Category: Community

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

– Mary Oliver –

This poem arrived shortly after I had posted Monday’s blog, Love Letters to Life. Its imagery brings to life what I could only hope to have conveyed. That by walking alone along the same river routes for weeks, I began to know and feel my relationship with earth, with life, and its relationship with me. That as I re-remembered this, so, too, was I being remembered, taken in, and held by earth.

A few minutes ago, I wished my friend “buona notte” as we concluded our monthly Zoom call. Held within our mutual love and respect for each other, our conversations always bring gifts – an insight, deeper clarity, more to ponder. Knowing that in a week’s time I’ll be in Italy, feeling its imminent “realness” and growing excitement and curiosity, with her invitation I was able to speak my intention for walking, alone-together with women, currently strangers, but soon to be walking mates.

May we feel remembered by the earth.
May we “sleep as never before,” rising each morning rested, refreshed, and ready for the day’s stage.
May our thoughts “float as light as moths among the branches of perfect trees,” and not weigh heavy as stones in our packs.
May we feel the presence, support, and joy of being with each other, inviting each other and ourselves into “something better.”

This will be my last Friday photo and poem feature until my return in mid-October. I expect to post “love letters” on Facebook if you’d like to follow along. Until then, much love and kindest regards, dear friends.


How is Your Haal (Heart)?

“In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?

What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, ‘How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?’ When I ask, ‘How are you?’ that is really what I want to know.

I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.

Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.

Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I, too, am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.”

— Omid Safi, from The Disease of Being Busy

heartful distractions on my writing desk

My friend Sally, who I met last year walking the Via di Francesco, shared this post from our mutual friend, Omid Safi. I first “met” Omid when he was one of a cadre of regular bloggers/columnists posting in an early iteration of On Being. It was in the aftermath of 9-11 when tensions, animosities, and cultural misunderstandings were high, particularly in the US. What always touched me was how Omid, who is a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, always wrote with an open-hearted clarity, generously giving space for multiple perspectives and opinions, all the while sharing his culture by way of story. In my experience of Omid, his writing and online presence are an embodiment of his love and reverence for his teacher, Rumi, founder of the Sufi order of whirling dervishes.

On a day when I read that over 40,000 lives have been lost to the conflict in Gaza, with thousands more unaccounted for, Omid’s message of heartful connection and healing conversation lands deep within my heart and soul.

Ours has been a virtual friendship. One day I hope to meet Omid in person, perhaps on one of his Illuminated Tours to Turkey or Morocco. One day I hope to put my hand on his arm, look him in the eye, tell him something about the state of my heart, and listen to him tell me about his. And together remember we are each and all human beings, craving human touch, connection, and peace.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Returning

“Returning is a wonderful thing when great
friends are involved. Years dissolve and time is
irrelevant in the light of true reunion. It means to
become one again. It means to be joined. It means
to be one in spirit, one energy, one song. It means
to be returned to the balance you find when
friendships are struck – and the entryway is a hug.”

Richard Wagamese, Embers, 2016

This quote, neatly printed, matted, and framed, hung in the guest room where I stayed last week, visiting my friends. A recent addition, it struck me as both new and the perfect description of the way my friends host theirs. Now my second summer in their beautiful home, with an outdoor living space only possible in their temperate island climes, I experienced the reunion, the song, the return to balance with both our entryway and departure marked by big, warm, heart to heart hugs…and donuts!

Yesterday, I wrote the quote in a card I’d created in celebration of another dear friend’s 60th birthday. It had been a couple of years since we had last connected, and our friendship, like the planets that had for a time, swung out of alignment. I was touched to have received an invitation to her party, and felt the years’ gap dissolve and time irrelevant as we embraced, said how much we had missed each other, and I stepped in comfortably to help her with food prep. This returning was an answered prayer, I’d said, as I hugged her goodbye with the promise to see each other soon.

“We approach our lives on different
trajectories, each of us spinning in our own
separate, shining orbits. What gives this life its
resonance is when those trajectories cross and we
become engaged with each other, for as long or as
fleetingly as we do. There’s a shared energy then,
and it can feel as though the whole universe is in
the process of coming together. I live for those
times. No one is truly ever ‘just passing through.’
Every encounter has within it the power of
enchantment, if we’re willing to look for it.”

