Begin with Light, Connection and Beauty

Here is an extremely beautiful video.

It was created by Enra,  a Japanese motion graphics performance group which mixes physical performance and complex digital graphics  This perforemance piece was published in 2013.

Nobuyuki Hanabusa founded Enra in 2012.  He "wanted to challenge different ways of expression and to create more complex works with a different outlook on the world."(Enra website)   Enra has a wide variety of members including those who specialize in Kung-fu, acrobatics, ballet, juggling, rhythmic gymnastics, and animation dance.  Hanabusa wanted to use the diversity of the group along with animation to create something new.

This piece is called Pleiades named after the constellation of seven stars.  As the two dancers move, they are accompanied by bursts of light like stars.  The light seems to be one of the dancers as it interacts and reflects their movements.

I thought that this was a good way to start the new year, with beauty, light and connection.  I hope it inspires you to dream outside of the box, to feel your connection to everything and to look for the beauty that is all around you.

Gifts of the Solstice

Today is the Winter Solstice.  It is the shortest day and the longest night of the year.  We felt it coming.  These days, the light seemed to end too soon. The leaves have mostly fallen from the deciduous trees and the migratory birds are now gone to warmer places.  The lake is practising freezing over and the chipmunks haven`t been seen for a while now.  We gave them lots of corn and peanuts in the fall and we imagine them now hunkered in their underground dens sleeping and eating.  We feel like hunkering by the fireplace and doing the same.

Traditionally at this time, people have festivals that feature light and fire.  They gather to feast and celebrate and tell stories with family and friends.  Somehow we are more open to the kindnesses and needs of strangers at this time of year.  Somehow at this transition from getting darker to getting lighter, the mundane becomes magical and our guards are lowered.  We allow the joy and the pain of others into our own hearts.

I read a story in the newspaper about Mike Mallard, a homeless man in Toronto.  At this time of year he collects cans and bottles to exchange for money which he uses to buy Christmas ornaments from the dollar store.  Then he decorates a tree in the local park for everyone to enjoy.  He said that it makes him think of home and his 91 year old mom who lives up north.  Readers responded with offers to help Mike go to see his mom for Christmas.  It was easy for people to understand his desire to see his mom.  Most people have had a mom at some time and moms know they would like to see their children.  Mike responded that he would like to see the money used to help other homeless people.  “That would be so much better,” he said.  “But I`d also love to see my mom…” he mused. (Metro News, Dec. 14, 2017). 

I am at that age when I and some of my friends have aged parents as well as grandchildren.  We watch our parents become more fragile, more vulnerable and move in to fill the gaps.  It is a delicate balance between helping and taking over.  It is a dance to offer assistance to make life enjoyable and to take care of physical, mental and emotional needs as our parents let go of abilities, responsibilities and memories while not treating them as children. Honouring the wisdom they have gathered through their lives and respecting their rights to live their lives in their own ways invites us to lower our guards, open our hearts and grow more comfortable in our own skin while we prepare ourselves for our own aging and the inevitable loss of our parent. 

It seems to be the opposite of caring for a new baby.  The eyes of a new born suggest that they have come into this world with all the wisdom of the universe.  There is a knowing in their wide open gaze.  We offer them welcome and often feel what seems to be an surprising if not seemingly  unreasonable amount of joy at their arrival.  Families rally, especially if the baby is early or has special needs.  From out of seeming nowhere, comes strength, love and patience.  These tiny beings draw out our best.  They help new parents to grow up overnight.  Grandparents remember their own babies who are somehow these new competent parents and still their own babies all at once.  How did that happen so fast, they wonder. Life seems brighter and more hopeful as we delight in every new accomplishment of this new one.

I was pondering these things as I recently walked through the forest, newly covered in snow.  The forest is a wonderful place to work things out.  It is quiet and beautiful and the trees offer their own wisdom.  Tiny saplings, fallen ancient trees, and mighty adults all have their interconnected place in the life of a forest.  I began thinking of life as a straight line with a beginning and an end but that didn`t seem to fit at all. It didn`t accurately describe what I was seeing all around me.

