Morning Dispatch. Report from the night before the lunar eclipse.

November 7, 2022.

This is the evening prior to the US mid-term elections, the eve of the fall lunar eclipse- seen here for many hours- an event that will have an impact on us in ways we notice and in ways we don't.

I notice a spinning-up energy inside me after days of needing to rest and feeling old and remembering, again, the research of a group of 80 years olds from a care home who were driven to a "play camp" specially designed to return them to a time in their lives when they were younger. The camp was a time travel experience, back to the 50s. Fifties cars, houses, kitchens, living rooms, music, games, gathering places, clothing. The 80 year olds played! They relived their youth. They did fun things all over again. When the bus came to get them to take them back, they erupted into a touch football game- this remembered way of bonding, of connecting and working together.

So poignant that last detail– to think of leaving your past again, this time so much more vivid than your memories. Now the old is layered with new memories and, perhaps, a forgiveness of the past, or, at least, a generosity towards the past is accessible. Is Gratitude for the good in life more visible?

The research captured the physical experience of the 80 year olds and determined they'd regained their healthy markers. Some had lost years of aging. Their blood pressure was lower, stress was lower. The impact of joy and play was experienced and known. This joy thing seems so important. With experiences of joy, maybe you can ready yourself for whatever comes next. You have a memory of what is possible. An experience of super-gratitude.

Reality check on Joy: We may feel the loss when joy floats away for awhile. We may feel the desire for joy. We may cycle through loss with less avoidance. We may enjoy the build up to joy again.

Is this true for you?: We all want to be connected, loved, belonged, sheltered, and cared for. Our best self wants to be caring, sheltering, welcoming, loving.

Why is it challenging to think of joy as reachable most days? We may be afraid of the responsibility of feeling super-gratitude (the giving back action seems so unavoidable when we’re feeling full of joy), we may be afraid of failing short of joy’s expectations (does joy have expectations?).

The risk of joy seems appropriate for a cold, cold, cold full moon morning walk.

Turning towards joy in the frigid air, shaking hands and cold-sparked lungs seems victorious.

Remembering, again, the ways we play and engage with life (even in the cold, the dark, under the light of the full moon) contribute to more connectedness, deeper connectedness.

Morning. Morning. Morning. Good. Good. Good.

Danger in Living

So much danger to living.

Yesterday, on a phone call with friends, I felt a surge of wanting to protect myself from danger. Protect myself on a zoom call?

I tried to contribute funny bits, self-deprecating humour about my awful hair in the 80’s- how hard I tried to make it big with hairspray and a curling iron! How ashamed I was, for years, to look at the photos. I still don’t know how I can laugh at the 1984 version of me, so lonely on the inside, so desperate for love on the outside, but also prickly. I suppose it describes many humans at one point in their lives. Recovering from hurt.

My hurt is really old, embarrassingly old. I’ve carried it for so long, even though I ran away from the vivid reminders of it when I was a child. I’ve tried to forget it. I’ve tried to ignore it. I need to forgive.

Forgiving is hard. It’s painful. To forgive, I’ve found, means feeling all the painful emotions and relaxing with them. Over and over. Anger, especially is challenging for me. One time the process between feeling my emotions and relaxing/letting go lasted for months. On and off, the emotions would spike and fall. My partner was afraid to talk to me sometimes, afraid he’d set off my anger. My anger would rocket up and explode in sharp words, slammed doors, heavy footsteps, walking away and walking away and walking away.

“Every emotion is workable.” Pema Chödrön’s voice resonates in my thoughts.

The only reality is the action we take, I’ve heard this.

You can have and be anything you want, I’ve heard this.

I’ve made a vow to be gentle, decent, and brave. I have to work with my emotions to honour my vow.

On the phone call with my friends yesterday, I spoke little. A buffer exists with three friends– it’s not on just one of us to speak. Fear can be debilitating, I said at one point. I’ve felt a whole lot of fear. It’s been a limiting factor in my relationships.

