Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations ...

All we have are moments. So live them as though not one can be wasted. Inhabit them, fill them with the light of your best good intention, honour them with your full presence, find the joy, the calm, the assuredness that allows the hours and the days to take care of themselves. If we can do that, we will have lived.

Richard Wagamese

Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations

Good morning, Everyone!

Yesterday, as I put my life back together after a week on Vancouver Island facilitating two wonderful workshops, my long-awaited copy of Richard Wagamese' last book, Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations, arrived in the mail.

Stopping only long enough to make a piping cup of tea, I curled up on the couch and opened the small volume, savouring its smooth cool pages, fitting photographs of Nature and her creatures and the sweet, spare, honest prose of Richard's hard won wisdom. Within moments, tears were rolling down my cheeks as I sat, overwhelmed by the emotional and spiritual power of his words. I thought, "This is my new book of scripture. My new source of sacred writings." If I could live my life in accord with these truths-of-the-heart, I would live my life well.

Richard writes as one who had long ago died in order to survive but then, at the time of writing, had come back to life in all its fullness. There is wonder, simplicity, authenticity and clarity in his wise words and every short meditation opens a window to hours of transformative reflection.

If you have not read this book, do order it now as a Spring gift to yourself. Here are a few quotations that may entice you:

Keep what's true in front of you, Old Man said. You won't get lost that way. I was asking about making my way through the bush. He was talking about making my way through life. Turns out, all these years later, it was the same conversation.

I'm learning that happiness is an emotion that's a result of circumstances. Joy, though, is a spiritual engagement with the world based on gratitude. It's not the big things that make me grateful and bring me joy. It's more the glory of the small: a touch, a smile, a kind work spoken or received, that first morning hug, the sound of friends talking in our home, the quiet that surrounds prayer, the smell of sacred medicines burning, sunlight on my face, the sound of birds and walking mindfully, each footfall planted humbly on earth.

There are periods when you exist beyond the context of time and fact and reality. Moments when memory carries you buoyant beyond all things, and life exists as fragments and shards of being, when you see yourself as you were and will be again - sacred, whole and shining.

There is sunlight in the mountains today. The morning is crisp and clear as untrammelled thought. Against the sky, the trees raise crooked fingers in praise. To be here is to be affected, made more. Filled. The creative energy of the universe. Drink it in, my friends ... 

May the rich writings of this lovely little book touch and help to transform your life.