Small steps

The best part of one's life is the working part, the creative part. Believe me, I love to succeed, but the real spiritual and emotional excitement is in the doing. Garson Kanin

The free online dictionary defines success as (n.)The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted.

So often, when I'm planning something, success is that far off point where the event is over, the document completed, the goal realized and I have the time to take a breath and say, "Job well done." -- or not. So often, I fail to see the success in the doing, in the over-coming obstacles, figuring out problems, un-doing mistakes, creating possibilities of new directions, new possibilities as I work towards my existing goals.

Recently, while preparing for the Governor General's forum, ART MATTERS, I worked with our staff videographer on the video which I posted here a couple of weeks ago, The Possibilities Project. There was no clear goal for that video, no desired outcome to have it play a role in the forum. In fact, the original intent had not been to include it as part of my presentation at the forum. The original intent had been to create a piece on the project which we could include on our website to give visitors an idea of what's happening at the shelter. And then, when I decided to include the piece at the forum, I believed I had to cut it down to about 3 minutes to fit into my presentation slot. That created a whole different set of problems. How to condense 7 and a half minutes into 3 without losing the depth and value of the voices in the piece. At that moment, success would have been measured by how well we cut the piece to fit the timeframe. In the end, cutting wasn't necessary and success became focused on a whole other set of criteria -- how well the audience received the message, how well the piece expressed the message.

I got excited by that piece. Got excited by the opportunity to put together an overview of a project that inspires me and others. In working on the Possibilities Project, in working on bringing creative opportunities alive at the shelter, I have become excited by the 'real spiritual and emotional' growth I have experienced, and that I have witnessed in those I work with. And in its expression, I have received many, many gifts.

Recently, Max, one of the artists gave me a piece he had written. "You can do with it as you wish, Louise," he told me as he passed me a piece of folded paper. "You asked me a question the other day. I wanted to give you my answer in writing."

Max wrote: You asked what being part of the Power Play: Homelessness gave me. I remember a comment David Diamond [the director] said about not biting off the whole problem, about taking small pieces and making them palatable. It's taught me that success isn't solving the big things. It's in taking the small steps that make a difference every day.

Small steps.

When I was released from the relationship that almost killed me, my life was a mess. Big time. I had seventy-two cents in my pocket, a few clothes and my dog, Ellie. And I had people who loved me who were hurt and angry. I had betrayed the sacred trust of motherhood. I had betrayed myself and everyone who cared for me with the lies I had lived while in that relationship.

I was broken.

I was blessed.

My sister and her husband gave me a home, a safe refuge to weather the aftermath of the storm. Everyday, Ellie and I would walk into the woods at the end of the street and I would breathe deeply in the freedom of walking without 'his' voice rhyming over and over again in my head all the reasons why I didn't deserve to live, all the ways I had failed him and was a failure as a human being.

As I walked, I remember thinking of the problems I had to face. The burden of finding a solution to their totality weighed me down. They looked so big. So daunting. So over-whelming. To give myself peace, I would look up into the limitless blue of the sky overhead and whisper to the heavens, "Okay God. Here's the deal. Can you please carry the burden of what I must do so that I can focus on doing one thing today that will bring me closer to my goal of healing and reconnecting with my daughters? Will you please carry the load so that I can breathe freely and take one small step each day towards reclaiming my life."

And it never failed.

As soon as I asked, the burden lifted. I would feel lighter, more peaceful and calm. And in my renewed strength, I could take one small step to heal. And that one small step became a path of steps leading me away from the turmoil and pain of what had happened with him, into the joy of what was happening in my life without him.

One small step.

Success isn't necessarily found in the big leap, the giant step over the mountain. Success is found in the small things we do each and every day to walk our talk, walk our path of integrity, honesty and truth. Success is found in the grace and ease with which we overcome obstacles, embrace tribulations and infuse each moment with love and joy.

Success is found in living each moment filled with the rapture of now, expressing our Divine holiness in everything we do.

One day I took a step away from abuse and opened the door into possibility.

Today, I breathe life into all sorts of spaces such as the Possibilities Project and know the feeling of success that comes with living each moment passionately aware of the preciousness of this gift called life. Today, I am free to express my creative nature, able to inspire others to come alive to their own unique expression and to keep taking steps, one at a time, that keep me living in the truth of my human condition -- I am a fearless woman touching hearts and opening minds to set spirits free to dance in a world of love, joy and harmony.

