Category Archives: What Matters

Gifts

Posted on March 15, 2014 | 3 comments

This is one of my most cherished photos.

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There is nothing I love more than reading to my grandchildren. Second to that,  I love buying them books. Books they will love to read and I will love reading to them.  I  should not go to a bookstore with my credit card. Amazon and Chapters have me on “speed dial” Perusing used book stores is one of my favourite pastimes. You never know when you will find a treasure.

“The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination”

Elizabeth Hardwick

I received my love of reading from my parents. I can still see, hear and experience my dad reading Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie at night in bed with me. I remember the hours I spent in our local library. As an introverted child my favourite pastime was getting lost in a book.

I know that all my childhood reading shaped the adult I am today. It opened a world that was infinite. It gave me a new level of consciousness by exposing me to the wisdom of all times and places. It gave me a profound awareness of myself and where I could fit in this great cosmos. I could ask questions, I could learn. Reading created empathy. It created the way I think.

“I think in a time like ours, where so much of the public discourse tells us that we are antagonistic, that we’re separate, fiction is a wonderful way to remind ourselves that actually that’s a lie.”

George Saunders

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If you can do one thing as grandparent that will change the world, read to your grandchildren every chance you can. Buy them books; picture books, fiction, non fiction. Read to them. Talk to them about what they are reading. Make them life longer learners, create young people who can communicate globally and they will change the world. Job well done!

(if you are not a grandparent, find a literacy program and volunteer, everyone deserves the gift of literacy)

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Mentoring

Posted on March 4, 2014 | 2 comments

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In retirement you have time to reflect on your career. Forty five years of working involves a multitude of relationships. I started when I was fifteen and am now retired at sixty. Some jobs I remember fondly and some I try to forget; like the one day I spent as a collections clerk at a credit bureau. Retirement doesn’t mean that you stop having relationships, you just get to be more choosy about what you want to spend your very valuable time on. One of the skills I acquired in my careers of many colours was mentoring. I have always believed in the principles of servant/leadership and the need for community building. I first read “The Servant as Leader”, by Robert Greenleaf in 1986. This skill is more valuable to me now than ever. Time, and no career restraints make if possible to mentor those who might not have opportunities.

I am enjoying my own personal art projects but was inspired by some blogs on journaling and art as therapy and as always I am inspired by A Mighty Girl. The thoughts just came together, and now I have an art class in a school where some of the Grade 6 girls just need to know that  the community cares. Once a week we get together at lunch hour, and I am helping them create a self-portrait illustrating why they are “A Mighty Girl” Each girl comes to the table with their own skills and talents and we work with paint, photographs and words to help them define their ‘mightiness”. It always involves a safe space and much laughter. The pictures below show some of the girls progress. I will post again when we are finished. The picture at the top of the blog is the one I painted for my granddaughter for Christmas. I am working on another granddaughter’s picture during the class.

I am not sure who is mentoring who?

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Remember

Posted on November 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day in Canada. A day we remember those who gave their life for us in conflict; respect for  those who are serving today. Canada is known as a country of peacemakers. I want to be a peacemaker. My favourite Catholic prayer is “make me an instrument of your peace” by St. Francis of Assisi
I don’t have much experience with war. I have never seen it, touched it, smelled it or heard it. It is only in my imagination, fueled by what I have read or seen in the media. I know that it is suffering.

In my grade 12 English Lit class we wrote an essay on “is war real or romantic”. It was 1971. We had the war in Vietnam Even that wasn’t real. It was romantic, at 17 you protested against a war. This war gave us a chance to flex our budding adult hood. I remember cheekily asking my mom if she thought the communists were going to swim across the ocean and kill her in her sleep.Worse yet I married a draft dodger, if only for a brief time. We had a great teacher that was way ahead of his time. He taught that the next big war would be over natural resources; fossil fuels first and then they would come for our water. My parents thought that was ridiculous. We got the lecture about how my paternal grandfather had served in WWI and my mother’s brothers in WWII. They protected us from evil. I so wish that is true.
Evil is still all around us.

Tomorrow I will remember my grandfather and all grandfathers. I will pray for gratitude and awareness of how fragile and unpredictable life is; I will cherish the wealth of my life. I will do my best to bring my attention more deeply to life around me. I will be an instrument of peace.

