Communal Gifts

In many Indigenous traditions, one's engagement with one's story and its connection to a larger story is an imperative - a rite of passage that one must undergo in order to move beyond what can often be a petty personal perspective into one's deeper and truer purpose on this planet.  This process brings the individual into contact with his or her essence and deeper gifts as a human being. This rite of passage is often lost  or ignored in broader society, and narcissim is on the rise.  In fact, this narcissm has become so pronounced that it often veers into pathology.

The loss of rites of passage makes it difficult to make the transition from one stage of life to another.  How does one "find a place" for challenging experiences and feel an inner permission to let go, move forward, and integrate the teachings from one phase into the next with clarity?  Without these powerful rites of passage, we are left holding too much in a cracked vessel, and what we are holding is bound to spill out into our immediate realms - often unconsciously.

Living one's gifts is the best way to find peace within oneself. It is in community that one can come to know one's gifts, but when our communities and even our families are so fragmented, our gifts can lie dormant.  In a power-driven and celebrity-driven culture, scarcity infuses the notion of the gifted human being.  In indigenous teachings, each person is gifted.  The community is responsible for helping the other come to know their gifts by mirroring them and leading them out.  The underlying competition that is at the core of our psychic and social lives in modern culture does not consciously engage in the process of leading out communal gifts - it often forces people to invest in the notion of "the best" at the expense of all else.  In addition, our culture is so grounded in analysis and critique at the expense of a more heart-centred and soul-centred perspective that one can be constantly assessing rather than affirming others. Tremendous wealth and connection is lost through this imbalance.

Protesting that "when all are gifted, none are gifted" may seem like a reasonable stance.  Yet the recognition that all human gifts are unique and essential to the community as a whole makes that argument less compelling.  Instead, it might be more worthwhile to consider how one can better embody the classical African concept of ubuntu - I am because you are.  This succint yet profound kernal of wisdom is a generational undertaking in a world as pathologically competitive as ours.

Spirituality & Cultural Courage

I was trained very well on my academic journey.  Critical theory, intellectual debate, and rational arguments have been part of the warp and woof of my own personal development.  These are all things which I still value.

And yet...my heart has yearned for other ways of knowing, other truths that offer a more integrated and, in my view, expansive relationship to the other, to life, and to the cosmos.  Intense childhood experiences which made me feel a deep, abiding sense of the interconnectedness of all life, as well as the presence of some mysterious, unknown Other, have also marked my personal development.  Yet these are often unmentionables in a culture such as ours - a culture that seems primarily divided between religious fundamentalism and secular atheism.

The truth which rationality paved a path towards involved the understanding that no one religion could possibly be 'the one.'  The irrationality of religious wars and the important documentation and critiques of the horrors perpetuated in the name of a "God" expose that something is terribly amiss in how we approach our relationship to one another and to the world. Yet the road leading to a condemnation of a spiritual dimension has not been a path I have traveled - not because I have not been willing to consider all the 'arguments', but because life experiences have revealed that it is neither "good, useful, or beautiful" to do so. These were the criteria my ancient ancestors, the Greek philosophers, implored us to use as a measure of what is right or true.

Among the more powerful cosmologies which have supported my personal understandings of spirituality have been those of diverse Indigenous peoples .  A profound First Nations traditional teacher has mirrored the criteria my ancestors established when she speaks of the "Beautiful Path" or "Following the Sweetgrass Trail."  The acknowledgment of a spiritual dimension to life does not necessarily make life easier or suffering disappear, but the meaning it provides is "good, useful and beautiful."  The acknowledgment of our deep interconnectedness and humility in the face of life's mystery opens doorways of understanding, builds bridges between difference, and offers insight, comfort, and inspiration in the midst of despair, uncertainty, and alienation.

In a culture where spirituality is often subject to blistering critique or is exploited as a 'cure all', the deeper essence and stories involved in engaging with a spiritual dimension of life are drowned out in the fury and the snickers.  It takes cultural courage to stand in one's deeply felt spiritual beliefs in the din of such ever-present noise.