I really caused a commotion once when we met up in person. My life took a turn and I was in the spotlight among the three of us. I was so high on life, I didn’t pay attention to anyone else. The contrast between the before and after this amazing turn of events felt like the most massive surprise birthday party- like flying in a murmuration of love. And my friend was overwhelmed by the show of it all, the way I talked, the way I floated when I walked. She had something to say. I listened. I fell hard.

Here, in my office/guest bedroom, I strive to be honest. What kind of friend am I? I ruminate on the protective feelings, the jealousy I noticed. What kind of friend do I want to be?

Soon, my thoughts turn to a family member. I see her face. I hear her laugh. Where did she come from? I feel love. sadness. grief. and, yes, jealousy.

Then, my thoughts turn back to my friend, the friend who I harmed with all my big, showy, joy.

And…I make the connection between an old family, first family situation and the current situation with my friend.

Now, jealousy, blame/anger, grief storm inside me.

I have to do something about this!

I walked the dog early this morning, on the first cold, blowing snow day I’ve experienced this year. Snow hit my face like tiny icicles. I ran through the park with the dog, only a few laps and we both ran home.

Now, writing about the dangers of living, I want to go back out in nature.

Wait!! I wonder if nature has been my refuge for so long, I’ve avoided the deeper connection work with other people. Rather than swirling into the possible ways I am so flawed no one can truly love me and if they say they are they must be lying, I sit.

I will experience my emotions today: jealousy, blame/anger, grief. I’ll feel them in the body. I’ll gain some clarity. Then, I’ll know, better, what action to take. What gently, decent, and brave action to take.

This is the warrior vow I’ve taken. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Presence.

I’ve been on a ten day retreat. A retreat into presence. I retreated into a place of belonging, inclusion: with nature, with other humans, with animals, with water and earth and sky.

I can imagine some of you are rolling your eyes. A retreat into presence. I have rolled my eyes at this sort of sentence before– feeling as if I am being given a headline by a reporter, not the essence from the experiencer. From the reporter’s point of view, a retreat into presence has the sound of too much focus on some strange, intangible, unproductive use of ten days.

From the experiencer’s point of view: a strong desire to play, create, and participate can be made real through experiencing the experience.

I notice my mind creates stories as I go about just noticing and observing my experience as it unfolds. I have a rich imaginal life– perhaps, like a caterpillar in the goo, I have some version of imaginal cells helping to transform my experience from reacting to emotion to experiencing emotion. That seems to be key. If I can feel sadness in my body and relax with it (yes, physically relax), my experience is full, but light. Technicolour and transparent. Descending and ascending. Presence, to me, is a felt sense of all that is happening.

In my ten day retreat into presence, I was not present all the time. The times I was, though, wow! Laughter and joy. Grief and sadness.

The sky told me some stories over the past ten days– I took some photos to capture an essence of experience.

If they speak to you, perhaps you could ask, how can I more fully participate in the experience?

All the light sees them…

Following the sun…

Sunrise. Good Morning Song.

I’ve been singing a good morning song to the sunrise.

I heard Wendayho in a yoga class years ago. The first track on the Planet Love album (2004).

The sound of the music reminds me of a peaceful chant. The words are easy to remember. When I sing them, my body relaxes.

Wendayho has calmed me through paddling big waves and wind on lakes, it’s comforted me as I walked Athena and felt sad about the death of my granddaughter’s bunnies.

I know the feeling of the words, even if I don’t know the translation of them.

Some internet sources say Wendayho is Cherokee, others say it is not. Some say it is a morning song. I sing it in the morning, and, all day long– whenever it comes to me.

I remember asking the Yoga instructor the name of the album- she had a CD playing. (Wow, seems so long ago.) The artists creating the work: Maneesh De Moor and Sudha. I played the album on repeat for weeks at a time during a stressful period in my life. It seems to have sunk, stuck inside me.

I wonder what songs sink into other people’s ears? What songs bring a feeling of calm or alertness?

Yellow. Colour Study Experiment

Experiment in Colour Study:

1. Walk with deep noticing. As if tracking along your way.

2. Track variation.

3. Track contrast.

4. Pay attention to light.

5. Admire. Give Thanks.

6. Focused on a task of deep noticing, we may become aware of a steady-something.

   1. Allow your emotions to rise and fall, like waves on the ocean.

   2. Still the body, now and again. Listen. Still the body, now and again. Listen.

7. Reflect the beauty you’ve found. Let the beauty be seen.

Yin:Yang of yellow/green with moon…

Space and Being.

