We were only four at Project Forward last night. Two clients. A volunteer and me.

One of the clients is a man in his late twenties. Tall. Slim. Like so many other clients, homelessness caught him by surprise. He's a father. A Licensed Practical Nurse by training. But the sudden onset of 'cervical dystonia' a neurological disease believed to have been caused by a reaction to the drugs he was taking for bi-polar disorder caused the basal ganglia in his brain to mis-function. Where once he could lift a 180 lb. patient with ease out of his wheelchair, suddenly he was weak, unable to control the activity of his limbs. His speech became slurred. His neck twisted, his head tilted down towards his shoulder and spasms rocked his body.

"My bi-polar disorder was causing me to do bizarre things," he said, his head tucked into his chin, his hands gripping the arms of his chair to keep them from shaking. "It was awful for my wife and kids and then, when I started taking the drugs, this happened. She asked me to leave a few months later and here I am. I can't work. I've applied for government assistance but I can't get it until I see a neurologist. I can't get an appointment with a neurologist for two years. My family want me to come home but my kids are here. I don't want to leave them and so I wait. Here." He looks at the room around him, gazes out the large plate glass windows where we sit in the boardroom. The view is of the river valley. Lights twinkle on the hillside beyond. The sky is indigo blue. Deep. "The view sure is beautiful up here at night," he says with a smile.

He always has a positive thing to say. "It's all I've got," he says when I mention his attitude. "If I don't keep thinking positive I'll drown in this place. I can't let that happen."

Attitude.

French philosopher, Voltaire, wrote, "Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats."

For this man, life became a shipwreck because of a disorder he did not choose, did not ask for, did not want.

Yet, he's singing in his lifeboat. Smiling every day as he sits on the second floor, working as a volunteer, talking to people, trying to lift their spirits with a joke, a warm look, a listening ear.

"I always like seeing you when I'm on the second floor," I told him. "You make me smile."

"It's your smile that makes me smile," he replied. "Guess it's true. Smiles are contagious."

The question is: How are you wearing your attitude today? Are you hiding your smile behind grey clouds or are you singing in your lifeboat, sharing your joy no matter the stormy weather tossing the waters of life?

A time for every purpose under heaven

Life's moments fill in time passing by. Moving on. Flowing along. Moments shift. Edges curl up along the pages of time unspent in one man's life. A page flips. Turns over. Time flows along, never standing still. Stunning news fills in a blank, pushes out what was there, waiting on the edges of the pages to happen. Waiting for the right time that will never come again. Time moves on.

C.C.'s nephew is gone. Nothing can change that. Nothing can bring him back. Nothing can fill in the spaces where he once had a place in the lives of those who loved him.

We breathe in. We breathe out. Time shifts. Our perspectives adapt. We begin to accommodate what has changed. To realign our thinking to encompass this new information. These new circumstances. This new place where time once held a different meaning. Where the ending was a distant horizon not yet arrived on this plane in time.

Nothing can change what has happened.

A man at the shelter almost died. He was tucked away in a washroom. Hiding his activity from prying eyes. Staff found him. It wasn't too late. Time had not yet ended for him. And now, time continues on unmoved by his circumstances. He will move on filling in the moments of his time here. Doing what he does. Or not. One day perhaps he won't be so lucky. One day, perhaps, it could be the last time for him. Or, one day, perhaps, he will make another choice. One day he might change direction and do something different, change how he fills his time. One day he might find the time has arrived to live his life with meaning, filling in his time well spent with something other than the drugs that are robbing him of the time to live his life on purpose.

Benjamin Franklin said, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."

Time is the measure of the moments we have here. Time has no value. It can't be spent like money at the convenience store. Or banked like money in an account gathering interest, waiting for a better time to be spent. But time can be squandered. Indiscriminately. Thoughtlessly. There is no right time to begin filling your time wisely. There is no better time than now.

