Category Archives: acts of grace

We Have a Winner!

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We have a winner but, before I reveal their name, I just want to say… I feel like I won!

Your input, both here and on Facebook was enlightening, informative and inspiring.

And… I did find the third way that was right for me. Thanks to all of you!

Which is what I really appreciate about all the feedback – you offered both your preference to A or B and why as well as expansive thoughts on an option C.

The #ShePersisted is about making ripples of opportunity for change/awareness to awaken. It’s not about triggering people or causing hackles to rise or to increase someone’s resistance to expanding their perspective or to understanding why change is needed.

It’s about creating space for each of us to check-in with our perceptions and ask ourselves… Is there another way? Is there a more loving, healing, cooperative path?

And that’s the option ‘C’ many of you spoke of.

I also have to acknowledge that her face bothered me too. I loved Kiki’s comment about The Devil Wears Prada look of her – I realized I was uncomfortable with all that perfectly coiffed black hair and the disconnect between the look on her face and the message she was trying to convey.

So… I went back in and kept going. Once I softened the feel and made it more ethereal option C became clearer.

What also became clearer is that I have to come to a place of ‘accepting the imperfection as perfectly acceptable.’

Because, ultimately, I could keep going in and reworking until the canvas paper she’s painted on tears or wears away.

Or, I can breathe and say, I’m good. She’s good. This is good.

This is good.

Enough.

Enough questioning. Digging in. Painting over. Worrying. Considering. Confusing myself with options. Asking others. Worrying some more…

This is good.

Enough.

Tomorrow, I’ll share No. 71 – ’cause one thing I’ve learnt through this entire process of spending 4 years working on the #ShePersisted series, the muse is not finished with me yet, and I have no intention of ever being finished with dancing amidst her inspiration.

Thank you again everyone. I am so very grateful for your presence, your light and your willingness to engage and share your thoughts and ideas.

Ultimately, as Mark says, I am the one who must finally step in and say, ‘I know my heart best. I must follow it.’

AND….

Drum roll please.

The winner is…..

Mitzi Barkmann.

Mitzi wrote on my FB page: “I can see where this causes a conundrum. Are you wanting to get us all, you and CC included, out of our comfort zone? Then quote #2 is the way to go. Yes quote #1 is more you and shepersists, but not as emphatic. :)”

So much truth in her statement, and in all everyone shared. The question becomes — Do I want to knock people out of their comfort zone or lovingly invite them to explore the possibilities of what’s beyond their comfort zones?

You helped me find my answer.

Thank you!

Love Will Hold Us Together

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In the stillness of morning light, I breathe slowly, waiting for the sun to break through wintery skies.

There is a weariness in my bones. I feel the weight of missing precious moments spent with family and friends. A longing for days that feel lost in misty memories of the times long ago when we opened our front door and invited others in.

In the softness of morning light, there is a heaviness to this winter morning.  A knowing that today will be the same. Connections made on screens filled with tiny boxes of familiar faces who light up my heart and who once graced us with their presence around our table. My heart is light with the thought of their smiles yet heavy with the missing, Of touch. Of gathering together. Of hugs and farewell kisses grazing cheeks and a touch on the shoulder to say, “I see you. I hear you. I feel you.”

Yes. It is the feel of people gathering together. Of coming together to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, reunions, and even a loved one’s passing, that I yearn for.

It is the knowing that today I am not with my 3-year-old grandson celebrating at a party just for him. My arms ache to hold his body next to mine and whisper, “I love you” in his ear. And to feel his sweet, precious breath against my ear as he whispers back, “I wuv you too YiaYa.”

It is the knowing that five months have passed since last I held my granddaughter in my arms and smelt her babyfresh head and kissed her tiny nose and tickled her tummy as she giggled and gurgled in squirming delight at my touch. Five months feels like a lifetime of change in a seven-month old’s world spent watching her grow on a tiny screen. She reaches for it when we talk. I like to think she is reaching for my heart. That she knows this heart she cannot touch except through a tiny screen is full of love pounding a fierce beat to the tune of her laughter and squeals and toothless smiles and sparkling eyes full of joy.

In the stillness of this winter’s morning light, I gently close the door on memories I yearn to feel come alive again. I breathe softly into this moment right now where I sit at my desk watching the river flow and the light slowly break through the darkness.

Clouds cover the sky. A blanket of grey above. A blanket of snow below. Misty. Ethereal. Mysterious light full of memory and longing on a wintery morning.

The sun is hidden yet still it shines. Eternal. Hot. Fiery.

Like my love for those I’m missing. For those not here because they can’t be and those because they never will be again. My love burns eternal.

