It was a moment filled with awe-inspiring grace. A moment that shimmered in Love and joy and gratitude. A moment that took my breath away and gave me back the missing pieces of my heart. Those pieces I didn’t know had not yet returned home and fallen into place.

The moment happened on Saturday. A film crew had been at the house since the previous morning interviewing me for a documentary that will be aired on The Discovery Channel next spring. They had flown my eldest daughter Alexis in for the weekend to interview and on Saturday morning the crew was doing, ‘B-roll’. Getting footage of Alexis and me together, talking, sharing moments, drinking tea, looking at photos,  that they could use for fill in the documentary. There were no microphones. Just a camera rolling and the director giving us instructions on where to sit, how to interact, move our hands, etc. It wasn’t about what we were saying. It was all about how we were behaving.

At one point, the director asked Alexis to tell me something she’s always wanted to tell me but was afraid to reveal. Alexis paused. Thought for a moment and said, “Oh. There isn’t anything. It’s what I love about my relationship with my mother. We tell each other everything. We don’t keep secrets.”

Time stopped. My heartbeat stilled. Silence, in all its luminous radiance descended.

For a moment, we sat. No words. No sound. No breath.

And then, we continued on.

But I felt it. I felt Love’s embrace. I felt gratitude encompass me, fill me up and hold me steady.

I am grateful.

Long ago, I deserted my daughters. At the time, I was desperate, lost, frightened, abused. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything else I could do for my daughters that would keep them safe, keep them whole. I was the reason their lives were in disarray. I was the cause of their pain. Removing myself from their lives was the only thing I could think of that would give them peace.

I was wrong. Very, very wrong. But at the time, I couldn’t see beyond the pain and horror of my life with a man who had lied so completely I believed I didn’t deserve anything other than his abuse.

At the time, I didn’t believe I deserved my daughters’ love. I believed I was unworthy.

Ten years later and I know the truth. Ten years later I know that abuse hurts. Abuse poisons our bodies, minds and spirits. Abuse would have us believe there is no light, no joy, no love. There is only abuse.

It’s not true. The things we believe that keep us from breathing freely. They’re not true – those words we hear in our heads that would tell us we are unworthy, useless, ugly, forgotten, without grace, without love, without beauty or joy or purpose in life.

Those words are not true.

What is true can be found in the beat of our hearts calling us to dance, to laugh, to sing, to speak up, to rise up, to give up believing the lies we tell ourselves that would keep us living small, afraid and beaten down.

What is true is that no one can tell us who we are, or what we’re worth, unless we let them.

Once upon a time I let a man poison me with his lies. I didn’t mean to let it happen. But it did.

I cannot change the past.

I can change how the past holds me back, or keeps me stuck in regret, fear, sadness, sorrow and all the feelings of being less than that would keep me from living life on the other side of regret. What I can change is how I am in the world today.

I am blessed. I am grateful. I am… enough.

On Saturday, my daughter said something I didn’t even know I wanted to hear. When she uttered the words, my heart filled up with joy and gratitude and grace and Love. When she said those words that sang so true, I knew deep within my soul what I have been learning since that moment when the man who lied was arrested and I set out on my journey of healing to find my truth.

On Saturday, my daughter’s words reminded me once again that it is not the falls and bumps and lurches of life that hurt us most. It’s the holding ourselves back from moving over, beyond, free of their turmoil.

On Saturday, I listened to my daughters words, opened my heart to their beauty and wonder and felt myself embraced by grace.

Once upon a time, the truth is, I was abused. Today, my truth is,

I am an alive and radiant woman touching hearts and opening minds to set spirits free.

I am thankful.

I am blessed.

I am in Love.

What are you waiting for?

A better answer — the right one? The perfect moment. The answer?

The question came out of meditation, rising into my consciousness as my body stirred into wakefulness.

What am I waiting for?

I like questions. I like how they can lead my thinking into areas, thoughts, spaces I’ve never before imagined. I like how they open me up to new ways of doing, being, seeing the world and everyone in it. I like how they keep me stepping through the limits of my ‘knowing’ into those places where I never imagined I could ever step.

