Disagreement is not rejection

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I am meeting with the very talented Michelle Jeffrey to get her insight on a delicate situation I am navigating at work with an external group of people who feel like their intentions to serve marginalized people have been disrespected.

“I always felt like disagreement equaled violence,” Michelle tells me. “Like if I said something against what someone else was saying that didn’t feel right to me, I’d be in harm’s way. So I stayed silent.”

Michelle speaks up today. She speaks out and lives her life on her terms. Doing it her way.

A memory slips into my mind.

Year’s ago, while working on a project with an organization that supports teens in distress, I was entering a building on their site for a meeting. As I walked towards the front door, a young woman exited the building where I was to meet one of their managers. She saw me, walked towards me and forcefully asked, “What are you doing here?”

I wanted to be polite. To show her I felt empathy and compassion for her situation, whatever it was.

“I’m here for a meeting,” I replied, smiling.

She grabbed my wrist, dug her fingers into my skin and said, “You can’t go in there.”

The suddenness of her action took me by surprise. I didn’t want to inflame an already delicate situation and quietly said, “I have a meeting. I need to go in there. Please let go of my wrist.”

She dug her nails in more deeply.

“You need to let go of my wrist. Now. So I can go to my meeting.”

I looked directly into her eyes consciously keeping my breathing slow, my voice soft.

She let go and started to walk away muttering back at me, “You can’t go in there.”

I went in.

As I remember the story of the young girl grabbing my wrist I also see something I hadn’t recognized before. I’d always focused on how upset that encounter made me feel. I often wondered what I could have done differently to avoid the confrontation.

What I’d missed seeing in my desire to make it ‘all about me’ was the strength and courage it took for me to simply stand my ground, quietly, firmly, compassionately.

I wasn’t standing in opposition. I was standing in compassion.

I wasn’t pushing back. I was creating space for both of us to move on.

I hadn’t recognized those things before. I remember thinking how scared I was. How I wanted to cry but didn’t want to give into my fear.

At the time, when I spoke with the man whom I was meeting with, he told me that the young girl had just been told she had to leave the program and return home.

“It’s possible she did what she did to force us to let her stay. She’s afraid to move on.”

“What’s important,” he added, “is that you don’t personalize her actions to be about you. If you need to talk to someone about what happened, we can find a counsellor for you.”

I assured him I was okay. But I still thought about the situation a lot. Wondering what I could have done differently.

My head wanted to minimize my fear, and the scratches on my wrist, by pretending it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t want to make it a big deal by over-reacting to a situation which I knew, in my head, was not about me.

My heart wanted to cry. She hurt me. Why did she do it?

That young woman knew violence. It had surrounded her all her life. It was the ground upon which she stood to protect herself, to defend against the unknown, to rebel against what she’d always known.

The difference that day was, my life had taught me that disagreement does not equal rejection, or violence.

Disagreement is an opportunity to find common ground, no matter how rocky the ground upon which we meet.

I could choose to respond in violence, or find the path to peace.

Thanks Michelle for shining your light so I could see where I stand today.

We can all choose to find the path to resolve our differences by choosing compassion, understanding, tolerance and love. Every day.

Which will you choose?

Be like the river when it arrives at the ocean

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As I look out my window this morning, I notice the leaves on the hedge on the west side of our yard are turning yellow.

Already it is past the mid-point of July.

Time moves even while I sit still.

I breathe in and imagine the world breathing with me. My breath on fire with the fires burning so fiercely to the west. The sky above is smoky grey. It smells of woodsmoke, of backyard fires.

This morning, I dedicate my thoughts to those who are fleeing the fires, to those who are fighting them and those supporting the evacuees and the fire fighters.

I am in the community and the community is in me.

Namaste.

Lou's avatarZen Flash

 “When you speak, allow the insight of our collective humanity to speak through you. When you walk, don’t walk for yourself alone; walk for your ancestors and your community. When you breathe, allow the larger world to breathe for you. When you’re angry, allow your anger to be released and to be embraced by the larger community. If you know how to do this for one day, you are already transformed. Be your community and let your community be you. This is true practice. Be like the river when it arrives at the ocean; be like the bees and birds that fly together. See yourself in the community and see the community in you. This is a process of transforming your way of seeing, and it will transform how, and how effectively, you communicate.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Communicating

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The Big Yahoo!

