The Gifts of the Season

‘Tis the season of gift giving and I have been given some lovely gifts.  Some are gifts of sweetness which are so welcome as the days get shorter and shorter and the clouds get lower.  They show appreciation for the work that I do all year.  Some are gifts of beauty for those who know that I love artwork and animals.  And some are gifts of warmth and clothing to take care of my physical needs.  And then, there are the gifts of stories that are shared from the heart, stories of life experiences so out of the ordinary that they must be shared.  Stories of love shared, care given, community created.  Here are some of those stories.

At this Solstice time of the year in this extra cloudy fall, the gift of sunshine and hoarfrost is particularly bright.  Ordinary leafless brown stems are transformed miraculously by the building up of ice crystals, decorated by delicate constructions that emerge from out of “thin air”.  Water that goes from vapour to ice in the night.  Then when the sun shines on this multitude of magic you are transported into a kind of fairy world where everything is beautiful and bright.  I tried to take pictures to share with you but anyone who has seen this phenomenon knows that that pictures do not tell the whole story.  Somehow my heart opens, my imagination is ignited and life is suddenly exciting.  That is a gift.

In early December I had the gift of holding a three-week-old baby while he slept.  His perfect face was framed by his impossibly tiny hands.  Every now and then his face would contort just before passing gas which made me giggle.  His legs would occasionally stretch out and I could imagine him doing the same thing while still inside his mom who sat beaming beside me.  We talked about the miracle of a new person growing inside you and the amazement of giving birth.  This feminine story, as old as the human race is one that still does not have its due space in the collective story.  It is one that women tell to each other over and over.  It is one that new fathers tell in a different way, through the lens of their own fatigue and helplessness.  It is one that is told at this time of year in Christian celebrations.  But, if we truly regarded this as a miracle, if we saw this new being as the collections of cells that came together as magically as the frost, nurtured for nine months by a women whose body gave all it had to create a new being; if we saw how the light caught this lovely being and lit up the room; if we felt our hearts open and our imaginations ignite and we stayed that way, then we would create a different kind of world.

I heard stories this week of how women supported and were supported by the people they took care of in their service industries.   Women who while self-employed created communities of care where their clients could feel safe and nurtured.  A story of someone who is suffering from early dementia who asked her local bakery owner to remember her daily order so that when she can no longer remember it, she can still get what she loves.  A story of a woman who is creating safe spaces near her home where she can go despite a terrible tragedy and not have people ask the every day greeting of “how are you?”  She is struggling and just wants four safe place to go.

I have heard many stories in this season of loved ones who took the opposite journey from birth.  Some of these journeys were a long time coming and others were sudden.  They told me stories of the gentle gifts of palliative care teams and how they felt surrounded by support for the first time since their loved ones began falling ill.  Why do we wait for death to suddenly be gentle and caring?  We must have forgotten the teaching of the frost, that the water vapour that created the tiny kingdoms of ice, will return to the sky once the sun warms the air.  We are all beautiful collections of genes, cells, carbon and water that come out of thin air and return again.  We are all beautiful when the light of love shines on us and just as miraculous.  When we are seen as gifts, then we are gifts to those who have the eyes to see them.  We are appreciated, cared for and treasured.

Maybe Christmas reminds us of this, maybe Hanukkah does or maybe the it is the frost.  We all have our own stories. They surround us like the invisible water vapour.  This dark time of the year is the time to tell stories. It is the time to gather around fires and candles and listen to them.  It is the time to treasure what lights us, what warms our hearts and what ignites our imaginations.  Our stories will crystalize into the world we create.

The Forest Family

Sammy was walking through the forest with his dad, his Grandma and his Grandpa.  This was a very special forest that had been protected from logging for over a hundred years by one family.  You could tell that this forest had been much loved.  You could feel it. Some of the trees were so old and so big that it took Sammy and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa reaching their arms wide and holding hands just to circle the trunk.

After they circled a giant Red Oak, Grandma said, “I wonder how tall this tree is.”

“There’s no way of measuring it,” replied Sammy.  “It’s way too tall to get to the top!”

“Hmm,” murmured Grandma.

The Grant family had owned and cared for this forest until there was only one person left in the family.  That man had passed the land on to the Couchiching Conservancy to care for it from now on.  So, anyone who wanted to visit, could follow the paths and be a part of the forest.  And that is what Sammy, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa were doing.

