Let love break your heart
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Monthly Archives: August 2016
In darkness there is light.
The light shines brightest in the dark, yet often, we see the darkness and forget there is light.
Recently, as I spiralled into a dark funnel of believing there was no light, I came to a place where I believed only the dark and gloomy thoughts rattling around in my mind were the truth. I could not see the light above because I was so focused on where my thoughts were leading me, I forgot that I had control of where I was going. I had the power to stop my downward spiral into the dark.
And then, the thing that was causing me the most distress was lifted with the decision not to pursue a particular project at work. In that decision I felt heard, validated, appreciated.
And suddenly, my slide into darkness ended as I lifted my head and saw the light shining above.
“Where did the light come from?” I asked. And the inner voice of wisdom laughed and replied gently, “It was always there. You just got so lost in believing darkness was everywhere, you forgot to look up.”
In his book, The Road Less Travelled, Scott Peck, writes, “Life is difficult… once we truly see this truth, we transcend it… Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
There is darkness in this world. Once I accept there is darkness, the darkness does not matter as much as the light I choose to share with the world.
When I was sliding down into the darkness of my thinking life was difficult and that’s all there was, I was fighting against the truth that it is difficult, challenging and in the process forgot, it is also a beautiful, joyful experience when I stop resisting what is. In my unwillingness to keep my eyes and heart open, I was refusing to see that in this world there are people who behave badly. Even more importantly, I was pushing against the truth that I am not powerful enough to change their minds, to make them see the light, to make them change.
I am not that powerful.
And that is a powerful space to hold compassionately and lovingly in my heart.
I cannot change the darkness of others. I am powerful enough to create light in the darkness around me so that I can live with loving acceptance of all the world holds, dark and light, without fearing the darkness is all there is to behold.
In that acceptance, I am free to live fearlessly in the light knowing, the darkness is not my answer, unless I close my eyes to the light.
Namaste.
Thank you Mark and Val for illuminating the darkness in Love.
Seek out the Beauty | 52 Acts of Grace | Week 22
It is easy to get lost in the darkness of this world, to forget that lightness begets light. It is easy to see only the tragedies, the horrors, the seemingly escalating violence that ripples with such ferocity around the globe with every mass event of killing, that ever heart breaks as one.
Seek out the beauty.
Seek out the things that soothe your soul and lift your spirits.
To give into the darkness is to let go of hope.
Seek out the beauty.
See it in every flower, in the clear blue sky above, in the cloudy, stormy day nourishing earth with life-giving water.
See it in the face of a child, and the weary eyes of a homeless man panhandling for money.
See it in the gratitude you feel when you wave at the driver behind who let you merge, and in the wave of the driver you made room to merge in front of you.
See the beauty in all, and create beauty in all ways you experience your day.
Do not allow sarcasm, crude jokes and off-colour remarks be the measure of your ripple.
Do not let skepticism, criticism, condemnation and complaints mark your progress through your day.
Let only light, gentle humour, loving laughter, kind acts become your ripple.
Commit to living from the light for this day, and see what a difference it makes in the lightness of your heart, the smiles of those around you.
Seek out the beauty and let your heart shine.
Live your story from your heart
“I’m not the story you made of me.” Lidia Yuknavitch
I read that line this morning while reading a Lenny interview with Lidia Yuknavitch by Suleika Jaouad.
It was one of those moments when truth hit with such clarity, I felt my heart stop for just a moment to let my mind catch up.
It’s where truth always hits first. In the heart. My mind, slower to grasp its presence, needs time to wrap itself around what just happened.
I am not the story you made of me.
You are not the story I make of you, either.
Everyone we meet forms a story of us, just as we form stories of them. We hear their words, feel their energy, their body language, their ‘vibe’ and immediately create a story that aligns with how we see and experience the world. We listen intuitively, even when we’re not conscious of what we’re doing, to what they’re not saying, or what is behind and underneath what they’re saying, seeking the common ground of our shared understanding of how their truth aligns with our knowing of our own truth. It is a common ground that can only be defined through our own experiences where our knowing butts up against their knowing of what they believe to be true between us.
It isn’t that we want to judge. It is that our minds can only make sense of their truth by comparing it to what we know to be true for us.
There is truth in all things and not all things are true.
The story you made of me is not my truth. It is a truth you hold because through your experience, that is the truth you know about me.
When I live my truth without fearing or worrying the truth you experience about me, I am free to be true to me while honouring your truth about me as yours, not mine.
