    When I was a child I had a Steiff Teddy Bear. I didn’t know it was a Steiff, which is a high-quality, German brand of plush toys, until much later in life when it would have meant something to me to own so swish a toy. As a girl, however, it was simply a bear that I loved.

    I also had a tiny little bear named Baby Growl-y. I don’t even know how to spell it. Did I come up with the name? My mother would know.

    When I got a little older, not yet old enough to think teddy bears were un-cool, still on that threshold between childhood and youth, I acquired Charles, a giant, white teddy bear.

    Charles was a Christmas present. I remember sneaking downstairs in the early morning before anyone else was awake to have a sneak-peek at the presents. I saw the bear, unwrapped, sitting up, alert and ready for love. I knew he couldn’t possibly be for me. I was too old. Surely he was for one of my younger sisters. Oh, heartbreak!

    Later, when the whole family was gathered around the tree to open presents and my father picked up that bear and said my name, I leapt for joy and hugged his softness to my little budding body. He was mine! And Charles seemed an appropriate name for he was a very proper bear.

    For some reason my mother continued to buy me bears right up until a few short years ago when I had to tell her to stop. She knows I have a love of bears, all bears, one might even say the Bear is my Totem Animal, but I’ve outgrown the stuffed bear, no matter how adorable.

    Or have I?

    Yesterday, because of some healing work I’ve been doing, I felt a deep connection to the little girl that I was all those years ago. That small child who was innocent and free, loving and hopeful. The girl I was before the harshness of the world made itself known to me. The girl who didn’t yet know shame.

    That little girl could receive the tender hugs of a teddy bear. She needed them.

    So, for her, I bought a gift. A giant, pink, plush teddy pig. Or would it be a piggy bear? Either way, it’s darn cute. And very huggable. Just what a little girl needs at Christmas time.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: We need hugs. We need tenderness. Sometimes we can receive these things from people but other times we need the soft and all-embracing love of a child’s toy to give us that comfort.

    Suck it Up

    • December 14, 2009 8:04 am

    Dearest Readers,

    I vacuumed the apartment yesterday. I could write this as the Inspiring Message of the Day and leave it at that. No kidding. When I vacuum it’s a miracle.

    Organization and neatness are important to me. I like order. The apartment in which I live is fairly spare and everything has its place. My work desk can often be a mess but it doesn’t last. After a couple of days I’ll stack papers and clear off unwanted business.

    But vacuuming? I’ll put it off forever. For some reason cleanliness is less important to me than tidiness. The place will look immaculate because of its orderliness but upon closer inspection you’ll often see that the dust bunnies have turned into full-grown rabbits.

    It’s a blessing that I have to travel a lot for work not because I get to see the world but because I’m forced to vacuum for the housesitter. This excuse brings great relief. “I have to vacuum! Thank GOD.”

    Too bad I’m not going to be around to enjoy it. By the time I get back the place is ready for another pass with the hoover and I’m counting the days until my next trip.

    What’s that all about? How can I love a tidy house but not care about a clean one?

    Lazy. There aren’t too many areas in my life where laziness still reigns but this is definitely one of them. But I’m hopeful. Change is possible. I have often visioned myself vacuuming the place once a week. Hmmm…. maybe I’ll start saving up for a cleaning lady.

    For now, the dust rabbits are gone and the cat no longer has to cautiously round corners fearing an attack by one of them. I’ve got two months before I leave town again. That’s about the time it takes for them to become full-grown.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: If you leave the vacuuming of the house long enough it will actually feel like a victory when you do it.

    What Goes Up…

    • December 12, 2009 8:56 am

    Dearest Readers,

    I posted a new video to YouTube this morning. Here is the story for you:

    Once upon a time there was a little girl with a fiery temper and a wondering spirit.

    In springtime, in the year she would turn 8 years old, she moved with her family from a small town in the far north to a big city in the southeast.

    From one day to the next, the little girl’s world became very big. And the relative safety she had known and only known was now replaced by the possibility of danger.

    The danger of strangers.

    Bad men, lost men, who snatch little girls and hurt them, rip their innocence away, use and abuse them. This was the danger of a grown-up world, a world of fear and of hatred, of judgment and of pain. The little girl came to know this world, this danger, first hand. And it changed her.

    So the little girl grew up (because she had to) and lived in the world with a wounded heart.

    Harder and harder she developed her shell and scared and more scared she became her heart getting smaller and smaller but you could not see it shrinking oh no for she had become an actress extraordinaire.

    An actress in the drama of her own life.

    And the drama was dark as dark can be. For she began to seek refuge in the Destroyer, the destructive abyss, the kiss of death.