They soon came to a giant tree that had fallen down.  Sammy tried to imagine how loud that crash would have been and what the crash would have felt like in his feet as the earth shook.  Grandpa thought it might be a maple tree judging from the bark.

“Maybe you could measure how tall that tree is by walking along it,” said Grandma.  So, Sammy and his dad figured out how long a stride was and then they climbed up on the log.  Carefully balancing, they stepped along the log counting their strides.  As they walked along the log, Sammy noticed that some parts of it were starting to rot.  The wood felt spongy and soft under his feet.  It was being eaten by insects.  On the side of the log were lots of mushrooms and fungi growing.  The dead tree was feeding them too.

When they got to the end of the log they figured out that it was about 35 metres long.  And that tree wasn’t as wide as the really big one they had found earlier.  Beside the end of the log, they found the stump that was still rooted to the ground.  In the rotted wood at the centre of the stump grew a tiny little White Pine sapling.  A seed had landed in the stump and the rotting wood gave it the perfect protected place to start its life.  Sammy thought it looked so cute growing there.

As they continued their hike they came across a dead tree trunk that was still standing.  The branches had all fallen off.  Grandpa called it a snag and told Sammy to look way up.  There were large holes that had been chipped out of the trunk.

“Do you know who made those holes?” asked Grandpa.

Before Sammy could answer, they heard a loud tapping sound and from behind the trunk hopped a big black and white bird with a bright red head.  It started to peck away at the hole making it bigger.  Wood chips fell to the ground.  The bird stopped every now and then to eat something.

“What’s it eating?” asked Sammy.

“That Pileated Woodpecker is looking for bugs that live in that dead tree.  And when he finds one, his super long tongue will flick it into his mouth.  That bird is a master woodcarver.  He’ll carve a hole big enough for his family to nest in, or maybe a squirrel or a pine marten.  That tree is still giving food to the birds and a home to other creatures.”

The family walked further into the woods and they stopped at a Yellow Birch tree.  Its roots looked like long legs and there was a space under the trunk as though the tree could just walk away.

“Do you know why that tree has roots like that?” asked Grandma.

Sammy shrugged.

“Well, once upon a time,” said Grandma, “this birch tree was growing in a dead stump, just like the one you saw back there.  Over time, the roots grew over the stump to reach the ground.  Eventually, the stump decayed and became part of the forest floor and now there is a space where the stump used to be.  The big old birch is telling you a story about when it was a young tree.”

Farther along the path, they came to a grove of Beech trees that were about 3 metres tall.  Their graceful branches dipped close to Seb’s head and their bright green leaves made him want to touch them.  They were thin and soft in his hand.

Attached to one branch, Sammy saw a little nest.  It was made from twigs and birch bark.  Dad lifted him up and inside, Sammy could see dead pine needles lining the nest.  “Where are the birds?” asked Sammy.

“I guess they grew up and flew away once they were big enough,” said Dad.  “But these pieces of the pine and the birch trees and little sticks from other trees kept the babies safe and warm while they were little.”

“These small trees are still just kids themselves,” said Grandpa.  “Let’s look for their mama.”

Sure enough, near the young trees was a big beech tree that reached up to the top of the forest canopy.

“This is the mama tree,” said Grandpa.  “She dropped her seeds hidden in beechnuts onto the ground and they grew into the trees you see here.  The forest floor is made up of all the dead leaves and insects and branches and trunks of the trees that become soil.”

“The earth sends up these trees and when the leaves die and fall, they become part of the earth again and then all that life becomes new trees,” added Grandma.

“I wonder if we can find a Grandpa tree,” said Sammy.  So, they all began searching the woods and it was Sammy’s dad who found a really, really, big beech tree.  They all joined hands to reach around the trunk. 

“Maybe this is the Grandpa tree,” said Dad.

Sammy touched the trunk of the tree.  “Hi Grandpa Tree,” he said softly.  Then he took one of his goldfish crackers from his pocket and wedged it into a crack in the bark.  “So, he knows that he’s loved,” he said.

After a few quiet moments, Sammy asked, “Will he fall down too someday?”

“Yeah, maybe insects will eat too much of him, or a disease will weaken him and then a big wind will come or maybe an ice storm and he will crash down to the ground,” said Dad.