Then the idea of a circle came to me.  I imagined my partner`s new baby grandson on the circle. And then his parents and grandparents a little further on and even further on his great grandfather who was now very close to the newborn on the circle in my imagination.  I thought of all of them travelling this circle, circumnavigating life together and that seemed to work for me.  It seemed to fit with what I was seeing as I walked down the snowy wooded paths.

As the earth circumnavigates its ancient pathway around the sun there are transitions points which we mark; spring and fall equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices.  They are an opportunity for us to pay attention to the bigger celestial picture.  Just like the transitions of birth and death, they take us outside of ordinary time.  They invite us to be present, to enter the transitions of others and walk with them, learn from them and understand how we are connected as we travel together. Transitions offer us gifts.  Not the kind you wrap and put under a tree but the kind that you carry with you always.  These are the gifts I wish for you this solstice.

First Light Lights our Way

Sainte Marie Among the Hurons  is a re-creation of a 17^th century French Jesuit Mission in Midland, Ontario.  Built on the foundations of the original mission, Ste. Marie tells the story of the Jesuits, the French laymen who joined them and the Wendat (the French called them Huron) people who were the original inhabitants of the area. Nearly four hundred years later thousands of people come to Ste. Marie on the last weekend of November and the first two weekends of December to celebrate First Light. 

The village is surrounded by a wooden palisade and contains many small buildings that each house separate functions such as the chapel, the barn, the blacksmith, the cookhouse, living quarters and armories.  The modern main building has theatres, a museum and a restaurant. 

For First Light Ste. Marie is lit by 5000 candles in lanterns and jars.  Visitors arrive at dusk.  The entry is lit by torches and lanterns.  People bring food for the food bank which is placed in a twenty foot voyageur canoe that is eventually full to the gunwales.  Inside the theatres, local children’s and adult’s choirs sing seasonal music.  Local artisans sell their wares inside the museum for those who want to shop for Christmas gifts. There is everything from wood carving to knitting, from Indigenous artwork to preserves. The restaurant is transformed into the French Café where one can buy tourtiere, pea soup and hot apple cider.  Local Franco-Ontarian musicians entertain visitors with foot tapping French fiddle tunes.  The joie de vivre is infectious.

Going outside, one travels through the dark night along pathways edged by lanterns.  If there is snow or a full moon, the night is bright but if not, you lose your sense of time and place and simply follow the lit path.  Entering one of the rustic buildings, you are suddenly bathed in candle light and the warmth of a roaring fire in the fire place.  You may encounter a guitar player singing Christmas songs, or a Franco-Ontarian singer with a harmonica and guitar singing in French.  

Entering the chapel, you are greeted by a harpist playing old Christmas songs amidst hundreds of candles and another roaring fire.  Jean de Brefeuf who composed the Huron Christmas Carol is buried inside this building.  "Twas in the moon of wintertime, when all the birds had fled," suddenly comes to life.

Illustrations from Huron Christmas Carol book

Another building has crafts for children to make, or hot chocolate, or freshly baked cookies.  Outside, a blacksmith heats metal over a fire and then pounds it into tools, bright orange sparks flying into the night sky.  Occasionally, historical re-enactors fire off muskets nearby.  Another building is the stable with sheep and a donkey.  A crèche is appropriately set up there.

Inside the two Wendat longhouses, Indigenous drummers sing songs passed down for centuries.  Inside one of them, an Indigenous drum maker and educator, passes out drums to the kids and teaches them how to sing an Anishinaabe river song.  Sitting in the longhouse with the fire’s smoke escaping out of a hole in the roof, singing and drumming, one again loses a sense of time and place.  Being there feels timeless as your imagination allows you to be a part of history and of the present at the same time.  The drum maker, John, tells everyone when the singing has ended that now that we have sung together, we are no longer strangers.  “Feel free to be kind to one another once you leave,” he tells us.

Although we were given a paper map upon entering, it is too dark and my eyes are too old to read it.  So we simply wander around through the dark and into the light and warmth.  Back out into the cold and dark, but now there are stars above us mirroring the candles.  Once again we come into a lit building and hear more music.  At an outside area, a man is making cedar tea with white cedar branches simmered in water.  He offers us a small cup of it and the flavour is soothing, the warmth welcome.  In another building a boy hands out fruit tea while his mother supervises.  

