• Do the Do

    • May 4, 2010 10:28 am

    Dearest Readers,

    As I negotiate the murky waters of grief made even more so by the distance between me and the dearly departed I find myself searching for things to help me connect to the loss. Is there a song on the iPod that will bring the tears? A poem? A movie?

    One of the most challenging things to do (at the best of times) is to stay present. I’ve got a couple of months of travel coming up at the beginning of June and it’s incredibly tempting to future-trip my way to departing, traveling and returning back home in fantastical avoidance of the Here and Now.

    “Life is a trip,” is what I’ve been saying lately in reference to all that can happen in a day or a week. I honestly don’t know how people do it, and by that I mean live, without a spiritual life. What sustains me, what keeps me going and fills me with hope and excitement and the willingness to keep moving forward is faith.

    Faith in the Power that makes the grass grow, the sun shine and the wind blow. Faith in the Abiding Presence of this Power in the minutiae of our daily lives. Faith in Love, that inexplicable Energy that springs forth majestically in even the darkest of situations.

    For me, this faith is not blind. It’s not hoping. It’s not wishing. It’s practical and it takes work. It’s practical because it makes me want to live fully and deeply, which is a heck of a lot better than wanting to die and I’ve been there done that. And it takes work because it requires prayer, meditation, demonstration and practice to bear fruit.

    This blog, as I’ve mentioned before, is part of this faithful work. When I woke up this morning I was heavy with the burden of facing another day. Not wishing to stay in that place and being aware, at least on some level, of the incredible abundance in my life (making gratitude practically mandatory), I set about doing the things I needed to do to shift my thinking.

    As I head toward completion of this post I have a lighter spirit, my energy is beginning to flow and I am feeling much more like do-ing the tasks at hand while be-ing in the present to do them.

    The shift began with willingness on my part. “Despite my fear I am willing to move forward.” From there I sought help from Higher Guidance. “Help me, take this day, show me. I’m small, I’m weak, I can’t do it alone.” Slowly but surely my energy has been restored, returning little by little as I do the next thing, take the next step, walk through the fear.

    The rain falls steadily but I can see the Sun behind the clouds.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Life’s a trip. An ever-unfolding adventure. When we forget this idea and it instead feels like a slog we can ask the Higher Power Back of All Things to support us and hold us up. It will carry us forward with steadfast Love.

    Working Out the Bugs

    • May 3, 2010 9:14 am

    Dearest Readers,

    When I was a child growing up in the Yukon the wilderness was my backyard. Even though our house was in a proper neighbourhood there was nothing behind it but bush and mountains. My sisters and I had a tree fort and when that got boring we’d venture further afield by climbing the clay cliffs, exploring the forests and running along the hidden backcountry trails.

    One of the telltale signs of spring in the Yukon is the crocus flower. With a hairy stem, purple petals and a yellow centre, this sturdy little soldier grows in clumps, pushing up from the ground in the most surprising places. “Haven’t seen any crocuses yet,” is an oft repeated remark by Yukoners around the end of April.

    I have a vivid memory from my childhood of sitting on the slope of the clay cliffs behind our house on a spring day surrounded by an explosion of purple blooms. I remember picking one and examining it closely, admiring its fragile beauty. Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered the flower was crawling with teeny, tiny black bugs. Shocked and repulsed I threw it away as though it had stung me.

    On a walk yesterday I saw the first crocuses of spring. A set of twins or triplets here, a clump of fifteen there, their lovely pale mauve and yellow faces shyly opening to the sun. I suddenly remembered the episode I just described and thought how apt a metaphor the story is for the duality of nature.

    In everything there is beauty and there is ugliness.

    Not that bugs are ugly for all you entomologists out there but humour me, will ya? The Duality of Nature: there is light and there is darkness, there is life and there is death.

    As some of you know I am grieving the loss of my friend Leanne Coppen and so, admittedly, I’ve got death on the brain. The Big Questions are swirling around in my head. The only answer that brings me any peace is this one: The Great Mystery.

    There are black bugs in the flowers. There is death in vibrant life. We must live fully every day knowing each side of the equation has its place in the Universe.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I will embrace the duality of Life to the best of my ability. I will accept that being fully human means allowing both darkness and Light to enrich my experience.

    Good-bye But Not Gone

    • April 29, 2010 9:41 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Yesterday I received a message announcing that my friend, Leanne Coppen, has died. She was living with cancer and fighting it with every cell in her body. Her blog, Living with Breast Cancer, often stood in for the Inspiring Message of the Day on this blog. She was full of hope and irreverent humour and inspired many, many people with her words.

    Leanne and I went to high school together. At 16, Leanne could best be described as a hippie love chick. She had long hair, wore baggy sweaters and long pendants and her wrists and fingers were covered in bracelets and rings. She liked to smoke dope and talk about peace and love and so did I. We were good friends.

    Leanne and I had many conversations about what we perceived as the f’d up state of the world and how Peace and Love were the only solutions possible. Once, we got into a deep discussion about currency. Why were there different currencies, we wondered? It’s One Planet, One People. There should be One Global Currency, we decided. “A dollar is a dollar,” we reasoned.

    This became a mantra for all that we believed: A dollar is a dollar!

    Leanne and I got our first tattoo together. She got a Sun on her lower abdomen and I just couldn’t decide what to get. We sat in the tattoo parlour poring over pictures. She asked me questions, trying to help me figure out what I was looking for. I saw one of her pendants, hanging on a long chain from her neck. It was a Peace Dove. “That’s it,” I said. “This?” she asked, holding it up. We then held each others’ hands through the pain of the tattoo needle.

    Today, that Peace Dove, faded now, 22 years old, feels like Leanne on my shoulder.

    One other memory stands out among many. I arrived at a party where Leanne was already waiting with a male friend of hers I had not met before. Upon my arrival, he looked at Leanne and said, “Yup.” Later, when he was out of the room she said, “Before you got here I was telling him about you. He asked if you were pretty or beautiful. I said, “Beautiful.” That’s what his ‘yup’ was in response to.”

    Leanne, who was stunningly gorgeous and whose beauty both made me jealous and inspired me, thought I was beautiful! This was a defining moment in the Celia McBride self-esteem books, lemme tellya.

    Once, my beloved friend Eden, who was and still is Leanne’s best friend, said, in the typical stoner language of the day (well, we were stoned a lot of the time!), “Where did Celia man go?” Forever after I was Celia Mango to Leanne and Eden.

    Last fall, Leanne and I re-connected. We had stayed in touch over the years and had seen each other probably every five years or so and it had been about that since the last time we’d got together. I emailed her to see if we could have a visit because I would be in Toronto. She emailed me back. “Celia Mango! How completely fantastic to hear from you!”

    How I cherish those words now.

    Leanne, you still feel really present. I’ve been talking with you since yesterday. Remembering, sharing, celebrating your life. Leanne, dearest, you introduced me to Goethe and you wrote as deeply as he did. Your words will be remembered, monuments will be erected in your name. Your legacy has only just begun. Believe it.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: O Death. You take the body but not the Life. Sadness, grief, loss. All real, all necessary. But beyond those feelings is the Everlasting Spirit, the Indweller of all Beings, the Great Reality: Peace and Love. Therein lies our comfort.