I also like how questions can keep me stuck, keep me from powering through my resistance because of their constant presence.

Asking questions I know the answer to, or asking questions that I know there are no answers to is one of my self-defeating games. As Thelma Box, the found of Choices once said to me during a process at Super Choices (a follow-on program to the foundational Choices week) that really opened me up to possibility, “I experience you as a woman who will never find an answer good enough for her.”

It’s true. 

I like asking questions. It’s how I learn and understand and grow.

It can also be how I stay stuck. Sometimes, I like to keep asking questions so I don’t have to change. If I’m constantly asking questions, there’s no need to hear the answer now is there?

And that’s the epitome of a self-defeating game. To ask a question, and not heed, listen to or acknowledge the presence of what I know to be true. To ask a question and not stop and breathe into the answer to see if now is the time, now is good enough, now is the moment for me to take action.

See, here’s the deal. Sometimes, my asking questions isn’t because I’m interested in the answer. Nope. Sometimes, it’s because I’m more interested in staying stuck, continuing the dance, fixated on going in circles – all while looking like I’m actively engaged in finding the ‘truth’. Taking the spotlight off of me and putting it on someone else, something else, somewhere else outside of my locus of control is a good way to appear interested in what’s going on around me, without ever having to take responsibility for what is going on around me.

Take the question ‘Why?‘

It came up this weekend when a film crew was here to interview me for a documentary for a program on Investigation Discover, “Who the bleep…?” It is the story of how I fell into the arms of Prince Charming only to awaken to the Prince of Darkness dancing before my eyes — and, how I survived.

“Why do you think he did it?” the director asked me at one point during filming.

Because he could, I replied. Because it’s what he does. What he’s always known to do to get what he wants. Because it gets him what he wants. Because every time he did something that pushed one of my boundaries and I didn’t hold firm or push back, it gave him permission to push a little harder, a little deeper into my psyche. And, the further he went, the deeper I fell.

To heal, I had to quit asking ‘why did he do it?’. The why of what he did doesn’t really matter to my life today. What matters is, what am I going to do with my life? How am I going to live?

It is so easy to get caught up in wondering why? about someone else. It’s so easy to base my life on how I feel, think, see, or perceive what someone else is doing in my life — and the impact their actions are having on my life. It’s easy, but it’s not particularly healthy, or life-giving.

To truly live my life I have to let go of wondering why someone else is doing what they do, and focus on the things I do and get accountable. 

If I say I want to be happier, and I’m miserable, I have to quit asking ‘why am I so unhappy’ and start asking, ‘what can I do to create happiness in my life in this moment?’ — and then DO IT!

Because, while there might be a better question out there, the only answer worth living is right here, right now in this moment. It’s right here when I commit to creating the ‘more’ I want in my life because knowing what I want more of in my life is the first step to living my life on my terms, alive and in love, celebrating each step I take that brings me to life in the rapture of now.

What am I waiting for? 

Nothing.

Now is my time. Now is the time, the only time I have to turn up and live. Because, there is no better time than now to live it up and shine bright!

There is a process during Choices training where we focus on the importance of taking care of ourselves first in order to be able to take care of others.

I’m practising giving myself medicine first today.

For the past two days at the office there has been little heat coming out of the vents. Even with a space heater by my feet, (which I can’t put on full because it blows the fuses)  my body has been chilled and I am feeling the worse for the constant chill that has crept into my bones. I came home early yesterday, climbed under a kazillion blankets (okay — maybe just 3). C.C. made me tea, I slept and read and still, I have not regained my equilibrium. My body aches, my nose is running and I am under the weather.

Time to take care of me.

And, because my mind is foggyish, instead of writing a post, I’m sharing what I found to be an inspiring and hopeful video about well-being and medical outcomes . I’ll be back up and at ’em tomorrow.

May your day be filled with honouring your worth. May your thoughts be filled with joy and may each moment unfold in the beauty and wonder of all you are shining out for all the world to see.

I am excited. Plans for this year’s Christmas at The Madison Benefit Concert are well underway and… I am excited.