We are well and truly lost but we don’t care.  We follow the candle edged path like a river.  It leads us into the buildings, into the longhouses and we enter and exit Indigenous, French and English culture.  We taste tea and food and flow along the river of history.  We sing, tap our feet and sometimes feel like dancing.  Hundreds of people flow along with us and everyone is polite, patient and kind.  It feels magical.

As we move along and experience the dark and the light, the cold and the warmth, the various cultures, we are changed.  We understand more about the history of this land, about the Wendat people who were eventually wiped out, about the French missionaries who were also killed and driven away and about the people who now live here and call it home.  And we are somehow, just as John said, not strangers anymore.  We have sung and drummed and walked together through the dark and the light, with  candles and stars to light our way. We just have to remember to be kind to each other out there in the river that we are all a part of.

In this high tech world of constant change, it is heart warming to see families, people of all ages, people from all across the province gathering to take part in the simple, low tech experience of sharing in First Light.

If you want to join in the feeling of this celebration you can watch these videos on youtube: Longhouse drumming and  Overview of First Light .  

Some of the food that was donated to the food bank

One Thing

The largest single living organism in the world is 106 acres big.  Named Pando which is Latin for “I spread”, it is also called the Trembling Giant.  It weighs approximately 6 million kilograms which also makes it the heaviest known organism  It is among the oldest known living organisms as well.

Pando is a clonal colony of a single male quaking aspen tree.  The massive underground root system which keeps on sending up new saplings that turn into trees is an estimated 80,000 years old. There are approximately 40,000 trunks which arise and die and are replaced by new trunks.  The trunks are all genetically identical proving they are all a part of one organism. Quakng aspens reproduce by sending out suckers that send up erect stems that look like individual trees although they are all form one single tree.

This amazing tree clone is found in south-central Utah. It was told to the world by researcher Burton Barnes in 1968. You can get a visual overview from a short video  on youtube to get a sense of the size of it.

Pando is in trouble because both the young saplings and the root system are under attack and there is an absence of juvenile and young stems now.  These are vital for the ongoing survival of the clone.  Scientists are trying to find solutions to save Pando.  They are employing students as “citizen scientists” to monitor and study the clone. You can see a video of Pando and some of these students here.   Parts of it are now fenced off to keep deer and elk from grazing the young shoots.

I learned about Pando when a friend lent me a CD of a singer songwriter named Roy Hickling.  He wrote a song about Pando called One Thing. Here are the lyrics:

A grove of Quaking Aspen trees

Alive for eighty centuries

Fifty thousand side by side

From one root they’ve lived and died

-      One thing

A dab of colour trembling leaves

Is it all or one you perceive?

Never know how high they’ll climb

Each one in their own time

-      One thing

-       

From borrowed earth we arise

With borrowed time, live our lives

The Aspen trees, the globe and us

All connected by the dust

-      One thing

A “Need to Know”  video on youtube concludes that what we can learn from Pando is that “life is strong when the individual is in community.”  This amazing aspen clone may have witnessed the world during most of human development.  It has survived many environmental stresses without any notice from most of the world.  But now it is beloved by those who visit it, live nearby and just hear about it.  And now some of those people who find it so inspiring, such an example of community and cooperation are working together to help it continue.  And they are building community with each other and with all the things that live where Pando lives. This is a very old story and also a new one.

A Window to the Future

Location of window in Parliament Buildings

In 2008, the government of Canada formally apologized to former students of Indian Residential schools.  As part of this apology, as a gesture of reconciliation, it commissioned a stained glass window to commemorate the legacy of these schools.  A number of Indigenous artists in Canada, submitted designs for the windows.  The design of Metis artist Christi Belcourt was chosen.  The finished window was permanently installed in the Centre Block of Parliament Hill over the door that the MP’s use to enter and exit the building.