In the stillness of morning light, I light a candle for those who are gone forever, and those whose absence is just a temporary moment in time passing until we can gather again, hold one another again and kiss one another on the cheek and whisper softly, “I love you”.

It is fleeting, this heaviness in my heart. It will pass. For now, I let my body rest easy in its embrace and warm myself on the memories I cherish and the knowing that soon, I’ll see their faces in tiny boxes on my screen and know, no matter the distance nor the times that separate us, Love will always beat fierce and strong in our hearts. Love will always hold us together.

When Love Is The Weaver

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Forgiveness does not look backwards. It reaches forward continuously transforming pain into Love.

As she has taken to doing since she passed away last February 25th, my mother once again visited me while I was in the bath. Unlike in life, where her fear of opening doors to the past kept her burdened with sadness, she asked if we could talk about something she’d avoided speaking of all my life.

There are so many truths I could not face when I was your mother of ‘this-world-out-here’ she says. Life was so hard for me and facing those truths only made it feel harder. I was always afraid the truth would break me, she says. I was not as brave as you. I’m sorry.

It was the ‘I’m sorry’ that got me. In life, my mother never, ever apologized. Never.

It was not her way.

My mother’s way was to cling to the picture of being the perfect mother of her dreams. She wanted to give us the world, it’s just the world was so big and scary she had to hold onto the belief she was the perfect mother to keep her fears at bay. It was her fear that blinded her to the beauty of truth in all its sometimes painful manifestations.

To be the perfect mother, she had to hold tight to the belief that the troubles in our relationship were all my fault. I was too outspoken. Too challenging. Critical. Judgemental. Harsh. If there were issues, I created them. I was the one who needed to accept the blame and apologize.

And while I’m not saying I wasn’t all of those things, I also felt she owned some of the issues. I mean, it takes two to tango. Right?

Where my two-to-tango thinking got me in trouble was believing that if she would just once apologize, the past would be set straight, as would my life.

The only way to set the past straight is to let it go.

For me, letting go of the past comes through forgiveness.

I thought I’d done the work. I mean, how much therapy, self-development, journalling, channelling and whatever other process was out there could I throw at myself?

We cannot see what we do not know. I thought I’d done the work and then, my mother apologized and asked if I could forgive her for not protecting me as a child and I discovered a knot of pain, not even her apology could dissolve.

But then, it was never really about her apology. It was about my pain and my holding onto it in unforgiveness.

I cried. A lot. When I felt the knot inside my body. It was lodged somewhere in my esophagus. It hurt.

I want to, I told her. But the words are stuck.

Then practice, she said. Practice saying, I forgive you.

Even that hurt. But I know the wisdom of my mother’s words.

To be free of unforgiveness, I must practice. I forgive you.

This painting comes from my practice. It is a gift from my mother to me. And to my daughters and grandchildren and their children too.

Unforgiveness blocks the beauty from shining bright in the tapestry of our lives. Unforgiveness hinders free passage of the love that weaves us into our family story, the love that forever weaves its way through time, even after our last breath has been tied off on the giant loom of our story.

It is Love that weaves all the colours of the rainbow into the tapestry of life flowing into the story of generations to come. And it is forgiveness that is its warp and weft, muting the pain and sorrow. Tears and fears. Sadness and hurts. Transforming them into Love.

My mother came to visit me. She asked for my forgiveness. Not for me, she said. It’s for you. You must say the words so you can weave an even more beautiful story of your life today that will inspire generations to come.

She was right, this mother of my dreams. There is much beauty in letting go. Especially when threads of forgiveness are woven into the tapestry of your life with Love as the weaver of your story.

Love Pours In

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Thoughts from my meditation on the question of Love — it is the theme this week of the year long Contemplative Listening and Writing course I began earlier this month.

Holding onto nothing, I become all that I am.

With every exhale, Love rushes into the spaces left behind where once I held onto everything.

Holding onto nothing, Love is all there is.

Holding onto nothing, Love pours in.

_______

Love Pours In

©2021  Louise Gallagher

I forget
where breath begins
and hold onto nothing
but my last breath
fearing there will never be
another to fill
the void.

Letting go
life rushes in and fills
the space
with nothing
more than
my last breath
moving into
the next.

In the ebb
of life’s
constant flow
holding on
fills the void
and I become
each breath
letting go.

And Love pours in.

I wrote this poem several years ago. I was reminded of it this morning when I started to share a painting I created on the weekend and realized, I needed to speak of Love.

I wanted to hold onto what I had intended. I had to let go.

And as it always does. That’s where love found me. That’s where love poured into the spaces created in letting go.