Tamarack/Larch. Reservoir view.

Many hued poplar.

The Generosity of Seasons

I love the gathering of autumn:

Gathering of garden greens and yellows and reds.

Larch and Aspen yellows all around me.

Family swooooooping in, as if in murmuration.

Sharing stories and memories, creating side-by-side, comforting and carrying one another’s joys and sorrows while we walk alongside each other.

Love builds bridges between time and space. Autumn provides so much evidence of beauty.

Latte Love with son @ Gravity Coffee, Inglewood.

Good Morning.

Generosity. Generosity. Generosity.

Pink Orange Sky, Ghost Lake, Alberta

Pink, orange sky Ghost Lake, Alberta

Yahoo! We are here!!

We. Are. Here.

Sunderful morning!

Take me to the river.

The wise ones are watching.

Oh, Aspen.

Generosity is web-like?

I experimented with seeing the sunrise everyday. My experience of the world grew wider. I felt like I was coming back from the edges of my spider’s web, coming back to the centre, healing all the rips and tears through it.

Generosity, too, seems to spiral out of a centre and spread and connect this to this and them to them and us to us.

The image of the spider is familiar to me. I’ve dreamed of spiders many times over the past several years. I’m beginning to make sense of them through long walks, through quiet, through writing.

And, now, snakes are showing up!

Life is interesting. So interesting. Isn’t it??

Generous Beauty

An Experience of Seeing, such generosity.

Ghost River Dam/Bow River

Aspen Reflections in the Bow River

Wishing seeds, Bow River

Snake being Snake

Generosity of Presence

This morning I rise remembering yesterday when I found a place to rest my body, to witness the world and my relationship to it.

I’ve been thinking about generosity. Clearly. This is the fourth blog post with the word generosity in the title!

How do I give? I wondered. What is being asked of me? When will I know what action to take?

After canoeing adventures which left me breathless, unmoored, in the throes of uncertainty, I’m finding pieces of my identity floating all around me.

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday trying to stay with the unease of this body. My mother came to me. We wept. We loved one another. We remembered some painful events. We remembered our love. I grasp, now, at words to explain what I mean, to share my experience. This is how I live with a broken heart.

I’m aware how cautious I am to share. I’m aware how, in all my uncertainty, this is an action, an experiment, I believe is worthy. I want to point to reality. Again and again.

As a child I tried to speak out, to tell the truth about what was occurring, had occurred. My truth was not palatable. My truth revealed a great chasm. Some truths are too painful to see, to look at, to acknowledge. Forty-four years later, I received the acknowledgement I’ve been seeking since I was nine years old. I was already free from harm by then. I am waiting to know what to do next. As I wait, I bear witness to the way the world is.

“Bearing witness is not a passive act. It is an act of conscience and consciousness and consequence.” Terry Tempest-Williams

In sharing words and images, I invite collaboration. Collaboration leads to community. In community anything is possible. We are able to see what is revealed. We are able to hold what is revealed. We are able to take action. Witnessing is an active ingredient! To watch fully is to allow our presence to transform.

This is where my imagination dwells.

Presence is a generous act.

Such stillness. Such joy. Such love.

Morley, Alberta

Generosity Experiment: First Thoughts

Sometimes a subject comes into view and we want to revel in it, we want to immerse ourselves in it, we want to endlessly read and hear about it.

So begins my deep dive into generosity. An experiment in generosity may be in my future.

I conduct many experiments. I share a few of them. Experiments help me to track the ways I am aware and awake in the world, without judgement. I am interested in reality. I am not interested in seeing reality as good or bad.

I am curious about serving the world through love.

Good Morning Sun.

I began my sunrise experiment in October 2020 and it continues today. At first, I noticed my impatience. I checked my phone for the exact time of sunrise, again and again. I knew the Morning Star, Venus, was also on the horizon, but I couldn’t spot them. I shivered in the chill of fall mornings and the cold in the winter. I took photo after photo, wanting to capture some beauty for all my trouble.