There is no greater success in my life than knowing, I am doing my best when I give my best to those I love, to those I serve. I am my best when I succeed with every step I take to open me up to experiening real spiritual and emotional growth in every moment. When I am excited about being my most magnificent self in everything I do, in every way, I am. Me.

Nameste.

Sunday Meditation

I've decided to add a new feature of the week -- (thank you again Maureen for the continued inspiration!). This one is for Sunday mornings: Sunday Meditation.

Sunday meditation will begin with a quote -- something meditative -- and then a brief post on what the quote means for me and an invitation for you to sink into 'the seat of your soul' as Gary Zukav calls it.

I invite you to take a deep breath, read the following and then let your mind come to rest gently in the vessel of your heart. Let your heart soften as you sink gently into the altar of your magnificence within as you quiet and become One with your holiness.

Why is it so difficult for us to see that our search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is only hiding the fact that we are both the rainbow and the gold? Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D. Forgiveness: The Greatest Healer Of All.

This morning, the A Course of Miracles lesson from Miracles One was: "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

I breathed into the words, let the ears of my heart open up to deep listening, let the meaning of the words become the words within me. As I let myself sink into the altar of my holiness, I let go of my resistance to not 'think it through' and let myself sink into being at one with the words. At one with the stillness within me. As I quietened my mind, I felt myself sink into that beautiful place of wanting nothing, needing nothing, being nothing other than who I am.

Since childhood we are taught, that at the end of the rainbow is a pot of gold. We search throughout our days for that pot of gold, always seeking the 'more', the 'better, the 'other than' what we have, that one thing which will make us happy, right our lives, correct our lack.

If I focus my sights only on seeking the gold, I am living with the belief, I am lacking. Lacking in some thing, one thing, some other thing than what I have. In seeking the gold, I miss the beauty of the rainbow shimmering in the light around me. I miss the journey of each step filled with the wonder and beauty all around me.

Perhaps it is that in my 'search for the gold', I give myself absolution from being the gold within me. When I believe the answer is 'out there', I do not need to take responsibility for what is within me -- all the gold and all the rainbows I will ever need.

Joyce at Peaceful Legacies has a beautiful photo today with her blog, God Seed. It shimmers like a rainbow. If you wish to have a visual image to focus your meditation on, I invite you to visit Joyce's blog for inspiration.

Nameste.

Sharings on a Saturday morning (inspired by Maureen)

We are not here to question the possible. We are here to challenge the impossible. Natasha Tsakos

My friend Maureen has a new blog mission on Saturday's where she shares her weekly finds from cyberworld with everyone. (My finds are your finds).

This morning, to honour Maureen's generosity of spirit and because she always inspires me to look at the world through eyes of wonder and to listen to the world around me with a poet's ear, I want to include a couple of finds I had this week.

1. While looking for information on setting up arts based businesses, I found a short Ted Talk essay on Zulu basket weaving. The art form itself is amazing. The ingenuity is inspiring and the outcome wonderful.



In Maureen's blog she asks the question, "I wonder how we ever did without computers and the World Wide Web."

One of my favourite places used to be the library. I was always a research junkie. Could immerse myself in library card boxes, searching for links to links to links to ideas linking me to the articles I needed in books and periodicals and magazines. I loved flipping through the cards, and then the computer, searching out key words to connect me to the wonder of the mind at large in the world.

From the time my daughters were infants, the library was our home away from home. A short ten minutes -- okay make that thirty with a two year old's inquisitive nature at large in the world -- took us to the neighbourhood library where we would spend an hour or two looking at picture books, checking out CDs and cassettes and eventually DVDs.

I loved the library.

With the Internet's pervasive and accessible nature under my fingertips, I no longer visit the library that often -- and while I miss it, I love the immediacy of the world wide wide and its ability to deliver not just words but video and sound as well.

And then it happens again. I go looking for a quote and come upon a fascinating story and that leads me elsewhere.

2. The 'elsewhere' this morning is an article on a prison based art initiative led by conceptual artist Peggy Diggs. One of the comments by an inmate really hit me, "There's a penitent atmosphere in here, like a mausoleum. It's hard-edged. If you put people in a cell with hard corners, when they get out they're gonna turn hard corners."

He was speaking about a cardboard/portable desk they were designing. It needed round edges he said.

To read the entire article, "Living Like A Refugee: Peggy Diggs takes a design problem to prison", click here. It's worth the read.

and that's the thing about the web. I meet amazing people, like Maureen and Diane and Joyce and Cheryl and a host of other bloggers and artists, and I learn more and more about this amazing, wondrous and oh so fragile planet we share.

