Savouring autumn.

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“Savoring calls me to slowness: I can’t savor quickly.  
Savoring calls me to spaciousness:  I can’t savor everything at once.
Savoring calls me to mindfulness: I can’t savor without being fully present.”

Christine Valters Paintner,  Abbey of the Arts

Here on the eastern edge of the Canadian Rockies, autumn falls in graceful disarray. Summer leaves turn golden and crisp chilly mornings awaken each day with hints of frosty filigreed mornings glistening on the horizon.

Autumn is my favourite time of year. It is a time to savor sun-soaked days filled with long golden rays of light lengthening the day’s shadows. It is a time to breathe deeply into morning’s indolent passage from night. To savour sunlight bursting with fierce determination across the windswept land. It is a time to settle into evening’s cozy light embracing the earth as the moon sends the sun early to bed behind the snow-tipped ridges of the Rockies sprawled out across the horizon.

It is a time to harvest. To pluck still green tomatoes from the vine and gather round the hearth to share in autumn soups and hearty breads. It is a time to gaze into the faces of those you have gathered round the table to share in autumn’s bounty and to treasure the faces of your loved one’s shining in the light of a hundred candles glowing in the night.

Autumn is a time of release, of moving into stillness, of letting go to fall with grace into silent rest.

It is a time of preparation and renewal. Of savouring the paradox found in summer shedding its vibrant cloak of bounty as you prepare the soil for winter’s long rest yet to embrace the earth.

I find myself in autumn’s gaze balancing the tension between releasing old ideas that no longer bear fruit with harvesting the abundance of all the seeds I’ve planted throughout the year.

In the tension of release and gathering I find myself looking inward, seeking comfort in the well-worn pathways to my heart.

In autumn’s slow, long light filtered through the branches lining leaf-strewn paths, I see the way more clearly. Life is an eternal circle of release and renewal. Relinquishing and rebirth.

Autumn soils bear the inspiration of spring’s first flowers even as trees shed their leaves in the sudden gusts of north wind blowing in on a breath of Arctic chilled air eager to embrace the land.

Autumn reminds us there is life and death in everything. It reminds us to hold onto life and to honour the dying as we release our fear of the unknown. It reminds us to let go and surrender to the beauty and the sorrow of living on this earth, and of leaving it. It urges us to dance in the sun’s shortening gaze and release our fears to the night.

Autumn is a time of contradiction and contemplation. It is a time to celebrate the bounty of harvest, and to prepare for the scarcity of winter.

Autumn urges us to give thanks, to sip the sweet wines of vine ripened grapes and to rejoice in letting go of summer ripened fruits as we dig into the earth to savour the rooted bounty growing beneath the surface.

And as autumn descends in fiery beauty, I breathe deeply into the rich verdant soil of my life and rejoice. Autumn is descending. My heart is full and life is a rich and vibrant journey filled with the bounty of this life I treasure and those who make it so rich and beautiful.

Autumn is falling and I give thanks as I rejoice in all I have to hold onto and to let go of, to savour and to release.

In the light of today, there is no past.

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At Choices, I watch people of all ages struggle to step out from beneath the shadow of their upbringings, the burdens of the past, the sadness of the lessons they’ve learned on the road of life that have broken their hearts and undermined their belief in their capacity to live freely and whole-heartedly.

Seldom are the burdens they carry intentional ‘gifts’ from the people who loved them. Most often, they are a reflection of the pain and fears of those who meant the best for them but didn’t know how to give or create ‘the better’ they dreamt of passing on.

Our parents were not handed a roadmap to raising us when we are born.

There is no surefire way to raise a child, to protect them from encounters that hurt them or cause them pain.

All we can do is provide them tools that will help them get up when they fall, move on when they falter and stand tall when the world feels like it is pushing them down.

Years ago, a child psychologist I knew told me that my job as a parent was to ensure my daughters survived their childhood. You’re going to mess up, he said. You’re going to make mistakes. We all do. As long as they can get to the age of 16, they have a chance of repairing the damage you did.

