Lifeletter #194: Love & Death in the Promised Land
Canada is now the promised land for millions of refugees. We are the country they would choose to live in, if they could. After the terrorist attack in Nice last July, my aunt, who lives in the south of France, told me that her friends also feel this way. When she asked them where they would go if forced to flee France, they named Canada. Oh Canada, glorious and free, you are beautiful; and darkness and despair live here too, even in the promised land. Canada is a tough place to be homeless, in...
Read MoreLifeletter #193: Our Inexhaustible Resource
They were avoiding difficult conversations, sometimes for many years. And now, in the face of death, they are suddenly much more willing to have those conversations, if the people in question are still alive and available.
Read MoreLifeletter #192: Into the Deep Water
For the last twenty four hours I have been feeling huge waves of fear, sadness and despair, as Donald Trump becomes the next American president. These feelings are not just mine. They belong to me, and they also live in our collective space. In a culture that is phobic about emotion, it’s not so easy to find a healthy relationship to these feelings. We spend a lot of time shutting down our feelings, fearing and avoiding them. We also encourage each other, in many different ways, to keep a...
Read MoreLifeletter #191: Shaken & Stirred
Only what shakes me to the core leads me onward. The rigidity breaks, growth follows. –Bert Hellinger We human beings are strange creatures. We protect ourselves a lot, and try to remain in a comfortable, familiar place. And we long for adventure, for the healing movement of unfolding and awakening. The impulse to defend and protect ourselves is very natural, and needs to be respected. And it can carry us into a place of real rigidity and isolation, where frozen pockets of energy can no...
Read MoreLifeletter #190: The Flame in Your Heart
Someone said to me the other day, “What do I really love, more than anything? How do I know what interests me most deeply, what matters the most? How do I know what to focus on, what to choose, what to give myself to? There are so many choices, so many possibilities. Help!” I hear these questions everywhere right now. They live in many people that I speak with and listen to. They are not just individual questions; they live in our collective space. These questions are intimately connected...
Read MoreLifeletter #189: The Trouble with Normal
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse -Bruce Cockburn Our need for belonging is powerful, deep, and enduring. It bubbles up from some primordial place inside us, asking for safety, connection and warmth. If we are not awake and present to the way this drive to belong plays itself out in our lives, we’ll get tied up in knots. We’ll stay inside narrow fields and courtyards, instead of wandering free and wild. We we will start to believe that being normal, or...
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