Excited because so many people have already turned up to say, ‘Count me in’.

Excited because it promises to be an evening filled with love and laughter, music and song, people who care, a community of giving and… because my daughters will both be there and Alexis will be singing as will her step-sister and brother!  Yeah!

I’m excited because since producing the first concert last year I’ve had lots of affirmation that this is a great way to draw attention to the need to ensure those who served our country and then found themselves lost on the streets, deserve our support and attention. And this year, we’ve moved to a bigger venue with the opportunity reach more people and touch more lives. St. Stephen’s Anglican Church has graciously offered up their newly renovated space and it is beautiful! What a blessing.

And I’m excited because, well Christmas is coming! That time of year when our senses awaken in awe and wonder. Where the air shimmers with tiny lights glistening in the dark, where eyes widen in wonder and hearts break open in love. It is that time when the birth of a child long ago reminds us that we too are miracles of life. A time when our hearts strengthen with the possibility of letting go of our disbelief of the beauty and worthiness of our human condition and with every life-giving heartbeat, we surrender and fall in Love.

It doesn’t matter if you are Hindu, Baptist, Muslim, Bahai, Christian. It doesn’t matter to what God, or Gods you kneel or bow before. What matter at this wondrous time of year, as it does all year, is that you let go of disbelief to embrace the magnificence of your human spirit shimmering in the light of Love.

What matters is that you hold onto all that is true and beautiful and life-giving about who you are, and release into the dark night your fears of never being enough, of never having or giving or knowing all there is to have or give or know.

We are all human. We are all connected. And at this time of year, more than any other, I am reminded of the power of that connection and our capacity to strengthen it in Love for one another.

On December 8 we will gather to sing and laugh and dance and play. It would be so wonderful, so amazing, so joyful if you could join us. If you’re here in Calgary or near about, please do come and sing with us. Please come and add your face, your voice, your beautiful heart to the song we shall be singing of Love and joy and community coming together to stand shoulder to shoulder with the men and women who have served our country and lost themselves on the way back home. Come help us ensure they have a place to come home to where they know they too can experience the safety and peace they fought so hard to protect for us.

I am off to coach at Choices for the next five days. Off to that place where miracles unfold with every breath and spirits soar free.

I won’t have a lot of time to post — along with all the wonders I learn and experience at Choices it is also about long days, short nights, fast sleeps.

Which means, I’ll not be around until Monday.

In the interim, you can read about my Choices experiences HERE at the blog I posted on the Choices site yesterday evening.

And, to inspire you, I’m pasting in a couple of videos worth watching and a ‘must read’ article. Feel free to come back and check them out throughout the week.

My blog friend Liz writes at Be.Love.Live. This weekend she posted several videos worth watching. Do pop over to her site to check out an inspirational TEDx talk on coming out of the closet — it’s not just LGBTs who face the issue of hiding in the closet, it’s all of us says Ash Beckham at TEDx Boulder because “a closet is no place for a person to truly live.”

Christina Frangou is a Calgary writer whose husband died just as he was finishing off his orthopaedic residency at the Foothills Hospital here in Calgary. Her beautiful tribute to his desire to give back and make a difference in the world will leave you feeling breathless and wanting to follow in her footsteps. CLICK HERE to read Love without Borders.

My sister Jackie shared this amazing audition from Britain’s Got Talent — It’s a shadow dance that will make you cry. It will touch your heart. It will inspire and awe you!

Namaste.  See you next week!

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
— William Shakespeare

We were all ages gathered at the Cenotaph. Children in strollers, elderly in wheelchairs. Bundled up against the crisp November air, we stood in the bright sunshine under a clear blue sky and paid our respects.

The wires holding the flag on high clapped against the flagpole, the Maple Leaf flapped in the breeze. Bagpipes whined a mournful tune and the honour guard stood on watch, heads bowed as dignitaries slowly walked up to the base of the statue of the Unknown Soldier and laid their wreaths.

C.C. and my youngest daughter and I waited and watched and listened and stood in silence as the words of John MacCrae’s poem, In Flanders Fields, echoed through the air.