“And then he’ll feed insects and mushrooms and be a part of a nest and keep baby trees safe?” asked Sammy.

“Yeah, he’ll still be part of life, but in a different way.”

“Hmm,” murmured Sammy.

Mural Honours Amazonian and Andean Protectors

A giant 160 foot mural was painted on this prominent building in Quito, Ecuador to honour the Indigenous and Andean women who are defending their land from oil, mining and agricultural laws that threaten food sovereignty and ancestral culture.

The project began with community meetings in the Amazon and in a small Andean community where the artists, Mona Caron and Raul Ayala met with women who were actively protecting their land.  Through interviews, storytelling, being defended by these women: the water, land, air, and biodiversity as well as the cultural and spiritual wholeness at stake in the defense of their sovereignty.” ( Mona Caron website)

Community mural meeting

Base of the mural.

The women are Zoila Castillo, Gloria Ushiqua, Cristina Gualinga, Rosa Gualinga, Alicia Weya Cahuiya, Dominga Antun, Bianca Chancosa, Carmen Lozano and Josefina Lema.

Each one was invited to come and paint their traditional face markings on their own portraits as is seen in the photo below.

You can watch a beautifulshort video of the mural here.  And you can read more about this project on Mona Caron's website.

This is an exciting and inspiring story of what women can achieve when they work together.

What Happens When You Mix All the Colours?

When I was about ten years old, my father told me that if you mixed all the colours together, you would get white.  He was an electrical engineer and he was talking about light.  When I asked my best friend’s father what would happen if you mixed all the colours together, he told me you would get black.  He was an artist, a painter.  Two opposite answers to the same question.  Two fathers who lived on the same street.  I have pondered these answers for most of my life.

I later studied physics and the electromagnetic spectrum.  I understand about how white light can be separated into the various colours.  I love rainbows and prisms and anything else that bends light, coaxes, tricks it into revealing its strands.  I am aware that there is beauty hiding in light and that there is more than our eyes can see at any moment.  I am always on the lookout for magic, brilliant beauty revealed at any moment, anywhere.

I also studied painting and how to mix colours to get any colour you want.  I am aware of how combinations create something together which none of the colours is on its own.  Instead of using separation to reveal colour, painting taught me how combining reveals colour.  When I see the colour black, I think of what is hiding there.  Black feels full and abundant to me.  When I look at the feathers of a crow or a raven, I look for the iridescent colours of blue and purple to appear as they do on a grackle.  I am still on the lookout for magic, for what is not immediately seen with the eye.

When is see a crow or a raven flying, my heart soars to the sky and my eyes are glued to its flight until I can no longer see it.  I can’t explain this.  It just has always been true for me.  So perhaps, it is not surprising that she appeared to me in the liminal space between dream and waking.  I call her Corva from the latin genus Corvus for crow and raven. 

Corva is a trickster, a teacher, a crow, a crone.  She flies into my dreams and reveals herself as an old wise woman who gives guidance and then refeathers and flies away.  She has a sense of humour, a sense of irony.  She sees the twists and apparent contradictions that are actually part of the same continuum of life.  She likes shiny things, things that reflect the light.  She is not afraid of the light, she knows that she carries all the colours of the world in her own feathers.  She knows that her DNA emits photos. She knows that she is black because her feathers absorb all the colours of white light.  She knows that death is a transformation as is birth.  As a crow, she eats carrion and eggs.  She allows them all to fly as the muscles that make her wings beat.

Corva reminds me that in between beginnings and endings is the time to live.  It is the time to love, it is the time to hold, the time to learn, the time to teach, the time to share, the time to grow, the time to tell stories. Corva reminds me that all things end, so it is important to show up and appreciate them while they are here.  She reminds me that all things begin and new beginnings are possible every day.  She reminds me that all the colours together are white and black.   She reminds me to be grateful to life, to have an open heart, and to look for magic.

I met her yesterday, at a funeral.  I saw her in the black clothes of the family and friends.  I could feel the density of all the experiences, the stories, the love mixed together like paint.  The black feathers of Corva were adorned by silver necklaces, earrings, watches, bracelets.  She loves shiny things.  I could feel the knowledge that love is what sustains us in the embraces, the holding onto one another, the physical contact that connected us like the bones in one body, to walk together through a ceremony that felt unreal, surreal, of another time. 