And when I step away from making up stories about you that I live as if they are true, and instead make room for my story about you to be just that, my story about you, we are both free to live with grace in our own stories, honouring the space between us.
Challenge is, we are a story-making people. Telling stories about one another to make them fit our world view, to make them sit more easily in our life is what we do.
Listening to our hearts calling us to let go of the need to make our stories about one another the truth about one another, is where we find peace, love and joy waiting to embrace us in its healing grace. We are all story-tellers and story-makers.
In every life there are many stories.
In every story there are many truths.
In every person there is only one story true to the heart.
Live your story from your heart.
The Windstory Tree (a story)
There is a tree. A tall tree, a proud tree, a tree of many branches. Alone, it has stood the test of time, the felling of its neighbours, the culling of its kind. Alone, it has patiently waited throughout time for the wind to come and bring its stories.
And it always does. No matter the clouds above, or clear blue skies, the wind arrives on a breath of Arctic chill or upon the warmth of a Chinook swooping in from the west. And always, it carries with it the stories of its travels. Of places been, and faces met. Of joyous times and sad times. Of weddings and births and wars and deaths. The wind carries all its stories and whispers them to the tree before carrying on its way to distant lands and faroff places.
And the tree stands tall. Collecting stories. Gathering memories.
And people come and people go. Passing underneath the tree, never looking up, never hearing the voices of its stories.
Except for one small girl. She sees the tree. She hears its stories. She knows its voices. And every day, she climbs into its branches, bringing with her offerings of peanut butter and jam sandwhiches, her favourite devilled eggs, and sometimes, chocolate, though she doesn’t bring the chocolate very often. She has a little brother who likes to eat all the chocolate before the little girl can hide it.
One day, the little girl scurries up into the trees branches, higher and higher and higher. On this day she has not brought the tree any offerings. On this day, she is carrying only a story so sad she can barely get the words out to tell the tree.
Her heart is breaking. The thing she had never imagined would ever happen is about to take place.
Her father is moving away. Not because he got a new job in some exotic foreign land like the one she’d heard about last time in the whispering of the tree’s branches.
No. There is nothing exciting about this move. Only fear.
Her mother and father are getting a divorce. She weeps these words into the tree, throwing her arms around its sturdy trunk, asking it to please mend her breaking heart.
And the tree stands solid. The tree stands tall. Its leaves whisper into the little girl’s heart. “Fear not. Fear not.”
“How can I not fear when I don’t know what’s going to happen?” she asks the tree.
“Fear not. Fear not. Open your eyes and look around you. The world is still turning. The sun is still shining. Look around you.”
The little girl hears the trees voice and opens her eyes. She wipes the tears away with the back of her hand and looks around from the great height to which she has climbed. Just beyond where she is perched, she notices a piece of paper caught in a hole the woodpecker who likes to dig for food in the trees sturdy trunk has made. Carefully she pulls out the piece of paper, unfolds it and reads what’s written on it.
Hello, my name is Pen Pen. I am ten years old. I live in China. I am writing this note sitting in the giant tree that stands in the yard where my home used to be. An earthquake tore down my home. But the tree is still here. I am glad. It is all I have left of my home. My parents tell me not to be frightened. But I am scared. Everyone is crying. Houses are gone. So is our school. I like school. How will I become a doctor if I can’t go to school?. My mother tells me I will still get to go to the University when I grow up. She will make it happen. But I have to trust and believe that it will happen first. How can I do that when everything has changed? Except everything hasn’t changed. The tree is still here. It is my friend. It whispers stories to me. It tells me tales of far away places. Places I hope to visit one day when I’m a famous doctor. I have to go now. My mother is calling me. There are people here to help us clean up the mess of our house. I am leaving this letter in my tree. I hope if you are reading it that a beautiful white swam carried the note to you. My mother tells me anything is possible if I believe. So I do.”
The little girl reads the note and feels the first quiet whisper of hope in her heart. There is a girl, somewhere on the other side of the world who has a tree for a friend. She too hears its stories. she too knows its many voices.
She had never believed that was possible. That someone else could know the beauty of a tree is whispered in the stories it gathers from the wind.
I must believe, she whispered to herself as she carefully tucked Pen Pen’s story into the pocket of her pants. I must believe and not let fear make me forget that I am not alone.
And while it didn’t make the news of her parents divorce any better, it did help her feel less alone and less scared to know there was someone else in the world talking to a tree, sharing its stories and their own within its many branches.
The End which is The Beginning.