The window is entitled  "Giniigaaniimenaaning" which means 'Looking Ahead'

Christi Belcourt

At the dedication ceremony for the window in Nov. 2012 in Ottawa, Belcourt talked about her inspiration for the design of the window entitled  "Giniigaaniimenaaning" which means "Looking Ahead".  This edited version of the government website is from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Summary.  These are Christi’s words:

“The stories of residential school students were never told in this building, so I’m going to tell you one now… I asked Lucille [Kelly-Davis] who is a residential school survivor what she wanted to see on the window.  I had assisted her through the residential school settlement process, and like so many survivors, her story is horrific… Despite her childhood, she married ,had four children and now has many grandchildren.  She is a pipe carrier, attends traditional ceremonies, and helps younger people learn the traditions.  She’s a powerful Anishnabeg grandmother who is generous, loving and caring, and gives all she can to her community and her family.  She is not a victim, but a survivor.  When I asked her what to put on the window, she said, 'Tell our side of the story.'… She said, 'make it about hope.'… It’s about looking ahead, as the name of the window says, ‘giniigaaniimenaaning’ looking to the future for those yet unborn…"

"Because she told me to make it about hope, what I’ve tried to show in the design is all the positive things I’ve seen in my life.  Despite residential schools, children, adults, and Elders dance in full regalia in celebration of who they are as Indigenous people.  We see Metis youth learning fiddling and jigging with pride across the country.  We see arenas full of Inuk Elders drum dancing, with little kids running around, speaking Inuktitut.  We see whole communities come together in times of joy and in times of great grief.  The lodges are growing, the traditional songs are being sung, the ceremonies are being taught, and the ceremonies are still practiced."

"I wish I could show the government that reconciliation has the potential to be so much more.  I wish I could convince them that reconciliation is not an unattainable goal.  If there’s the will and the courage to discard old paternalistic ways of thinking and of behaviour.  We need action, and where we need action, don’t meet us with silence.  Where we need support, don’t accuse us of being a burden… I wish I could speak to the hearts of MPs, whether Conservative, or NDP, or Liberal, and let them know that renewal and reconciliation can be found between Aboriginal peoples and the rest of Canada through the sustained wellness of generations of Aboriginal people to come."

You can watch a short video from the government website about the creation of the window.  It shows the stained glass artist transforming Belcourt’s design into glass. 

Here is the transcript of Christi Belcourt describing the design on the film:

"It begins in the bottom left corner in a lodge, where a grandfather is smoking his pipe. This is before residential schools when everything was whole… when everything was intact.

The middle panel of the left hand side is the panel that depicts the residential school era, where 150,000 children were forcibly removed from their families. The children were abused sexually, and abused physically, and mentally.

In 1990, Phil Fontaine was the first national leader to publicly acknowledge that he had been abused in residential schools. There was something that happened when he did it that made the rest of Canada kind of wake up to the idea that this had happened. So within the design there's a shattering of glass. And that represents the shattering of silence and the shattering of lives. Then the drum dancer…the Inuk drum dancer is there. The drum is our heartbeat, and so it's awakening the people. The dove is there as a hope of reconciliation.

In 2008, which is the middle panel, the Government of Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper publicly apologized, and our leaders were for the first time able to be on the floor of the House of Commons and respond. As it moves down into the right panel the lines and the colours are meant to bring a feeling of bringing it forward into the future.

The jingle dress is a sacred dress. It's a healing dress and so the jingle dress dancer is there. She's dancing for the future of her grandchildren. The child is now with the mother…no longer being separated…no longer being taken away. She is able to tell her child "I love you". The grandfather in the back is practicing ceremonies and able to pass on that traditional knowledge.

And so the bottom panel is the other half of the circle where the grandmother sits in the lodge and she's smoking her pipe for her grandchildren. And it is a restoration of cultures…a restoration of traditional practices. If we look at the history, we won't repeat it. If we remember history, we'll be able to move forward from it."

Top panel of the window

The TRC Summary (p.288) states:  "Commemoration in highly visible public spaces such as the parliament buildings creates openings for dialogue about what happened, why, and what can be learned from this history,  Through dialogue citizens can strengthen their ability to `accommodate difference, acknowledge injustice, and demonstrate a willingness to share authority over the past.'  In the context of national reconciliation, ongoing public commemoration has the potential to contribute to human rights education in the broadest sense."

