The Next 150 Years

“Now we begin in a new 150 years... we leave behind the first 150 years…   The ones with one big problem: trying to wipe out our Indigenous people…. .it is time to listen to the stories of the Indigenous, to hear stories about now….   Yours is the first generation in the new and real Canada.   I love you!”  So said Gord Downie to thousands of young change-makers at the WE Day Canada  on July 2, 2017 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.  Gord was joined by Chanie Wenjack’s sisters Pearl and Daisy. Daisy, Gord and Pearl at WE Day Canada  Gord, Pearl and Daisy were there to usher in the next 150 years as representatives of the Downie-Wenjack Fund   An email I received from this fund went on to say,  “The Downie-Wenjack Fund believes it's time to look ahead to the next 150 years - a new era, with a new opportunity to learn and celebrate the Indigenous history of this land. If we all work together, we can start to build a country where Indigenous culture is woven into the very fabric of our collective Canadian identity. Indigenous oral history says that what we have today, is a product of the seven generations before us and what we do today, will affect the seven generations to come - welcome to the next seven generations!” You can watch the video of Gord speaking to the young people and then Pearl telling some of her story.  Pearl goes on to sing a Cree healing song for everyone.  She repeated the song four times for the black people, the white people, the yellow people and the red people.  The young people at the event were visibly moved by this powerful healing song as were the presenters.  You can watch it here.   You can learn more about the Downie-Wenjack Fund here.  That is just one way to be a part of this new story.

One Shining Day

“In this stillness, I am the trees alive with singing.  I am the sky everywhere at once.  I am the snow and the wind bearing stories across geographies and generations.  I am the light everywhere descending.  I am my heart evoking drum song.  I am my spirit rising.  In the smell of these sacred medicines burning, I am my prayers and my meditations, and I am time captured fully in this now.  I am a traveller on a sacred journey through this one shining day.”

Richard Wagamese in Embers (2016) Douglas & McIntyre, p. 30.

Richard Wagamese began each day in silence and the smoke of the sacred medicines of sweetgrass, sage, tobacco and cedar.  Then he wrote and that collection of early morning writings form the book Embers.  It is the kind of book that you can open at any page and so one early Sunday morning, I opened it.  And the quote above is what my eyes rested on.

The last line, “I am a traveller on a sacred journey through this one shining day,” spoke very loudly, very clearly to me.  This reminded me to bring all time into this one moment, to bring the wisdom earned on past roads to this present moment, to bring my dreams of the future to this moment and to bring my focus and attention to this moment, on this “one shining day.”

Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway tells the story of one woman’s day which includes a party, a death and all the consciousness that Woolf spills across the pages.  Her idea was that the whole of a woman’s life is captured inside of one day.  I recently read All that is Solid Melts Into Air by Carol Giangrande which follows Woolf’s idea, telling the story of a woman who is on holiday on the island of St. Pierre in the St. Lawrence.  The day is Sept. 11, 2001 and her husband, son, her son’s partner and her son’s father are all involved in what we now call 911.  As she waits for news, her consciousness takes her to the memories of these four men, her hopes for the future and the pain of the moment in which she can’t connect with any of them except in her mind.

I have been clearing the collections of six decades for six years now.  I am both getting good at this finally as I ironically reach the light at the end of the tunnel.  As I sort through papers and objects that represent my life, I discard some and keep others.  Some represent stories that have taught me much and i take that wisdom forward as I acknowledge it in the moment.  Some, I hold onto because they were my children’s and it is still painful to realize that they are grown and gone.  They are both children in my mind and adults to my eyes. 

Recently, a friend shared this quote with me.  It speaks to how we handle change and time passing.

“... We leave things undone because we sometimes prefer loose ends to closed doors, situations that are bad to those that get worse.  We want to avoid the finality of endings and to preserve the illusion that things haven’t changed, that they are just the way they have always been.

And yet things change on us even as we try to hold them together.  Endings multiply and unless we can make peace with this truth we end up living in dreams, our lives filled with unfulfilled hopes and worn-out loves, our hearts turned into attics so filled with things we cannot let go of that there is no room for anything fresh and new.  When we cannot manage the endings of our lives we rule out any new beginnings.  We kill hope because we have no real faith, nothing to allow us to see the seeds of what is to come in the ashes of the things that are over.”