The poppies were blowing in the wind yesterday. They shifted place, were lifted up by the breeze and moved from one ledge to the next of the base at the foot of the statue of a soldier without a name, standing on guard, in some unknown time to mark their place.

The poppies blow.

We had given a ride to one of the men from The Madison. He was there to lay a wreath on behalf of The Poppy Fund. “Did you hear my name called out?” he asked when he joined us after the ceremony. “I wasn’t expecting that.” And I could hear the pride, the sense of honour for the tribute paid him.

“I saw Mike* laying a wreath,” I said. And he told me that Alpha House, the program operator at The Madison, lays one every year on behalf of the veterans who now call The Madison home. There are 15 formerly homeless veterans living at The Madison. In total, the Calgary Homeless Foundation houses 49 veterans, with Veteran’s Affairs listing 65 individuals within the sector known to be veterans.

It is stunning, especially, as one staff member of the VA told me, pretty well every homeless veteran began their journey into homelessness at the same time as they left military service.

It is a mighty toll to pay for serving your country.

I asked my daughter yesterday why she makes a point of coming to the Remembrance Day ceremonies with me every year. “Two reasons,” she replied. “One, it’s a way to show gratitude for what Canada has contributed to the world, and two, it’s an important day and this shows I know it. It’s more than just a day off work to go shopping.”

My friend John McMahon wrote in his comment to yesterday’s blog,

“Today I think of my Uncle Guerard De Nancrede. He was my hero as a young boy. Pilot, father, brother, uncle, grandfather and rakish good looking guy whom I believe never could find anything in his after WW2 life to compare with the experience of being at war. Like you imply, being at war with an enemy, often times yourself in a prisoner of war camp of memory, is a horrid price to pay for doing the “right thing” even if it is not the “right thing”. Ambiguous words for an ambiguous struggle.”

As I looked around the crowd yesterday, as I watched news reports on TV of the ceremonies around the country, John’s words echoed through my mind. Memory serves us well. It erases the ambiguity of what happened and leaves only the reminders of the necessity of what we did in the name of doing the right thing.

I don’t like war. I don’t like guns and killing and fighting and shedding blood to create peace. I’ve never been able to understand how killing another can bring lasting peace. For every mother’s child who is killed a seed of anguish is sown in the hearts of every family. How do we make sense of losing a loved one in the name of war and peace?

And yet, it is important to stand on guard for those who have fought so that we can know our freedoms today. It is important to honour their names so that their sacrifices will not be in vain.

And it makes me sad. I stood and looked at the crowd, I listened to the voices of the dignitaries, I listened to the pipes and the clanging of the metal tie-downs against the flagpole and I yearned for a day when the list of names of those who went off to war would no longer lengthen. I yearned for a day when the lessons learned from the wars we’ve fought would be lived through true and lasting peace.

Let peace be our destiny. Let Love be the way.

When the war came, my father set out to find it. He was living across the ocean in what was to become my homeland. But the war was important, he told me once. Britain was his homeland and all the young men were going. He figured he’d be okay. So off he went.

It was a lie. Not just the one he told about his age, but the other, bigger one, about being okay. The war did not sit well with my father. Not then, and not in years to come.

My father seldom mentioned the war. He never spoke of what he saw, the things that hurt him, the regrets and sorrows he carried, the things he learned and wished he hadn’t. It was as if in the silencing of the guns, memory had to be silenced too.

I wondered about his memories. I wondered if that was where his anger came from. He wasn’t a violent man, my father, but he was mercurial. One moment the world would be sunny and bright, the next a dark and seething storm would erupt and all you could do to avoid it was run for cover. I wondered if it was his unspoken memories that pushed him over the edge into darkness. I wondered if in not speaking of what happened, the pain could find no release except through anger.

Over the years, my father’s anger waned. Over the years, the memories he never spoke of dimmed too.  I wonder if his anger would never have come home if he had found peace with memory.

This is a reprint of a post from my Recover Your Joy blog. I share it on Remembrance Day in honour of my father, and all the poet boys who never found peace when the guns were silenced because when they came home, they could not forget.