At the time, I remember thinking, What damage? I love my daughters how could he suggest I’d hurt them? Truth is, even before I disappeared into the darkness of a relationship that was killing me, there were things I’d done unintentionally to cause them pain, to wound their hearts, to limit their capacity to live whole-heartedly. I carried my own childhood wounds and lessons learned on the road of life with me. Unacknowledged, they limited my ability to be whole and present with my daughters.

Didn’t make me a bad mother. It did make me very human. And in my humanness, it made me capable of change, if I was willing.

We are all capable of change. We are all worthy of living life on the wild side, on the outside of our comfort zones, never looking back at the things that dragged us down or held us silent in our fears.

We all deserve to love and be loved.

And that’s where programs like Choices come in.

Choices is not a cure-all or magic potion to drink that will fix everything. It’s just a beautifully constructed program with some very well-defined and effective processes that gently and lovingly create space for each person to look inside and heal the broken spaces where the light has been distorted. And in the healing of those broken places, learn to live in the wonder and beauty of who they are when Love can get in to outshine their fear they’ll never be enough.

So many times we think we have all the answers to who we are.

What I’ve learned at Choices is I will never know all of who I am because all of who I am is greater than my fears and wildest dreams. When I let go of the fears that hold me back from being all of who I want to be in a world of love and joy, anything is possible. When I risk letting go of the protective walls and shields I’ve built around me and my heart, I free myself from the habitual behaviours and responses I’ve  adopted to keep my heart from getting hurt and my dreams from getting shattered. And in that freedom, life happens, miracles unfold.

Because, once I tear down the walls around my heart, the world is a wondrous place where my light shines brightly in the freedom of being all I am when I no longer walk in fear that my past is my future and all I’ll ever know.

When I let go of measuring each step by the length of the shadow of yesterday, I am free to walk in the light of today becoming all I ever dreamed my life would be.

Namaste.

What we cannot feel, we cannot heal

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Art Journal Louise Gallagher

Art Journal
Louise Gallagher

A thought to carry you into the rest of the week comes from a piece my beautiful friend, Kerry Parsons, shared in a Facebook group we belong to.

‘What we cannot feel, we cannot heal’…is a powerful call in Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change…

“Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.”

Choosing to allow our hearts to be broken open…drops us to our knees and there in the suffering love enters and, one more time, we rise. We, women empowered by the potency of love, together…do what must be done. (Kerry Parsons)

There is so much in this world that must be done to ease the suffering, end the misery, turn the tides of war and close the gates on hatred so we can open our hearts to love and love alone.

There is much to be done.

To do it, we must open our hearts and minds and allow in the truth of what we are doing to one another, to our planet, to our world. We must allow the truth of what we are doing to drop us to our knees, to break us wide open to one another so that our hearts connect and we become the love flowing all around us, joining us as one.

Connected, we rise. Connected we are strong. Connected we are One Love.

*********************

I am off to coach at Choices and  leave you with some music to start your day (and end your week) from a young man who made a difference my life, Jesse James Cameron formerly of Makeshift Innocence who supported the making of Stand by Me with the musicians and artists of the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre and who shared his story so beautifully.

Namaste.

 

 

The Fall

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I fell yesterday. Literally. I fell. Hard.

On the ceramic tiles at the entry to our building downtown.

I had gone out for a breath of fresh air and on my way back in, forgot that when wet, the tiles are slippery. All of a sudden, where once I was standing, my feet slipped out from under me and Kabang! I was lying on my left side on the ground.

It hurt.

Body and ego.

I glanced around to make sure no one saw me, dusted myself off and struggled to my feet.

Whew! Nothing broken. Just a bunch of sore spots that would, I was pretty sure, turn to bruises.

But as the day progressed my body became stiffer and stiffer. My head hurt and my elbow ached. I wanted to come home but couldn’t. I had a 4:30 deadline I could not miss. I had to get it done. With 2 minutes to spare I hit the SEND button on my email and the document was gone.

I could leave.

I came home, told C.C. my tale of woe and crawled into bed. He pampered me and let me rest. Took Beaumont for a walk and played with him in the rain while I lay in bed feeling sorry for myself.

My critter mind wanted to get busy citing the litany of sins I’d committed to make this happen. “Of all the stupid…”  “You should have been more careful.” “You weren’t paying attention.”