In the words of Boston Philharmonic Conductor, Benjamin Zander, "How Fascinating!"

3. And, because I can, and because this is one of my favourite videos to watch -- particularly in those moments when I need a lift, to feel inspired, I will share Zander's Ted Talk on Music and passion. it's worth the twenty minutes to get uplifted and inspired!

Some kinda different

I had a technology hiccup this morning. Usually, as I blog, my system automatically backs up. For some reason, this morning, that didn't happen. So, after an hour of writing, all has disappeared into cyberspace!

And I must get busy getting ready for work.

Which means....

today's Friday blog is shorter than anticipated.

Not a bad thing. It is just a thing. Just the way it is.

As part of today's blog though I had found a song I really enjoyed over on Ted Talks. So.... I'm going to share it with you.

My post was based on the idea that "What you do with what you've got makes a difference." Edie Reader's song says it all and asks the questions we need to ask ourselves -- what will we do with what we've got to make a world of difference?"

That creative place

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself. Alan Alda

We drove home yesterday from the coast. Through misty valleys and cloud crested peaks. We travelled the miles inland, up and over the coastal range. Across the verdant valleys of the interior to the foot of the Rockies. It was warm and green. Vestiges of winter hid in gullies. Promises of spring pushed back winter's grip, loosening its hold upon the land.

And then, we crossed the Rockies. Higher and higher we climbed. Spring fell back. Winter marched in, white and majestic. Snow piled up along the road. Fir trees stood sentinel upon the mountainside laden in winter's finery. Spun sugar snow cast shadows in the looming dark.

We drove east, across winter's spine edging the horizon. Down from the peaks into the plains where the ground lays frozen, tucked beneath a snowy blanket. Here on the plains, winter maintains its icy hold upon the earth. Here, in winter's depths, the world is still and silent.

I love the green. The lush earthy smells of the west coast. The flowers budding in the gardens. The gentle mist of sea air.

I love the snow -- I have decided I must. I live here. The challenge is to see the beauty in the black on grey world of winter on the windward side of the Rockies. That place where a Chinook can blow in and sweep away winter's blanket in one fell swoop leaving black earth exposed and a muddy oasis on every street. That place where between the Chinooks we bundle up and trudge through snowdrifts and icy roads hoping for a warm spell to dispel winter's gloom.

On the coast, I feel my creativity stirring with every breath. Every turn of my mind, every twist of my thinking brings me up against a new thought, new idea, a creative juxtaposition of wonder in the world around me.

Here, on the plains where winter grips the earth in its icy maw, I struggle to connect with my creative muse. In icy captivity I grapple with ennui. With that feeling of wanting to hibernate, to snuggle under the blankets and hold myself still until winter passes and spring renews my spirit with its promise of fresh new starts, new days, new beginnings.

I must struggle with my ego in the depths of winter.

It is a good struggle. In winter's grip, I become conscious of my ego's urging to let creativity go. To give over my power to doing nothing, to being nothing more than a human doing whatever it can to just get by.

I don't like getting by. Don't like the feeling of 'this is all there is so why bother' that invades when I am tucked under the belief winter's here, there's nothing to do but bear it until spring's return in month's far ahead.

It was a wonderful visit with my daughter. A respite from winter. A rejuvenation of spirit. Staying connected to her heart is easy. Staying connected to my heart's desire to be creative is not so easy when I am facing the depths of winter with ego's gloomy forecast of long days of snow and cold ahead.

My heart space is my choosing. I breathe and fill my being with energy and light. I close my eyes and allow the muse, who is ever present, no matter the weather, to rise up and within me. I breathe and give her space to call out to the moon and stars to come dance with me. To come be my creative force of nature.

I cannot change the weather. I can change my perspective on its affect upon my creative state of being. I can shovel out the slush and snow clogging my thinking in its constant quest to hold me in frozen animation. I can lighten my ego space with deep breaths of fresh air. With peaceful thoughts of the wonder of my creativity awakening me to the beauty and the joy of the world all around me.

The world outside my office window is frozen under winter's finery. Regardless of where I am, I am free to dance in the heat of creativity, no matter the weather. I am free to revel in the fires of my creative spirit awakening me to all the wonder of the world dancing in the light of knowing, I am a free spirit capable of greatness in everything I do. Capable of creating wonders. All I have to do is set my spirit free and dance.

The question is: Where does winter hold you? Are you setting yourself free to dance?

