Before we can find our Self.

There are early morning sounds in the street below me. I have just returned upstairs from the first day at my ‘nano’ office. It is a display window in the lane that runs between Cumberland and Yorkville in the trendy heart of Toronto. I used green painters’ tape to fix a piece of paper with the word INSPIRATION in orange lettering on the back wall. I also placed three smooth stones – two black and one white – on the floor and traced the word again in the dirt and footprints of the last ‘tenant’.

Why did I do that? I’m not entirely sure. Its the first gesture of a new beginning.

It’s my birthday today. And it seems as good a day as any to ask myself such questions. The window will emerge from this one word to eventually display vibrant and joyful works of art by painters I know, respect, love, and admire. They are friends of mine and over the next year we will make the world more beautiful through works of art and more inspired through labours of love. Right here in the middle of the city.

I have not only surprised myself, but I have dumbfounded most of my friends.

Here’s another question: “What the heck am I doing here?” I have not only surprised myself, but I have dumbfounded most of my friends who would have thought they knew me well. Being here, now, was beyond anyone’s expectation a few short months ago. This time last year I was likely sitting on my back deck with a creamy cup of coffee loving how the early morning sun glimpsed through the trees. Read more…

Last night I watched Bill Maher’s show. Other than the ‘out there’ HBO license for language I find his take on things incisive and he brings a necessary attention to much we might otherwise be complacent about. One of the panelists quite succinctly said that until we get over our addiction to oil and gas the drilling and risk will go on. Another panelist opined that the answer to our energy concerns was not going to be found down any hole – but by looking up to the sun and the wind.

From the perspective of holism, what we do for ourselves we do for all. We cannot point any fingers or place blame until we look to ourselves to see how we support the very activity we love to hate.

Here is a great article that I received today. Timely message. Check it out!

I won’t have a backyard in my new home – but I will be in walking distance to most all that I need. I’m looking forward to that.

It is the many small acts that each of us can do with ease and simplicity – once we are conscious – that add up to a solution.  Can you or I stop the leak?  No, but we can curb the demand by reducing the use of fossil fuels and force change by demanding alternative energy sources.  Think about what you can do today.

Cheers!

How dark is it inside a cow’s stomach?

When I was little we summered at the cottage – a log cabin on top of a granite rock. When we would come home late in the evening from some event we would feel our way up the sloping granite, one footfall at a time, following the bouncing beam of a flashlight.

The whip-poor-wills and crickets would be raucous and the stars sparkling overhead. I would cling to my dad’s hand and he would declare: “It’s as dark as the inside of a cow’s stomach!” I used to think that was a riot – but I don’t just now.

It’s a quarter to three in the morning. Son #2 is watching Chinatown – his dad’s all time favourite movie. Son #1 is making ginger and lemon tea to soothe his strep throat. Last night they auditioned for a record label and will soon fulfill their heart’s desire as musicians. They are on their way. In exactly one month from now we won’t be chatting in the kitchen in the middle of the night – we won’t be here at all. Where we will be has yet to be determined.

Read more…

The Intrinsic Nature of Business

What do free range chickens, Jack Russell terriers and the colour beige have to do with the intrinsic nature of business? Well, this: Every aspect and particle of the universe – animal, mineral,or vegetable – even man made – has a nature of its own – characteristics of behaviour.

This morning, pre-coffee, my Sweetheart and I were talking about the move to the new house. We got kidding about how the stand-alone screened room would make an excellent chicken coop and we could create our fortune breeding free range chicks. I told S that we used to have free range chickens – Rhode Island Reds – the whole wheat of chickens, if you will, on our farm when we first moved to King City. The problem with free range is that weasels are also free range and it is their nature to ‘ferret’ out chickens and tear their little throats out. Read more…

From here I can see forever.

Ever see the truck commercial where the vehicle is sitting at the tippy top of a rock overlooking the entire Painted Desert with red rock buttes reaching the 360° horizon? Did you wonder what it might be like to be at the top of your world and have a panorama of possibility? Read more…

THE LAW OF GARBAGE!

In the middle of the night when I am wont to wake, I sometimes surface with those trailing tendrils of prophetic dreams. Last night, the dream was about searching for a job of a certain description. I was using search terms similar to those I had used a year before and found that the jobs that came up were the same as the previous year. Not only that, they seemed to have a similar feeling of negativity. Curious. Read more…

And the Great Rubber Band Remedy!

Do you remember the I Love Lucy episode when she and Ethel get a job in the chocolate factory? At first they are keeping up with the conveyor belt and then as it gets faster, they miss a few, pocket a few and then end up shoving handfuls of chocolates into their mouths until they are sick.

Well, it might be okay at the outset to make a bit of lemonade when life hands you lemons, but in the long run all you end up with is a sticky mess that doesn’t quench your thirst. Another thing that happens is that as your boat floats off course on a sweet and yellow sea you are so busy with processing lemons that you take your eye off the horizon – your goal – while your charts blur. Read more…

Do you know the way back to peace, beauty, health, and happiness?

Today is Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday which is the day before Good Friday when Jesus made the symbolic gesture of washing the feet of his disciples. Tomorrow commemorates the day that He was arrested, tried and nailed to the cross. On Sunday – millions around the world will celebrate the ascension. When I ‘googled’ Maundy Thursday there was a litany (forgive the pun) on which Christian denomination named the day, what. Where the root derived through the cultural shifts of history and which nation said it first – and for goodness sake, what calendar you might be following. And here you go – getting distracted by the detail. Read more…

Holding on to stuff we should be letting go makes it tougher!

For those of us who have enjoyed the cumulative freedom of catharses (plural) will know that it is like going through a very tiny knothole into the meadow of an actualized life. Hmmm kinda like a birth. Nature is rich with metaphor if only we could grasp it while we are in labour giving birth to our whole Selves! First there is the messy work – oh gawd. And then there is the sweet smelling frilly part. Smiles. The integration. The ‘ah ha!’ moment. You kind of get it and then over the passing days and months you find yourself living life just a little differently. More centred. More trusting of yourself. Expressing more of yourself from a deeper part of your heart. What you ‘got’ at the emerging from the knothole was only the beginning. Read more…