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Remember how the other day I wrote about not wanting to Yahoo! when a parade went by?

Well, I did it.

I Yahoo’d out loud. Loud and strong. In fact, I Yahoo’d so loud people in my office actually talked about how loud I was — and how surprised they were I could be so loud!

So there! Take that you critter of wanting me to conform to not making a scene. I made one and it didn’t matter. It didn’t make a giant hole appear in the fabric of the universe to suck me into the forever vortex of embarrassment and shame!

It was on Friday. One of my co-workers had read my post about not Yahoo’ing and she insisted we go outside and Yahoo at the regular Stampede morning parade going by.

She was persistent.

So I did.

I went outside and we Yahoo’d and people smiled and we laughed and waved and it was all just a whole lot of fun.

And then, on Saturday  morning, at the Inn from the Cold Stampede breakfast sponsored by the Kinsmen Club, another parade marched by and I Yahoo’d out loud all over again.

Which goes to prove, being a yahoo isn’t just about not having a clue or being a little slow on the uptake. It’s also about doing things just because you can; Just because there’s no reason not to — other than that annoying critter in your head who would have you believe Yahoo’ing is for losers.

Seriously though, it wasn’t all that big a stretch. Though I will admit, I did have to work up to it. I did have to tell myself to stop being so self-conscious and self-important and just let it go, give in, yell out.

And it was quite satisfying. To simply yell at the top of my lungs. Even made the folk in the parade smile!

Yahoo!

Giving people a reason to smile is a great thing to do!

Giving people a reason to feel special is even better. And my co-worker who insisted I Yahoo out loud did just that.

Thanks JM!  You are special.

It’s Stampede time in the city! Yahoo!

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I laughed yesterday as I stood on the street corner waiting for to cross. It’s Stampede time in the city and there are daily parades everywhere. The parade that was holding me up from crossing the street yesterday had horses and First Nation’s chiefs and a big Stampede float with a bunch of people sitting on it, laughing and waving at everyone standing by waiting for it to pass.

They waved and called out, “Yahoo!” and I waved back.

I did not yell out, “Yahoo!” That felt silly.

Which is what struck me most. How concerned I was with the opinion of strangers.

The desire to not look silly, to not make a scene, is buried deep in my psyche.  Perhaps it stems from childhood when I was always spinning and laughing and chattering about this and that and continually calling out for the attention of the adults around me.

Don’t be so ridiculous. Stop making a fool of yourself. Stop it! People are looking. Calm down…

My monkey-mind critter knows these phrases well. He likes to repeat them in the most inopportune times and while I know he’s only trying to protect me, his concern is grating. His caution limiting.

Like when I want to feel part of the excitement going on all around me, and he reminds me not to do it because he fears I’ll look foolish.

Seriously?

How silly is that?

A bunch of people are riding by on a float doing exactly what I’m afraid to do because I’m worried others will look at me and say, “Look at that silly person!”  People in all likelihood whom I will never see again, I might add!

How often does that happen to you? You want to leap in but hold yourself back from taking the plunge because you might look too enthusiastic. Too excited. Too different. Too… silly?

Let it go.

Let laughter be your answer. Let your enthusiasm carry you away from holding back and leap in!

It’s okay. People may not think you’re silly. They may actually think, I wish I was courageous enough to do that too!

It’s stampede time in the city. There’s all sorts of yahooing! goin’ on!  Think I’ll saddle up and ride me a cowboy!  No! Wait! That’s rude. That’s not appropriate!  Real women don’t talk like that!  At least that’s what the critter says.

But it is kinda funny that ole’ expression. Sort of a ‘turn the tables on the cowmen kind of talk.

Nevertheless, let sanity and good taste reign. What I meant to say was… Think I’ll saddle up and join the parade!

Yahoo!

Letting Go

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In the beginning, when I was born, I knew little.

As I grew, I learned.

Every day, I keep learning more about what I knew before. More of what I didn’t know I knew. And, if I’m really open, expansive and accepting, more of what I don’t know at all.

Like a trapeze artist suspended in that space between holding onto the trapeze which keeps her flying high and letting go to grab the next bar, my growth appears between the space of holding on to what I believe I know and letting go of believing I know the answers.

In that space between, I stretch, I expand, I seek, I grow. I flourish, I learn. I live.