    The kiss of the highest of highs brought on by the lowest of lows. The kiss of bad men, lost men, to whom she’d now willingly give her heart, using and abusing, confusing pleasure and pain.

    But the little girl kept growing (because she had to) and miraculously her wondering spirit grew, too.

    It grew stronger and stronger, weakening her shell, cracking it open, easing her wound, healing it, and carrying her because she could not carry herself alone.

    And as her spirit lifted and soared she became a traveler, roaming the earth far and wide, encountering people and stories and writing stories of her own.

    On one particular journey she found herself in a little village by the Sea.

    She decided to go for a walk and because her spirits now had high high hopes, she liked to climb high high up on her walks.

    So she chose the most difficult route. And she climbed and she scrambled up the hardest, most challenging path and just by the skin of her teeth made it to the top.

    But now she had to get back down.

    “Surely there had to be an easier way back down,” thought the little girl (who was now a woman). But she could not find one and so she continued on, trusting that eventually she would discover a simpler way back down to the road.

    Soon she came upon a fence.

    “A-ha”, she said. “If someone built a fence all the way up here, they had to have begun to build the fence all the way down there.”

    And so she followed the fence down the hill.

    This proved to be an excellent idea until she hit the patch of gorse. Gorse is a yellow-flowered shrub that grows in dense patches as tall as the tallest man and as thick as a bear’s coat. Gorse leaves form spines, needle-like spikes, sharp and menacing.

    “I must get down to the flat,” said the little girl (who was now an anxious woman), and she began to make her way through the gorse patch, weaving and threading between the shrubs.

    Soon the gorse became so thick that she was forced to the ground, where the bush was thin enough to form a crawl space.

    She lay on her back, completely surrounded by spiked branches, the flowers creating a soft yellow glow around her.

    To continue on seemed impossible. Yet she had made so much progress, she had come so far down the hill, that to go back up seemed like defeat.

    “Perhaps defeat is not so bad,” she thought. “Perhaps defeat is better than being torn to shreds by the spikes.”

    So she crawled back up. Through and through the gorse patch until she was out, back where she’d started, back at the top of the hill.

    She walked on. Soon she saw a grove of trees. “Trees are easier than gorse,” she thought, and entered the thicket.

    There before her was a path. A wide-open tunnel of trees shadowy green switching back and forth all the way down to the road.

    The little girl (who was now a very grateful woman) knew from her life experience that sometimes we have to go all the way down to the bottom to find our way back to the top.

    But what she had not known and what she learned on that day is that sometimes we have to go all the way back up to the top to get down to the bottom.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p06YDmi1jwc

    Power Up

    • December 11, 2009 10:16 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Yesterday the power went off. The computer screen flickered for a moment and I thought it might just be a “brown out” but it continued to stutter and finally went black. The lights went out, the fridge stopped humming, all was quiet.

    Whenever the power goes out I am reminded how much we rely on electricity to function in our daily lives. Can’t send an email, can’t write a document, can’t call anyone, can’t make a hot meal, no hot water. When the power goes off we are forced to re-think our next steps. How can I do what needs to be done unplugged?

    In 1997, I was living in Montreal. That was the winter of the famous Ice Storm. It was everything you heard it was and more. The city was under siege by ice.

    I saw telephone poles bent in half from the weight of the ice, bowing and broken trees, cars stopped in the middle of the road, abandoned by their owners, unable to drive any further. The city was in darkness. It felt like the apocalypse.

    Except, in our little apartment, we had power. For some reason the block on which I lived did not succumb to the blackout. We were one of the few lucky spots in the city that had heat, light and all the comforts of home.

    We felt guilty (and grateful) for our good fortune so we decided we ought to be living in the dark, too. We conserved heat and kept the lights off most of the time. We called the emergency hotline and offered our place as a refuge but were told most people were already looked after.

    When the power went off yesterday I wondered how long. Would it come back in less than an hour? It usually does. What if it didn’t? Could this be something bigger? Would it be days? It’s cold outside. How would we keep warm?

    Unable to do anything much, I went to lie down and have a rest. The power came on half an hour later and I got up, relieved, and resumed my work.

    But something had changed. I was newly aware of my good fortune. There’s nothing like a power outage to build gratitude. I have so much. It’s so easy to take it for granted! Flip the switch and it’s on and Bob’s your uncle.

    People in Montreal and the surrounding communities survived that Ice Storm. Resiliency, generosity, charity, and community prevailed. There were people without power for weeks and weeks but time passed and they got it back and everyone made it work. It was not the end of the world.