An Island Wedding
Heart Song
Acrylic
Louise Gallagher 2016
When she was a little girl, my eldest daughter Alexis, loved to play ‘wedding’. Her entire kindergarten class knew that when it came time to play, if wedding was on the agenda, (which she inevitably made sure it was) not only would she plan the whole thing, but she would play the leading role of The Bride and some reluctant male classmate would be coerced into being her groom.
No matter who the groom, or the attendants she would carefully pick amongst her classmates, Alexis always made a beautiful bride.
One month from today, Alexis will be walking down the aisle bringing to fruition all her childhood planning.
And I know she will be a beautiful bride, just as she is a beautiful woman, inside and out.
It is who she is.
Last year, when C.C. and I were married, Alexis and her fiance J, made the decision to change the venue for their wedding from the more formal yacht club setting in Vancouver to a rustic haven on one of the Gulf Islands.
Where the theme for our wedding was along the lines of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”, this wedding comes with more explicit instructions to set just the right sartorial tone. “Bohemian Gatsby: tweeds & tuxes, silk & sequins, fringe & faux fur. ” which Alexis and J explain in their style guide, as “Backwoods Blacktie Style Guide”. Guests, once they step onto the dance floor, “draped in sequins and silks and tweeds and tuxes and sipping on some bootleg whiskey,” will remark that “the partygoers look as if they were plucked from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.”
It has been a gift to watch (albeit from afar) my eldest daughter grow from childhood fantasies of the ‘perfect wedding’ to an accomplished adult capable of co-creating, a wedding that reflects both her style and J’s desire for an event that brings family and friends together to celebrate love, joy and marriage. Even more importantly, in spite of broken dreams of childhood from having parents divorce and other traumas, it has been wonderful to watch them grow a relationship founded on shared values, a desire to bring out the best in each other and an understanding of the courage and compassion needed to stand beside one another when times are tough and when sailing is smooth.
J and Alexis are doing it all with grace and in the mystical nature that imbues the spirit of the Gulf Islands with wonder and awe, we may just be lucky to witness not only the love shining between them, but also the dolphins leaping in joyous exultation as Alexis and J walk down the aisle. Or, as is written in the style guide, “Waiting the bride and groom’s arrival, you look out across the Tricomali Channel just in time to see a school of Pacific dolphins bound amongst the waves.”
With Alexis creating, there is no telling what miracles will happen.
And here’s a little bit of musical whimsy to set the mood.
And just because… the almost theme from our wedding… 🙂
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau: In the name of peace.
On Saturday evening, I was invited to address the crowd gathered at Civic Plaza to commemorate the devastation that rained down on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 71 years ago. It was an evening to share our fears and hopes for nuclear disarmament, for peace on earth, for a future free of the fear of nuclear devastation.
It rained, hard, and still the people stood and listened and watched and when the moment was right, set their lanterns onto the surface of the reflecting pool and let them float into the night.
There were moments where I wanted to cry. To scream out, Stop this! Stop this suicide wish we have with our planet. We are killing ourselves and the world as we know it. Stop it.
A nuclear disaster is a real and present danger. It continues to grow in the darkness of our desire to not acknowledge it. It continues to fester in our silent voices refusing to call out for disarmament. To not stand up and demand we free ourselves from relying on war to make peace.
While Canada does not possess nuclear weapons, we have a long history of colluding with our super-power 
neighbours in fighting for the right to arm our military with weapons of mass destruction. In the name of national security we tell the Commissions and Tribunal’s when they gather to negotiate, “Our neighbours need them to deter other not so rational nations from using their weapons of mass destruction against them.” And so, in the shadow of our big brother, we do not insist they disarm. Instead, we tell ourselves the world is safer when we stand together with the nuclear super-powers and don’t make them back down from their continued demand to keep their arms and stay in the game of improving upon their prowess as creators of mass destruction.
The current presidential campaigns do not leave me feeling that safe living in the shadow of the US. I don’t feel so confident that some of the 1500 nuclear warheads they have on call will not be used indiscriminately under the misguided belief they will teach someone on the other side of the globe a lesson.
Fact is, there are over 15,550 nuclear warheads co-existing with us on this planet today. When the recent coup took place in Turkey, there was great concern over the safety of the airport. It is believed by many that the US has nuclear weapons stored there.
We think we are safe from the fallout. We are not.
It would only take 100 of today’s warheads, which are 20 times more powerful than the two dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, to create a cloud so dense it would block the sun for years. In the nuclear winter that would ensue, all plant life on earth would die. And so would much of life.