The Poet Boy

When the poet boy was sixteen, he lied about his age and ran off to war. It was a war he was too young to understand. Or know why he was fighting. When the guns were silenced and the victors and the vanquished carried off their dead and wounded, the poet boy was gone. In his stead, there stood a man. An angry man. A wounded man. The man who would become my father.

By the time of my arrival, the final note in a quartet of baby-boomer children, the poet boy was deeply buried beneath the burden of an unforgettable war and the dark moods that permeated my father’s being with the density of storm clouds blocking the sun. Occasionally, on a holiday or a walk in the woods, the sun would burst through and signs of the poet boy would seep out from beneath the burden of the past. Sometimes, like letters scrambled in a bowl of alphabet soup that momentarily made sense of a word drifting across the surface, images of the poet boy appeared in a note or a letter my father wrote me. For that one brief moment a light would be cast on what was lost and then suddenly, with the deftness of a croupier sweeping away the dice, the words would disappear as the angry man came sweeping back with the ferocity of winter rushing in from the north.

I spent my lifetime looking for the words that would make the poet boy appear, but time ran out when my father’s heart gave up its fierce beat to the silence of eternity. It was a massive coronary. My mother said he was angry when the pain hit him. Angry, but unafraid. She wasn’t allowed to call an ambulance. She wasn’t allowed to call a neighbor. He drove himself to the hospital and she sat helplessly beside him. As he crossed the threshold of the emergency room, he collapsed, never to awaken again. In his death, he was lost forever, leaving behind my anger for which I had no words.

On Remembrance Day, ten years after his death, I went in search of my father at the foot of the memorial to an unnamed soldier that stands in the middle of a city park. A trumpet played “Taps”. I stood at the edge of the crowd and fingered the felt of the bright red poppy I held between my thumb and fingers. It was a blustery day. A weak November sunshine peeked out from behind sullen grey clouds.  Bundled up against the cold, the crowd, young and old, silently approached the monument and placed their poppies on a ledge beneath the soldier’s feet.

I stood and watched and held back.

I wanted to understand the war. I wanted to find the father who might have been had the poet boy not run off to fight “the good war” as a commentator had called it earlier that morning on the radio. Where is the good in war, I wondered? I thought of soldiers falling, mother’s crying and anger never dying. I thought of the past, never resting, always remembered and I thought of my father, never forgotten. The poet boy who went to war and came home an angry man. In his anger, life became the battlefield upon which he fought to retain some sense of balance amidst the memories of a world gone mad.

Perhaps it is as George Orwell wrote in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-four:

“The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading.  It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist… War is Peace.”

For my father, anger became the peacetime of his world until his heart ran out of time and he lost all hope of finding the poetry within him.

There is still time for me.

On that cold November morning, I approach the monument. I stand at the bottom step and look at the bright red poppies lining the gun metal grey of the concrete base of the statue. Slowly, I take the first step up and then the second. I hesitate then reach forward and place my poppy amongst the blood-red row lined up along the ledge.

I wait. I don’t want to leave. I want a sign. I want to know my father sees me.

I turn and watch a white-haired grandfather approach, his gloved right hand encasing the mitten covered hand of his granddaughter. Her bright curly locks tumble from around the edges of her white furry cap. Her pink overcoat is adorned with little white bunnies leaping along the bottom edge. She skips beside him, her smile wide, blue eyes bright.

They approach the monument, climb the few steps and stop beside me. The grandfather lets go of his granddaughter’s hand and steps forward to place his poppy on the ledge.  He stands for a moment, head bowed. The little girl turns to me, the poppy clasped between her pink mittens outstretched in front of her.

“Can you lift me up?” she asks me.

“Of course,” I reply.

I pick her up, facing her towards the statue.

Carefully she places the poppy in the empty spot beside her grandfather’s.

I place her gently back on the ground.

She flashes me a toothy grin and skips away to join her grandfather where he waits at the foot of the monument. She grabs his hand.

“Do you think your daddy will know which one is mine?” she asks.

The grandfather laughs as he leads her back into the gathered throng.

“I’m sure he will,” he replies.

