Wonderpot Wonderment

   My friend has a wonderpot.  It is a cast iron Dutch oven with a wire handle that can be put on an open fire.  He loves to invite friends over for a wonderpot meal.  He starts by sautéing onions and perhaps adding some sausage for flavour.  I like to go to a farmer’s market before one of these meals and buy vegetables in season if possible.  Carrots, orange, yellow and purple, peppers, red and orange, tomatoes, green beans, kale, squash of all kinds, fresh from the earth are beautiful.  Once I found a parsley root as big as a parsnip to put in. The vendor taught me how to prepare it.

  The rest of the meal is potluck and the guests bring something for the pot.  You never know what might appear – a handful of Swiss chard from the garden, carrots, more sausage, even apples.  The pot gets fuller and fuller and it bubbles away creating what we have come to call “wonderment”.  One friend brought bannock as well.  We cooked the dough wrapped around sticks over the coals as we waited for the wonderpot to do its magic.  The smells of cooking vegetables and bread in the cool fall air were wonderful.

   I love to grow vegetables and I lived on a farm for over twenty years.  Now that I have moved to town, I comfort myself by buying food directly from people who grow or raise it whenever possible.  Some women love to buy shoes.  I love to buy fruit and vegetables – it makes me happy.

   I found a store near my new home on a local farm where you can also pick your own strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.  They have figured out how to make buying local very easy.  I can get local milk, eggs and whatever food is in season on the farm.  It makes me feel connected to the earth and farms and that also makes me happy.  I love the enthusiasm the vendors have for their products, be they bread, sausage, fruit, vegetables or cheese.  I have found that I appreciate the food more as well.  I don’t let it go to waste and I enjoy eating it more.  I don’t know if it is more healthy or not, but it helps me to feel connected.  And did I mention, it makes me happy?

   A few weeks ago in November, we were at a farmer’s market in Midland, ON.  I bought some potatoes which actually tasted like potatoes, the end of the season’s kale, some garlic and some feta made from sheep’s milk.  I used to have sheep and I used to milk them and make cheese, so it was really exciting to find a man who makes cheese from local sheep’s milk. We had a long chat about the virtues of sheep milk. I took my treasures home and like one of those cooking shows, figured out what to make.  I sautéed the kale with the garlic, steamed the cut up potatoes and when they were cooked, combined them with sheep’s feta that made a lovely creamy cheese sauce.  I don’t know if it actually tasted wonderful or if I felt nourished by all the different farmers that I had chatted with as I shopped and that made me pay attention to the flavours.  It doesn’t really matter.  The important thing is that I felt nourished physically and emotionally and I felt connected to the wider world and the earth.  That’s got to be good for me!

   Earlier in the fall we went to buy cranberries near Bala, ON where there are two major bogs.  We decided to go to the Iroquois Cranberry Growers on the Wahta Mohawk Territory (iroquoiscranberries.com).  They have 68 acres under cultivation and can produce up to one and a half million pounds of cranberries annually.  There is a store near the bog where they sell all manner of cranberry products such as fresh, frozen and dried cranberries, tea, soap, candy, preserves and juice.  I decided to get Christmas presents while I was there and I chose a cranberry cookbook.  The friendly woman at the cash told me proudly that it was a community cookbook from Wahta and that her recipe was in there as well.  I asked her to show me which one it was and she happily found the pumpkin cranberry muffin recipe.  I was looking for a pumpkin recipe to make with my grandson after we carved the Hallowe’en pumpkin so I was thrilled to now have one.  The following week he and I made the muffins and I told him the story of the recipe.  He declared the finished muffins a success.  They did taste really good and I felt great about the pumpkins I had bought at a farm gate stand and the cranberries from the Iroquois Growers and the connection I felt with the woman in the store.