Each older woman that I hugged was Corva to me.  We had all seen enough to know what love is, what loss is, to know the magic of children, the delight of new beginnings, the need to pour out love and the bottomless ability of 2children to absorb it.  We could see the darkness and all its richness and we could see the light and all its hidden secrets.  We know that we will walk together through the darkness and the light.  We know that we will transform death and that we will soar as well.

If you mix all the colours, the stories of lives lived, what do you get?  Do you get a blur of vibrant reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues and violet?  Do they compress into a beam of white light?  Do they meld into a rich dark black, full to the brimming? Two men told me that the stories were opposite, they were black or white.  Corva showed me that they are the same.

Angels Amongst Us

Winter has come early this year.  Sudden snow and icy cold kind of jars you into another reality.  Suddenly, even though it is November, it felt like January and I got into January sorts of things like big coats, scarves, hats, mitts, warm boots, warming up the car, and driving in bad weather.  And in this space of altered reality last week, I had a series of encounters.

The first was at a strip mall in Orillia.  My partner and I had stopped to buy some food at Food Basics and were walking to Subway to get some lunch on our way to another event.  On the sidewalk between Food Basics and Subway sat a large man with his Malamute dog and a sign that read “Homeless”.  We passed by him and I heard him talking to the dog like she was his best friend.  We had a nice warm lunch and as we left the restaurant, I decided to go and put some money in the dog dish of coins beside the man and his dog.  As I got near them, I pulled out my wallet and took out a twenty dollar bill.  When the man saw it, he said, “Bless your heart.”  I handed it to him so it wouldn’t blow out of the bowl in the wind.

We began talking and he told me that he and his dog Mukwah were on a cross-Canada walk to bring awareness to the fact that pets can’t stay in homeless shelters.  He told me of his plan to walk to British Columbia and the route he was choosing so that the dog didn’t have to walk farther than twenty or thirty km per day.  He pulls a kind of trailer with their gear when they walk.  When we finished our conversation I shook his hand and he gave me a business card with his facebook and email address.  I checked out his facebook page later in the week and it was full of news of Mukwah’s health and their plans.

James and Muckwah in Orillia from their facebook page

Black-capped Chickadee

The next day, my partner and I were walking in the forest of the Wye Marsh and hand feeding chickadees which is one our great delights.  There was a busy little band of them landing, eating, fluttering and singing.  Suddenly a bird about double the size landed on my hand, grabbed a see and flew away in just a second or two.  My brain thought, "Wow, that was a really big chickadee."  It was black and white and grey with a black cap on its head.

White Breasted Nuthatch

 My partner interrupted this inner dialogue saying, "That's the White Breasted Nuthatch that I heard about.  It has been mimicking the chickadees."  The bird landed again and this time I could see it's long, strong beak, it's slender profile and could, yes, see that it was indeed a nuthatch. That got me thinking about how our brains try to make sense of what we see based on previous experiences.  What we think we "see" is not always what is there.  There's a lesson in that, I thought.  And sure enough, the lesson kept evolving throughout the week.

Three days later, I was working in Toronto and I had had a number of cancellations due to the ill health of some clients.  On one of these breaks I stepped out to buy a cup of tea.  At the bottom of the front steps was my neighbour.  This woman works from home and we occasionally chat on the front porch when I am tending my morning glories and she is having a smoke break.  She told me earlier this year that her husband had died and she is working her way through grief.  I always pet her large golden retriever who barks at me and then comes over for a pat.

This morning, she was standing on the sidewalk with her usual dog as well as a new one.  She waited for me to come down the stairs.  “This is my new therapy dog Eva,” she explained.  “She’s helping me with losing my husband,” she continued.  “I’ve named her Eva after my husband.  He was called Jean Yves.”  We talked about the breeds that were evident in this dog (Corgi, Golden Retreiver) that she has adopted from the Humane Society.  She proudly talked about her disposition and breed traits.  In opening her heart to this new dog, she is daring to love again, to share her love for her husband with a dog who needs a home.  “There’s nothing better than a dog to help with grief,” I said.   I know that when you live alone, these small conversations in the day can be like lifelines and so I took as long as she needed to acknowledge her courage and her new love.  “Well, we have to get to the park so Eva can run,” she eventually said and we parted ways.