In honouring a greater silence, we may remember to hear - one another, the symphony of creation, and the essence of what is.

Life's Fundamentals

Few things bring life's fundamentals into perspective the way a serious illness can.  Suddenly, life and death come roaring into consciousness from their relegated corner amidst the routines and tasks of daily living.  Such an event not only impacts the person with the illness, but the entire family and community of friends. 

Mortality's presence sounds its bell, and the tone we hear can have a profound impact on how we choose to respond.  Do we hear a death knell, or the infinite chimes of what is possible?  Choosing possibility in the face of such an event does not equate to being a Pollyanna.  The reality of what one faces is sobering.

Yet the perspective we choose, and the intentions we employ, can assist us in navigating such treachourous terrain.  Holding the tension of the opposites of life and death allows us to connect to the core reality that is often obscured in our everyday distractions - the reality of love.  It is through love that you can activate the will to heal in another person. When we want someone to stay with us in life, this has a profound healing effect on the soul as well as the body.

Quantitative research has demonstrated the power of prayer in response to illness or trauma.  Those who have utilized prayer personally, or who have had others pray or meditate for them, have healed in ways that others have not.  When love forms concrete actions in the world, those beads of positive response can create a healing field that surrounds all dealing with a profound health challenge.

When life's events bring us to our knees, it may be an instinctive sign to stay there, in humility, and allow something beyond ourselves to move us into new life.

Sacred Witness

I can barely look at the wrenching images of the birds affected by the oil spill off the Gulf, but I don't feel it is acceptable to not bear witness to their suffering.  In the pictures, the birds seem to be meeting our gaze - looking us directly in the eye and beseeching us to see what we've done. When I spoke with indigenous elder Diane Longboat about the Gulf tragedy, she helped me to see that their suffering must be redeemed by acknowledging and understanding that they are messengers of a new way we must live on this planet.  To not recognize, and honour, their sacrifice, we deny their integrity in the web of life and continue to threaten our survival on this planet.

The images of the birds are stark reminders of our abuse and our unconsciousness of our interconnectedness.  As a species, we have hurt our relations by not honouring the sacredness of their lives.  It is only when images such as the photographs of these noble creatures comes to consciousness that we are forced to truly see the impact of what we have done.  Our witnessing then becomes the catalyst for deep change, allowing us to forgive ourselves and ask forgiveness for, our reckless pursuit of more.

From this sobered and humbled place, we open ourselves to co-creating a different world.

Turning Conflict Into Art

There is real difficulty in naming, acknowledging, and owning the experience of violation and, potentially trauma, that can sometimes occur in intense conflicts.  It can be even more challenging to move on from conflicts that offer no balm or accountability for the unethical actions of others. We can be hurt so deeply when the acknowledgement of our voice, our perspective, our strength, and the integrity of our intentions is refused.  The 'easy', (and sometimes brutish) route of blaming and scapegoating  for a conflict situation emerges when another's humanity is denied.

Speaking truth to power is one of the most paradoxically powerful and vulnerable forms of conflict that emerges in our world.   Toxic authority - both the kind that is entrenched in outer systems, as well as in inner ways of relating that are learned behaviours - does not like to be challenged, or have its actions questioned in any way.  Toxic power can respond to questioning with rage, panic, and ruthlessness.  Rather than allow the truth to emerge, cover ups and denial are the learned modes of operating, thereby creating more and more confusion and despair within the self-regulating system of life.  Healthy life systems have their own exquisitely tuned feedback loops which are always co-creating towards greater self-expresson, self-expansion and wholeness.

Learning from the dance of opposites that we find in the natural world, we see the stunning co-creativity that is constantly at work in all dynamics.  If we could remember, and truly trust this instinct and impulse, our  trauma could potentially become the canvas of the greatest form of expression of the deepest source of our selves.  The artist of life, through honouring and expressing the comedy and tragedy of the dance, can turn painful conflict into an exquisite new creation.

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.