   Buying locally grown food and eating seasonally is good for lots of big picture reasons such as a smaller carbon footprint and better quality.  It’s not possible to get everything this way and I still shop at the local supermarket as well.  But I find it is much harder to feel connected with that food and much easier to take it for granted.  Even if we only buy some of our food locally and eat seasonally some of the time, we are supporting people who are passionate about the food they grow and raise. The producers can only produce what we will buy.  We may not get the cheapest price but then again I waste less, eat it more mindfully and don’t buy junk food there so perhaps it is cheaper.

   Like the last story of the open door, when I purchase food from these hard working, enthusiastic people they are happy and by now you know that I am happy and maybe you are remembering a similar experience in your life that made you happy.  We are nurturing our bodies, our minds and our communities and remembering how we are connected in this big wonderpot we call life.

This is the World I Want to Live in

My daughter shared with me this story of connection.  It takes place when a flight is delayed and is beautiful in its simplicity and hope.  She concludes, "this is the world I want to live in, a shared world."
Check it out!

https://www.facebook.com/berlinartparasites/photos/a.241035489279718.52064.199504240099510/903762776340316/?type=3

Opening Doors

   Ahead of me I could see the silhouette of a tall woman holding the door opened by leaning her back into it.  Through the open door I could see a very tiny old woman walking gingerly with a cane towards us along the glass walkway that joins the Toronto subway with Yorkdale shopping mall.  As I got to the open door I looked at the woman holding it open.  She was beaming.  She reminded me of Queen Latifa with a broad smile on her beautiful face.  I immediately beamed back a smile that naturally emerged from my face like a mirror of her own.

“You have a good day!” she exclaimed to the older woman who had finally made it through the open door and had replied in a tiny voice that I could barely hear.  “Well, we have to help each other,” the young woman declared.  Then she turned to her friend who had been waiting for her patiently. 

“You’re so sweet,” the friend said encouragingly.

“Well, I just love old people,” stated the young woman.  “They make me happy!”  The two women continued a conversation in this vein but I was walking faster and their voices receded into the distance.

   I remembered reading in a positive psychology text that when we help someone, the recipient of our help feels good, and we feel good and anyone watching the event also feels good.  We all make endorphins which are good for our mood and our health.

   I take that walk two or three times a week on my way to work just before 7 am. The walkway joins the bus station to the subway station.  In November most people on their way to work wear black and walk purposefully and somberly.  Occasionally someone will hold the door for the person behind them which lifts the heart for a moment.  Others appear oblivious to those around them, heads down and some nearly mow you down.

   But being witness to this outgoing young woman’s experience of love kept the smile on my face.  I am smiling again as I write this just picturing her face.  We get so used to being part of the crush, of being invisible and anonymous.  We forget what that does to our sense of well being.  There is much written about how this generation has forgotten how to relate to one another because of social media.  But I imagine this young woman makes a positive impression wherever she goes.  She has inspired me to be kinder today, to notice who is around me.  Perhaps I will inspire others as well.  That one act has created ripples that have gone out, I imagine, like sound waves or ripples from a stone dropped in a still pond.

   I shared this story with some of my clients that day to share the endorphins.  We got to talking about the Syrian refugees that will finally be allowed to come to Canada.  I remember my family helping Vietnamese boat people to come to Canada decades ago and how the family in Brampton that my family helped remained lifelong friends.  I suspect that welcoming this new group of displaced people will be good for all of us just as the simple act that I had witnessed that morning.  One of my clients remarked, “And what a beautiful metaphor – holding open the door to let someone come in!”  Wow!  I hadn’t thought of that connection at all but in sharing the story, it continued to expand.  That’s really what this blog is all about – sharing our new story.

   Humans helping one another is not new.  It has allowed us to populate the world, keep children alive and create social structures that protect us.  But in a stressed society that values independence and competition, such acts stand out as life giving, healthy and truly human.

   This week, I was speaking with my son who follows current events closely.  He explained one theory he had heard about the motivation behind the attacks which just occurred in Paris.  Some feel that the rationale for this is that these attacks motivate people to fear and hate Muslims which can lead to a backlash towards innocent Muslims.  This can lead to disenfranchisement in some youth which makes it easier to radicalize them.  In other words, the attacks create the social conditions that create new recruits for their cause.  “So,” my son reflected, “responding with hope and love is actually the most effective strategy to combat this strategy of hopelessness and hate.”