Later in that same day, I had another break and headed out to get a gift card for my partner’s son and his family who just had a new baby on the weekend.  I got to the busy corner of Spadina and Dupont and there, precariously balanced on the edge of the sidewalk was an old woman with a walker.  It was very cold and she was bundled in a coat that seemed too big for her.   I watched her closely, concerned for her safety.  “Ooooh,” she called out.  “Do you have any coins?  I am trying to get twenty dollars together for my groceries.”  I pulled out my wallet and gave her the twenty dollars she needed.  “Ooooh, you’re an angel,” she exclaimed.  She was so tiny, I leaned over and gave her a gentle hug.  “It’s yours now,” I said, as I smiled and walked on.

The next evening, I was in Barrie, doing the deposit for my business.  I took out extra cash since I attend local artisan shows at this time of year to buy Christmas gifts for my family.  I like to support local people and get beautiful things for my loved ones.  I came out of the bank into the dark parking lot (even though it was only 5:30 pm) and a man approached me.  For some reason I was not afraid.  He said, “Could you help someone who has had the worst luck today?”  “I can,” I responded.  Reaching for a twenty dollar bill was becoming second nature suddenly.  I passed him the money.  “What happened?” I asked.  He told me that he had slept in the shelter downtown last night and someone took his pack with his insulin in it.  “I’m trying to get to Timmins,” he said, “but now I have to get some insulin.”  He thanked me for the money and I wished him good luck.  Then I got into my car and drove away.

I spend a fair amount of time with my ninety-one year old father in his senior’s home.  I help him with paying bills, going for walks, cutting his fingernails, getting him to medical appointments, buying him cookies and candy and the list goes on.  He gets a lot of help.  Some he pays for and some is provided by the Ministry of Health.  I was doing his dishes this week when I heard a voice calling in the hall.  The calling went on for a while and I finally opened my dad’s door and stepped out into the hall.  The woman who lives across the hall from my father was the one who was calling.  She couldn’t find the key for her room.  She was searching madly through her purse.. "Do you think they're in your room?" I asked.  "I don't know," she cried.  So, I went into her unit and looked on the counter top and then on her dresser.   There were the keys.  I brought them out and she was so relieved.  Since she is in a wheelchair, she asked me to lock the door and give her the keys.  I did so, touched her lightly on the shoulder and went back to my father.

My father has a chronically dry mouth because of all the medications that he is on.  He likes to suck hard candies to remedy this but now lacks the dexterity to get the plastic wrappers off.  I search stores for hard candies with no wrappers which are surprisingly hard to find. I have shared this story with some of my clients.  This week two clients brought me huge jars of hard candies that go on sale at Christmas time for my father.  He will love them.  How kind of them to join me in my search and bring him something that I was unable to find.

These encounters kept playing through my mind as a montage, as if they were connected.  I sensed there might be a message in there somewhere.  I help people for a living, so me helping them wasn’t out of character.  No, it wasn’t about that.  I live in one of the wealthiest provinces in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  Yet our politicians tell a story of scarcity, that we can’t afford to help those who need help.  This feels untrue to me.  It's like seeing the giant chickadee.  It wasn't a chickadee at all!  In the face of government cuts, I can still act out of what feels true for me.  I can see the nuthatch for the nuthatch that it is.

Another thing I learned from these encounters, these teachers, is that if you need help, ask for it.  You are more likely to get it than if you never ask, even if it is hard candy (with no wrappers).  We are all connected and resources can move from one of us to another like atoms sharing moving electrons that create electricity.  When we share what we have, we are in that flow and what we need has the momentum to arrive.  Also, I learned that although I am no angel, I have the capacity to bring help when it is needed just like we believe angels do.  I always remember that quote from Hebrews that says strangers may be angels we don't recognize. Perhaps the people I shared with were angels in disguise.  Who knows?

What I do know is that I am not going to let politicians dictate that my story is one of scarcity.  I can tell and live a story of abundance.  There seems to be no shortage of ways to help people have a better day, to be the help that arrives just when it is needed.  There is enough to go around, there just isn’t enough for greed.  Well that is my story.

Birth of a Family

Birth of a Family (2017) is a touching feature-length documentary that I viewed at the Indigenous Film Festival at the Midland Cultural Centre last week.  Since I heard filmmaker Tasha Hubbard speak about this project a year or so ago, I have wanted to see it.

