Season's end...

Season's End

Summer has fled

Leaving my world in disarray

An ungracious autumn has

Hastily crept into her empty bed

Turning warmth  and delight

Into the dank and dreary

Cloud filled day 

That closes into starless night.

I might yet yearn

For winter's crystal breath

To sweep away fog and mist

But I will not spurn

The days yet due

When  trees grace the land

With leafy fire

And grey skies arch in blue.

After an absence...

I have been away from this blog for months now. Until I just checked I not realized that it had been quite so long. The past months have been very different - transformative in many ways.

The biggest change is my new relationship that seems to have exploded into my life out of thin air. It truly was unexpected and we both have o step back from time to time and shake our heads. Logically we admit that we may have moved more quickly than reason would advise but as Pascal says "the heart has reasons that reason cannot know." So now here I am living in London, Ontario still toiling away at my dissertation, searching for work and most importantly living with an amazing woman. Gertie Mai can best be described as a force of nature though she is much more modest in her self-image. Somehow she swept me off my feet with just a smile - a rich heartfelt laugh - and of course a sweet kiss.

I am both content and joyfully happy.

When times change,,,

Through my six decades I have seen considerable change and yet there are times when I think I really will not see any more progress. This tends to be especially true in politics. But then I am reminded by the Canadian public that though quiet they are thoughtful and resilient.

The past several years in Canadian politics have been bleak, brutal and nasty. Under Stephen Harper the Conservatives have waged a war on democracy by distorting the truth and suppressing any attempts at open discussions and critiques of their policies. Lacking any idea beyond reducing the role of government in Canada they smear and denigrate anyone who might attempt to articulate a vision for this country beyond balancing the books and reducing taxes. The level of vitriol and acrimony within Parliament has become poisonous.

When the current election began it seemed that the best Canadians could hope for was another Conservative minority. Then something happened. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the Tipping Point and it seems somewhere in this campaign Canadians reached theirs. That it first became evident in Quebec is most intriguing. That it soon spread outwards across the country is fascinating. Beginning the campaign at 19% in the polls, the NDP have steadily risen from a distant third to a close second. The gap between them and the first-place Conservatives is tantalizingly small.

Will this result in a transformation in Canadian politics? Only election day will confirm that but something has already happened and any political party that ignores this does so at its own peril. Canadians are not sheeple. We may be slow to react. We may be patient beyond our own best interests at times but when change comes it is transformative.

Eagle's Flight

Eagle soars on golden wings
Sweeping clouds from azure sky
Passing from view
Drawing me higher
Lifting me free
From contemplation
Opening my heart
To all creation
Filling my spirit
With the simple joy
Of a new day
The gift of being.

My day

Chickadee sits on treetop
And cheers the world
With its simple song.
No harbinger of spring
It gives way
To other birds
Returning with the sun
Winging north on a softer breeze.

The winter's rage that was so fierce
Collapses before the gentle touch of spring.
The rain comes to sweep away its frozen cousins
The snowdrift, the icy patch.
They blend together
And sink into the thirsty ground.

I sit behind the shielding glass of sun porch
And let the sun warm me as it slides down the sky
Sinking below the waving line of a wet horizon
Marked by ocean swells.
The sliver of a pale moon hangs there
Marking the night.

Finding my path...

In my last post I explored how I recently found myself at a crossroads. I believe I was most fortunate that this happened because it helped me to find my path again. Life is like that sometimes. We get caught up in our routines and stop paying attention to just where we are going.

Being in Toronto along with a couple of other incidents shook me out of my stupor and forced me to take a reckoning of just where I was and where I was going.

When I began my PhD I intended to get to the point where I really did not need to be in any particular place so long as I had access to the Internet. Ideally that was to be somewhere sunny and warm like a beach in Thailand or Vietnam.

This week I have repostioned myself to move back to that path. I have set specific goals, figured out what I need to do and now I am back into the life I both want and need.

That does mean a change in my relationship with Margo and that really was the most difficult step for me. But I know I was honest and honourable with her. We have been friends for almost a decade and I hope we remain friends forever. My time with Margo gave me a safe place to heal and to become whole again. That is a precious gift I will always cherish.

Crossroads....

This time home has been transformative for me. Most of that has come indirectly from my work on my dissertation. I have been spending much my time on a journey with the Mi'kmaq and they have welcomed me with open arms.

I have been attending a cultural circle on Tuesday and recently I was invited to participate in a workshop designed to train men to act as facilitators in a program to end all forms of violence in local communities. That experience opened up something in me and brought me closer to my participants than I had ever been before. For a day I became one with them.

It does not end there. I had been working on a paper that I was to present at an Urban Aboriginal conference in Toronto last week. I sought feedback from my friend Gertie Mae Muise who is a Mi'kmaq elder and a founder of the Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network. She helped me to reshape my language to speak more clearly from the voices of my participants.

I presented that paper and it was received very well. But my experiences at the conference did not end there. I attended several workshops and gained new insights into my larger work. I know now that there is much I must learn and experience if I am to complete this work appropriately. I have to reflect on my life and be willing and prepared to transform it further if I am to move ahead.

That brings an intense feeling of being at a crossroads. I need to earn a living and I may have an opportunity to do that through consulting work but once I have built up some financial reserves I have to seek out an elder to help guide me on a new path, one that will properly prepare me to carry on with my dissertation in a way that shows honour and respect for the Mi'kmaq.

Speaking for the people...

