• Glad Tidings

    • October 10, 2023 2:16 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    I have been putting off writing this letter for so long!

    At the beginning of each week, I write the letters “HJL” (short for “Healing Journey Letter”) on my to-do list. At the end of each week, I cross the letters off and re-write them on the page of the coming week.

    Talk about procrastination!

    But I am here now. And I have so much to tell you.

    After a month-long Spring book and retreat tour in BC/Yukon, I returned to Ontario having sold a good number of books, led two inspiring retreats (Being Enough and Soul Care) and connected wholeheartedly with family and friends.

    There were challenges along the way and I wrestled with a few angels and I was acutely aware of how privileged I am and what a fun adventure I was on.

    “How is this my life?” I asked myself one evening after a book talk, staring into a bank of towering trees on Bowen Island.

    While there, a woman who bought O My God sought me out to tell me she’d had a trauma flashback reading the part of the memoir where I describe the sexual assault I experienced as a child. In order to regulate her response, she had immediately taken herself into the woods to rage, cry and heal in the arms of Nature.

    “Thank you,” she said to me after sharing her experience. “Your story helped me to heal a little more.”

    As a person who has struggled with the need to succeed in order to feel worthy, I allowed myself to enjoy the kind of success that cannot be measured by book sales or profits.

    This woman’s life had been deeply touched by mine. My life, in turn, had been newly touched by hers. Nothing else mattered in that moment.

    When I got back to Ontario, I directed and acted in a play that I’d written for the first time in more than 10 years. My co-star was a man whose neurodivergence and acting talent inspired the short play, which we performed for the Port Hope Arts Festival. “This is my dream come true,” he said of the experience.

    Wow.

    In more recent days, I’ve been “chopping wood and carrying water”, working as a spiritual director, writing a novel, and doing my best to live a life of service.

    Port Hope has not had the floods and fires we are seeing elsewhere this summer, though the sudden, torrential rainfalls we’ve had feel unsettling. And it is painful knowing there are so many people who have been struck by disaster in Canada and around the world. I do my best to align myself with these fellow humans through spiritual practice.

    A few days ago, I stepped off a high stair onto uneven ground and my foot turned beneath me. I felt a crunch and went down, groaning and gasping with the pain. An X-ray showed a small, bone-chip fracture in the talus bone. Now, I am wearing an air boot and walking with a cane, hurray!

    Because I am a person who has also struggled with the need to control things, I immediately went looking for the spiritual significance of the injury. Forget about feeling this experience of powerlessness, I must understand it and figure it out.

    Here is what came:

    A meditation experience brought forth the idea that I had (yet again) taken on other people’s suffering to the point of injuring myself. (Ugh. Does anyone smell burning martyr?)

    A website about the mind-body connection gave me the wise (but pretty obvious) advice to PAY ATTENTION.

    A counsellor friend suggested I “Be Still and Know …”

    My boyfriend wondered if I was too busy (again) and needed to slow down (again).

    “How about you’re just clumsy?” one of my sisters said.

    After the incident, the perfectionist part of me was in a shame spiral. The wounded child within felt like she was being punished. I could feel myself going down, down, down into the black, squishy quagmire of self-pity and despair.

    What did I really need? A good cry.

    So I did that. I took the time to bawl my friggin’ eyes out.

    Guess what came next? Gratitude.

    Surprise!

    So often, when we allow ourselves to release the grief, the gift arises.

    What is the gift?

    In this case, for me, just getting to be here.

    I watch people die all the time where I work.

    My life will end one day.

    Being alive now, even with all of the crazy, heartbreaking madness in our world, is really something pretty incredible.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Keep G(r)o(w)ing

    • August 7, 2020 1:36 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    How are you doing? Really, how are you? My own emotions have been on a rollercoaster ride, mostly stabilized in the last week, but definitely up and down. When I am up, I wonder about you, how you’re feeling about the changes in your personal life and in the world, how you’re coping with it all.