This film is not about a family reunion but a family union.  It follows the journey of four siblings who have never met each other before.  Separated from their young Dene single mother and each other during the infamous Sixties Scoop the four siblings grew up not knowing each other.  The oldest sibling Betty Ann works at a newspaper in Saskatoon and she spent decades finding their mother, and each sibling.  Betty Ann reconnected with their mother but she died before the other siblings were located.

The film begins at the Calgary airport where Betty Ann waits for one sibling after another to arrive.  Hubbard went and met with each one of them before they met each other so that they would know her when they all met and they could get on with what they had come to do.  She calls this "observational documentary filmmaking".  In other words, getting out of the way and let the story unfold naturally.

 This newly birthed family travels to Banff and spends some days doing things they have never done before, together.  They go onto a glacier, and the skywalk.   They spend time sharing photos about their lives and catch up on the 212 birthdays that they have missed since they are all in their fifties or sixties now.

Esther, Rosalie, Betty Ann and Ben in Banff

They talk honestly about their lives and grieve the time lost and then have one of many group hugs combined with bursts of laughter.  Although the years separated from their mother and each other cannot be recovered, they are grateful to have each other to share the grieving process with, as well as new adventures.

This newstory from Shaw Saskatoon will give you an idea about the film.

Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie and Ben are all so open and generous with their experience.  I laughed, I cried, I felt the love they have for each other and I was amazed at the courage of these four adult siblings to move into this new adventure together even though it is scary and full of the unknown.

All four siblings were raised in non-Indigenous homes and as they begin to learn about their own heritage the issue of Indigenous children being raised away from their culture becomes fleshed out.  First Residential Schools, then the Sixties Scoop and now kids are still being taken away and put into foster care.  The Birth of a Family helps non-Indigenous people, to understand some of the impact of these policies which are still in effect.

Filmmaker Tasha Hubbard

Tasha Hubbard herself was taken from her parents when she was 3 months old during the Sixties Scoop and didn’t reunite with them until she was sixteen.  She has ten siblings she hadn’t met.  This helped Hubbard to connect with the family in the film. 

Check out the trailer here: 

And if you want to watch the full film, you can stream it on the National Film Board website here.  It is a story that needs to be told and heard.  It is part of the new story that we are all a part of.

Decolonizing Moments Emerge in Unlikely Places

The first snow of the season fell this weekend and the wind was too high to want to be outside, so we headed to town to a “Victorian Christmas” in the Recreation Centre.  I’m not sure what made it Victorian, but the hall was filled with vendors selling artwork, sweets and crafts that might become Christmas presents.  I walked along the aisles slowing down to look at the work of so many people until I came to a booth with a stuffed toy giraffe, African looking cards and bright hats.  The sign read “Home Free”. 

The woman at the booth explained to me that she was raising money for this group that helps to fund families in Uganda.  She went on to explain that the group tries to get children out of orphanages and back with their own family members who need financial help to raise the children or to foster families.  This woman, Linda, makes hats and sells them to raise money for Home-Free.  She had travelled to Uganda this past year and met many of the families and the women that Thrive Uganda which is a part of Home Free supports with micro loans. 

Linda explained to me that eight women here in Canada support five Ugandan women who are the staff of Home Free who are supporting roughly four thousand Ugandans.  So, of course I bought a hat – a bright multicoloured cotton hat for gardening.  How wonderful to be a part of this program funded by women, staffed by women, to help women take care of children.  I saw the irony in the fact that this “Victorian Christmas” sale that was somehow linked to Queen Victoria, Empress of so many colonized countries was where I met one woman, Linda, who was seeking to undo some of the harm that was done by the colonizers.  It seemed an odd place to have a Decolonizing experience or maybe it wasn’t.

The next day, there was more snow on the ground, but the wind had died down and the sun was peeking out.  Suddenly, the world looked bright and new and much friendlier than the previous day.  We headed back to town to the Midland Farmer’s Market at the Huronia Museum.  Much to our surprise, there was also an art exhibition being held in the hall that is the winter home to the Farmer’s Market.  It was called Rekindling Voices. This exhibition celebrates Indigenous culture and included the work of seven local artists.  