When I resist, when I refuse to let go of what I believe I know about anything or everything, I rub up against the dissonance of being stuck in fear and ennui and lose my momentum until, the trapeze stops swinging and I hang suspended in my own inaction.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
˜Shunryu Suzuki

Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to an international arts and literary arts residency in Italy.

I was surprised. Grateful. A little scared and a whole lot of disbelieving.

This friend is an amazing artist. Why would she believe I’d be worthy of such an opportunity?

My ‘expert’s mind’, which thinks it knows everything there is to know about me and my limitations, (it likes to repeat them often so I don’t forget) knows little about my possibilities (because my expert mind tends to stay stuck in repeating everything it knows without letting go of its limitations to explore the vast unknown).

I am letting go of my expert’s mind to allow space for my beginner’s mind to swing into action.

Namaste

 

Does fear stop you from creating?

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Work in Progress. No. 44
#ShePersisted Series

Over at Live and Learn yesterday, David Kanigan shares an expert from a Robert Ito article in the NY Times about funny-man Ray Romano.

“It’s just doubt, that’s the biggest thing.”

Doubt, uncertainty, insecurity can keep me from doing things I love.

Like painting.

I have begun working on No. 44 of my #ShePersisted series.

No. 44.

It’s taken me awhile to get to No. 44. With every piece I complete, I worry the next one won’t appear. Or won’t be any good. Or won’t ring true.

I worry I can’t paint. I’m not creative enough. I don’t have any talent.

And in my worry, I hesitate. I avoid. I ‘take a break’, convincing myself it’s what I need, even though I know, that’s the lie.

Deep within me, to the farthest reaches of every cell in my body, I feel the compelling and vital desire to express myself creatively, to dig into my creative essence and let it flow free.

And still I hesitate. Stall. Pause.

Until finally, the pressure grows so great I know there is only one way to release it.

I put brush to paint to canvas if only to prove my fears right. And in the act of proving them right I push through. My fear. My insecurity. My doubt.

I don’t know what else to do.

I know the fears and doubts are there.

I just can’t let them win. I just can’t let them own me, or worse yet, deprive me of doing something I find so satisfying, so joyful, so life-giving.

Creating. Painting. Writing.

For me, these are life-giving passions that dance an uncomfortable jig in the darkness and lightness of their ever present need to be expressed.

Giving into the darkness, I feel bereft. Empty. Defeated.

Yet, to give into the lightness, I must struggle through the dark. I must dance with my fears and turn them to the light so that I can set myself free to create, even in my fears, even in my doubts and insecurities.

The world is filled with creative soul’s clamouring to be free. Now, more than ever, as world events seemingly spiral over the edge of reason, we must all let go of our reasons to not create, to not bring our soulful essence into being. We must release ourselves from the darkness and begin to create in the light of knowing, the kind of world we need, the world we deserve to live in is filled with beauty, wonder and awe and above all, peace.

Namaste.

 

We Can All Be That Village

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I am 4, maybe 5 years old.

We are living in central France. My father loves to take Sunday drives to Belgium, to the monastery, D’Orval, where the Trappist monks make his favourite beer.

I remember it is a beautiful place, this D’Orval. Serene. Tranquil. Surrounded by fields of hops and wheat. Filled with gardens of herbs and vegetables and flowers. Even though visitors were only allowed in certain places, I like to think I skipped amongst the flowers. It was something I loved to do.

I think we must have been returning from D’Orval the day my family forgot me at a gas station. They were down the road only a couple of minutes when they realized there was an unusual silence in the car. I imagine someone asked, “What’s that silence?” Followed by, “Louise, why are you so quiet?” Followed by a startled, “Where’s Louise?”

They turned around immediately at that point. Though I’m sure my siblings may have suggested leaving me behind, my mother would have worried all the way back to where they found me. I was standing by one of the gas pumps with tears rolling down my cheeks. The most likely explanation is I had skipped off somewhere to check out a flower, a flying leaf, a piece of interesting grass… When I returned from my adventures, my family was gone and I was alone.

In real time, being left behind that day may only have been a few minutes. In my child’s mind, it felt like a lifetime.

It is one of the challenges of homelessness for children. Everything feels like a lifetime. And losing all your belongings, your special places, your own room and toys, has life time impacts.

At Inn from the Cold where I work, helping children understand and cope with the trauma of homelessness is integral to the work we do of providing children and their families shelter, sanctuary and healing.