   Earlier that day while swimming before work I was reminded of the shooting that occurred in an African American church in the US earlier this year.  I remember hearing the voice of one of the church members speaking about this on the radio.  “We have no room in our hearts for hate,” she said.  “We forgive you.”

   I see French flags flying from cars and flag poles, a sight I never expected to see in Ontario.  I see some Canadian politicians realizing that the Syrian refugees are fleeing from the same kind of violence, and are not the perpetrators of it.  I see journalists going back to Beirut where a similar event happened which didn’t get onto our radar.  I see citizens of Peterborough helping to fund the repair of a mosque that was damaged by those who bought into the message of hate.  I hear about a Syrian film festival at the Art Gallery of Ontario to help people understand and appreciate that culture. I read an email about an imam being invited to speak at the Midland Cultural Centre to explain Islam to people and to decry violence in its name.  Those who listened then donated money to bring a Syrian family to that town.  I read about the hacker group Anonymous disabling the Twitter accounts that are used to recruit young people to ISIS.  I see the picture of a young couple who have donated their wedding money to bring a Syrian family to Toronto in an effort to counteract the act of hate towards the young Muslim woman who was attacked in the same city.  And I hear my son’s voice telling me that the most effective strategy is love.  “There is no us and them,” he concludes.  

   There are so many more of us who want to get along, who want to cooperate, who want to hold open doors for each other. Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning defined evil as good people doing nothing.  At this time it seems vital to me that all the "good people" need to express our care for the global family in whatever way emerges for us.  The door of the new paradigm is wide open.  We just need to step through.

New Navigation

   A birch bark basket caught my friend’s eye as we wandered around the Canada Day displays in Midland, Ontario last July.  As we got closer we could see that it was part of a display for Sainte Marie Among the Hurons, a local historical recreation of the fortified mission built by French Jesuits  brought by Samuel de Champlain in the early seventeen century.

(www.saintemarieamongthehurons.on.ca). The display table was covered with the furs of various animals and two bear skulls which I began to photograph. I could hear my friend telling the historical interpreter that we had been learning the Ojibwe words for some of these animals.  I had just finished reading Armand Garnet Ruffo’s book Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird where I learned some of the original words for animals that we see from our canoe.

   It was at this point that I turned to look at the young man who was wearing some of the pelts as well.  He pointed to one on his belt and said “this is otter, nigig.  I wear it because it’s my totem.”  I asked him the name for wolf. “Ma’iingan.”  We knew that beaver is “amik”.  Bear he said, pointing to the skull,“mukwa.” 

“What is deer?”  I asked. 

“I don’t know.  I need to learn more of my language.”

He had a pelt on a strap across his chest which I thought was a weasel.  “No,” he said, “red squirrel.”  He explained that one of the first chiefs that Champlain met gave him the gift of a coat made of red squirrel which is very soft and would have had great value.

   After our conversation he went to the inside of the booth to get something for us.  He handed us both a souvenir astrolabe key chain to celebrate the 400^th anniversary of Champlain’s arrival in Canada.  I thanked him for the gift and mumbled something about Champlain’s arrival being a mixed blessing, smiled and said goodbye.

   The tiny astrolabe weighed heavily in my pocket.  We had read Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda the previous winter about the Wendat (Huron) people who once lived on this land but had been virtually wiped out after the Europeans came.  We had visited Ste. Marie to learn more and found references to other missions which we hunted out and found.  Some were marked by National monuments, some cairns, and some signs painted by the side of the road.  We sadly imagined the events that had happened on this land that was once Wendake.  This year brought the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report on the horrors of the residential schools which took seven generations of indigenous children away.  It also brought stories of more than 1200 missing and murdered aboriginal women.  