Richard Wagamese, Embers, 2016

Last Saturday marked my return to walking with my Camino group. Seeing the sandwich sign marking our start brought joy to be reunited with friends who love to walk. We share an enthusiasm and energy as we support those readying for their late summer and early fall Caminos. This weekend we ventured out for the first time to St. Albert, a community north of Edmonton, with its own river, park trails, botanical garden, and splendid outdoor farmers’ market. More than twenty plus folks enjoyed a summer morning engaged in convivial conversation. I was so engrossed with a dear friend that little attention was paid to the route, and both of us were bewildered on our return to see sights totally missed. Such was our deep, connected returning.

It’s a short post, dear friends, sent, as always, with much love and kindest regards.


Morning

the old pine on the river bank at sunrise

“Morning!” we call out in passing –
the dog walkers, the bicyclists,
the ambitious lady with her water bottles
and her sports bra, all out
unfortunately early to avoid the heat.
“Morning!” Not even
“Good morning,” which
could be an overstatement,
given the hour and the fact
that the world is on fire. It’s what
we have to offer. We have the gift
of a couple fresh hours,
the fact that we are out
moving through it,
a whiff of possibility, the reality
that our lives keep on
touching one another’s in the
tiniest of ways. Morning
is as good as word for it as any.

Lynn Ungar, July 8, 2024

…Morgen…Dia…Giornata…
On a German markplatz filling with farmers’ stalls for market day…mumbled by an elderly man in the small coastal fishing village on the Portuguese Camino…nodding to locals and those few fellow tourists at dawn on Florentine cobblestone streets.

This week a heat dome descended on my province. Sig was up early training Walker to become his name through neighborhood streets, quiet yet surprisingly busy with others intent to spare their dogs from the rising heat. I’d set out early one morning to climb stairs and hills in preparation for September’s long walk (sports bra left at home, water bladder instead of bottles in my pack). Cyclists early for the workouts or commutes. Our lives touching each other with a nod, a smile, a mumbled “morning,” and then each of us on our respective ways into days that held possibility and for some, or many, grief.

A world on fire. With suffering and love.

Beauty in passing.

Morning, friends. Much love and kindest regards.

Memories

For Retirement

This is where you life has arrived,
After all the years of effort and toil;
Look back with graciousness and thanks
On all your great and quiet accomplishments.

You stand on the shore of a new invitation
To open your life to what is left undone;
Let your heart enjoy a different rhythm
When drawn to the wonder of other horizons.

Have the courage for a new approach to time;
Allow it to slow until you find freedom
To draw alongside the mystery you hold
And befriend your own beauty of soul.

Now is the time to enjoy your heart’s desire,
To live the dreams you’ve been waiting for,
To awaken the depths beyond your work
And enter into your infinite source.

John O’Donohue, “For Retirement,” To Bless the Space Between Us, 2008

I have tried umpteen times to format a post using parts of this poem, one gifted to me by a dear friend and colleague twelve years ago on my “retirement.” It appeared as a Facebook memory last week, June 30, as had photo memories from my retirement party that last week in June. I concluded I was pushing the river and so have included the entire piece, in a manner more typical of my Friday blog, together with my posted response:

“Twelve years ago, I had a remarkable career with Edmonton Public Schools. I made wonderful friends. It was my “love made visible.” Hopefully, this current chapter writing poetry will bear similar fruits. Thank you for the memories.”

floral tributes
my “swan song“
“they knew I loved orange”

Within weeks of saying goodbye, I’d launched a new website, and – parlaying my talents, honed skills, and cherished relationships – a private consulting practice. For another seven years I made visible my love supporting leaders, hosting group conversations that mattered, and teaching The Circle Way. Then, government budget cuts and Covid-19 and “poof,” my career ended. Then, I truly stood “on the shore of a new invitation to open my life to what is left undone.”

These have been a few weeks’ worth of memories…professional…personal with the anniversary of Annie’s passing and the joyful arrival of Walker and last week’s simple celebration of our 44th wedding anniversary at a favourite cafe…last year’s preparation for my first long walk in Italy, now to be followed by another this September. Memories that invite reflection and confirmation that I make it a practice to be regularly “drawn to the wonder of other horizons.”

Writing poetry, my consciously chosen next chapter, invites me to “befriend my own beauty of soul.” And because how I’d been able to shape my career allowed for the same, I still miss it. I always said I had the remarkable good fortune to work with people who I loved and cherished and knew they’d felt the similarly about me.