Eugene Kennedy in Free to Be Human

The line that jumped out at me in this quote is that our hearts become attics with no space for new things.  This image fits in with the culture of consumerism where we buy things to use and to help us feel good and then are stuck with the things.  As I clear the stuff of my life out, I wonder at the magnitude of it all and the difficulty in letting it go.  This comes out of a narrative of scarcity that makes us scared enough to hang onto things and relationships because we are afraid of being left with nothing.

In contrast, Wagamese’s quote tells the narrative of abundance.  The whole natural world is open to us.  We are the sky everywhere, the snow and the wind, the light.  We have hearts and spirits and that is all we need to carry as traveller[s] on a sacred journey through this one shining day.

Of course these two examples are at opposite ends of a spectrum but that helps us to see the difference.  In a narrative of scarcity, our attics become too full for anything new and we miss out on the moment.  In a narrative of abundance, there is no mention of holding onto stuff because everything is available to us as we need it and as travellers, we need to be light, not weighed down.

Holding onto the stuff of my children, the memories of them as children, my identity as the mother of young children can, depending on the day, weigh me down in sadness, or take the energy that I need to create new relationships or at best, slow me down on my journey.  Focusing on the wonderful adults that they are and the interesting lives that they are leading while realizing that we will always be connected in a non-tangible way frees me to move through my days appreciating the people that I spend time with, the beauty that surrounds me and the opportunities to try new things with more fluidity and grace.

Here is an example of that from my life.  Last Friday, I took part in the Alliston Potato Festival Parade with friends and people who I hadn’t met yet.  As I walked from my parked car to the place where the float was waiting, I passed the high school that three of my children attended.  My mind was flooded with memories that played out as little movies in my head.  I remembered when my daughter was in this parade, I remembered past parades.  I walked past the dog groomers where I took my little Sheltie before she moved to her new home when my own move precluded having a dog and not only the weight of my big African djembe drum weighed me down. 

I found the float which was a huge flat bed truck and as the drummers began to gather, I chatted with friends, met new people and took part in the chaos of the set up.  Suddenly, the organizer yelled, “We’re moving” and we all climbed up and took our places.  The lead drummer began the West African rhythms and we all joined in.  It began to rain and we pulled garbage bags over the drums and tarps over our heads but we kept drumming.  Suddenly, I was moving down the same street I had just walked down, but this time, I floated by at the height of the flatbed, facing the back of the truck, surrounded by my fellow drummers, the intricate and powerful rhythms of the drums and streets lined with eager faces.

I noticed that children, mothers with babies and senior citizens were the ones that dared move to the beat of the music. Some waved, some danced, some smiled while others seemed unaffected by the infectious beat.  So I began to search out the faces and movements of the children, moms and seniors giving them a big smile, a wave, a nod.  I made a point of connecting with those people.  I noticed that small Alliston had grown and had become more multi-cultural as well.  Near the end of the parade a young man dressed in clothes from India with an Indian drum joined in with us as we passed.  What appeared to be his grandmother waved at us and I waved back. 

We continued on the flatbed back to where the cars were parked even when the parade was over.  We played to the empty streets.  I looked up and saw beautiful old trees floating past with the beautiful evening sky between them.  Rain clouds had turned into pink fluffy ones as the sun set and I marvelled at riding down the street facing backwards and watching the trees and sky move past me.  I drummed for them, I drummed with the other drummers, I drummed my own heart beat as I at the age of sixty had had one more adventure.  When I look back at it, taking part in the parade, I was a traveller on a sacred journey through that shining evening.

As I walked from where the truck let us off, back to my car, I was a bit tired and the drum still weighed the same but my heart was lighter.  I passed the same buildings but now I had a new memory, the view of all of these from the truck, surrounded by friends and music and smiling faces.  I had emptied the attic of my heart enough to let something new in and had felt connected to all of it in that one shining night.

Three Stories of Amazing Humans

My daughter sent me a link to BBC Three which has short clips called Amazing Humans.  The website has lots of stories but here are three that I liked. 

The first is a story about clowns and artists from Europe working with kids in refugee camps.  In sharing their gifts, these people are allowing the kids to be kids bringing them hope and some happiness.  Watch this 3 minute video here.

The second story is about a Scottish medical student who has fitted a bike out with seats in the front to give senior citizens from nursing homes a ride out in the country.  By getting them out, they experience the world once again as they did when they were young, changing their outlook on life. Watch this 3 minute video here.