    When I have these moments, when I wonder about you and if you’re okay, my own fear and anxiety decrease. Thinking of others is such a healing practice. So is caring for others. As the spiritual care worker in a long-term care facility, I am considered an ‘essential service’, and when I am with a resident, there is no thought of myself. The fearful, anxious thoughts disappear.

    Deep Presence brings relief.

    If you read the last Letter, you will remember my account of the Woodpecker, appearing at just the right moments in time to remind me that the Universe is as conscious of me as I am of It. Three days ago, I arrived back at the house after an endorphin-producing run to the rat-a-tat-tat of the Woodpecker. She was in the tree above our driveway and I stood and watched her hammer her head into the trunk at rapid-fire speed.

    Impeccable Timing brings relief.

    The above photograph of the snowdrops is evidence of a miracle, really, since the entire front garden of our house was dug up last fall to fix a leaky basement. All of the soil was removed, creating a 6-or-7-foot trench around the wall of the house. The dirt that had been removed was then dumped back in the trench to re-fill it. The result was a big, uneven pile of mud. Now, after a long winter, those snowdrops you see in the photo pushed up through the disturbed ground in the exact same spot as they always do, year-after-year. How?

    Life Finds a Way.

    In times of crisis, in times of despair, in times of great fear and crippling anxiety, I look to these experiences of Deep Presence, Impeccable Timing and the Unstoppable Life-Force Energy to keep me going and to keep me growing.

    And I think of you, and hope that you are accessing your own inner resources and outer practices to keep going and growing, one moment at a time.

    From the Fires of Love,

    Celia

    We’re Alive!

    • February 12, 2019 6:51 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    After retiring from showbiz a number of years ago and then weaning myself off the dubious pleasure of award shows, I recently found myself catching snippets of the 2019 Golden Globes while staying with some friends. The happy couple was ensconced in their den and I, busy with other things, would come and go from the room to chat with them while the stars of Hollywood made their speeches and showed off their formal duds on the TV.

    During one of my brief stop-ins to the den, Jeff Bridges was called to the stage to receive a lifetime achievement award. He was suitably humble and excited and after the requisite thank-yous to his agents and lawyers and colleagues and family, he shouted out his exuberance for life, waving his award in the air while saying, “We’re all alive, right here, right now, this is happening. We’re alive!” (You can jump right to 3:49 for that particular moment.)

    Bridge’s words came out so joyfully, in such an unaffected and sweetly, awkward manner, that my friends and I could not help but laugh. Who does that? This wasn’t an arm-waving celebration of personal victory (for many before him have done that little dance with their newly-acquired statue) but a celebration of our aliveness, the astonishing, undeniable reality of our Being.

    His jubilant affirmation reminded me of a spoken-word poem I’d written in the 90s, listing all the times I could have died and ending each account with the words, ‘I’m alive.’ One of the concluding stanzas goes like this:

    i was born
    i was given this gift
    this life overwhelming
    this blessing this hope
    i’m alive

    And the final stanza:

    we’re alive
    you’re alive
    i’m alive

    The poem remains my own hand-waving exclamation of childish wonder at the miracle of our inexplicable existence. Like Jeff Bridges, I am in total awe that This is Happening, right here, right now.

    And yet not too many of us are gleefully whooping about the mind-blowing fact of our actuality. Humans can go through hours, days, weeks, months and years utterly asleep to ourselves and the absolute mystery and phenomenon of It All.

    Not only that, many people feel that being alive is not a miracle to be celebrated but a sentence to endure. I know that feeling well and understand that it can be a quantum leap to get from ‘I’m done’ to being amazed by the fact that I am a breathing body with trillions of cells, held to the earth by a puzzling gravitational pull, traveling around the sun at unfathomable speeds in a universe that may or may not have had a beginning and may or may not have an end.

    But this is one way to make the leap: Be amazed.