I'm at Fostering Biimaadiziwin: National Research Conference on Urban Aboriginal Peoples in Toronto and today I spoke for the people, the Ul'nu more commonly known as the Mi'kmaq. I knew I was coming here for several months now and for a long time I was apprehensive about my presentation. In my work with the Mi'kmaq I have committed to learning to speak and to think form their perspective. That is no easy challenge given that I am not an Aboriginal person by birth or heritage.

But there has been a profound change in my person and my being because of my work over the past year or so. I have been touched deeply by the people who have participated with me on this journey. Yet nothing that I had experienced had such an immense affect as a workshop I attended a little over a week ago. Under the guidance of Grand Chief Mi'sel Joe I experienced something that gave me a sense of legitimacy that had been absent form my work. It was a transformative experience such that when he took my hands and asked "Does the colour of you skin make you any less Ul'nu?" I answered "Today I am Ul'nu!"

So when I spoke today I was able to feel that I could speak for the people - to bear witness to what they have experienced but as importantly to bear witness for what they have achieved.

Ground and centre...

Today my room is awash with brilliant winter sunshine. The sun woke me around 7:30 with a splash of red across my ceiling. The snow covered mountains sit hunkered down under a bright blue sky. The air is crisp and clear - the kind of February morning I recall from my childhood.

I have been attempting to develop a meditation practice over the last two to three years. There are times when I am diligent in it; other less so. But since I returned to my home at Black Bank I have found a rhythm in my life that includes meditation in a way that seems as natural to me as my morning coffee.

There is something about this place in winter that lends itself to reflection and contemplation. There is a beautiful stillness to the mornings that allows me to awaken into a contemplative moment. My routine is simple. I get up - wash my face, go down an make coffee. Then I sit in the sun porch and watch the songbirds cluster about the bird feeder or scurry around devouring seeds that poke up from the snow.

After this I return to my room, read my Tao for the day and then meditate in front of the Buddha I brought back from India. There is a fullness of being that flows through me and I feel grounded and centred within my own life.

A walk in the woods...

My first few days back home were rather spring like but now we are definitely settled into winter. And that is actually okay. I have been slogging through the woods the past few days. I say slogging because we have about a foot of snow with a crusty surface and walking through it is no stroll. Still the quiet beauty of the woods in winter more than makes up of the effort requires. Whether it is a grove of birch and witch hazel














Or a partly frozen brook there is a peace there unique to winter.

Obama: Let us heal together

There is one thing among many that always impresses me about Americans and that is their resiliency. I was struck by that tenor while listening to President Barrack Obama speak tonight at a memorial service for those wounded or slain last week in Arizona,

He spoke without rancour but with compassion as he reached out across what has been an acrimonious political divide of late. He cautioned those on all sides that they must seek to heal and not to exacerbate. This is not a time for finger pointing - it is a time for consolation and care. It is a time to lay down the tools of the political battle and to embrace the means of reconciliation.

America may be somewhat diminished in the eyes of the world yet it remains the repository of dreams, a beacon of possibility for many in a world of deprivation and oppression.

Peripatetic? Me?

I have been called a variety of things in my life. It is hard to make it to 60 without having that experience unless you spent your entire existence under a rock but yesterday a colleague asked me how I managed to survive my peripatetic life - moving seamlessly back and forth between Calgary and Newfoundland. I was a little surprised at the question. I had never really thought of it as something that needed explaining or even thinking about much. I have lived this kind of life since 1969 when I first headed off for a very short time in Labrador City. Since then I have lived quite a few places, with the longest stay being 10 years in St. John's between 1987 and 1997.

Yet I never imagined myself to be peripatetic...or as dictionary.com would have it:

–adjective

1.

walking or traveling about; itinerant.

2.

( initial capital letter ) of or pertaining to Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens.

3.

( initial capital letter ) of or pertaining to the Aristotelian school of philosophy.

–noun

4.

a person who walks or travels about.

5.

( initial capital letter ) a member of the Aristotelian school.

Based on the actual conversation I had with George I suspect he was referring to my gypsy ways though he also called me his favourite academic.

Peripatetic? Me?

Beginning the New Year

Each year bring its own memories, some good, some bad. Whatever the year was it is forever part of who you were perhaps who you are. We are unrelentingly propelled through the present, often so obsessed with looking over our shoulders or peering blindly into the future that we miss the only time we actually have, the present.

I long ago gave up making resolutions at the beginning of the year - such an arbitrary and unsatisfying way of being present in one's life. Instead I renew a long held resolve to live more fully in the present and to savour whatever each day brings. Some are momentous and tear past us in fleeting glimpses. Others seem uneventful. Each is precious and at any point in life finite.

I have come to a place where I begin to grasp that in a profound way deep within my being and as I sit in my daily meditation I try to open myself up to an even greater awareness of being present in an amazing world. It is a troubled place and despair is oh so easy to embrace as we are so often drawn to witness the terrible injustices and inequities. People starve to death every day where food sits stored in abundance. It has always been this way. We are simply more aware of it in the digital world driven by the 24 hour news cycle. This makes it no less cruel or unfair yet to somehow imagine the world has not ever been so is naive and pointless.

It simply means we must each do something. The idea that one person cannot make much difference is the biggest impediment to affecting change in the world. We can each transform the world in small ways that may have an enormous impact on others. If nothing else, as a Vietnamese Buddhist nun once said, "If we change ourselves we have changed the world."