Some mornings (all of June!) I groaned as I got out of bed, resenting my aliveness at 4:30 a.m..

My walks to a bluff where I had a view of the sun rising were between 10 and 20 minutes long. I added an element of voice and sound to my sun rise experiment on many days. I listened to A Songline for warriors. Meg Wheatley’s Warrior’s for the Human Spirit, A Songline. I wondered how a warrior views the sun rising. I wondered how one person might make a difference in a world where people were so divided.

Over time, I began to embody an unshakeable stillness when I stopped to view the sun. A warm feeling arises in the middle of my belly, a feeling like expansion, like the swelling of a heart in love.

Over time, I began to embody the beginnings of discipline. Discipline, one of my words for 2022, (along with reciprocity and sacred) remains an uncomfortable word and idea. I resist authority. I resist group-think. I resist we-should-all-do-it-this-way-because-this-is-the-way. I don’t judge my resistance. I don’t see it as good or bad.

I experience discipline, now, as self-care. I wonder if self-care leads to serving the world with love? So many experiments to do!

I am learning to be a Warrior for the Human Spirit, one experiment at a time.

How, I wonder, might a warrior for the human spirit experience generosity? How might they serve the world through generosity?

Generosity.

Generosity:

Each day the sun rises.

Wow.

How do I give back?

Generosity. Part 1

My generosity story begins with a gift.

Tom gave me a rock. A pink and orange and grey heart-shaped rock (one of the most beautiful rocks I’ve seen). I look for rocks. He looks for rocks. Athena chases them into the water.

The day Tom gave me the rock, we walked a wide, smooth-rock-and-pebble beach on Lake Superior. We talked about our joys of the day: the dog (obviously), and being in big mysterious water like Lake Superior (it’s like-an-ocean-big!), and the soundtrack of the birds, the warm spicy smell of cedar all over.. Just to be able to notice it feels lucky. And then, Tom gave me the rock. I added it to my collection. I smiled at his generosity. If I found it, it would be hard for me to let it go. I name objects. My car- Sabine. My hat- Love Hat. My rocks. Sometimes after the people or place they’re associated with. Sometimes the way they seem. I try to get to know them. I make dry riverbeds on my desktop or book shelves, I add them to the garden. I leave them in window corners or on ledges. I wonder what happens to them when they disappear. Where they go. What adventures they have next.

Gift Rock went from Lake Superior (incredible fish and chips and apple fritters) to Sault st. Marie (A Koa built for doglovers) to Wawa (a strangely kitschy and practical general store) to Quetico to Toronto to Montreal (in my pocket while I drove a moving van and my son and girlfriend back to Toronto). The Gift Rock traveled, too, to Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Park (portage country/boulders and waterfalls) through Manitoba (highly recommend the rock history of Meteor Lake) and Saskatchewan (Grasslands National Park- 10/10) to home (Renfrew is a fast-growing neighborhood just north of downtown with incredible bluff views of the prairies to the east and the southwest edge of the Rocky Mountains.)

Gift Rock added to my life. Devotion is powerful. You wish the thing well. You nurture it. You appreciate the beauty. You may ascribe a story to it. Your story may take on meaning. Purpose.

Gift Rock was a very special rock, as I’ve said. I am also aware not everyone would see a rock, shaped like a heart as worthy of so much attention. Focused devotion may veer towards deleterious.

Without harm, I created a place in my heart unlike any I’ve ever held for a rock. I imagined Gift Rock as a piece of a mountain. I imagined mountain-breaking-events- earthquakes, tectonic plate collisions, repeated high winds blasting, ice freezing and thawing and breaking- massive sheets of movement, water, water and more water. Each time I held the rock I remembered a funny or sweet or awe-filled moment of experiences in nature. I imagined Gift Rock holding what I gave it.

Gratitude. Curiosity. Memory.

I didn’t expect I’d let it go.

part 1, concluded. Part 2, coming next.

Sleeping. Waking. Experiencing. Begin again.

This morning I rise to an awareness of the future changing.

My daughter and son-in-law travel towards us, back in time from Iceland to Canada, from Toronto to Calgary.