I watch the little girl skip away with her grandfather. The wind gently stirs the poppies lining the ledge. I feel them ripple through my memories of a poet boy who once stood his ground and fell beneath the weight of war.

My father is gone from this world. The dreams he had, the promises of his youth were forever lost on the bloody tide of war that swept the poet boy away.  In his passing, he left behind a love of words borne upon the essays and letters he wrote me throughout the years. Words of encouragement. Of admonishment. Words that inspired me. Humored me. Guided me. Touched me. Words that will never fade away.

I stand at the base of the monument and look up at the soldier mounted on its pedestal.  Perhaps he was once a poet boy hurrying off to war to become a man. Perhaps he too came back from war an angry man fearful of letting the memories die lest the gift of his life be forgotten.

I turn away and leave my poppy lying at his feet. I don’t know if my father will know which is mine. I don’t know if poppies grow where he has gone. But standing at the feet of the Unknown Soldier, the wind whispering through the poppies circling him in a blood-red river, I feel the roots of the poet boy stir within me. He planted the seed that became my life.

Long ago my father went off to war and became a man. His poetry was silenced but still the poppies blow, row on row. They mark the place where poet boys went off to war and never came home again.

The war is over. In loving memory of my father and those who fought beside him, I let go of anger. It is time for me to make peace.

I am always moved to awe when my words resonate so strongly with someone they tell me they’ve printed them out and will carry them in their wallet as a reminder.

Sometime ago, at a seminar, a woman told me she’d been carrying a post with her for a couple of years that I’d written on my Recover Your Joy blog (When Good-bye is Never Spoken). My heart leaped for joy because in her words I know I have touched a life, opened a heart, connected in a way that makes a difference.

And what more could I want then to know that my words here resonate?

It’s why I write here every day (except weekends now as I’ve given myself permission to relax on weekends!). I write here to inspire dreams, ignite thinking and open up minds to all that is possible when we let go of fear, limiting beliefs and self-denial. I write here to clear my mind, open my heart and set my day off in notes of optimism, hope, possibility and Love so that I remember always it is my responsibility to Shine bright and Live true! 

And when we all Shine bright and Live true! we create a world of brightness, a world of truth, a world of joy.

Like writing a love poem to C.C. for a year and discovering that Love is not about getting from another, it begins with me, writing here every morning reminds me that giving is receiving. It’s about the conscious intention to put into the world thoughts and words that inspire and create more of what I want in the world — love, joy, possibility, hope, harmony, acceptance, tolerance and awareness. I want to open people’s eyes to the beauty of our human condition and our capacity to live wildly in love with the rapture of now, sharing the best of who we are as we create from our higher good.

Writing here opens my day up to wonder and awe. It frees possibility within me. It inspires my thinking, and reminds me, every day, that we are connected. We are the same kind of difference that makes each of us different and unique. And in our differences, and our sameness, we share the beauty of this human condition called life on earth with all its challenges, opportunities, ups and downs and possibilities for more.

That’s what I set out to do every morning when I sit down to write. Inspire. Ignite. Activate.Connect.

And yesterday, when someone told me they had printed out my post to carry with them, my heart leapt for joy. I felt blessed. To know I have touched someone’s heart in such a way is a gift. It is humbling. It is uplifting. It is affirming.

I am truly blessed. I am grateful.

Every day people comment and I am given the gift of knowing I am connected to them in ways beyond just a mere, Hello. I am connected in ways that say our hearts resonate like a harp striking a note of harmony rippling from one string to another.

Your words feed my heart. They fill me up with joy, awe, wonder and Love. They enrich my life, my being here, my essence. And you remind me, everyone of you who takes the time to Like, to comment, to send an email, here and on FB, that we are all connected. We are all part of one big planet where it is possible to create a world of Love, peace, harmony and joy — by listening to one another and acting out in Love.

So thank you everyone. Thank you for being with me every morning (or whenever you read). For opening me up to the more of what I want to create in the world. For reminding me of our connection. For being the wind beneath my wings and the possible in my daily world.

Thank you from my heart to yours, in Love!