I’ve certainly cultivated a new approach to time. Alongside a slower pace – one enhanced by walking – we live a quiet life and marvel at Walker’s ability to accommodate.

Lately I’ve noticed how my once attraction to life’s “hoopla” has given way to noticing, marking, and often passing over the myriad opportunities for engagement “out there.” Quoting Leonard Cohen, “I ache in the places I used to play.” And while this can be literally – like the ache after a night of dancing a few weeks ago – what I really mean is the tender bit of heart ache, grief even, in finding myself drawn to the still and quiet, letting go, or might it be entering into my infinite source?

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Our Joined Sorrows

Niagara’s old sycamores
sycamore bark

LANGUAGE OF LIGHT
Next to the garden beds I wait
while summer’s profusion wanes

the sycamores stand in unity rows
guarding a path for the recently dead

arboreal complexion of limbs and trunk
sentient camouflage in pale olive and tan

trees older than first-born stars
leaves shimmering in the language of light.

Diana Hayes, Language of Light, 2023

I’ve started my preparation for another autumn long walk in Italy. This time, a small women’s group walking a small portion of the ancient Via Francigena from San Miniato, Tuscany to Rome. No doubt obvious to you who follow me here and on social media, I am smitten with Italy, and am borrowing a page from a once friend who said there was something about returning repeatedly to the same place, to venture deeper in.

I feel good going into this summer’s training. Last year’s foot injury has healed. So, too, my heart – mostly – from Annie’s year-ago passing. Following the same program developed by my friend, I’m starting a month earlier and so feel an ease and confidence I didn’t last summer. Every other day, alternating with pickleball, and a rest day, my chiropractor approves.

Today it rained. I opted for a slow start hoping for the forecasted three-hour break in the showers. Eventually I decided to dress for the weather and set out with my new floral knee-length rain poncho. I “ruck,” meaning when I walk, I carry at least ten pounds of weight in my pack, use my poles and wear my hiking boots, and made of today an experiment in waterproofing and breathability. Better to test here than thousands of miles and another continent away.

Last year, my friend accompanied me on many walks. This year, plagued by her own chronic foot injury, I’ll be walking alone most days. And I’m quite OK with that, given my proven way, even in groups, of often walking solo, in silence, with my camera ever ready. And so it was, Tuesday and today (Thursday), I resumed my lapsed practice of listening to podcasts. Several On Being with Krista Tippett episodes, the last one featuring a conversation with poet, essayist, teacher, and community gardener Ross Gay on The Insistence of Joy. His closing words struck deep:

Is sorrow the true wild?
And if it is — and if we join them — your wild to mine —
what’s that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?

Step by step, mulling his concluding words, that powerful question, as light showers grew heavier, I switched over to another of my favourite podcasts, Ellipsis Thinking, created and hosted by my dear friend, Greg Dowler-Coltman. In this episode a conversation with Saltspring Island poet Diana Hayes, the author of today’s chosen poem. Greg had gifted me with Diana’s chapbook, Language of Light, an exquisite collection borne of her near inconsolable grief for her mother’s too-soon death from breast cancer, the same cancer she suffered at the same time. As I listened, struck again by Greg’s talent for deep listening and thoughtful questions emerging from his innate and kind curiosity, I felt a kindredness with Diana’s way of being in the world and as a poet.

Bittersweet is what comes to mind. Knowing oneself and another when we are vulnerable in disclosing and joining our sorrows. The poignant, piercing joy that can result when we do.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

an open poem…

“Aries and Viriditas” original artwork by Katharine Weinmann

…to a world-weary empath

you can’t leave Earth yet

~ because I just flipped ahead about
a hundred pages in your story and I read
that someday you will be the reason someone else
doesn’t give up on their life

I’m sorry to spoil the end of your epic tale

~ but someday you will be the one who ignites
the blaze in another person’s heart that
won’t ever be put out again

don’t complicate the plot of your story

~ you are here to be lamplighter that hands out
little bits of your flame to ensure the rest
of the world doesn’t exist in darkness

I know you have been scorched so many times

~ to love the world is to sometimes be burned at
the stake by others who mistake your gift
of compassion as a personal weakness

I know it’s not easy to be a bringer of light
to those who have become addicted to shadows