So this is my fervent plea, to Prime Minister Trudeau, to Premier Notley, to Mayor Nenshi who as a signatory to Mayor’s for Peace is calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020. 
Let’s Do It! Let us disarm, disengage, disconnect the weapons of mass destruction and decide now to take the path to peace.
Please.
Let us choose peace.
Namaste.
In peace and the hope for a nuclear weapon free world.
To read the full text of my speech, please click 2016 Lantern Festival
Thank the Sun | 52 Acts of Grace | Week 21
When we begin each day with gratitude, each day becomes brighter and our hearts become lighter.
No matter what is happening in our lives, we can always be thankful for the sun and moon and stars and earth. For this planet that carries us around the sun. For the sun that nourishes life on earth, for the moon that pulls the tide in and out. For the stars that light our way at night.
Whatever is happening in your life today, take a moment to thank the sun for the divine pact it made with earth long ago. Thank it for greeting you every morning when you arise, for shining upon you and all of earth, for feeding the life around you.
Practice saying a simple prayer or blessing to the sun every day this week.
“Thank you Sun for shining so brightly. Thank you for the light that feeds the plants and animals and gives me vitamins my body needs. Thank you for your warmth. I am grateful.”
Yes! In My Backyard
Every morning when I awaken, the first thing I do is let Beaumont, our 1 year old Sheepadoodle, out into the backyard. For some reason, he will not go out unless I do. No matter the weather, he waits patiently until I step outside before venturing forth.
There have been moments when I have allowed impatience to govern my response. Times when I’ve sighed, heavily, stepping outside only to quickly retreat back into the house once he’s exited.
But I am learning.
Learning that the gift he awakens with the door’s opening is the offering of space to stand in reverence with morning’s presence on the deck. Learning that he’s not being resistant. He’s inviting me outside to savour the dew-kissed air with him.
What a lovely gift he’s opened up for me.
I step out into the cool, crisp morning air fresh with dew or last night’s rain. I smell the flowers, listen to the birdsong and the splash of the fountain, fill the feeder and sit quietly in the morning treasuring this moment of tranquility. In the distance, I can hear the faint hum of traffic heralding morning’s rush hour yet to come. The silver bullet of a jet flies overhead en route to some distant city. A squirrel chatters in the crab apple tree. A magpie caws from its perch on our roof.
In these moments, I am immersed in nature, in the awe of and reverence of life unfolding, of being at one with my world around me — even living here in the city, life is a wondrous and rich tapestry that supports me and gifts me with every breath I take.
This is morning. This is life. This is being. Present. Here. Now. Breathing. Savouring. Treasuring. Life.
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- My morning gift of nature
Breathe. All is as it is.
Breathe.
Such a simple process. And necessary.
Yet, so easy to forget. That we breathe. That breath is necessary.
Sometimes, my breathing is the last thing about which I think. Sometimes, I immerse myself so completely in my thoughts, I forget breathing even exists. Lost in thought about things going wrong. The anxiety of the moment. The confusion of my thoughts. The sadness, the fear, the what next. The criticism. The ‘What do they think of me? What will I say? What are they thinking?’ kind of whiplash thinking to someone else’s presence, my thoughts block me from remembering the simplest way to step away from the anxiety, the confusion, the sadness, fear, worry is to simply breathe.
Breathe deeply.
Feel this moment. Feel the air entering your body. Feel your lungs fill up, your chest push out, your belly expand. Feel the air moving deeply within you. Feel it filling you up. Filling you out. Filling you in with its life giving force of nature.
Breathe. In. Deeply.
Now. Exhale. Slowly.
Feel the air move through your body. Feel the quiet, patient, loving presence of its movement as your belly moves in, your lungs compress. Feel the tightness in your shoulders ease. Your heart soften. The straining of your neck relax. Fee. Your body’s gratitude for this breath, right now. Feel each breath.
In. Out.
Relax.
Breathe.
What is there to do in this moment, right now?
Breathe.
Will you give into the anxiety, the fear, the sadness, the confusion, the grasping, clawing desire of your mind to worry, worry, worry as your breath grows shallower and your heart speeds up?
Or, will you keep breathing. Deeply. Deeply breathing into this moment, right now, aware, conscious, knowing, whatever is out there in the world, is nothing compared to the power within you to be present, right now with each breath.
Breathe and know that what is going on, inside, within you is the space for breath to nurture and nourish your being present in this moment, right now, breathing deeply.
And all is as it is. All is what it is. And you are, each breath, moving in and out, in and out, slowly.
Dare Boldly 