Thing is, it's time. That time. The time. Time to make the moment count. Time to fill it in before it's too late. Before it's gone, lost, used up. It's only a matter of time before we take our last breath. Before it's our time to turn a page that will never be written with us in it. It's time. Once upon a time, Pete Seger wrote Turn Turn Turn for the Byrd's:

To everything - turn, turn, turn

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

The question is: What on earth is your purpose?

Sorrow

C.C.'s nephew was murdered on the weekend. The news didn't take long to travel a thousand miles. One phone call and sorrow descended in a wave of inexplicable pain.

"I don't know how I feel," C.C said late last night. "Mostly numb. I think I should feel more. I'm angry that I don't."

"We don't come with a guidebook mapping out how to deal with something so tragic," I replied. "What if you don't judge yourself for not feeling something you don't know what to feel? What if you simply let the numbness guide you?"

His sister won't talk to anyone. She won't answer the phone. Take calls. In her grief she has shut down. Perhaps she believes if she doesn't talk about it, it won't be true. Perhaps she has fallen into the first step of grieving and is using denial to shield her from the enormous pain of her loss.

I want to help. I want to do something. Change something. Help somehow. I too want to deny this is possible. I want to believe it cannot be. I want it to be a miscommunication. A lie. I want to tell C.C. it's not true. I want to ease his pain but cannot lie.

Violence has ripped through the delicate filigreed network of leaves sheltering the family tree. The inconceivable, the unbelievable has happened. Violence, in all its brutality has settled in the branches. Impersonal. Without feeling. Without conscience. It is filled with malice. Riddled with disease, it claws at the roots of humanity, grappling for a footing in the story of the lives that have been intertwined since the moment of their birth.

Violence does not discriminate. It does not take sides. It sucks the air from around it, leeches out the sweet clear breath of the morning rising upon the dawning of a brand new day. It over shadows the joy of awakening, the peacefulness of sleep. Violence kills the life around it.

There is nothing that can explain why. Nothing that can take away the pain. That will happen in time. For now, tears must fall, hearts must break open and time must stand still before it can begin its work of easing the pain through grief and sorrow.

A young man is murdered a thousand miles away, and time shifts, the earth tilts. A life has ended and sorrow descends upon those left behind.

I have no answers. I want to ask, 'how can this happen?', but I know I can't. It has.

All I can do is be the arms of love that tenderly hold this man for whom I care so deeply, as he struggles to come to grips with something no one can ever understand.

I forgot about Daylight savings time today. I'm normally an early riser, regardless of what time I went to bed. This morning I awoke late and was impressed I'd managed to sleep in -- except Daylight savings stole one of my hours!

Be thankful for small mercies. I did get an extra hour in there!

Looking outside at the snow falling, I think I may just go back to bed and cuddle up for some extra zzzz's.

Last night I went to watch C.C's team play hockey. He coaches PeeWee's -- 12 and 13 year old boys who are starting to come into their prime as players. As I watched the kids skate onto the ice I was impressed by their prowess, by the silky movements of their bodies gliding across the ice. There was such grace, such fluidness in their movements.

Throughout the game, they skated backwards, forwards, in circles. Edges sharpened, they'd grind to a sudden stop, quickly change direction, their sticks constantly in front of them, searching for a chance to grab the puck from their opponent. They kept their eyes alert, their heads up as they raced back and forth in a constant dance spread out across the ice searching for the right moment to score a goal.

Poet, Alice Abrams wrote, “In life as in dance: Grace glides on blistered feet”.

For those kids skating last night, it has taken a lot to get to where they are able to effortlessly move across the ice. It's taken practice, practice, practice, drill after drill, repetitions and repetitions of moves and shots and plays. It's taken a lot of falls. It's taken a tone of hard work.

Do you remember the first time you learned to skate? I loved it from the get-go. I loved the feeling of being free, of being able to move with such speed across a frozen sheet of water. The feeling of the wind against my face, the air parting as I slid through it. I loved jumping, spinning, leaping.