The girls, giggly and buzzing with energy, move from room to room, exploring their world anew, picking up toys and books, putting them down. I look around at the tasks before me; sorting, putting away, cleaning, polishing. A sense of not-now descends. Like a pebble falling into a deep pool of water, I settle with a cup of coffee nestled between my hands. Such comfort, this morning ritual.

I sit in a comfy chair, the sun through the front window projects the shadow of a huge lilac tree onto the floor, the side of the couch. Squirrel shadows jump from trunk to trunk. Athena, full-bellied, sleeps. Tom reads the news on his phone. I remember when this ritual included a newspaper made of newsprint.

I remember back and back to when I was small, my mother’s Maxwell House instant coffee, evaporated milk, and a spoon of sugar ritual. I remember sitting with her while she read the newspaper. Me, with the comics. I feel a warm belly recalling this memory. Comfort. Ease.

Sloane tells me her favourite time of day is sleeping time. Falling into rest. I can relate, more and more to looking forward to night journeys. As I wake, images and symbols come to me and a sense of comfort remains. Gratitude fills me.

This morning ritual of sitting with coffee and the weather of the day is becoming an extension of the night journey. A space of time between sleep and “doing”, a time of “being”.

I wonder when I will add a late afternoon nap to my routine? I wonder if we all, like I did in Kindergarten and Grade One, would benefit from a quiet time, breathing with awareness of the stillness inside?

Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, writes:

This is about more than naps. This is about more than naps. This is about more than naps.

This has been my battle cry and mantra since I created the “Rest is Resistance” framework in 2016. I begin experimenting with rest as a tool for my own liberation and healing in 2013. It has always been about more than taking a full nap. My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body. I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more and most importantly as a remembrance to my Ancestors who had their DreamSpace stolen from them. This is about more than naps. It is not about fluffy pillows, expensive sheets, silk sleep masks or any other external, frivolous, consumerist gimmick. It is about a deep unraveling from white supremacy and capitalism. These two systems are violent and evil. History tells us this and our present living shows this. Rest pushes back and disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor. It is a counter narrative. We know that we are not machines. We are divine.

Slowing down. Resting. Waking up to a slow routine, a quiet remembering, may change our lives. How do we make room for quiet? for stillness? What do we do as individuals, couples, families, communities to connect with stillness?

More questions.

Much love, Mar’ce

Happy Bunny Day!!

I rise this morning with Athena. She wants food. She wants to play. It’s too early. The girls still sleep. We can’t wake sleeping children

We cuddle, we sigh, we rest for 40 minutes until we hear the girls waking.

Today is a bunny birthday. Butterscotch and Oreo, the bunnies in the backyard turn one-year-old.

The girls make a maze for them to hop through and they love it! They offer them food treats from the pet store, but they don’t seem to care for them.

They sing Happy Bunny-day to you.

Sloane’s birthday cake- dry porridge mixed with banana and topped with carrot and blueberries? They love it!

The air is full of little girl squeals and giggles. Lots of shouting occurs when they negotiate who is doing what and when. In the kitchen, I clean up and try to listen with curiosity and trust. I do not intervene, though more than once I want to say- quiet, please. I allow the noise to be what it is. I wonder at how difficult it is for me!

Two hours of chaos and bunny love happens.

And then, as if we are paddling in a different river, we move towards drawing and reading. We are quiet.

Change is always happening.

Bunnies, children, Mia (their name for me), Athena. All is okay.

September 30. Truth and Reconciliation Day.

We went to Nose Hill Park, a huge municipal park in Northwest Calgary, a place of many sacred gathering sites for Indigenous people.

Such a generalization, isn’t it? Sacred sites for what? Which Indigenous people? How do I know anything about this?

I trust what I’ve learned from Indigenous people about the history of the land (specifically, this land), about the history of their ancestors. Physical evidence of on-going relationship with the land exists.

Many families visited the medicine wheel at Nose Hill yesterday. I saw them gathering. I gathered with my grandchildren, with my partner Tom. Sloane and Theia, ages 8 and 7, waited patiently during our minute of silence and the placement of a rock Tom gave me when we visited Lake Superior this summer. A heart-shaped rock.