   And now, here was this astrolabe.  I learned that astrolabes are instruments used to measure the altitude of stars and the sun to calculate latitude.  They were used from classical times to later in the seventeenth century to navigate.  A little card in the souvenir package declared, “guided by his dream and his Astrolabe, Champlain laid the foundation of the New World… The Astrolabe… thus became a symbol of the New World and possible dreams.” 

   And look where that dream and astrolabe have taken us; cultural genocide, the end of the Wendat people in Ontario, missing and murdered  women, and children who died or were forever scarred in residential schools.  Champlain’s dream whatever that was became a nightmare for the people for whom this world was not new.

   I did some more research and it seems from what I found that the astrolabe in the museum is probably not even Champlain’s.  It was found in a farmer’s field in the later 1800’s when Champlain was becoming famous and was assumed to be his.  Closer examination of the facts, including that it was found with silver cups, bronze plates and an insignia suggest that it probably belonged to a Jesuit instead.  But Ottawa’s Museum of Civilization paid a lot of money for it even though the evidence of its owner was thin, and it is now lending it to Ste. Marie Among the Hurons for the big Rendezvous Champlain celebration. The keychain replica is meant to advertise this.  They say that history is written by the conquerors.  This little astrolabe is a new spin on a bad story.  What are we celebrating?  What are we re-enacting?  Why spin Champlain into a hero?  If we need heroes, let’s look in the direction of people who have not been assimilated even after all this time, who survive and find ways to heal and forgive.

   It is clear that our old ways of navigating are not working for many of us.  We need new dreams.  We need to dream them together.  We need to dream reconciliation, healing, harmony.  An astrolabe won’t get us there.  A GPS won’t help us to find our way.  But together we can create new dreams and new navigational tools. 

   We have newer tools like social media that help in spreading the word and creating movements.  We have old tools like respect and wisdom.  Healing is up to all of us.  We all have a part to play.  It starts with intent – to be part of the solution not part of the problem.  Then opportunities will appear and we can just step into them, not knowing our way – how could we?  We’ve never been there before

   I took the tiny astrolabe and wove a crow feather I had found into the chain.  I hung it from my rear view mirror in my car -- a symbol of the past, the rear view.  Later I found a trumpeter swan feather and as I added it, it would only stick out sideways, a change of direction.  As I drive it spins in the wind, a constant reminder of our new navigation helping us to find our way forward together.

Turtle Woman Listens to Village Voices

   I heard the subway train rattle into the station as I was still walking up the escalator.  The people in front of me sped up and I followed running along the platform to the last car.  I knew I could make it as I had many times before.  Suddenly I was flat on my back lying beside the open train door.  Confused, I recalled feeling my left foot wipe out as my smooth flip flop hit some water.  I had landed on the huge green back pack that I carry, full of linens for my work, so my back and head were fine but my right elbow was really hurting.  I lay there like some kind of turtle woman who had flipped onto her soft shell and couldn’t get righted.

    In the strange extended time of an accident when our brain actually speeds up so we can take in more information, I looked around me, marvelling at this strange perspective.  The open subway train doors formed a large white rectangle.  There were yellow stripes on a diagonal and something fluorescent green.  Through the distorted view of my progressive lens I saw shapes moving towards me, kind of blurred streams of light which I translated as people running to help me.  Suddenly I was on my feet and walking onto the subway car saying that I was fine.  I have no memory of who helped me but I assume someone did because I wouldn’t have been able to get up with that heavy back pack and a hurt elbow without assistance.

I walked quickly to the nearest seat, not wanting to hold the train up any longer.  I sat down to assess the damage.  My elbow really hurt now but I didn’t think it was broken.  At any rate, there were no bones protruding through the skin.  Across the aisle from me was a man lounging sideways on two seats.  “You’re rushing!” he declared in a slow Jamaican accent.  “Everybody’s ruuushing,” he drawled.  “Too much in a hurry.”  I smiled back.  “It was the flip flops,” I explained.  “No,” he said.  “You were rushing.  You shouldn’t rush.” 

“So much for sympathy,” I thought.