I told him to take a hike.

He did, but not until sliding in his favourite, “It could have been worse…”

Yes. It could have been worse. But even that statement is a trigger to my critter mind’s desire to make me feel less than and be other than, in the moment.

It is what it is. A fall.

I did not break any bones. I got some bruises and this morning, before I take Beaumont to the Vet for his final round of shots, I’ll stop at the Chiropractor’s for a quick adjustment. My neck and left shoulder are stiff. My elbow and hip are bruised.

And that’s it.

end of story.

No matter how much my critter mind would like to make it into something else. Some catastrophe averted. Some “OMG! What if…” where I am left lying on the ground, broken and battered, with no help in sight. 

That’s it. I fell. I got up. I carried on. It wasn’t “my fault”. It wasn’t the Universe teaching me a lesson. It wasn’t some macabre whim of fate stepping in to trip me up. 

The ground beneath my feet was slippery. I slipped and fell.

And this morning, a new day is dawning. Daybreak has edged its way over the horizon to cast a new light upon the world. 

A new day is born.

I have a lot to do today and an evening meeting with a community association.

Tomorrow, I’m off to coach at Choices where hearts will break open and in their breaking open blood will flow freely and minds will expand and possibility of what is possible when love runs freely will awaken the spirits of all those who chose to take what Choices calls, “The Adventure of a Lifetime”.

In their hearts breaking open, anything is possible. A broken heart is an open heart and an open heart is a loving heart.

Yesterday I fell. Anything was possible. 

What’s real is, today I am grateful for all the possibilities of my day, for all the gifts of this morning, and all the opportunities I step into when I surrender my fear of falling and fall in Love.

It was just one of those nights…

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Rain fell. Sleep did not.

A restless night that eventually ended up in restless sleep.

And now, I’m running late.

Must run! Busy week ahead trying to cram a week’s worth of getting things done into two days – Wednesday I begin a week at Choices coaching.

May your day be blessed with moments that fall as gently as the rain, nurturing the garden of your heart.

And to accompany you on your day,  a beautiful song list I found on YouTube:  Top 10 Rain Songs of Jin Shi

The memory of trees

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Overpainting that became the underpainting. Sep 2, 2015

Overpainting that became the underpainting.
Sep 2, 2015

I had forgotten and in my forgetfulness did not realize how much I was missing, how much the lack of its presence was impacting my daily living.

And then, I stepped in front of the canvas. I stood and breathed and held myself in that space where time floats away and all that is left is the moment now, the moment of creation.

I had forgotten.

That moment where I become one with being present, one with the moment, one with the muse.

And then, I let go my fear and found myself in that place where in fear’s presence love flowed fearlessly into my being part of its flow.

And I remembered.

I remembered the joy, the bliss, the grace of letting go of fear and surrendering to the muse calling me to create.

The memory of trees are buried in the roots deep beneath our feet. September 9, 2015 Mixed Media Louise Gallagher

The memory of trees are buried in the roots deep beneath our feet.
September 9, 2015
Mixed Media
Louise Gallagher

And in my remembering, I fell.

Into the art of creating for the sheer joy of creating. For the utter bliss of being one with the paint flowing, the canvas calling, the brush strokes appearing effortlessly, fluidly, simply.

I fell

and became part of the flow

one with the muse

all in

in Love.

 

 

 

A Thursday Thought: Fear is the enemy of greatness.

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fear is the enemy of greatness copy

Fear is the enemy of greatness.

Love always conquers fear.

Love always.

The Road Less Travelled: Adventures in YYC

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IMG_7313

The city core is filled with quiet spaces that invite walkers by to pause, catch their breath and sit awhile. In the west end of downtown there’s Poetic Corner, a tiny oasis of zen-like space designed to give passers-by pause to contemplate the giant arachnid sculptures perched on the stone steps.

On 7th Avenue, there’s the park by the NOVA building, complete with meandering streams and streaming waterfalls.