Bodhi
 "Some days are like this,
 you wake with an ache in your chest
 that isn't even yours.
 You know that somewhere, great rivers
       of blood are being shed.
 Somewhere mothers are weeping over
      children, bodies strewn like wildflowers.
 Somewhere, men and women, eat a bowl of pain -
 A man tells his wife that he is leaving,
 A woman wakes in an empty bed
 or puts her hand to en empty place
      where a breast was.
 Somewhere, in the screeching of brakes
      there is a shattering, of glass, of lives.
 This earth is covered in a sea of suffering.
 If for few moments we manage to forget
    do not begrudge us our wine, our prayer, our reaching out
      for a word, a touch,
           even from a stranger"

Regina Sara Ryan

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Life Remembered As It Was Lived

Posted on October 26, 2013 | Leave a comment

Eulogy

He took a big, almost sob relieving breath.

“My Grandpa loved us. He really loved his girls (his dogs). He had a big smile and really big laugh. He told great jokes. He made us laugh. He took us on the best hikes. My Grandpa could take a nap any where any time.

I love him and miss him.”

Our next door neighbor’s “celebration of life” was today. It was a simple affair, just as he would have wanted it, followed by chili, and wiener and marshmallow roast for the whole community. It was a fantastic fire.

Below was his daily walk with his girls.

Clarence lake

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A Dog Has Died

Posted on August 13, 2013 | 3 comments

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I lost an old friend two weeks ago. I had no time to grieve. The day after he died a blog I read posted the poem below. The poem is by Pablo Neruda.
The blogger called it “found zen”. I realized how lucky I am to have all these beautiful animals in my life to keep me grounded. Unfettered unconditional love is what I aspire to. These bodhisattvas will return for me.

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Someday I’ll join him right there,
but now he’s gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I’ll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I’ll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he’d keep on gazing at me
with a look that he reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea’s movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean’s spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.b-web

                                 There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don’t now and never did lie to each other.

                            So now he’s gone and I buried him,
and that’s all there is to it.

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Brave For My Granddaughters and Merida

Posted on May 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

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I sign the usual petitions polar bears, wolves, pipelines, environmental things mostly and I am also passionate around women’s rights. My  very public participation this year in V-Day and Vagina Monologues was  outside my comfort zone.

I signed the petition last week put out by A Mighty Girl, to keep the Disney character Merida, from the movie Brave unprincesfied. To keep her from becoming a sexualized, made up, hair glossed, lips rouged, dress tightened, breasts more defined looking princess: more in line with all the other Disney princesses who have lost their innocence and some their

A Mighty Girl is a blog I read regularly. It has great information on books, characters, toys, music and clothing for young girls. It is in-line with what I value for my granddaughters.

My two-year old granddaughter Stella loves Merida and the movie Brave. My seven-year old granddaughter likes it as well but she is not easily influenced by television, movies etc. She doesn’t watch TV at home and all movies are family time with lots of discussion.

Stella’s second birthday last week had a “Brave” theme and Merida came to the party. There was fishing, archery, a bear, a castle and the boys had as much fun as the girls, after all it was a party for a two-year old. Her dad even dressed in a kilt!

I identified with Brave when I watched it. I loved her spunk as well as her faults. There were great teachable moments in the movie. It reminded me so much of the girl I once was. Tree climbing, bike riding, red hair flying in the wind tom boy. Fifty years later and thirty years of working in the prestige cosmetic industry I know a thing or two about marketing to women and selling you something that you don’t really need but that you hope will make you happy or change your life.

Girls  (and boys) need good strong role models and parents as the primary educator are responsible for what their children learn. As a grandmother, and with  my disposable income I know I can vote with my feet and refuse to buy those consumables that don’t empower my grandchildren to be smart, confident and courageous.

I think we might have won a battle, but maybe not the war.http://www.amightygirl.com/blog/?p=3443

If my granddaughter can always be this joyful, my work will be done!

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Love God

Posted on February 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

To be six years old and the secret is so simple. Love god, creator, buddha. Love is the operative. I adore the way my granddaughter created this picture. She doodles constantly and I regularly get an envelope full of her art work. Sometimes I get full-blown painted canvases. I love to look at it and wonder what motivated this piece.

I love the Franciscan look to god, the hearts,peace sign, stars, earth and planets. What more creations are in that little spirit, I so admire.love-god

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