Curated by Paul Whittam (Negik),  this powerful group of paintings was displayed on the walls of the hall.  In front of them were the market vendors.  We had to excuse ourselves to go behind their displays to read the plaques describing the pieces and then step back into the centre of the hall to see the paintings from a distance.  One plaque describes how all these artists are “storytellers in their own way.”  Each one was “selected for a light that shines through their artwork into the hearts and minds of people willing to accept the resilience and inextinguishable fire of our collective peoples.”  The paintings told their stories beautifully.  We could see the light that shone through the artwork as they told their stories of resilience.

It wasn’t until we were finished spending time with the art that we turned our attention to buying food.  The powerful art juxtaposed with the buying and selling of food seemed somehow symbolic of the society that we live in.  The inextinguishable fire of the paintings telling the Indigenous stories surrounded the settler farmers who appeared to be oblivious to the beauty behind them.  This was yet another decolonizing experience that made us think about how our stories are interconnected. 

This past week I was aIso reading Richard Wagamese’s last book, Starlight which was published posthumously.  It is a lovely narrative about a man who lives so close to the land that it fills him up.  In the novel, he teaches a woman who has escaped from an abusive relationship and her young daughter how to be on the land.  With this narrative in my head, we stopped at the Wye Marsh to walk in the forest after our Farmers Market experience. 

The first snow in the forest is like coming home for us.  The familiar creak of boots on the packing snow, the snowflakes gently floating down through the trees, the beauty of the snow accentuating the shape of the spruce boughs and … the hungry chickadees.  We always carry sunflower seeds in our pockets at this time of year for these bold little birds.  No sooner had we entered the forest than the familiar  chick-a-dee-dee-dee could be heard.  I held out my hand with sunflower seeds in my palm and a chickadee quickly landed on it, took a seed, looked me in the eye and fluttered off.  I kept walking for a bit and then stopped on a bridge to look at the creek burbling below.  The chickadee swooped past me and landed in a cedar tree inches from me.  I extended my open (and sunflower seeded) palm through the boughs of the tree to the bird.  It hopped the last four inches onto my hand and fed once again. 

As we continued down the path, this same bird swooped in front of us to get our attention and then landed on a tree.  We took turns feeding our hungry little friend in the dance of swoop, hand out, feed, walk, swoop, hand out, feed, walk.  After a while, more chickadees joined our friend and then the antics began.  At times, two chickadees at a time would try to land on my hand and then little feathered squabbles erupted.  At one point they were all in the trees eating their seeds and I held my hand out waiting.  Snowflakes gently landed on my palm and melted.  I might have said that the chickadees weighed no more than a snowflake, but upon comparison with an actual snowflake, I could not say that that was true.  My hand was home to snowflakes, sunflower seeds and chickadees.  My hand was home. 

My partner put seeds on the top of my winter hat and I stood still in the forest as the birds landed on my head to eat.  I could hear the whirring of their feathers as they flew in and feel their little wiry feet through the wool.  I imagined that I was a tree and birds were landing on my branches.  I felt myself sway like a tree in the wind and imagined roots buried deep in the forest floor.  I felt like a character in one of Richard Wagamese’s books.  I felt at home there on the land.  This land is not a commodity for me to buy and sell.  It is not full of resources to extract.  It is not something to take from.  It is my home and I am part of it.  Perhaps this was another decolonizing moment.

All these moments of becoming conscious of colonial thinking, of listening to the voices of Indigenous people through story, art, and music, of connecting to the land are for me decolonizing moments.  All these moments are creating a new way of thinking and being here on this land that we now call Canada.  These moments are writing this new story.

The New Narrative of Rewilding Leads to Action

We need a new narrative when it comes to dealing with environmental issues says professor Paul Jepson.  The old narrative that nature is in crisis because of human greed and ignorance which is leading to a catastrophe has created some change but it is also leading to people ignoring the problem  Jepson suggests that the new narrative be about restoring and rewilding.  This narrative would be about things that we can do that work and is therefore more accessible to people who want to make a difference.  He details this idea in an article called The Story of a Recoverable Earth in Resurgence and Ecologist.  Jepson worked as a conservationist and is now a professor at Oxford.