    Be amazed by the breath. This constant companion, always there, coming in and going out of the body, whether I pay attention to it or not. There. It. Is.

    we’ve got lungs cleansing breath is the life force giver
    we’re alive

    Be amazed by the weather (even while you’re complaining about it). How does snow fall from a cloud? How does a lake freeze over? How does the sun warm the skin even in frigid temperatures?

    we’re rich without a penny
    we’re alive

    Be amazed by others. That person I’m judging has an entire story, a family history, a complex emotional life, common fears, desires and needs. That person is trying, just like I am and just like you are, to meet the challenges life brings.

    we’re alive

    Sometimes, when I’m riding on a bus or a train or sitting in an airplane, I will take a moment to open myself up to all of the people around me, imagining their individual lives, realizing that each of them has the same, full, rich complexity of human experience as I do. With this exercise, these easily-ignored strangers become my human family, fellow travelers on the Path of Life.

    And I am amazed.

    I provide spiritual care for dying people and being so close to death on a daily basis makes me cherish my aliveness. A dear friend of mine recently died in the middle of his own fantastic life and his sudden death now infuses my aliveness. Death is the unmentionable reality informing our lives. Let us all be amazed by that fact. And let us remember, as often as we can, that we are here, This is Happening. Right now. We’re alive!

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Become like a Child

    • September 28, 2015 3:02 am

    Yesterday I went for a bike ride to the seaside. It was a blue-sky day and the sun was giving off gorgeous heat. The wind was up and whenever I turned east I had to ride hard against it. I’m living near Dover, in the UK, and the coastline is made up of the famous White Cliffs, which jut out of the sea with magnificent sharpness, their top-edges carpeted with soft, green grass.

    As you come inland the topography continues to undulate making for hilly roads. I was beginning to get hot riding up and down the steep streets and I noticed my mind had jumped ahead to my arrival at the beach, my ride home and the refreshments I would have when I got back. My trip to the sea was over before it had begun. Everything in front of me now, the cheek-by-jowl housing typical of English towns, the leaves flashing silver as they danced in the breeze, the puffs of white cloud drifting over Dover Castle in the distance, was invisible. I was missing it all.

    The good news is this: I noticed.

    I actually became aware that I wasn’t where I was. I realized I was not in reality and had bought in to the fantasy in my head and been seduced by it. With this awareness I could change.

    Bringing myself back to the present I felt my body riding the bike. I remembered suddenly what it felt like to be a kid riding my bicycle on a hot summer day. Would I have been thinking about the future when I was seven years old? Maybe. More likely I would have been seeing the world around me, being with it as it happened.

    I passed a sleeping white cat curled up on a concrete block. It looked so warm and so content I could actually feel its interior pleasure. If a cat is allowed to curl up and sleep away the afternoon why aren’t we, too?

    I rode on, feeling the breath in my lungs and my heart working hard as pedaled. I sensed the wind kissing my face cooling the sweat on my forehead. I heard the rocks pop under the tires as I neared the the sea.

    The beach was empty save for two young fisherman and a couple playing in the waves. I found my spot and parked the bike marveling at the way the sun was hitting the cliffs making them glimmer the brightest white imaginable. I lay down and curled up like a cat. Deep rest. Body settling into smooth stones heated warm from the late-summer day. Diamonds on the water. France at the other side. Whispers of prayer to give thanks.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: When I realize that I have engaged with my thoughts so as to disappear from the reality before me I will remember what it feels like to be a child and experience the wonder of my existence as it unfolds.

    Pray Tell

    • January 27, 2011 9:35 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Tired? Grumpy? Lethargic? Despairing? Anxious? Overwhelmed? All of the above? You’re not alone. On any given day I can experience any number of these fear symptoms. Lately, my number one solution has been simply to pray.

    Get quiet, ask for Direction, listen. All of these actions constitute prayer and with them comes the exquisite sensation of simply dwelling in the Presence of God.