Yesterday, while walking to a meeting in the late afternoon, I passed the park at the MacDougall Centre, the southern offices of the Premier and found myself entranced by the sounds of the tumbling waterfalls, the firs whispering in the breeze and the birds chirping in their branches. I’ve passed this park many times and never taken the time to discover it. I’ve always been on my way to somewhere, a meeting, a lunch date, back to the office. I’ve always had a reason to hurry by.

It is the nature of being at home in the city.

While sitting with a couple of girlfriends on Monday sharing lunch at a local pub, I glanced out the window beside us and spied a Magpie hopping along the roof of an SUV parked beside the building.

“Isn’t that interesting,” I commented to my friends. “I see that Magpie and my mind immediately started to discount its presence.”

Magpies are everywhere in Calgary. They squawk and taunt from tree tops and where ever else they’re perched. They hop along lawns, willing errant squirrels and other rodents to chase them. In the sunlight, their feathers glimmer with pearlescent hues of green and blue and aqua. But mostly they’re considered a nuisance.
What struck me as interesting though was how watching that bird on the rooftop immediately took me back in time to a vacation in New Zealand. We’d gone for a month’s ski trip only to discover the snow was awful. So instead, we toured about the south island. One day, sitting in a pub chatting with my then husband and some other friends we’d met along the way, I spied a Kia hopping along the roof of a vehicle parked outside.

I thought the bird was cute. His antics amusing.

He’s a nuisance, our friends said.

I laughed and went outside to take his photo.

It’s all in our perspective.

Sitting in that pub in New Zealand, everything looked fresh and new. Everything was interesting. Nothing looked like a nuisance.

Sitting in a pub in Calgary, I see the world through my eyes accustomed to the everyday. Magpies are nuisances. Parks I pass everyday are just that. Everyday spaces I don’t have time to explore.

ThIMG_7316anks to the awareness gained through my observations of that Magpie, I took the time yesterday to stay awhile in the park at MacDougall Centre. I walked beneath the firs, skipped across the blocks of concrete that cross the stream at the top of the waterfall and sat on a bench in the late afternoon sun soaking in the tranquility of my surroundings, even as the city traffic scurried by on the avenues bordering either side of the park.

I didn’t hear them.

I was immersed in the beauty and wonder of the space that surrounded and embraced me. The space I was inhabiting in that moment.

I still made my meeting on time. The difference was, I carried with me the tranquility of that moment in time, when I stopped to take the road less travelled and savoured the world around me.

Or, in the words that end Robert Frost’s iconic poem, The Road Not Taken,
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

We are Sheepadoodles

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We are The Sheepadoodles

We are The Sheepadoodles

The Sheepadoodle families got together yesterday for a play date. Six puppies, many owners and friends. Five of the puppies were from the same litter. One was from a litter born a week later. The mother, rather than being black and white was predominately black. The puppy, predominately black but with the cutest white nose ever.

It was hilarious.

We parents standing in a circle, chatting about our puppies while the puppies rolled about on the ground, chasing one another and acting like crazy fools as they leapt over fallen bodies, dove onto each other and wrestled.

When Beaumont and I arrived, four of the puppies were already in action. He tugged and pulled at his leash as we walked from the parking lot across the field towards them. I let him off his leash and he was gone. Like a bullet, heading into the lump of puppies sniffing and rolling about.

For the next hour he was deaf and blind to my presence. There was no calling him, though occasionally I did manage to grab hold of his harness, make him sit and take a breather.

There’s a lot to be learned from a tangle of puppies playing together.

At first, the puppies played in the grass at our feet. As they gained confidence, or perhaps gained independence and a sense of, ‘forget about obedience, I’m here to play, play, play,’ they moved away from us, running through the stand of trees to one side, running off through the long grasses on the other.

At first they played as a pack but then easily and naturally divided into twosomes, sometimes merging into threesomes and occasionally joining up as the pack for brief periods of time. It’s as if they intuitively knew, the pack was too much energy to handle all at once and kept dividing off.

We owners stood about and chatted like parents of two year olds at a birthday party.

How is your guy doing with training?

How’s her appetite?

Is she completely house trained?

What dog food are you feeding him?

Who’s your vet?

We stood and chatted and the puppies played and we laughed and laughed and laughed at their antics.

The puppies were mostly oblivious to us.