The last story is about a young woman who paints henna tattoos on the heads of women who have lost their hair.  She wants to do something to make this time better and to empower the women.  Watch this 3 minute video here.

These are just some of the examples of ordinary humans sharing their gifts with others to make difficult things less difficult, to empower others and to share their love of life.  I think that the amazing thing in these stories is not that the people are extraordinarily gifted but that their simple sharing brings amazing results.  We all have the ability to create these kinds of stories in our own lives and perhaps these stories will inspire you to create amazing stories of your own.  You can check out more stories here.

Dancing to the Same Rhythm

Blue Skies Music Festival has been creating magic since 1974 in the wilderness of Ontario near Clarendon.  I was lucky enough to spend part of last weekend in the midst of this magic.  After leaving the Trans Canada Highway and driving down a curving dirt road we came to the front gate of the festival. Volunteers helped people to park in fields and on the road and then the walking begins.  Very few motorized vehicles are allowed on the property so the space feels safe and welcoming.  The main stage was at the bottom of a meadow surrounded by trees with tents set up for camping all around the perimeter.

The first thing I noticed was that there were children running everywhere, having a great time.  The huge lawn was set up with a volleyball net, a Frisbee area and a playground for the kids.  There were older folks, young parents, teens and kids all co-existing quite naturally.  There was an absence of people walking around staring at their phones which was happily replaced by people actually talking to the people they were with.

Lots of tie-dyed shirts, aging hippies, young people with, yes flowers in their hair and a very joyful atmosphere is what made it different from other festivals that I have been to.  There were good performers, mediocre performers and some great performers on the stage and lots of interesting workshops in the other areas.

But one of the highlights for me was the arrival of a drumming group who are situated in Ottawa, the Remesha Drums from Burundi  You can see a youtube video of them here.

The men processed down the hill carrying huge drums that weighed over one hundred pounds each on their heads.  They played the drums as they walked.  As they got closer, the sound grew and grew.  People came running over to watch and when the drummers got to the bottom of the hill, they formed a circle.  Taking the drums from their heads, they drummed and danced with athletic prowess, jumping into the air, doing back flips and smiling widely the whole time. 

The crowd was mesmerized and responded with loud applause and whooping.  Then it was the women of the group who danced, wearing flowing white dresses.  They invited first children and then women to come and dance with them.  Before you knew it, everyone was dancing with them, arms up in the air, smiling broadly and moving with the rhythms of Africa.

This, I thought, is the gift that immigration brings to us here in Canada.  Here we are in the wilderness, dancing to these ancient rhythms that have come across the ocean to us.  The Remesha Drummers got us dancing together, all in the same rhythm and the people loved it.  These people from Burundi shared their culture with us, opened up a space and welcomed us in.  I hope their experience of being in 

Canada is as welcoming.

Earlier in the day, the Smoke Trail Drum and Dance Group  from Alderville First Nation demonstrated Northern Traditional Powwow drumming and dancing.  At the end of their sharing, they invited everyone to join in the Round Dance.  Hundreds of people joined the line that snaked across the lawn and eventually turned into a circle.  We were invited by the lead dancer to run into the middle of the circle holding hands and giving a big whoop.  We did this three times and once again the people loved it.  The Smoke Trail Dancers shared with us their culture that comes from this land and has survived ongoing attempts to make it disappear.  And we are so much the richer for being able to share in this ancient culture.  We were welcomed into the Round Dance on this land that we were welcomed onto.  I thought about how the drum is the heartbeat and how when we dance together our hearts beat as one.

The third experience of dancing that I watched on the weekend was the old fashioned Square Dance that originated in England and France.  Once again the people joyfully entered into the sets that the caller called.  The fiddle music and the smiles on the faces of the dancers was a joyful scene.  It was beautiful just to watch and I'll bet it was even better for the dancers.

What I observed was this:  When we are welcomed into the music and cultures of other people, we very quickly become united, our hearts beating as one as our feet move to the same rhythm.  And it is fun!  Dancing together makes us feel connected, or rather, it reminds us that we are connected. We are very lucky in Canada to be able to share in so many cultures, to have such a rich human experience.  Once we have danced together, how can we not care for each ? How can we fell unconnected?  Perhaps we need more dancing.

So next time you get an opportunity to join in dancing like this, take it.  Don't worry about how you look because no one is looking.  They are just feeling the universal rhythm and becoming one with it, one with each other.  But don't take my word for it.  Try it for yourself!