I’m less than consistent in expressions of gratitude through words and deeds. I guess that’s why I’m here – ever learning!

Humility

Keep on keeping on with an open, grateful heart.

With a sense of humour!

The memories that I am making now with my husband (we have been married only 3 years) are the sustaining ones.
Childhood memories have become selective and warm. They arise unbidden in conversation or in thought and remind me of the sheer wonder of being alive.

I write this as I journey by ferry across the Salish Sea to attend a public town hall with our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. I am profoundly grateful to live in a healthy democracy in which the leader and the electorate engage openly with each other; where our strengths and struggles are celebrated and our failures and flaws are acknowledged; where many good and talented women and men work tirelessly in the political realm for the common good.

Typically I commit my days to practices and pastimes that nourish my bodymindheart. Today that includes meeting a friend for ongoing courageous conversation, Pilates practice, a walk, a special dinner with two women from my political life, and closing time of journaling and reading.

Not talking, going quiet, waiting it out, slowing the breath, holding the space.

Complaining is misapplied energy. It’s useless. What’s underneath is an open space which, when my complaining is politely sidelined, makes room for my creative energy. I can be FOR something; I can be a blessing!

A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle midwifed the birth of my inner journey. Barbara Bown Taylor affirms it in every book, Sharon Butala’s The Perfection of the Morning made the connection to the primal power of the natural world (in this case the Saskatchewan grasslands), Mary Oliver’s poems always, Middlemarch, George Eliot’s outstanding classic of English literature for her timeless insight and humanity.

Continue choosing the life giving path of gratefulness and reading more poetry.

All the dedicated custodians of this life-giving site are helpers in the most edifying sense. I pay homage to you!

This new year has brought a gentle fresh new start with my sisters and me after over 5 years of brokenness. Forgiveness undoubtedly is the source of this new beginning. No words of forgiveness were shared and were not required. Rather it was a shift of outlook which emerged from a softening and spaciousness of heart. The path was made by Light and by lightness of being.

The miraculous process of ingestion, absorption, elimination.

Stop. Look. Listen.

Thanks for this Barbara. My growing up home sounds similar. I too have cultivated transforming disassociation into conscious presence. Sometimes the old patterns show up but less and less.