“New beginnings are possible,” I said as I placed the rock. “I will be part of a new beginning.”

If the grandchildren hadn’t been there, we would have lingered. Instead, we moved quickly off the windy high ridge and into a more protected area.

We spotted a garter snake slithering across the path. We climbed trees. We collected colourful leaves. We examined coyote poop. We identified rose hips.

Nose Hill is becoming a place where we gather, too.

So much depends, now, on an orange shirt.

This morning I rise at the sound of my granddaughters, Sloane and Theia, awake and in their bedroom, talking to the world through the voices of their stuffed animals. Owls and dragons, and bunnies and bunnies and more bunnies chatter and squeal with delight.

This morning I walk into the living room and see the girls’ orange shirts laid out as school day clothes– today they have their first school assembly for the year. I’ll be in the audience. We’re all aware of the wearing orange shirts at this time of year to show respect and commitment to Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. I am aware of the history of Orange Shirt Day, of the truth of residential school harm.

***

This morning my granddaughters eat cinnamon-sugar toast or pancakes with strawberry sauce. They ask me what kids in residential school had for breakfast. I tell them, thin porridge. I describe thin porridge. They are sad to know this is true. They also know the story of Orange Shirt Day.

Phyllis Webstad, 7 years old, proudly chose an orange shirt for her first day of school at Residential School. It was taken away from her at the door. She was given a number and a corresponding shirt which matched everyone else’s shirt. This was a beginning moment for Phyllis. The beginning of harm.

This morning the girls eat breakfast, get dressed and attend to their pet bunnies, Butterscotch and Oreo, who hop out of their hutch to munch on the back lawn of clover. The girls’ bunny love is squeal-y and sincere. I wonder at the contrast between this moment in a 7 and 8 year old girls’ life and Phyllis’ moment.

***

Dear Reader, I do and I don’t know why I’m writing on this topic today. I’m writing on it because my feelings are big, because the truth is in the room with me. I don’t know why I’m writing because I cannot educate anyone. We can only educate ourselves. To be honest, over the past 15 years I’ve been met with much resistance to the truth from settlers.

It is easy to wear an orange shirt.

It is not easy to feel the past and on-going suffering of Indigenous children and their families.

I remember my first-hearing of stories of hunger and starvation from Indigenous peoples who went to residential school. I remember feeling numb at the suffering Indigenous people experienced which began when they were children, at the suffering which continues today through the harm of having children forcibly removed from their parents, language and cultural practices forbidden, punishment justified, neglect unnoticed, horrific abuse allowed, harms hidden from view, harms known and ignored.

***

The school assembly begins with everyone rising and singing O Canada. I understand this choice from a settler perspective. I am unsettled by this choice. I place my awareness in an Indigenous perspective that’s been shared with me: What does it mean to repeatedly honour a country which did not/has not, in fact, stood on guard for Indigenous Peoples?

Waves of nausea crest and break in my gut.

I notice evidence of teachers modelling a willingness to acknowledge and hold truth in meaningful ways. I hear students’ responses to questions as hopeful.

I feel a sense of not-enough.

I remember how difficult this truth is, how many times I experienced parts of it before I began to feel through the whole of it.

***

After the assembly, at home, I cry in private. I allow my tears to remain on my face until they dry.

Where do we find comfort when the truth of history is so awful?

I remember reading Anne Frank’s Diary as a young woman, watching Roots on TV. I asked my mother if it was true. I was a sensitive child, prone to crying and lashing out and asking lots and lots of questions. She told me it happened in the past and I didn’t need to worry about it. It was over. She gave me the kind of comfort she knew how to give. Her father had been a green beret in the army, and two of her brothers. Pain-filled truths are often buried.

I took my youngest son Ben to see The Striped Pajamas when he was 11 at the Metro Cinema in Edmonton. When the movie ended (a heart-wrenching scene of a line of human beings walking into a gas chamber) he looked at me and demanded, “Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me it isn’t true.”

“It is true, I told him. Humans harming each other is so true.” We sat in our theatre seats and wept.