    I heard someone recently say that for her God was a person. That works for her so that’s great. For me, God is not a person. God is the Spirit of Unity Back of All Things. God is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, the Condition of Possibility of any entity whatsoever.

    Neither of those definitions are mine, by the way. They came to me and I grabbed on to them. They make sense to me. They back up my experience. And that is how I have come to know this God. Through experience. Not because someone told me what to believe. The experience of this Power is why I have I faith in its existence.

    But despite my faith I am still self-reliant. And my self-reliance causes me to suffer. I overwork, I future-trip, I judge, I worry, I sabotage myself. I operate on Old BS (belief systems) instead of trusting Higher Guidance. And then I end up in chaos of one kind or another, whether it’s just a wee little bit or full-blown doesn’t matter. I still find myself there. Sigh.

    It is at these times of inner crisis that I remember to pray. Not just pray like I do everyday, sorta kinda doing it because I gotta. But praying deeply. Taking the time to BE. Be with God. Not wonder, not question, not say a few deferential words. But connect. Rest. Dwell in the Great Presence.

    When I embrace the Sacred I am so embraced. The Divine enters and fear disappears. I remember who I am.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Today I will take time to pray deeply. Shedding all thoughts but One.

    Six…

    • September 15, 2010 9:41 am

    Dearest Readers,

    What was the happiest moment of your life?

    An easy question to answer? Not for me. The question was put to me this morning and I found myself thinking back to one of my favourite comic strips in which Charlie Brown asks Lucy to to name one thing she likes about him and she says something along the lines of, “Wow. Gee. That’s a stumper. That’s a real poser all right. That’s a puzzle. That’s a real tough one…”

    She uses just about every synonym for “difficult question” that there is. I could find lots of things I like about poor good old, wishy washy Charlie Brown but I happen to feel the same way Lucy does about the question “What was the happiest moment of your life?” I can certainly think of lots of happy moments but the happiest? The pinnacle moment, the moment that surpasses all other things? That one really is a stumper.

    When I got accepted into the National Theatre School of Canada I was pretty happy. I’d been rejected twice before and I’ll never forget the phone call that came saying, “You’re in.” I was ecstatic. But could I call it the happiest moment of my life? I don’t know.

    Then there was the phone call asking me to write a play for the Stratford Festival of Canada. Again, I was over the moon. But I’m not sure the moment deserves the title of “happiest”.

    I’ve heard a number of women describe the birth of their first child as the happiest moment. I could certainly see that being true but I don’t happen to have a kid. I got to witness the birth of my older sister’s first baby this year and no doubt it will top her happiest list. I was extremely happy for her but it wasn’t the happiest moment of my life.

    If I took the time I could probably create a list of the happiest moments. There have been lots of them. Falling in love, receiving certain kinds of recognition, getting off the booze and the dope, climbing mountains, performing on stage, helping other people on the Healing Path. All moments, all happy. But the happiest? Like I said, this one is a true puzzler.

    Maybe my resistance is coming from a place of cynicism. What followed all of these happy moments was not necessarily all happiness. It was life. Challenges ensued. Lessons were learned. Growth took place. All of these elements didn’t take away from the happy moment itself but nevertheless preclude the “happiest” definition taking root.

    Perhaps I haven’t had my happiest moment yet. I like that idea. It’s kind of exciting to think that the happiest moment of my life hasn’t actually happened. Something to look forward to, yes?

    That Charlie Brown strip ended with Lucy walking off in the last panel with the synonyms for “impossible question to answer” trailing behind her. Picture me in the same way, still thinking, still wondering, still searching…

    Inspiring Message of the Day: To be happy means to be Present. When I am here, now, in my body, grounded in my life as it happens, there is no other happiness. What if the happiest moment of my life could occur over and over again throughout the day, each and every day because I am practicing True Presence? I will do my best to stay here today, in the happiness of Now.