~ but we need you to be a gardener of effervescent seeds
that you will perhaps never see grow into burning rosebushes
that can be seen from space

Oh, my love, don’t give into the calling despair

~ set your life on fire with kindness and watch how many
other people come out of their caves to sit by your
campfire heart to share their own stories of survival

Oh my love, you are my favorite element

~ john roedel ~

It’s Easter Sunday. Cold, with a skiff remaining of the crusty snow that blew in on Thursday, and sunny. We were treated by our friends to a quintessential Easter brunch: locally sourced smoked ham and scalloped potatoes, sauteed asparagus, hot cross buns, and bread pudding with maple syrup. While flowers remain hidden here, a solitary bird, perched high within the branches of the still-bare alder tree, serenaded both our coming and going. A “slow” meal, interspersed with watching the antics of their cats, and our always edifying conversations, with the window open feeling the gentle breeze and hearing the birdsong, I felt the day’s hopeful promise.

Now home, and after a nap (I’ve been plagued with early waking for the past few weeks – The recent full moon? An upcoming solar eclipse? Excitement with Tuesday’s trip? Editing? Anxiety anticipating the long-time-in–coming meeting with a friend on Good Friday, one that allowed us both to lay down our metaphoric load of disappointment and grief?), I turned down the furnace and opened wide the windows to invite in Spring’s energy to displace Winter’s. A bit of packing, tending to correspondence, and this blog, one held in the draft folder for a day when time is short, concentration spent.

John Roedel is a self-described “Facebook poet,” sharing his bittersweet, aimed straight-for-the-heart compositions, often in the form of a photo of a first draft scratched in pen on the lined page of his notebook. On the heels of today’s brunch conversation, one that weaved back and forth through life’s joys and despairs, this felt like the right one to post. Too, that it speaks to his “favorite element” fire, which is Aries and the astrological sign currently ruling our planet. Aries is my sign, too. Fire my element and dosha. And as a self-described “empath,” at times world-weary – the trifecta of reasons for sharing it with you, many of whom I suspect are, too, world-weary empaths.

So, take heart, dear ones. Continue to set your life on fire with kindness and know we’re all in exceptionally good company.

Much love and kindest regards.

Cross the Sea

CROSS THE SEA

A girl in Gaza
speaks into a table microphone:
Do you believe in infinity?
If so, what does it look like to you?

Not like a wall
Not like a soldier with a gun
Not like a ruined house
bombed out of being
Not like concrete wreckage
of a school’s good hope
a clinic’s best dream

In fact not like anything
imposed upon you and your family
thus far
in your precious thirteen years.

My infinity would be
the never-ending light
you deserve
every road opening up in front of you.

Soberly she nods her head.

In our time voices cross the sea
easily
but sense is still difficult to come by.

Next girl’s question:
Were you ever shy?

– Naomi Shihab Nye, Voices in the Air, 2018

I’m sitting at a worktable in my public library typing this post for tomorrow’s drop. We’ve been without WIFI in our home office for nearly a week (hence why no Monday post). WOW! How dependent are we on this technology? It’s tax time. My husband does all our investing online. Bills to be paid by the month end. Waiting to print time sensitive return labels. Looming project deadlines. I’ve managed with my phone but wonder how much I’m over the data limit and how much the costs will be. My neck aches from being hunched over…texting and tapping what I can to stay in touch, be responsive. So, in this moment, I’m reminded how much I enjoy and appreciate my library, surrounded by stacks, students plugged in working at other tables, surrounded by full-length windows.

It’s quintessential springtime in Alberta. After several days of sun, warm weather, and melted snow – after getting off really easy with winter – the temperature dropped below freezing and snow fell for most of the day. I took a leisurely start to my day with a coffee date being canceled. Sipping my Americano, in the flat white light of the living room, quiet with snow gently falling outside, I began reading this volume of poetry, waiting on my shelf for just this moment. Needing some shoring up given another week of rejections and trepidation about the manuscript I’m revising, I was not disappointed, as even its epigraph began to set me straight:

“Stay humble, blend, belong to all directions.
Fly low, love a shadow. And sing, sing freely,
never let anything get in the way of your singing,
not darkness, not winter,
not the cries of flashier birds, not the silence
that finds you steadfast
pen ready…”

Naomi Shihab Nye

Then this, the first sentence of her introduction:

“Poet Galway Kinnell said, ‘To me, poetry is someone standing
up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible,
what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.'”