You can  hear him talking about rewilding urban spaces here: 

When I checked out youtube, there were quite a few videos on this idea of rewilding which all seemed to be from Europe.  I’ll let them tell their stories here:

Here Chris Packman talks about rewilding his garden.  I really liked this one because I have done this with a garden I have on Georgian Bay.  I started out planting medicinal and indigenous species and then nature took over and brought an abundance of wild plants, insects and birds to the garden.

 Here is a video about people who are rewilding a northern part of Russia to protect the permafrost by bringing grazing animals like horses and musk oxen onto the land.  It shows the kind of creative thinking that is going on all around the world.

 And lastly, Peter Smith speaks passionately about letting nature go and what rewilding might look like.

This new narrative uses the “re” prefix.  You hear words like restoring, regenerating, rewilding and recovering.  It is about doing what we can to leave the planet better than we found it.  This is a narrative of giving to nature instead of just taking.  These videos give you a taste of this new narrative and they may also give you ideas about things you can do to be a part of this new narrative, this new story.

Love Will Never Be Extinguished

Last night I attended an inter-faith community vigil for the 11 Jewish people who were shot in a Pittsburgh synagogue on the weekend.  Memorials were carried out across Canada.  The CBC covered those in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.  The one that I attended in Barrie wasn’t covered so I imagine there were many others that I don’t know about. It was only a few years ago that a similar event happened but this time for the shooting of Muslims in a mosque in Quebec.

The rotunda in Barrie’s City Hall was filled when I arrived.  There were between two and three hundred people who had come out to support the people in Pittsburgh who had lost their loved ones and the community that has been so devastated by this hate crime.  There were people from many faiths and backgrounds present.  Audrey Koffman, Spiritual Advisor for Am Shalom Synagogue in Barrie led the vigil.  Spiritual leaders from churches and mosques joined the Jewish leaders in the service.

The question was asked over and over again: What is our response?  Of course people are angry and horrified, but once those emotions have calmed down, how do we as individuals and as a community want to respond?  Over and over came the answer: Our response is love.  Our response is to build communities where we learn about each other, respect each other and stand together.

We got an opportunity to stand together during the vigil.  I was standing just behind a young Muslim couple and their little boy.  Like any child, he soon grew bored with this adult stuff and started to peek out at me from behind his mother’s skirt.  I smiled at him and he grinned back.  Then he peeked out from the other side of her skirt.  He was lovely and I couldn’t help but remember that we have a responsibility to make this world more loving and safe for the children who are going to inherit the world that we are creating.  That is quite the responsibility.

The choir from the synagogue sang beautifully, as did the Jewish Spiritual Advisor and the Imam.  Haunting tunes of sadness and strength wafted over us.  We were invited to hum the tunes even if we didn’t know the words.  Eleven candles were lit for the eleven lost ones and suddenly it was as if they were there with us, people we didn’t know, people we were honouring.  I imagined that each person present had such a light in them.  If those lights were visible to the ordinary naked human eye, then that room would be bright indeed.  I imagined that brightness for a moment.

Many speakers spoke about building tolerant communities and for that hour, we were a community that came together to share our concern, our support, our love.  My friend was there, even though I couldn’t see her.  One of the people that lit a candle was the retired minister of the church my parents attended in Brampton.  One of my clients goes to synagogue with one of the victim’s brothers.  In a crowd of “strangers” I was connected by my own life.  But more than that, I was connected by intent to these people.  We were all trying to do something good in the face of hate.  Ms. Koffman remarked that our presence was evidence that love is more powerful and prevalent than hate.  I could feel that power.

What does standing together, praying together, listening to each other, being entrained by the same music do to us?  I wondered how coming together changes each of us, how knowing that we are not alone, that there are others who are willing to be counted changes us.  I thought of the one gunman who acted out his hatred and will likely lose his own life now and he seemed so tiny, so alone in comparison with the people who were standing together non-violently, building a community of compassion.  I was grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of such a gathering.

We were invited to sign a book of condolence that would be sent to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Such a small thing but perhaps important to people that have come under attack.  Suddenly they have new friends.  Hate crimes are meant to create fear and only love conquers fear.

 “Love will never be extinguished,” said one of the speakers.  And I believe him. We are not diminished by acts of fear and hate if we choose to stand together, offer our love, our understanding and come to know that we are more alike than we know. We have to decide what kind of a world we live in.  We have to create that world.  It’s up to us.  It’s our story after all.