It is said that history is written by the victors.  For too long, Indigenous stories have been told by those colonial voices that had power over them.  Jesse Wente of the CBC and TIFF Lightbox feels it is critical that we listen to those stories as they are told by Indigenous people.  This is why I have used Christi Belcourt's words to tell this story.  Listening from the heart is an important part of healing and reconciliation.  As you listened to her explain the significance of the window and the vision of healing, you are an active participant in this window to the future.  You are a part of our new story.

Let Us Stand Together Whatever Our Differences

Here is an email that I received this week from the Malala Fund  which supports the work of Malala Yousafzai.  I liked Malala's response to recent world events and thought I'd share them with you in her own words: "As we look around the world today and see so much fear and uncertainty, many wonder what this means for the most vulnerable among us. What this means for girls denied an education and a better future by poverty, war and discrimination. The girls we serve have never asked for our pity or fear — they don’t want it. They want the world to know they are strong and ambitious. They have high expectations of themselves — and of leaders whose decisions affect their lives. So let us not be afraid. Let’s stand up and move forward. In the face of fear and hate, I do what my mother taught me: be patient, persevere and always speak the truth. To those who have asked for my thoughts on turbulent elections, divisive referendums and the isolation so many feel, I say this: I am just a committed and even stubborn person who wants to see every child go to school, every woman have equal rights to men and peace in every corner of the world. There is not a lot I can do alone. But together we can keep fighting, believing and working for a world where all girls can learn for 12 years and lead without fear. For all who believe as I do and most of all, for refugees and girls fighting for their right to go to school, Malala Fund will be here — today, tomo‌rrow and as long as it takes for every girl to get the education she deserves. So let us stand together, whatever our differences. Our sisters need our support, now more than ever."

What Will You Do?

After the recent US elections, some people in Toronto decided that this gave them license to be openly racist.  This disturbed the majority of people who became equally open about their beliefs.

One incident involving an angry young man on a Toronto street car was of course filmed by an onlooker and put on youtube.  Apparently it all started when an older woman asked the young man to turn down the volume on his device.  The young man got angry and another passenger became involved.  The young man started hurling racial slurs and then a group of younger women got involved trying to get the man to calm down and get off the street car.  The young man kept going, invoking the name of the president elect.  The driver also tried to calm the young man down with no success.  He eventually got off of the street car still yelling.  Although this was a disturbing incident for all involved and for those viewing it, what stood out for me was how the young women stood up to the man, protecting the racialized man who became the target.  They did not sit by and watch it happen.

Around the same time, posters showed up in an East end neighbourhood trying to solicit “white people” to join the alt-right movement.  Residents took them down and the police are investigating.  Now a new neighbourhood group called the East End Anti-Racism Collective is organizing an event to celebrate diversity and to speak out against racism and violence.  Their posters which are also on plain white paper say “I heart Diversity”.  Local politicians and the local community association say they will take positive actions to counteract the racist ones.

Poster put up to replace racist one

In the same newspaper that I read about the pro-diversity event, I learned that Toronto has become a model for other countries working at integrating newcomers.  Toronto started to get attention earlier this year when over five thousand Syrian refugees were welcomed by private and government sponsors to the city.  Hundreds of people from The Netherlands, Britain, Sweden and the US have come to learn about the resettlement program.  Montreal is modelling its own Newcomer Office after the one in Toronto. The article in the Toronto Metro News quotes Councillor Joe Mihevc as saying “that most of the countries visiting have been plagued with ‘anti-immigrant sentiments,’ and it’s encouraging that Toronto remains a ‘city of hope even in the middle of all the Trumpism.’”

The shocking results of the US election have many people thinking about what their own response to this outcome can be.  I said the day after the election to some people that I felt that I need to be more respectful, kinder to balance this fear and hate.  A few people told me that that was exactly how they felt. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning that “evil is good people doing nothing.”  That definition which appears counter intuitive when we like to think of evil as something out there, has always challenged me to find a response that feels true to my values.

Some people believe that working in the negative is not very effective, especially when communicating with animals and children.  They don’t understand negatives very well. Saying, “don’t jump on the couch,” makes them first picture jumping on the couch and then trying to picture the opposite.  It is complicated.  Likewise, hating racists will leave us feeling bad.  It’s like taking poison and hoping someone else dies. Instead, I think we have to look inside of ourselves and discover what we would like our world to look like, to sound like, to feel like.  And then as Gandhi said, “be the change we want to see.”  That might look like standing up against injustice and it might also look like creating communities where diversity is celebrated, where we learn from one another and enjoy our differences.