   By now the subway operator had closed the doors and the train was in motion.  He walked down the subway car towards me.  He leaned over and in a clipped South Asian accent asked, “Are you alright?  Are you in need of assistance madam?”

“No, I’m fine,” I said, not wanting to cause any further problems.

“You don’t need any help?”

“No, I’m fine,” I lied.

“She was rushing.  Too much rushing,” came the voice from across the aisle. 

I chuckled at the cross cultural triangle the three of us formed which is one of the few things I do like about being in Toronto. Three different worldviews, two genders, one city.

   At the end of the day I took the subway back to the bus station.  I did not rush as I felt tired and hurt.  As I walked from the subway over the covered walkway to the bus terminal I could hear the strains of a jazz sax being played by a busker.  As I got to the top of the stairs I saw the man sitting on a stool playing.  He took the sax from his lips and sang, “The sky may be grey but it’s a beautiful day.”  It was true.  The November sky was grey and overcast and my mood was grey.  Maybe it was a beautiful day.  I wasn’t feeling it though.  I thought I detected a Caribbean accent in his singing voice and got the feeling that there something to be learned in all of this.

   The next morning, I was back at the subway.  This time in boots.  This time being careful.  I walked up the escalator and carefully made my way down the platform that was strangely crowded for that time of day.  An announcement came over the system that the train was turning back at St. Clair West and shuttle buses were being ordered due to serious signal problems.  A woman beside me asked, “What exactly does that mean?”  “I think it means we will have to get on a bus at St. Clair West,” I answered.  “I’m experimenting with different ways to get to work,” she replied.  “This is probably my fault!”  “Well, thank you for apologizing in advance,” I laughed.  The train pulled up and I carefully walked to it and got on.  The train crept ahead slowly, then stopped and started and sat, inching it’s way south to where I wanted to go. “Well,” I thought, “I certainly couldn’t be accused of rushing today.”  I read the paper and sat, closed my eyes, thought and waited.  How ironic to be held up in the tunnel the day after the warning not to rush.  Eventually a voice came over the train’s intercom with yet another Caribbean voice saying, “For those of you stuck here in this train, St. Clair West Station is blocked.”  No.  I was not rushing.  I was not even moving. In my head I figured out how to walk from St. Clair to my office on Dupont St.  Would I turn right or left from the station?  Was it still dark in the above ground world? Would it be safe to walk in the dark?  Would I have time to still get a coffee before my first client of the day?  I was sitting still, but my mind was racing.  I took some deep breaths and tried to be calm.

   I heard a train going past us in the tunnel in the opposite direction and then our train lurched into action.  We pulled into the St. Clair West station and I expected to hear instructions to get off the train because it was turning back.  But no such words came.  People were standing on the platform and when the doors opened they got on.  I asked one man just getting on if the train was turning back and he said not in this direction.  Another man and I exchanged looks.  Should we get off or stay on.  We both shrugged and then sat down.  I noticed the woman across from me was crossing her fingers and smiling.  The train moved out of the station in our desired direction.  The man and I started talking about what time we were to start work, how long it took to commute, getting coffee and then we came to my station.  It is always funny how people in the city will not even acknowledge each other until there is a problem and then we talk like neighbours.  I bid my subway neighbour a good day and got off the train.  I still had time for coffee.  The sky was still grey but it seemed like a good day.  I could hear the busker’s voice in my head. After all, I hadn’t fallen and my elbow was feeling a lot better.  I chuckled at all the voices that I had heard in the past two days.

   Two days later I was once again working in the city.  As I walked up the escalator to the subway platform I heard the train rumble in to the station.  I took a deep breath and decided not to run, even though I had sensible foot wear on.  I walked calmly and got to the train.  The subway operator had his head out of the window.  I looked to see if it was the man who I had met earlier in the week.  It was not.  This one looked Korean.  He had his whole upper body out the window and was taking in a deep breath of the crisp fall air as this station is above ground.  The woman ahead of me bid him good morning.  I calmly (and without incident) stepped onto the train and began walking down the centre aisle as the train moved out of the station.  Since I wasn’t hypoxic and was so intentionally calm, I looked around me and saw face after face “pop out” at me, with some kind of superclarity.  That had never happened to me before.  The faces of people from around the world popped into focus as I walked through the train.  The whole world lives in Toronto and it was a real feast for the eyes.  Each one seemed very beautiful somehow, even at this early hour.  Usually on the train, we learn to soft focus, to not make eye contact, to protect our “personal space”.  This week I had been helped by strangers, had been given good advice, had broken into conversation around the train stoppage and now I was seeing people in a kind of hyperlucid fashion. 