We know that the longer homelessness lasts, the greater the impact on adults. The same is exponentially true for children.

To offset the trauma, early childhood development practitioners work with children to help them develop healthy coping skills that will serve them well, at the shelter and throughout their lives. They use play and art therapy and a host of programs and practices designed to engage children in understanding and identifying their emotions, and providing them practical tools to help them find healthy ways to express them.

No one wants their child to feel lost, frightened, confused. No one wants their child to feel the trauma of homelessness. Yet, it happens. In the past 6 months at the Inn, over 250 children have stayed under our roof. As an emergency family shelter, we do everything we can to make it feel like a welcoming, safe, environment.

But it isn’t home.

And so, we must work even harder to help the children learn healthy ways to weather life’s storms as we work with their parents to guide them on their journey home. And once home, we must continue to support the children and their families to ensure homelessness does not repeat itself in their lives.

When I was 4 or 5, I got left behind at a gas station. It was just a few moments of trauma, but the ripple effect of that moment set up a refrain in my life that sometimes caused me to feel like I was not wanted, did not belong or fit in. I am lucky. I have had access to the resources and the knowledge on how to overcome those feelings so that I can be a change-maker in the world today.

Imagine the trauma of homelessness on a four or five year old. Imagine the stories they will create in their fragile minds as they try to understand what is happening to them, their siblings, their parents.

Imagine if, we did nothing.

The future would not be changed for the better and the likelihood of their being homeless as adults would grow with them as they journey into adulthood.

We can end child and family homelessness. It takes all of us working together to ensure families have access to the right resources at the right time to help them navigate life’s storms and find their way back home.

We can’t all work at a shelter, but we can all contribute our time, donate our treasures and offer our talents to help make homelessness a short-lived experience for every child who enters a shelter’s doors.

It is said that it takes a village to raise a child.

It takes an entire community to raise a family out of poverty and homelessness.

We can be that village. We can be that community.

Namaste.

 

 

In Liberty’s Gaze.

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You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man’s freedom.
You can be free only if I am free. — Clarence Darrow

She didn’t know her own strength. She’d never been tested. Never been put up against man’s nature to tear things down.

No one knew what would happen when the winds of adversity blew. When the gales howled. When the hurricanes ripped through the foundations of her truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.. Give me your tired, your poor…

No one knew the measure of her strength under pressure of another’s assertions he knew best, that his truth was the righteous belief of mankind’s salvation. No one knew.

And, when the winds came, as they often do, they howled and careened around her body, pummeling her righteous stance, her insistance that she not be swayed. Her belief that she must hold fast. Be strong.

The winds screamed like a thousand banshees roaring through desert sands, a storm of idealogies cast upon the winds, swirling around her, rising up into a hailstorm of dissent, rising up with hatred and condemnation, fear and loathing. A typhoon of evolutionary calamity in the making of war that would never know peace until quietened in an oasis of calm at the sheer strength of her steadfast gaze through time. …Give me… Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…

The winds roared and she stood strong and true as she stands strong and true today. True to the foundation upon which she was built, a symbol of friendship, freedom and peace, this lady of liberty. This lady with the strength to hold fast the belief of nations and the dream of all mankind. Liberty for all. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me…

Hers is the strength of a dream woven into the fabric of their collective nationhood aspiring for equality, justice, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness for all mankind. A nation of people who stand true in their belief in the rightness of all men to worship from their own separate pew. The strength of a nation that stands true to the right of all men, women and children, where ever on earth they may stand to rise up and be heard, be seen and be free. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The above is the inscription inside the base of the Statues of Liberty in New York harbour, Swan Ally Island in the Seine River in Paris and Paris’ Luxembourg Gardens. The lines are found in a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus written in 1883.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus, 1883

I have reposted this from my Recover Your Joy blog I posted it in in 2010 in honour of our American neighbour’s July 4th Independence Day celebrations.

Happy July 4th my friends!

PS — I wrote these words long before the current times. And still they ring true for me. Having since written a piece on the African term, Ubuntu — I can see the connection in all things — We are all connected. Ubuntu from the Bantu language, represents the philosophy that — “I am what I am because of who we all are.”

May we all be free together. May we all know our magnificence together. May we all be together as one human race celebrating our humanity.

Let it begin with me.