The Gift

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When the email arrived carrying a link to ‘The Gift’ I wasn’t really expecting it.

Sure, when Ian Hanchet (the gift giver) commented on my poem “If I Could...” he wrote, “I was inspired to immediately pick up my guitar and melody flowed from me. I recorded it on my phone, but I need to become more acquainted with the rhythms of your poem so that I may do each phrase justice. Too bad my life just got super busy. Maybe Next week I can return to this work of wonder.” When I read his words I thought, ‘how lovely’ and promptly wrote back to thank him and to let him know how excited I was he liked the poem that much.

And then, I let it go.

Yesterday, Ian emailed to say he’d finished the song and included the audio link.

I cried as I listened to it. Not just because Ian is a talented musician with the kind of voice that makes me feel like I am sipping an after-midnight scotch in a moody, crowded jazz bar somewhere along a dimly lit side-street in Soho only those who ‘know’ can get to after going down a flight of stairs leading to a deep red door that opens into the mystical world of late-night jazz, but also because in his gift I received something beautiful and precious — The gift of being seen.

I wrote back to Ian after listening to what he calls, ‘our song’ – which in and of itself feels like a rare gem to be treasured always – and told him how special his gift is.

Ian’s gift also carried me back in memory to another gift of a song I received years ago from my dear friend, artist, musician, writer Max C.

In 2014, when I changed the name of this blog to Dare Boldly, Max had read my declaration of identity and felt inspired to send me a piece of music he’d written to accompany it. He asked me to record my voice reading the declaration and then, he put it to his music.

Like Ian’s gift, Max made me feel ‘seen’.

I hadn’t forgotten about Max’s gift, though I hadn’t thought of it in a long while. What I had forgotten, however, was my declaration of identity – it’s the one I share at the top of this post.

Full circle.

That’s what Ian’s gift brings me. Full circle back to remembering – I am the song. My song.

What a powerful and liberating gift. To remember…

We are each ‘the song’ of our life.

We are each, The Song Maker. The Song Singer. The Song.

Let us always sing outloud. Let us each sing of truth, beauty, kindness, hospitality, generosity of spirit, Love.

Let us sing each other awake in a world we create together of beauty, awe and wonder.

Thank you Ian for your gift of many gifts.

I revel in gratitude.

___________

PS — along with being a musician, singer/song-writer, poet, Ian is an amazing writer, deep thinker, music historian and generous human being. You can find him on his blog, Vignettes and Bagatelles.

Click HERE to listen to ‘our song’ If I Could Give You My Heart.

Strong back. Soft front.

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©2021 Louise Gallagher
Mixed media on canvas paper – 7 x 10″

The Sunday after the 2016 election my daughter, Alexis, and I attended Jazz Vespers at St. Andrews-Wesley United Church in Vancouver.

We needed to do something… hopeful.

The results of the US election had stunned us. Taken us by surprise and lead us down a dark alley towards a sea of confusion.

Jazz Vespers was the antidote to our despair.

I still remember the words of Rev. Gary Pattison who led the service. “Jesus Christ loves Donald Trump,” he said. “I’m glad he does because I’m not there. Yet.”

Four years later I wonder if Gary got there.

I didn’t.

I feel compassion for the child who never knew love. I pray for a miracle to heal the man. But love him?

I take a breath.

I do not write of politics. I do not write of religion or the economy or issues that consume weeks of headline news. I write of our human condition. Because, no matter the political, religious or economic times, it is we, the humans of this world, who create the climate for goodness, or darkness, to prevail.

Which is whyI am not writing about the man. I am writing of my response to how I felt yesterday as I sat and watched the inauguration of Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America. Our neighbours. Our closest ally. Our partners along the longest undefended border in the world.

I didn’t watch the inauguration on the same date in 2017.

I couldn’t.

I was far from Rev. Pattison’s kind of love and far from being able to do what a professor in a social justice course I took long ago said was necessary to change the world. “Until you love the Hitler in you,” he said, “you cannot love all humanity.”

I so want to be that person. The one who can love the human condition without falling into measuring someone’s worth as lacking because I am standing on my self-righteous pulpit judging their humanity and deeming it unworthy of redemption.

We are all worthy of redemption. And I wonder, is redemption the miracle that transforms blindness to sight, deafness to hearing and heartlessness to giving a damn?

And I hear the sinister whisper of my self-righteousness crawling across my skin. It is vile, that whisper. It would have me believe that it is The Man who makes the country. The Man who determines the heart of its people. The Man who is everything.

On that November day in 2016, when Rev. Pattison gave his homily at Jazz Vespers he stated, clearly and unequivocally, “We must stand with strong backs and soft fronts.”