And this, to open the first section, “Messages,”:

Broken pencil
Broken pen
Maybe today
I’ll write my best poem

Well maybe not a poem but a post. And maybe not my best, but enough. Enough to be thankful for Palestinian-American poet and educator, Naomi Shihab Nye who first came to my attention when I read her well known “Gate a4” and signature, “Kindness.” Enough to let her cultural perspective and experiences teach me, as she was taught when teaching a poetry workshop in an international high school in Japan, the word Yutori – “life space” – the place and space “in which to stand back to contemplate what we are living and experiencing. More spaciousness in being, more room in which to listen.” (Voices in the Air, xiii) And enough to remember a girl in Gaza, or Ukraine, or Israel, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ethopia, Yemen, Russia…asking profound questions, being deeply heard, and wishing her the infinity of the never-ending light she so deserves.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

A Morning Offering

watching the sunrise on the Sahara a year ago

It’s dawn. Still dark, as yesterday’s “spring ahead” time change makes more noticeable the gift of more daylight in the evening.

It’s Monday, when I typically drop a post, or try to. Last night making pizza and watching the Oscars interrupted my typical pattern of getting to my desk at 6 to write. Too, yesterday I sent off to my editor the big writing project I’d been waking early each weekday for the past few weeks to complete. After pressing the “send” button on the email, I took a breather and walked in sunshine warming and snow melting, passing folks enjoying the same. Smelling, hearing, and feeling spring. My breather continuing until bed time.

It’s soon time to join my 7:00 am Zoom weekday writing space, where after exchanging good mornings we all mute and “vanish” ourselves to our keyboards to write for an hour or longer. I’ll finish this post, despite it being late, and begin pieces for several March submission deadlines.

It’s a post without a theme. Simply keeping my promise made to Muse to write. Showing up at my desk, in the space I created to create. Candle lit. Classical music streaming from the station I re-discovered during those recent trips to Niagara (WNED on TuneIn). Radiant heat glowing on my back. Americano cooling in its handmade Italian cup. Borrowing from my Friday pattern, I’ll leave you with what feels like the perfect poem for today, an excerpt from John O’Donohue’s “A Morning Offering,” in To Bless the Space Between Us:

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

In Times of Terror, Wage Beauty

There are those who want the
world to remain on its current
path. This is not only unacceptable,
but it is painfully unimaginative.
For the beauty of our generation
is we are uniquely situated to
achieve what so many in this
world currently consider
impossible. How exquisitely
beautiful it will be to watch the
current narrative go down in
flames, then witness poetics &
phoenix rise from the ashes.

Embers, ancestors, and angels
await us, loved ones. Forward.

– Mark Gonzales –
In Times of Terror, Wage Beauty, 2014

I’d forgotten I had on my poetry shelf this eloquent “collage of visions.” In response to last week’s attempt to find enough words to notice and name one of the current global narratives literally imploding and exploding, a friend, in her comment, referenced the book, one I had gifted her years back. Immediately retrieving it, thumbing through its simple and beautifully designed pages, I knew I wanted to uplift and amplify Mark’s message and intention here today. Quoting from the back cover:

In Times of Terror, Wage Beauty is a
meticulously crafted series of ideas in
tweet sized digestible prose. It serves as
a personal guide to social change makers
in the 21st century navigating complex
social systems by highlighting advanced
approaches to healing and global wellness.

A quick early morning scroll today on social media and I’m reminded it’s International Women’s Day. Aware of feeling cynical and crusty, perhaps the result of many very early mornings arriving at my desk to write, I’m less inclined to jump on the bandwagon and share any of its memes or create my own. As with so many of these socially-politically designated days, often created, if not co-opted, by the power brokers to highlight and assuage their own interests, or by corporations to make money, I’m tired and disillusioned with the narrative that has become a “painfully unimaginative” rhetoric. I need a narrative like Mark’s. One that insists we not live in a world where any of us needs to shout to be heard, seen, and valued (26).

Instead, a narrative that encourages the simple yet essential acts of creativity – dreams, laughter, love, and imagination (51). One that heals the hearts of those forced from their homelands by centering on their beauty (29). One that remembers stories as ceremony, vessels for ancestors, memories, futures, and the vehicle by which the divine is engaged (41).  One that reminds me “now is not the time to be timid” (21).

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.