Perhaps comfort is not necessary. Perhaps, instead a commitment to warriorship is needed- the bravery to stand still in the face of whatever arises.

***

Dear Reader,

Can we establish in each of our lives a way of seeking the truth and holding still long enough to know the best action to take for a peaceful/honest/trustworthy future of our children and their children, for the future of humanity?

We aren’t just making up for wrongs.

We are helping to create a world where honesty and integrity are foundational to how we live.

***

I’ve been in many Indigenous circles where the moments after the first day of Residential School are given voice. The complex wounds of history reveal the unimaginable, the truth.

I’m humbled by all the Indigenous people who have been patient with me, with other settlers. I understand why some of them choose not to engage in private or in public with settlers. Some of us do not welcome the acknowledgement of truth, this reckoning we call Orange Shirt Day/Truth and Reconciliation Day. Some of us push away the uncomfortableness, refuse to participate, create a backlash of participation. Some of us are afraid of the re-balancing of power which will occur as Indigenous voices are acknowledged and treated with respect.

I’m humbled by the number of settlers I’ve met who have faced the truth. Some of us welcome honesty. Some of us are interested in re-building integrity, investing in compassion, giving what must be given in order for peace among our peoples.

Some of us are curious about Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Some of us find truth in Indigenous Ways of Knowing.

Some of us are suspicious of any way of knowing which is different from what we’ve been taught from our ancestors. Some of us refuse to question our beliefs, our opinions.

***

I grieve this truth, too: we are in a time of deep-division. We are in a time when our hatred and intolerance of the other is visible as we go about our daily lives. No longer do we live peaceable and isolated lives, only finding out how hatred escalates during news hours and news breaks.

Perhaps this is exactly what we need; to not lose sight of what we all have to lose.

***

Most settlers alive through the residential school years did nothing to stop the harm. Most settlers elected successive governments who, on their behalf, perpetuated the harm of residential school, created more harm in all of our society’s systems, focused on defining Indigenous peoples as sub-human, inferior, deserving of harm in order to integrate them into our society or eliminate Indigenous people altogether.

***

Thank you Phyllis Webstad. Thank you to all of your friends, your children, your grandchildren– all the people who helped you find your voice and all those who have amplified your story.

Thank you Adrian Wolfleg for sitting with students from Sunnyside School, for talking about the importance of making friends with all beings- the animals, plants, people in our neighborhoods.

I am humbled by the guts it takes to begin again and again and again.

***

Phyllis Webstad’s Orange Shirt day, now co-opted or honoured (perhaps both) by the Government of Canada in their declaration of September 30 as the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, may begin another beginning.

So much depends, now, upon an orange shirt.

Waking up.

I rise this morning a 7:45 a.m., the sun is up.

A series of images came into my awareness just before waking: a tree with expansive and far-reaching branches, a wide river, streaks of clouds in a blue sky. Sounds emerged, too: a deep bass sound and the calls of Raven and Chickadee. The colour yellow came. The colour Red showed up.

I miss being outside each day for hours. I miss sleeping in a tent. I miss the sound of waterfalls or a creek churning nearby.

For now, I have work to do in other ways. Soon, I’ll find a balance again. Until then, I’ll visit earth and sky and water in my dreams.

Warrior Women

I rise this morning thinking of warriors. Women warriors. Male warriors. Non-binary warriors. I know many of them. I rise this morning looking for inspiration from warriors. I need to make peace.

I don't speak often of the word Warrior, worried I’ll be misunderstood or rejected for being too ________ .

***

Most of the representations of warriors I’ve encountered in film/television media have been embroiled in extreme violence and lots of blood. Years ago, I watched Spartacus, a show which used over 300 gallons of fake blood per episode, (Kill Bill spilled over 450 gallons of tinted corn syrup. On Stranger Things, Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, “bleeds” whenever she uses her special powers.)

I watched Spartacus through a triangle space between my third and fourth fingers. Among many male warriors, three women warriors with on-screen lives battle for survival in Spartacus: Laeta (Anna Hutchison), Saxa (Ellen Hollman), and Naevia (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). Addai-Robinson said of the show’s popularity, "The show is known for the sex and violence but what keeps viewers coming back are the relationships and the love between the characters."