I was never an expert skater, but had enough confidence in my body to respond to my demands, to be able to manage mild figure-skating maneuvers without falling down too often.

But I did fall, especially in the beginning. In skating, falling is acceptable. It's the only way to learn. It's part of the game.

In life, falling, like blisters, are part of the process of learning to move with grace and dexterity through the air.

Today, I'm celebrating my blisters. They are a sign that I have worked hard, played hard and given it my all.

The question is: What about you? Do your blisters hold you back from stepping forward? Do they keep you on the bench, sitting on the sidelines watching life skate by?

Getting real.

Before I met Conrad, the first man I seriously dated after my daughters' father and I split up was SY. He was handsome, dashing, very charming, intelligent, a dreamer and a very devout Catholic. He fell in love with me at first sight he eventually told me. In fact, he'd left the party where I was at because he was terrified by the feelings that swept over him. "I'd probably have asked you to marry me on the spot if I'd stayed," he later said. Given that he was in the process of determining whether or not to join a monastary, that was pretty heady stuff.

I was charmed. And fell in love.

But I was also conscious enough to know I had issues -- and one very serious concern. It was over three years since my marriage had broken up. In that time, I'd hunkered down into my writing and was starting to gain traction. I'd had some success with a couple of projects and wanted to keep pushing them forward. "I know how to be a writer," I told SY one day while talking about my fears. "And, I know how to be in relationship. What I don't know is whether or not I can do the both at the same time."

Three years later, SY and I called it quits. And, I learnt a valuable lesson. Writing and being in relationship are difficult tasks for me to balance at the same time. I met Conrad very shortly thereafter and never had to test my writer's muscle with him. I quit writing as soon as I started falling into the emotional terror of that relationship. Writing is about truth for me, in that relationship, my truth was leeching out and I could not face myself on the written page. I stopped writing.

It's nine years since that first fateful encounter with Conrad. In that time I have ridden the roller coaster of abuse, fallen into the depths of despair, been suicidal and almost lost my life. In that time I have risen above the horror and trauma and pain of the past and stepped with joy and confidence into being all I'm meant to be when I walk freely in the light of my existence. I've been writing -- and I've been fearing writing.

And, I've entered into relationship again.

My fear rises. Can I write and be in relationship?

I'd like to blame not writing on relationship, or having a man in my life but truthfully, not writing is about me blocking myself off from the muse's call. It's about me stepping back from my creativity and closing myself off from the call. Not writing is about me -- and no one else. It's about my fears overriding my courage.

Last night I was supposed to go to dinner and a movie with a girlfriend. She had to cancel at the last minute and I relished an entire evening by myself at home alone. Both girls were out, C.C. and I had plans to meet up later. I had several hours to delve into writing.

Did I write?

Nope. I poured myself a glass of wine, curled up on the couch, pulled out a new book a girlfriend had given me and cracked it open. Now, there is nothing more satisfying than sitting in a pool of lamplight, its golden glow cast upon the the words lined up in symmetrical perfection upon the page. I love sitting in the quiet of the room, the shadows pushed back as I fall into the story unfolding before my eager eyes. I love reading.

Love writing more.

But last night, I didn't write. I didn't take the opportunity to use that time for myself by diving into my own creativity.

Successful people do what other people won't.

Now, I'm not upset that I spent the evening reading -- I loved it. What concerns me is the fact that I know within me is the seed of self-sabotage that has often, in the past, taken root and circumvented my expressing my creative whole.

What's important for me is to be honest, truthful and forthright with myself. To acknowledge that what I did last night wasn't about taking time out to read and relax. It was designed to avoid.

Yup. I was in avoidance mode. I've been treading those murky waters for some time now -- and it's time for me to turn up for myself, get honest, get real and get back on track.

Fear is the opportunity to be courageous.

I fear being in relationship -- not because I fear the other person might hurt me. I am smart enough to know how to keep myself safe and still be vulnerable and open to relationship.

Nope, my fear comes from my knowledge that sometimes, I use relationship as an excuse to not do the things I love. The things that are right for me. The things that bring me joy.