    The moment of panic I felt with yesterday’s blackout was followed by some pretty serious self-talk generated by that kind of big-picture thinking. “In the moment I am always okay. This too shall pass. All will be well.”

    Looking at the big picture is not simply seeing the bright side of things, although that helps. It is a way to remind ourselves that nothing is the end of the world.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Electricity is a power that makes things easier but it is not the Ultimate Power. If I trust the Ultimate Power in times of crisis then my fear has no sway.

    Cope or Hope

    • December 10, 2009 9:54 am

    Dearest Readers,

    I’ve written before that December seems like the quickest month in the calendar. It’s already the 10th and wasn’t it just the 1st?

    Yesterday I was with a group of people and someone brought up coping during the holiday season. One person did not quite hear what was said and asked, “Hoping? Did you say “hoping” during the holiday season?” “Coping!” the other shouted back.

    It was an interesting mistake to make. Coping vs. hoping during the holiday season. Which one are you?

    Being self-employed and far away from my family and choosing to stay home this year has put me in a kind of detached state around this season of cheer/jeer. If there weren’t decorations in the stores and if people didn’t keep bringing it up I probably wouldn’t even know it was Christmas. I’d just be doing my work and then, “Oh, it’s the 25th?”, make my dinner and go to bed with the cat.

    Admittedly, I have had a few moments of feeling that excitement that can come with the advent of the season and I am making some celebratory plans so I guess I am more in the hoping camp.

    Mostly what I am doing, to the best of my ability, is giving where I am able. Whether it is time, food, money, what have you, being of service is not only a good way to get out of myself and build my self-esteem, it’s the time of year when it seems to be the most needed.

    I know how difficult it can be to give when we’re in that coping place. Giving when I’m feeling hope is easy but how can I give anything when just I don’t have anything to give? Sometimes we need to be receivers. Sometimes we need to let people give to us.

    That said, I know that when I need to feel better there is almost no better way than to give of myself in some capacity. Giving is one of the quickest ways to get out of that fearful place. Somehow giving opens the heart and frees us from whatever it is that is binding us to fear.

    Finding the balance between giving and receiving is challenging and I don’t do it perfectly. I really need to check in with myself often. If I give here, am I going to send myself over the edge? Do I need to say no? Will saying yes make me feel better despite my reservations? Is saying yes just what I need right now?

    These questions are paramount to self-care. We can’t give what we don’t have but when we give we receive. Making sure I am clear on what my own needs are first will help me to serve the needs of others most effectively.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I will use this holiday season to practice giving in ways that both attend to my own needs and allow me to be of service where it is truly needed.

    Imagine

    • December 9, 2009 6:48 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Yesterday, December the 8th, is a day I always remember for two reasons: It is both the day my father was born and the day that John Lennon was shot and killed.

    It’s been 29 years since Mark Chapman put four bullets in Lennon’s back. Almost three decades. My father, incidentally, just turned 67.

    Like those in the generation before me who remember where they were when JFK was assassinated I remember where I was when John Lennon died. I was only nine years old but I knew who he was and I knew who the Beatles were. My parents had Beatles’ records and I liked their songs, particularly Penny Lane and When I’m Sixty-Four.

    It was a school day and the story was spreading around the schoolyard. I’m sure none of us really knew or understood the implications of what had just happened but we knew it was big. It was only later, as a young adult, that I was able to feel the real sadness of it and grieve the loss of such a great artist and activist.

    John Lennon was not a perfect man. His defects of character and his shortcomings as a father, his drug use, his egotism have all been well-documented. But he was a man who spoke for Peace and Love. In my mind, this makes him a kind of saint.

    His message is still being sounded nearly thirty years on. His song Imagine, ranked “the third greatest song of all time” by Rolling Stone Magazine, is a most inspiring call to action.

    Imagine all the people
    Living for today

    Imagine all the people
    Living life in peace

    Imagine all the people
    Sharing all the world

    John Lennon was a dreamer. The world living “as one” is still a dream. It’s not the reality we live in. But could it be? Is it possible? If not, why not? What stops us from letting go of our differences, from accepting each other exactly as we are?

    Fear. Plain and simple. It’s fear.

    I can’t make World Peace happen by myself but I can practice peace in my own life. I can let go of judgmental thinking, I can accept other people’s beliefs that aren’t the same as mine, I can be compassionate and kind, understanding and generous.

    This call to action is a high one. We are caught up in our own lives. Change is difficult. But imagine every single one of us making peace a priority in our own lives. Wouldn’t that change the world?