   At the end of the day I was once again crossing the walkway to the bus terminal when I heard a familiar jazz saxophone.  I don’t carry money in my pocket and I never stop to fish around in my wallet for coins for the buskers.  This time I stepped to the side of the sea of people and did just that.  As I passed the “beautiful day” busker I dropped a loonie into his sax case as thanks for all the experiences of the week that had taught me to slow down in a city that revs you up and to really see the faces and hear the voices of the world.  The impersonal city became a village once I paid attention.

Hidden Rainbows

   Low western sunlight shone through the windshield, and as the car turned a corner it beamed through a Canada Goose feather hanging from the sun visor.  Multiple tiny rainbows appeared and rippled across the feather as the car made the turn.  Amazing!  I took the feather down and angled it towards the sunshine trying to understand what I was seeing.  Repeating bands of the visible light spectrum glowed mysteriously.  Who knew that rainbows were hidden in feathers?

  

                                                       Sunshine through a swan feather

   The next day I tried a trumpeter swan feather against the sun and there again were the rainbows but brighter against the white barbs.  I researched this phenomenon and found that some feathers have convoluted air cavities that act as tiny light-scattering prisms. .Later that week my partner discovered an orb spider’s web illuminated by the setting sun.  Rainbow colours appeared on the various silk strands.  We tried to photograph it which was tricky because it all depended on the angle the camera was at.  I tried to photograph the rainbows in the feathers as well but the camera saw the event differently than I did.    

                               

                                         

                                                        Rainbow in spider`s web

  

   We began looking for hidden rainbows in unlikely spots.  Seeing the spectrum of visible light depends on light bending through water or air or transparent solid objects.  It depends on angles of light.  You have to be at just the right spot to see one.  You have to look at it in the right way.  A few inches off and it disappears.

   Yesterday, a friend gave me a girasol (around the sun) crystal.  If you look at a light through it, the fibers in the crystal create a halo affect around the point of light.  You have to move the crystal towards and away from the light to get this effect which is very beautiful.  I took it home and looked at all kinds of lights through it, happy and curious as a child.

   The way we look at things can determine what we see and how we see things.  The paradigm that we think and work in will affect how we see events and people.  After the recent Canadian federal election I heard a radio interviewer ask a guest if Prime Minister designate Justin Trudeau was a strong enough figure to lead the country.  After nearly ten years of a prime minister who controlled and micromanaged the country with a paternalistic “father knows best” attitude, we had become well used to the paradigm of hierarchy, competition and control being linked to this role.  It seemed to me that the question was being asked from this paradigm.  

    However, Trudeau seems to be working in the new paradigm of collaboration and cooperation.  The old prime minister rarely met with the premiers yet Trudeau is inviting all of them, Elizabeth May of the Green party and the other party leaders to come with him to the United Nations summit on climate change in Paris later this year.  He promises to have a cabinet with gender equality while the old prime minister reluctantly let only a few women into his.  In a CBC radio interview, Premier Kathleen Wynne of Ontario said that Trudeau will “dialogue” and “cooperate” vs a “lack of connection” with the previous PM.

   Perhaps this style or paradigm will look new to many Canadians. In the light of the old paradigm collaboration spells trouble and men who share power with women appear weak. It all depends how we look at it.  Collaboration allows many ideas that can inform each other to co-create new solutions. Gender equality offers new potentials that have not been explored yet.   If we look with new eyes, the light of the new paradigm shining through the old political institutions may reveal rainbows.