For the past four years, I struggled to stand with a soft and open heart while keeping my back strong so that I could stand up for what was right and just without tearing down those who stood against me. Just as I struggled to believe there was hope in the darkness, a light at the end of the tunnel.

For the past four years, I have lost heart.

Yesterday, I was reminded that the sun is not gone because clouds cover the sky nor does my heart stop beating while I’m sleeping nor when I’m afraid.

Yesterday, I felt the delicate embers of hope begin to burn in my heart again. The embers that had begun to glow when Mr. Biden was declared President Elect last November.

Yesterday, I felt myself exhale and breathe in deeply.

Neither Trump nor Biden are my President.

But as a citizen of this world, as a neighbour to America, I look at what is called the self-evident truths of their declaration of independence as a beacon of hope in a sometimes dark and messy world. And while their path to equality and freedom has been fraught with missteps and peril, the intent to get there, the commitment to do the hard things was always part of what I believed was possible. Because, I believed America would do the right thing, even when it was hard.

For the past four years I have doubted. I have faltered.

I have hope again.

Yesterday, I watched the inauguration of Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America and Kamala Harris as Vice-President.

I cried. I smiled. I cheered. I bowed my head and prayed.

Today, I stand strong of back, soft of front. Today, I believe all things are possible.

As to loving Donald Trump. I leave that up to God.

Listen to It All

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  Listen to It All
 ©2021 Louise Gallagher
  
 I want to listen
 to it all
 to the sun rising
 into the indescribable blue of infinity
 full of whispering clouds floating
 within the sweet nothingness of
 endless sky falling
 into the story of forever 
 kissing the far-off horizon
 where it dips down to touch
 the untold mysteries of the sea 
 diving deep
 deep into the silence
 of the womb
 of mother earth’s divine creation.
  
 I want to feel 
 it all
 deeper than my skin
 peeled back
 to reveal
 my blood flowing red
 my heart beating wild
 in love with the ecstasy
 of being alive
 in this world
 of beginnings and endings
 forever tied up in the stories we tell
 so that we do not have
 to listen
 to the beauty of the silence
 that yearns to be heard
 above the cacophony of our human noise.
  
 I want to listen
 without knowing
 I am listening
 to anything
 other than life
 unfurling
 in all its mysterious beauty
 and unfathomable cruelty
 impregnating the darkness and the light
 with the wholeness
 that rises up
 to embrace me
 when I listen
 deeply
 to it all.

…to be continued.

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The story of all life holds beginnings turning into endings,
endings beginning again in a new story.

Every season turns into the next becoming
both the ending and beginning of the story of life
to be continued.

_____________________________________________

Who Do You See?

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What Do You See?
  ©2021 Louise Gallagher 

In every image I see

 something of me reflected.

In every image
 there is a reflection I must see.

Sometimes, I want to avoid
 looking at the reflection I see.

Sometimes, I want to see
 only what I want to see reflected.

Always, I must open my heart to see
 what is being reflected back to me.

It is hard sometimes, to look at ourselves in the mirror with our eyes wide-open and say, loud and clear so our heart can hear, “I Love You.”

Try it.

Right now.

Go stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes, deep into your eyes, take a deep breath and clearly state (keep your eyes open and looking into your heart) “I Love You.”

And, if it’s hard, if you hesitate or want to shut your eyes, or cry or shake your head from side-to-side in disbelief, ask yourself, “What is so unloveable about me?”

And, if the answer comes easy, if you have a list of ready-to-speak reasons why not loving yourself makes perfect sense, start there. Start in that painful, awkward, uneasy place where unself-love resides. Start right there to love those broken, ugly, untouchable places where you tell yourself you do not deserve Love.

We all deserve Love.

We all deserve to love ourselves. Many of us have not been taught it’s important. Or many of us have been taught it’s selfish or conceited. But, if we don’t love ourselves, how will we teach our children to love themselves enough to do the loving things? To treat their life, all life, as precious? To treat themselves and others with dignity and respect?

And, if we cannot love ourselves enough to speak the words today, how will we speak to ourselves in the tough times? In the times when we need tender loving care to get through the rough spots on our road? Or when life hits us with one of its curveballs and we just want to curl up into a ball and turn the world off? How will we take care of our heart, and the hearts of everyone we love, if we are beating ourselves up with Unlove?

Years ago, when my mother was around 85 and living in an assisted living centre, my then-teenage daughters and I went to visit her one evening. As she shared some of her life-story with us one of my daughters asked her, “Do you love yourself Nana?”

Mum blinked her eyes. Fluttered her hands around her face as she always did when she was nervous or uncomfortable and replied with something like, “What a silly question.”