Beyond Eden -- a play of spiritual connection

As you look and listen beyond the masks and beyond the poles, listen closely to what it stirs in you...this part of our history remains complicated; confronting and beautiful all woven as one. Dennis Garnhum, Director, Beyond Eden

At one point during the play, Beyond Eden (written by Bruce Ruddell) miniature lighted canoes, suspended from tree branches float down the aisles of the theatre towards the stage at the front. A haunting Haida chant fills the chamber of the theatre, drums beat and images of water and rain forests dance across the stage.

It is magical and mystical. Haunting and compelling -- all woven as one.

It is the weaving in the play that so moved me. First, we were five people woven together through family, friendship and love. C.C. my friend BA who lives here in Vancouver, my daughter Alexis and C.J., my friends Jane and Al's daughter, Alexis' roommate -- affectionately known as my 'tall daughter'. We met for dinner. Chatted and laughed. The girls shared stories of settling into their apartment together. BA shared stories of her recent trip with a Bedouin and two mules through the desert of Jordan and C.C. and I shared our stories too.

an evening of stories woven together, just as the play wove together the history, drama and turmoil of our First Nations culture here on the west coast.

One of the actors in the play, Telly James, is a friend of Alexis'. They graduated from the theatre arts program at MRU together. Telly is a proud member of the Siksika Nation. After the play, we met Telly in the lobby and I asked him about being part of a play about the Haida. "Did it awaken any desire to dig into the Siksika culture?"

"It definitely stirred something he said. I've started to learn my language. I can now understand it and I find as I get involved in these projects I want to know more about my own culture."

I have seen the Totem Poles that are the focal point of the drama in Beyond Eden. They stand on the grounds of the Museum of Anthropology here in Vancouver. One of my favourite places to visit. Standing beneath their soaring sculptured beauty one feels the immensity of the Haida artist's feat in creating these poles and, you feel immersed in the mystical wonder of a time and place where we walked connected to nature, at one with the Universe, its beauty, wonder and power woven into the fabric of our world.

I never knew the story of how those poles came to stand on the museum's grounds until the play last night.

And, in having learned, I am now part of the dialogue, that complicated conversation that investigates and muses on the ethics and the necessity of preserving ancient cultures. Do they belong on museum lands where they will be preserved and sheltered form the elements or should they be returned to their sacred ground where once they protected the Haida people's who had left this world. And as so beautifully depicted in the play, as part of that world, their purpose is to return to the earth, to complete the cycle as time wears them down and they return to mother nature, woven into the fabric of life on earth.

Good questions.

Release your inner girl

In Colin Tipping's book, 'Radical Forgiveness', he describes a process called, "A Wake for Your Inner Brat". Our inner brat, suggests Tipping is responsible for much of the angst we experience as adults. Yes, he says, it is okay to honour the inner child, but never ever give it freedom to rule your life. Never let it have free reign for in its expression, we do the bratty things we do as adults.

In the process, he asks you to imagine your inner brat being released. He asks that you imagine your inner brat is grateful for finally being told, "your work is done". Free, the inner brat dissolves into a pile of bones as its spirit joyfully lifts up into the atmosphe. Tipping then invites you to wrap the shell of your inner brat into a shroud, to carry it out to a beautiful horse-drawn hearse and have a celebration for its death.

Powerful stuff.

Writer, activitist, feminist, Eve Ensler suggests it is the killing of our inner girl that is causing so much angst in the world today. In a very passionate and enlightened speech at Ted Talks India last November, Ensler emboldens us to awaken our 'girl cells', those cells within each of us that are compassionate, emotional, considerate, caring and a host of other 'feeling' characteristics we are beating out of the human race, and rise up and celebrate what makes us emotional beings.

Now, I don't necessarily agree how she's divided the species on masculine and feminine lines, there are many men who have stood for what they believe in -- and what they believe in has been founded on compassion, empathy, care etc.

what I do get in Ensler's speech is that within each of us, there is a voice looking for expression. A passion searching for release. A need for connection crying out to be met. A desire for love hungering to be fulfilled -- and those needs and desires and passions are our 'higher good'. The expression of all that is loving and caring and kind and beautiful about being human.

'So-called' terrorists are not born, she says. They're created.

And it is the hatred, the fear, the territorial nature of man that is creating the rise of terrorism and genocide and a host of other atrocities in our world. When we connect to our inner girl cells, we connect to all that is holy and profound and transformational about our human being.

It is a video worth watching.

Bullets are hardened tears, she says.

Bullets are also the hardened and killing expression of our fears.