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets,
for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
Ludwig van Beethoven

I am writing to Beethoven this morning. This is not a thank-you a letter. This is a love song. An ode to joy. A benediction. A grace.

I am writing while his music plays softly in my ears, a melody of grace, a song of love, an ode filled with joy.

I am writing to Beethoven and to Grieg and Mozart and Pachelbel and Satie and others. I am writing to my step-son and my daughter and to the 30 million piano students in China. I am writing to musicians everywhere. They hear the music and set it free. Thank you.

Thank you for bringing music alive. For writing the notes that play on and on. Thank you for stirring the hearts and souls of mankind over the generations that still today, your notes ring true. Your sounds are pure. Your songs continue.

I got inspired by Mozart and Beethoven and musicians everywhere this morning. Hadn’t intended to but as I opened my Youtube Favourites list to access my morning meditation piece, I noticed a new video by The Piano Guys.  Kung Fu Piano: Cello Ascends. Being a lover of cello, piano and The Piano Guys music, I had to click.

I’m glad I did.

Imagine, The Great Wall of China. A millennium old fortification made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, that stretches along in a primarily east to west direction of the northern states of China. It was a wall designed to keep marauders out.  It also kept people in. It kept their stories, their history, their culture protected outsiders, exposed only to evolution from within.  (source: Wikipedia)

Imagine this great wall that dates back in places to  220–206 BC, stretched out like a giant undulating snake through forest and over hillsides, along valleys and deserts, connected to itself, with serpentine tributaries that deke in and out and along its spine for over what is estimated to be almost 5,000 miles. Locking in. Locking out the world within and beyond. Imagine, the human effort to create such an incredible piece of architecture, of history. The sheer force and will it took to build it up, step by step, brick by brick, stone by stone. The lives invested. The lives lost.

Now, imagine along its back a beautiful grand piano set upon the stone work that was placed somewhere perhaps between the years 1368–1644 AD, during the Ming Dynasty rule. A man, white, Caucasian, dressed in traditional Chinese peasant garb black top, white pants,  sits in front of the piano and plays. At the far side of the piano another man sits on a stool, a beautiful gleaming cherry wood cello rests between his legs. He is clad in white top, black pants. The Yin and Yang in motion, in music, in song. He too is Caucasian. His eyes are closed, his body flows with every note he plays, together, in concert, sitting here on the ledge of The Great Wall of China.

I got inspired this morning by music. It does that. Music. It lifts me up, opens me up, sets me up to flow into the muse, with her and amongst her songs, rising on the notes she plays all around calling me to explore, to let go, to create.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to listen and watch and lose myself in the music and sights and wonder of this feat of not only playing on the Great Wall of China but of wondering, how did they get the piano up there? What did it take? Not just the physical act of moving it up there, but the paperwork, the logistics, the commitment to getting it done.

And then, I followed the music to another video, The Piano Guys live concert in Red Butte Gardens where they play in concert with the Lyceum Orchestra (comprised of youth 13 – 18 yrs of age). In this piece they stitch together 4 movements from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony with pieces of OneReplubic’s, “Secrets“.

I got chills. I wanted to get up and dance, to cheer, to laugh, to celebrate as the music swelled over and in and all around me.

Ah, the muse is alive and well and flowing amongst us. She is everywhere. All we have to do to know her, to feel her, to be one with her secrets is open our hearts, expand our  minds and breathe into the wonder and awe of the music everywhere.

All we have to do is listen to the beat of our hearts pounding out the secrets about who we. The truth is written in the music of our hearts beating wildly in love with our human condition. We are magnificent. Miracles of life. Wonders of the world. We are divine.

Namaste.

I am sitting in a small wooden boat, drifting across the placid waters of a lake. “Pick up the oars and begin to row,” the meditation master invites and for one moment awareness sweeps over me and I awaken to a deep inner truth. I have control of where I am, and where I go on the water.

It was profound. Enlightening. Awakening.

In the past, to lull myself into a relaxed, meditative state, I sometimes imagined myself to be on a raft drifting on the water. All was calm and I imagined I had no cares, no thoughts, no desire to be anywhere other than on the raft drifting along with the gentle current. Eventually, my raft would bump lightly up against the shore and I would step off onto the lush, green grasses of an island filled with all the wonder and beauty imaginable.