    Inspiring Message of the Day: You can kill the messenger but the message doesn’t die. I will work for peace in my own life knowing that it will transform me and could so transform the world.

    The Tufa is Now

    • December 8, 2009 8:24 am

    Dearest Readers,

    For the last six summers my father has come up to the Yukon to visit me and together with an old friend of his (and one of his own prodigy) we have paddled one of the many splendid rivers in this Territory.

    One year, we paddled the Coal, a challenging river in a secluded part of the Yukon wild; gorgeous mountains, rocky canyons, lush green.

    On one stretch of the Coal you will find yourself in the Coal River Springs Territorial Park. If you then bushwhack into the wall of trees beyond a certain stretch of the riverbank you will discover the tufa, a natural phenomena of terraced limestone created by cool springs.

    Now, as I mentioned, this is a remote wilderness area. There are no park wardens or guides. No signs. Finding the tufa is about guessing. My dad’s friend had a vague idea of where they were, having been to see them years before, but other than his distant memory we were totally winging it.

    In order to get to the section of bush where the tufa might be, we had to line the boats upstream. This involved walking along a rocky shore and hauling the boats against the current. My father and I had inappropriate footwear. We were not having fun.

    Next, we had to scour through mosquito-thick bush and swampy underfoot. Could they be over there? No. How about here? Uh-uh. You get the idea. No map, no directions, no fun.

    I was, by this point, extremely irritable. “This f&%#ing tufa better be worth it,” I said to myself.

    But what if it wasn’t? What if this whole deal was going to be nothing but a big ol’ disappointment? What if the tufa sucked?

    In that moment I knew I had to change my tune. Because if the tufa weren’t worth it I was going to be really peed off. It would all have been for naught and I would be in a bad mood for the next five days.

    I realized then that I was actually living out that old cliché that says, “It’s the journey not the destination.” It wasn’t about getting to the tufa at all. It was about being where I was while getting to the tufa.

    After collectively almost giving up more than a few times we heard a shout from deep within the forest. Someone had found the springs.

    We explored the area, fragile and beautiful, like a forgotten paradise. We filled our containers and drank the mineral-rich water running down from the hills. We marveled at the clear pools of turquoise and the shelves of coral-like limestone.

    The tufa were worth it.

    But if they hadn’t been worth it? It would not have mattered. Because I shifted my thinking and made the journey the destination.

    Whenever I find myself trying to get somewhere, to the end of something, be it a job or a place or a time, I remember the tufa.

    And I remind myself: “The tufa is now.”

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Can I be in my life today? Am I able to let go of what is to come and be here now? I will practice staying in today by remembering that my life is only ever happening right now.

    Alive

    • December 7, 2009 11:50 am

    When I was young I used to get a thrill out of inspecting the book shelves of others. Come to think of it, I still do. It’s one of the places you’ll find me if I’m in another person’s home, scouring their kept titles to uncover their treasures.

    On one such adventure, when I was a child, I discovered the book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, about the Uruguayan Rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountain range. Sixteen young men survived by eating the flesh of their dead fellow passengers.

    The book moved me, changed me, opened my mind to things I had not yet known to be possible. It is a deeply spiritual book and it impacted me on that level. Even as a young girl I began to look for the hidden meaning in things, the mystical path.

    In 1993, a movie was made of the book starring Ethan Hawke and others. I remember it being a good film but it having not quite the same impact as Read’s telling of story. Probably because I knew Ethan wasn’t really going through it. The book is first-hand and its power is unforgettable.

    The other night, I took the book out once more, looking for something to center me in truth, gratitude, spirit.

    This is what I found:

    “It was something no one could have imagined. I used to go to Mass every Sunday, and Holy Communion had become something automatic. But up there, seeing so many miracles, being so near God, almost touching Him, I learned otherwise. Now I pray to God to give me strength and stop me slipping back to what I used to be. I have learned that life is love, and that love is giving to your neighbour. The soul of a man is the best thing about him. There is nothing better than giving to a fellow human being.”

    These are the words of Coche Inciarte, one of the survivors, speaking to a priest about what the experience had meant to him.

    Imagine being stripped of everything you have, everything you are, forced to consume the flesh of your brothers and sisters, reduced to living in near impossible conditions where seemingly all hope is lost, and there, at the edge of nothingness, you discover the meaning of life.

    I went looking for healing and found it in the pages of this book, where the words of a man who stared death in the face reminded me of what it’s really all about.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Here is the Simple Truth: Life is Love and Peace comes from Giving.

    December 6, 1989

    • December 5, 2009 9:10 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Tomorrow is will be 20 years to the day that Marc Lepine gunned down 14 women in the Polytechnique School in Montreal.

