Self-Forgiveness

It's often easier to forgive others than to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we make along the way.  As human beings, we are bound to make missteps - sometimes big ones.  If we are committed to birthing our ideals in the world, we can be very hard on ourselves when confronting our own contradications. Can we forgive ourselves? 

More often than not, our intentions are good.  Unfortunately, we can be inexperienced, naive, overly idealistic, and even triggered by our past wounds.  We can override our intuition and find ourselves in a shark pit.  We trust where we really shouldn't. We can say too much, and be too honest, when we should learn to be more careful and circumspect.  We can have too much blind hope in our ideals, and not be willing to face the way things work "in the real world" to disasterous ends.  We get jealous, frustrated, and angry. We can be so driven by our vision, that we lose sight of the here and now - forgetting that it is in the intimacy of the everyday that the world is transformed, moment by moment.

I've always loved that Gandhi's autobiography is called My Experiments with Truth.  That is what a conscious, committed journey really is - an experiment.  When we surrender to that which is weaving us, we glimpse the implicate order, the larger pattern of our lives...the larger story that weaves the pieces into a whole.  This quilt includes all the themes on the journey - big mistakes and all.  When we poke behind the mask of our mistakes and the faces of our adversaries, we find our greatest teachers and life lessons. 

In my life, Kuan Yin (the goddess of compassion) has often been hidden behind what Bill Taggart refers to as the 'blessed betrayers" - the people and experiences that have caused the most grief, hurt and pain.   If I can seek and find compassion for the other who has deeply hurt me, then I must be worthy of extending it to myself as well.

Hope & Struggle

Last week, our grade 8 students put on an extraordinary performance.  In many ways, it did not feel like a performance at all; it felt like a sacred moment in time.  The students had researched a hero or heroine using Joseph Campbell's criteria in Hero of a Thousand Faces and had to defend their choice.  They then researched their hero/heroine's words, put together a speech, and collaborated in a symposium where they put the script together.  In addition to the dramatic component, the students also created life-size sketches of their hero/heroine.

The ability of these grade 8 students to embody the powerful words of people like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Dian Fossey, Tommy Douglas,  and James Orbinski (who was in the audience), was truly inspirational and moving.  Staged in conversation with one another in themed vignettes, the struggle for justice in terms of women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, racial equality, environmental and economic equality was brought into the present moment through the voices of both the ancestors of these struggles, as well as the present-day predecessors picking up the torch.

Blending curriculum expectations across the disciplines of visual and dramatic arts, English, history and geograpy, the students were living the power and promise of a relevant, engaging, and meaningful education.  Conceived and led by an exceptional educator (Lynn Heath), the students were challenged with high expectations and rose to exceed them all.

Hope and struggle - sometimes they seem polarized and yet, what we witnessed through this unforgettable evening is that they exist in relationship to one another. Hope fuels struggle's promise and gives it meaning, while struggle makes the promise of hope a reality.  The truth of this was evident in the tears of the audience - in recognition of both the past struggles to strive for a better world, and the witnessing of this young generation embodying new hope for the future.