Sometimes, I use relationship (or any host of excuses like being busy, tired, over-worked) for the reason why I'm not committed to my Be. Do. Have to be my most incredible self.

See, I was skirting my writing before C.C. and I entered relational waters. I was already running from my truth.

Time to stop. Take a breath and be real honest with myself.

Time to embrace myself for having the courage to stand up and acknowledge -- I've been cheating on myself.

Time to acknowledge -- this is my one and only life. It's up to me to live it up. It's up to me to get my worth out of the value I create by being all that I am meant to be when I live passionately and fearlessly in love with my very own, one and only life.

The question is: Are you willing to get real with your truth? Are you willing to turn up for you and acknowledge where you might be letting yourself down -- not because of someone else, but rather, because you're afraid of being the most magnificent human being you are? Are you willing to get real?

Time Well Spent

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. It's up to me to make it count.

Today, I have the potential of creating the best day of my life. Or not.

I have the opportunity to make every thought a fresh start, a new perspective, an exciting adventure into the unknown. I can use my thoughts to create, new growth, new ideas, new perspectives. Or, I can let myself regurgitate old thoughts, replaying the film of past experience through worn down corridors of thinking that wear me out with every repetition. I can wearily wear my thoughts clothed in habitual feelings, walk well-trod paths of discomfort that hold me in and keep me back from breaking free into that space that lives beyond the norm.

With each action I take, I have the opportunity to build the foundation for the life of my dreams. Or, I can continue to withhold from myself all that I am meant to be as I journey through all that I was and all I refuse to let go of. It's up to me.

Today, I have the opportunity to expand my horizons by stepping out of my comfort zone beyond the confinement of that place where I hold myself down and keep myself back from spreading my wings and flying free.

Today, I have the choice. This is the first day of the rest of my life. It's up to me to make it my best.

Regardless of what the day has in store, it's up to me to carve my own unique path, to create my most incredible journey. I've got limitless potential exactly the way I am. It's up to me to quit yearning for what isn't here, in the here and now and work with all I've got. I've got a lot.

With all that I've got, it's up to me to quit pulling the threads of 'what was there and then' as my excuse for not being all that I'm meant to be in this moment, here and now, right now.

My life is up to me and I have the possibility to create my most incredible life today. Doesn't mean I'll make a million bucks today, or land that contract of my dreams -- the possibility is there but that's not the point. What's on point today is my being my absolute, total, best. What counts today is that I give my all to everything I do so that at the end of the day I can say, without equivocation, Time Well Spent.

Today is the time that counts for me. This is the moment that creates the springboard to the next. It's up to me to fill it full of my personal best so that I can end today, and every day from now on, with a calm assured breath that I have done my best. Given my all. Been my most magnificent self. That is the measure of my success today.

The question is: What will you choose today? To create new thoughts or travel worn paths of familiarity? Are you willing to create a new perspective, look at a further horizon and see you've got it in you to live the best day of your life today?

For those I love

I had to give an early morning talk about homelessness to a group of Calgary business men and women today.

It was dark when I left home. Everyone else was sleeping as I quietly closed the front door and stepped into the morning. The thought went through my mind as I turned the key in the lock that the most important beings in my life are on the other side of that door. Close it lovingly.

Some days, racing from home to work, from meeting to meeting, cramming in just one more task, I forget what's most important.

The people I love and who love me.

Some days, as I whip from one quadrant of the city to the other, whip into the grocery store, whip home to whip up a quick dinner, I forget why I'm whipping about and lose myself in the speed with which I am moving, rather than focusing on the things that move me.

As I closed the door and set out into my day this morning, I took a moment's grace to think about those I love sleeping on the other side of the door.

I smiled. The morning felt warmer, brighter. My day looked rosier.

With thoughts of love spilling into my morning, I drove away with gratitude filling my heart.

The question is: Have you taken time today to think about those you love? Have you let your heart fill-up with gratitude?