    I was 18 years old, living in Whitehorse, working at a newspaper, which made the massacre somehow more real, being one of the first places where the news was delivered. The rest of my family was living in Montreal and that, too, brought me closer to the terror as I heard from them first hand what the city was going through.

    It’s hard to believe 20 years have gone by. “It’s still so raw,” said a student in the yoga class I taught yesterday. It is. I can feel that horror, that sense of loss right now as I write this.

    Today, for the Inspiring Message of the Day, I’d like to send out a prayer written by Matthew Fox, an American Episcopal priest and theologian.

    If you are a man, remember, this is not about you, but the system of Patriarchy that has divided us.

    “Prayer to the Cosmic Christ”

    From Patriarchy’s lack of authentic curiosity,
    From Patriarchy’s separation of head from body,
    From Patriarchy’s separation of body from feelings,
    From Patriarchy’s preoccupation with sex,
    From Patriarchy’s fear of intimacy,
    From Patriarchy’s reptilian brain,
    From Patriarchy’s anthropocentrism,
    From Patriarchy’s cosmic loneliness,
    From Patriarchy’s crucifixion of Mother Earth,
    From Patriarchy’s envy and manipulation of children,
    From Patriarchy’s abuse of women,
    From Patriarchy’s homophobia,
    From Patriarchy’s righteousness,
    From Patriarchy’s idolatry of nationhood and national security,
    From Patriarchy’s forgetfulness of beauty and art,
    From Patriarchy’s impotence to heal,
    From Patriarchy’s sado-masochism,
    From Patriarchy’s parental cannibalism and devouring of its children,
    From Patriarchy’s lack of balance,
    From Patriarchy’s savaging of the earth,
    From Patriarchy’s quest for immortality
    From Patriarchy’s ego,
    From Patriarchy’s waste of talent and resources, human and earth,
    From Patriarchy’s human chauvinism,
    From Patriarchy’s compulsion to go into debt to finance its bloated lifestyles,
    From Patriarchy’s matricide, spare us O Divine One.

    Love and Peace to you all.

    Ask to Receive

    • December 4, 2009 8:45 am

    Dearest Readers,

    One of the reasons this blog is called Cultivate Your Courage is because cultivating courage is a practice that I need to keep up. I would love to be the person who is writing everyday about how fearless I am but instead I come to you today, humbly, with fear kicking my butt.

    The inspiration I hope to offer you comes from the fact that I refuse to let it win.

    Despite the fact that I’ve been taking good care of myself I continue to feel fatigued this week. When I’m tired the fear rears its ugly head.

    A friend of mine sent me an excellent quote by Friedrich Nietzsche who apparently said, “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

    This was a good thing for me to hear because I’m now being attacked by negative thinking that I have overcome in the past. Old BS (Old Belief System).

    Last night, I decided to flip back through my journal for inspiration. I had just finished writing the day’s entry on the very last page and whenever I get to the end of a book I like to look back to see where I’ve been and how I’ve changed.

    I found an entry from the summer, wherein I’d written that one of my new goals was to “practice joy”. A-ha! I’d forgotten about that.

    How does one practice joy when she feels like a slug? That’s like saying to a depressed person, “Just get off the couch!” It’s a whole lot easier said than done.

    This is where asking for help comes in. Because left to my own devices, I will choose to remain a slug. I will stay on the couch. My fear will keep me stuck. Asking for help is a panacea.

    Whom do we ask? I usually start with the Higher Power, the Creator, the Great Spirit.

    “My desire is to practice joy today but I am tired and my fear is threatening to win. Please help me to find my way to freedom from fatigue and fear. Show me what to do. I am willing to receive guidance. I am willing to change and be changed.”

    If immediate guidance is not received we can try a human being who loves and supports us unconditionally. Not the person who’s going to try to make it better, give us a solution, force an answer. Not the person who talks instead of listens. Not the person by whom we feel judged or whom we judge. Remember we are asking for help!

    Who is the person who knows how to practice active and compassionate listening? Or the one who reminds us how well we’re doing despite the fact that we may not be feeling 100%? These are the people we reach out to for support.

    A friend of mine from Montreal used to say, “Some days are better than others.” This was a HUGE help. It reminded me that I’m not perfect. That I can be having a great run and then something can shift and I’m struggling again. The struggle doesn’t mean failure. It means opportunity.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I will use the fact that I am struggling as an opportunity to change. Instead of succumbing to fear I will ask for help. When I share my burden it is always lessened. We’re not alone!