My daughter did not back down. “Do you?”

Mum breathed out. Kept laughing nervously.

At this point both my daughters knew what was necessary.

The pushed her wheelchair to the full-length mirror in her entryway. They said, “Try it. Look at yourself and say, “I Love You.”

My mother was taken aback. She giggled and replied. “Oh no. No. I can’t do that.”

The girls were adamant. “Of course you can.” And each of them demonstrated how ‘easy’ it was to do and say.

“You do it too, mum,” they called out to me.

So, following in my daughters footsteps, I demonstrated ‘the how’ to my 85-year-old mother.

Still she hesitated. With encouragement, she finally looked at herself in the mirror and said, “I Love You.”

And then, she fluttered her hands around her face and exclaimed, “Oooh La La!”

It was such a sweet, tender moment, and at the same time, poignant and sad.

To be 85 and never to have told yourself, “I Love you.”

My mother was not, is not, alone in her silence.

We are a world of human beings who have never learned to say those words to ourselves.

Have you? Ever told yourself how much you love yourself?

When you stand in front of the mirror, who do you see reflected back?

A woman or man of integrity, humility, honour, beauty, strength, courage, passion, dignity, truth, wisdom, compassion, caring….

Or do you just not look? At yourself? Deep into yourself?

Do you just brush your teeth and hair and put your make-up on (and maybe notice with dismay a new wrinkle or two) or shave and avoid looking deep into your eyes?

Whatever you do in front of that mirror, that’s what you do in the world. So, if you want to change the world, start by changing how you look at yourself in the mirror and what you say to yourself.

Start by practicing, “I Love You.”

You’ll be amazed by what happens.

And PS — if it’s too hard to say the words, get a crayon that writes on glass and start by writing it out and reading it to yourself every day until you’re ready to claim the truth.

Sometimes, self-love starts with baby-steps…

______________________

About the artwork:

I am fascinated with carving stamps. I created the botanical on the left by first imprinting it with vaseline on the page (the vaseline acts as a resist to the paint) and then using the same stamp to print it on the right with black ink.

The little botanical is also a stamp I carved.

The background is watercolour and acrylic inks – the ‘mesh’ is created by using drywall tape as a stencil and dabbing paint through it.

Mixed media 8 x 10″ on canvas paper

The words were put in place in Photoshop (not physically printed on the page)

Falling Effortlessly

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 Falling Effortlessly
 ©2021 Louise Gallagher 
 
 I stand and watch the sun 
 bathe the distant mountains
 in morning’s glory.
 
 Day awakens. It beckons me to be right here,
  right where I’m at.

 Breathing deeply, I surrender
 and the beauty of the moment
 catches me falling effortlessly
 into Love’s enduring embrace.

I stand on the platform of the small observation deck built into the side of the hilltop, just before the path dips down into the valley below.

In the distant horizon, the rising sun bathes the mountains in morning’s glory. A Chinook Arch stretches itself across the sky like a blanket thrown across the frozen ground to warm it up.

I want to capture the moment. To freeze it under the klieg lights of my attention as if in its frozen image I will find myself free of thought, fully present here.

Still, my mind chatters. I wish I’d put my hat on. My ears are cold. Don’t forget to drop that canvas off at JD’s today for our Zoom visit Friday. I wonder if I turned the coffee on before Beaumont and I left for our morning walk. I must remember to call the dog groomer’s today.

A Canada Goose, floating on the river below, honks loudly. repeatedly. In its cacophony, I hear it saying, ‘Stop listening to your brain chatter. Listen. Listen deep to the world around you.”

I give my head a shake. Beaumont keeps sniffing at the snow along the trail.

I close my eyes. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

The thrum of a train heading west vibrates in the air. The hum of traffic plays like a counterpoint to the melody of the river below where as it rounds a curve downriver, the ice forces it to bunch up into a rushing stream racing to get through the narrower channel. A bird twitters somewhere in a tree.

I keep my eyes closed.

I listen. Deep.

I want to take it all in. To hold it all in one thought-filled moment. But it escapes, like steam from a pressure cooker being slowly released.

I breathe. Deep. And open my eyes.

Sunrise has slipped into day. The geese still float languidly on the surface of the water below. The river keeps flowing eastward. Time flows in all directions.

And I wonder. Where do my thoughts go when I stop listening to their chatter?

And I smile. It doesn’t matter where they go. What matters is, will I let them pull my attention away from being here, right now?

Will I follow the randomness of my mind or follow my heart’s desire to know stillness. Peace. Calm. Tranquility.

I take a breath and Beaumont and I keep walking.

Beauty walks with us.