This viewer did not watch the show for the relationships or the love between the characters. This viewer watched three seasons for the physical embodiment of warrior, for an experience of facing what I did not want to believe was true- all the violence, all the justified killing, all the ways we kill each other’s culture. I’ve also watched Game of Thrones and Vikings– often with my hands blocking out sound and/or image. These shows represent the stories of some of my ancestors. I am part them.

Splatter horror is part-art and part-craft. Create a visceral reaction in the audience and you allow them to experience horror from an emotionally secure view. Interesting research– in countries with higher GDP, the consumption of horror movies is higher. Perceived resource scarcity, the study’s authors conclude, lowers the sense of control viewers experience, leading to lower consumption in horror as a genre. From my emotionally secure view, I experienced the violence as separate from me, but I still felt it in my body. I still needed to shield myself at times, comfort myself at others. Rarely did I feel joy in anyone’s victory.

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I’m confused by the word warrior. Etymology online (a resource I often access) says the word warrior comes from the French: c. 1300, from Old North French werreier (Old French guerroieor) "a warrior, soldier, combatant, one who wages war," from werreier "wage war," from werre (see war (n.)).

A little over 100 years after the word warrior came into use, Joan of Arc, a national heroine of France, led the French army in victory at Orléans in 1429– defeating the English’s attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years' War. Joan of Arc was a peasant girl who believed she acted under divine guidance.

What choices did the “Spartacus” women have in 73 BC to 71 BC? What choices did Joan of Arc have in 1400? How has our language been shaped by the events of our lives? How does our language shape the current events of our lives?

Could being a warrior (female/male/non-binary) mean something different than “one who wages war” like the portrayals I’ve seen on the screen? How do other cultures define warrior?

Warrior, from the Tibetan word Pawo, literally means one who is brave.

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Compassion, "feeling of sorrow or deep tenderness for one who is suffering or experiencing misfortune," mid-14c., compassioun, literally "a suffering with another," from Old French compassion "sympathy, pity" (12c.), from Late Latin compassionem(nominative compassio) "sympathy,"

The Tibetan term for compassion is nying je, which the Dalai Lama states, "connotes love, affection, kindness, gentleness, generosity of spirit and warm-heartedness." People with these traits want to help others who suffer.

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What if warrior and compassion were coupled in a female/male/non-binary being?

All morning I’ve been contemplating this notion.

I experienced a period of anger last night which had my body electrified with a pushing-away kind of energy and my mind racing for a couple of hours. The anger felt powerful. Strong. Piercing. My words did not feel kind or generous or gentle in my body. The reaction of the recipient of my anger, “Why are you being so mean?”

The story I told myself: I was angry at an obstacle in my path-to-being-good and being-seen-as-good. The person I directed my anger towards, and my sincerest apology soon after my outburst, showed up with a compassionate response of love. I felt shame afterwards, and guilt. And gratitude. And forgiveness. I had temporarily lost my ability to discern the appropriate response to my anger.

We beings are capable of so much. Our bravery and our compassion can help define what we do and how we live.

Much real blood is being shed at this moment. Many warriors are in action at this time. Some are blindly waging war, others are facing the truth of oppression/domination/violence with discernment, bravery and compassion.

I’m still at the beginning of this path of understanding. I am not an authority in any way. I’m a questioner. This is my questioning. This is my call out to you, dear reader. I’m interested in listening to your warrior stories and questions. How do you come to be a warrior? What is your physical experience of warriorship?

Many of my ancestors were fighters; French, English, Irish, Viking. They waged war for what they wanted. Some viewed other persons as disposable obstacles to their want. The shame and guilt they also experienced may have created a code of silence. Others viewed other persons as part of a necessary whole to make peace among all beings.

And what do we do now, I wonder, with the way the world is, with the world my ancestors left us, with the world my grandchildren will inherit?

In my first family, we let pain remain unheard, we actively resisted facing painful events and truths. So much shame. Our concealed suffering erupted eventually, like an earthquake, separating some of us from the others.

How does a warrior face suffering with bravery? This is my question today.