Deaf and dumb to our entreaties to slow down, come here, stop, sit, stay.

We can learn a lot from a pack of puppies playing.

Like, sometimes, its okay to be on top, but you gotta give everyone a chance.

When someone is feeling alone and outcast, don’t hesitate, go over and nip them on the ear to let them know you want them involved in the game. They’ll always listen.

Don’t be shy about joining in. There’s enough play for everyone.

And, share.

If there’s a water dish full of water and you’re all thirsty, who cares if every head is in the bowl? Sharing is all part of the fun.

Life is about sharing in the tough times and the good. Yesterday, we shared in the joy of six puppies playing and the camaraderie that comes from the shared experience of their presence in our lives.

And always begin your day with laughter. Everything will look sunny and bright if you begin with laughter!

What a blast!

 

There is purpose in everything.

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Beaumont helping me write

         Beaumont’s purpose is to help me write

Over at Leading Essentially, my friend Ian Munro has been holding a conversation on living on purpose. He is intentional in his approach, organized in his thinking around the subject and has created a pyramid to depict what he describes as the Four Levels of Living Purposefully.

In his post on Saturday, Four Levels Of Living Purposefully, Ian describes Level 1, Perform tasks, as that place of our to-do-lists. Getting things done.

Level 2, Self-awareness, is about being conscious of the demands on our time, internally and externally, and making conscious choices that support our sense of purpose in the world.

Before we can manifest our purpose in Level 3, Embracing purpose, Ian says we must take the inner journey to truly feel it, breathe it, know it so completely that its pull is ever present in everything we do.

The fun begins in Level 4, Engage. The ability to live and work in a way that is completely fulfilling to us.

I love how Ian is so clear on living purpose. In his post, he cautions that living through the four stages can be cyclical. We’re not on purpose at all times, and we’re not clear on how our purpose is being manifested at all times. We move back and forth through the stages.

For example, yesterday I cleaned my office at home. The inspiration to get rid of clutter and excess paper came from next weekends neighbourhood clean-up — deliver your junk and unwantables and give-aways to the community centre on Saturday and they will haul it away. How perfect is that? And what a great reason to get busy getting rid of things we don’t need.

Now, cleaning my office doesn’t sound like it’s very on purpose. It’s more a Level 1, perform tasks kind of thing.

But, there is a deeper reason for doing it, a heart-calling, purpose driven motivation.

I don’t work well in cluttered space. I know. I know. I can hear my sister Jackie spluttering into her coffee as she reads that and I can see my daughters rolling on the floor, laughing out loud right now.

I am known for my clutter. And it’s true. I love the ‘Zen’ look, I just don’t create it very well!

Regardless of my comfy environment-seeking soul, I like to work in tidy. I think more clearly, create more freely when my senses are not constantly bombarded by clutter flowing all over my desk and in the room around me.

And my office was cluttered. Very cluttered.

So I cleaned.

At the time, I wasn’t creating a difference in the world, or living on purpose, or so I thought, until this morning when I read this quote from 18th Century educator, Horace Mann, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

And I rethought my cleaning yesterday.

What if, cleaning my office was necessary to get clean on something I’ve been niggling away at but never completed? What if, to clear my mind and make space for my creative writing process to awaken, I needed to unclutter my writing space?

 

The book I have been sporadically working since leaving the homeless shelter where I worked 3 years ago, still calls. It still pulls me with its desire to be expressed.

It is part of my purpose “to touch hearts, open minds and set spirits free”.

As Ian says in his post, “We can’t actually live our purpose if we aren’t willing to do any work to make it happen.”

How we express ourselves in the world is a reflection of our understanding of living purposefully.

What is ‘the victory for humanity’ I want to win before I die?

That’s in my intention statement which follows my contract and purpose — “to create a world of peace, love, joy and harmony.”

“I am a trusting woman touching hearts, opening minds and setting spirits free to create a world of peace, love, joy and harmony.”

And I can’t do that if I’m not writing, not sharing my experiences and the lessons I learned about love and life and compassion and kindness working at a homeless shelter.

And I can’t express myself clearly if my work space isn’t clear.

So… it’s all about purpose, just expressed differently in everything I do.