But in this meditation, I direct the small wooden boat which I row towards an island. I determine where I go.

It is a small yet significant shift.

I direct my boat. I control the speed, the direction, the outcome of where I am. I have absolute and total control of what I do and where I am going in my life. I have the capacity to respond to the environment around me, to avoid eddies, skirt storms, speed up or slow down.

I have control of how I row my boat, and where.

On Friday, when I presented at Break the Silence for the launch of Violence Prevention Month, I shared the story of my fall into hell and my journey into becoming a victor in my life.

Afterwards, several people came over to thank me for my words and for shifting the focus from being a ‘survivor’ to embracing the attributes of ‘victor’.

“We really do want our women to rise above the abuse. To go beyond survival mode into living life as victors,” said one woman. “We need to watch our language,” she added.

And we do. Need to watch our language. We need to be conscious and expand our understanding of the power of words and their ability to hold us in place, or set us free.

Sometime ago I spoke with a friend who was involved in the establishment of the new Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre (CAC) here in Calgary. The CAC offers “hope, help and healing to children, youth and families impacted by child abuse – all in one amazing place.”

The friend told me, their voice rigid with disgust, that they would never feel compassion around ‘these guys’ who abuse children.

What if you were to re-frame that to ‘at the moment’ I feel no compassion around these guys who abuse children? I asked.

They made choices, they told me. They need to live with those choices.

I agree, I replied. They did make choices. But what if in our insistence they live with those choices forever more we are locking them into that place of shame, anger and guilt that lies at the core of their actions. What if in not allowing compassion to filter through the cracks of our resolve to hate, we inhibit all possibility of redemption? What if in our disgust of what they’ve done, we block the possibility of transformation?

No one is born a child molester. Just as no one is born a murderer, gang member, or an abuser.

Becoming those ‘labels’ are learned behaviours that at one time served a purpose in their ability to protect, and/or defend their position in the world. At one point, their responses to what was happening in their world became their behaviours in the world — and the molester, murderer, gang member, abuser was born.

And yes, for those with personality disorders, with mis-matched chromosomes and faulty brain synapses the behaviours appear to be hard-wired. But they are the minority.

Even the man who abused me deserves my compassion, for in his inability to understand or feel or see the harm he caused so many people through his insistence that he had the right to lie and steal and cheat and deceive to get what he wanted, he is locked in a vicious cycle of self-abuse.

And hating him, vilifying him, locking him into a fortress built of condemnation will only harden his resolve to stay the course of his destruction. Hatred will not change his path. I believe love can.

Not the love that says, “I give you permission to act out in my life.” Because that isn’t love. It’s self-harm. It’s blindness. It’s wilful disregard of my own safety.

I am speaking of the love that holds a space for transformation to occur through our human capacity to choose a path other than the path of least resistance that leads to our repeating the things we’ve done to harm, hurt, betray and destroy lives.

Once upon a time, I chose the path of least resistance. I let my raft drift aimlessly along the surface of my life, waiting for a miracle, or a magic wand, to appear to calm the waters.

Today, I know, no matter how choppy the waters, no matter how distant the land, I have the power to pick up the oars and row myself to safety.

I have always had this power even though there were times the sky appeared so dark, the waters so threatening, I didn’t believe I had the strength to pick up the oars. I am grateful there were those who had the wisdom, and the courage to show me I could.

We all have this power. No matter what we tell ourselves about our circumstances, we all have the power to row ourselves to safety.

We can’t continually shame those who disobey or disregard the mores of our society for causing the rough waters on which we sail. Yes, many have broken laws, created havoc, caused distress.

In our shaming of them, however,  we keep stirring up the waters and losing sight of the possibility and the power we all have to create a world of wonder, a world where calm seas welcome every sailor home to the heart of who we are as human beings — magnificent, divine creations of Love.

As my friend Kathleen from GP taught me long ago, “We take God’s breath away.”

And that means all of us.