This is not a new idea.  But in the face of overt racism and sexism doing nothing is like tacit approval at best.  Perhaps the sheer ugliness of what is being promoted in the US will shock us out of complacency and draw the goodness out of us into the light of day.  Not only do we have to stand up for our values, but we have to live them, be them. That will be good for us and for the world.

The Social Action of Music

"Music has to be recognized as an agent of social development, in the highest sense because it transmits the highest values – solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion.  And it has the ability to unite an entire community, and to express sublime feelings."  So said Venezuelan educator, musician and activist Jose Antonio Abreu, founder of what is now called El Sistema.

Jose Antonio Abreu

In 1975, Abreu began offering free music lessons to eleven impoverished children in an underground garage in Venezuela.  He got government funding for this project and it grew and spread around the world.  The program provides free classical ensemble music lessons and practice every day after school to promote personal growth and positive social change.  It is about more than just individual musical ability.  Playing music together is just as important.  

Abreu was born in 1939 in Venezuela.  He studied economics, worked in the government and taught at universities.  He concurrently studied music.  Abreu brought these two streams together when he created “an innovative youth education method in which music was the primary avenue for social and intellectual improvement.” Hi motto was “Social Action for Music.” (Wikipedia) He has since received numerous awards for this ground breaking work.

Today there are over 100 Sistema chapters in 60 countries around the world. They target children who would not normally be able to take music lessons or play in an orchestra.

A few years ago, a Sistema chapter was started near me in Midland, Ontario which is when I first heard about this program.  This group’s website states that “Our mission is to build and sustain an intensive social program that provides free, ensemble-based music lessons to inspire children to realize their full potential as students, musicians and citizens. “ 

Sistema exists in almost every province in Canada now and there are over 20 programs in existence.  Here are some examples:

Saint James Music Academy in Vancouver (2007) serves 480 students from Downtown Eastside inner-city schools and it is an official community partner of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. 

OrfKidstra in Ottawa (2007) serves 400 students from Centretown inner-city schools and is partnered with local community organizations including the National Arts Centre. 

YONA-Sistema in Edmonton (2013) is partnered with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and other partners. 

El Sistema Aeolian, London (2011) serves 75 students and includes a youth string orchestra, a choir and an adult orchestra.  They give 15 – 20 performances a year.

Sistema Toronto says that it is a “social development program that builds a sense of community, self–respect and mutual support in children.”  You can see a very beautiful 6 minute video of cellist Yo-Yo Ma giving instruction to some of these children on the website.  It is lovely to watch this famous musician be totally present with the three young cellists and get them to “feel” the music they are playing which is Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  He gets them to imagine what looking at the night sky feels like and then play that. 

The website for the London groups states, “Music transcends language and takes us directly to our limbic brain; the emotional core.  It allows us to express the flow of intellect and emotion.”  This is exactly what you can see Yo-Yo Ma doing with the kids on the video.

“Sistema is a social program first and foremost. We use music ensembles as a model to teach students their role in the success of a team. By working toward a common goal, our students learn about cooperation, mutual support, empathy, self-respect, perseverance, and resilience,“ says the Sistema-Toronto website.

“Our world needs creative thinkers; young people with high social and emotional intelligence.  We need to foster leadership, volunteerism, mentorship, pursuit of excellence and a commitment to community,” states the El Sistema Aeolian website.

I first heard of El Sistema from a friend who was starting up the local chapter in Midland.  The board is constantly fundraising and looking for donations of instruments.  I saw some of these when my partner donated his time repairing and refurbishing donated violins for the kids.  He and I plan to do a fundraising house concert for the group as well. Many local people are involved in supporting this program.

We have all heard the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child.”  To me this is the village stepping up and offering music to kids who wouldn’t be able to participate otherwise.  And of course they will also contribute to the village while they are children and as adults.  It is a good example of how one person’s idea can spread and inspire other people to work in a framework that is about cooperation, not competition, about the joy of creating together.  If you want to feel the magic of that, watch the video with Yo-Yo and the kids.