Let there be light ...

 

There is always a glimmer in those

who have been through the dark.

Atticus

Hello everyone - greetings of light-in-the-darkness to you all!

I would not have believed Atticus' ancient words in the dark, depleted days following years of family caregiving, the death of my husband, my mother's death 3 months later and all the mind-numbing tasks that inevitably follow the death of loved ones. I had given more than I had to give and was utterly spent. For months after the first rounds of bereavement tasks were complete, I did little more than sit in a chair by the window and breathe. And even that was an effort some days.

It was close to a year and a half before I regained sufficient physical strength to engage my grief in a meaningful way. And, to be quite honest, there were many days when I wished I had died, too, I felt so bereft and had so little life force left to fuel my living.

Some would have said I was depressed but, in fact, I was exhausted, grieving and traumatized. But, deep within me, invisible to the naked eye, healing was already beginning to take place. First came the s-l-o-w restoration of physical strength wrought by weeks and months of simple rest, good nutrition and short daily walks. (Though those initial "walks" comprised nothing more than a few steps to the front door where I stood on the porch with my face to the rain.)

Then, in the long silent hours of sitting by the livingroom window, staring at the garden, came quiet opportunities to re-connect with my Self, my memories, my feelings and the many sources of strength greater than my own - the healing rhythms of nature, the beauty outside my window, the wisdom gleaned from poetry and prose and a deep spiritual connection with Mystery. As my energy rose sufficiently to reconnect with people, the love of cherished relationships, old and new, sustained me through new choices in life and vocation. The glimmer that had desperately endured the darkness was fanned to a new brightness by my willingness to let healing take as long as it took and to accept the loving support of family and friends.

For some of you, 2020, (this strange, COVID, "year-out-of-time"), is ending in a similar state of grief, trauma and depletion.  You are full of unexpressed pain and sorrow and have not an ounce of strength left to give.  It feels like there is nothing left of you or in you. But please don't allow that to be your truth for long. Choose, instead, to gently and persistently fan the flame of your own life force.  Seek the things that have renewed you in the past and allow them to do it once more - even in the smallest "doses" and most unusual ways, given COVID's limitations.

As Atticus knew, way back in second century Rome, there is a tiny glimmer left in all of us who have been through the darkness, be that darkness the countering of COVID's grim effects, the fearfulness of not being able to work, the anxiety of becoming ill yourself or the exhaustion of caring for loved ones at home who were already ill or injured before the pandemic. This remaining glimmer can be buried so deeply that it seems all but lost - but it IS still there. And, with gentle fanning and exquisitely tender nurturing, it can break into flame and give light once more - first to yourself and then to the world around you.

When you do choose to heal, you may find you have sufficient energy to fan your own flame but, more likely, you will need some help. So, please do ask for that help. Even if it's hard at first. (You may have noticed that we nurturers are not always great at asking for nurturing, ourselves.) There will always be others who have walked the healing path before you who are willing and able to help you find your way.  Keep looking until you find the right ones for you - supportive friends, somatic therapists, spiritual advisors, meditation leaders, support groups and others. This care and support will make all the difference.

Festivals of light across cultures - Diwahli, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and others - remind us that there IS light in and after the darkness and that it can be fanned to a new intensity with time, care and exquisite attention. 

So, at this particularly dark moment in time, for each of us individually, and as a wider community, "Let there be light ...".

Feed Your Spirit ...

Self care is not selfish.

Anonymous

Hello, Everyone,

Whether you are a family carepartner wondering how on earth to manage the holidays on top of your regular care-giving duties or a helping professional working 12 hour shifts over the holidays, self care deserves a place right at the top of your to-do list.

Genuine self care springs from a place of self compassion and self compassion means simply giving the same kindness to yourself that you would give to others in a similar situation. Self care is not selfish. It means allowing yourself time to heal, refresh and renew so you can become or remain whole and healthy. Once your depleted self is refilled, you can then give to others with more fullness and joy. (Those who have attended the Caring On Empty workshop will remember the wisdom of one of my favourite Sufi sayings - Never give from the depths of your well, only from the overflow. This requires that you actually have an overflow from which to give!)

Most of us can quickly come up with physical and emotional ideas for staying strong and healthy during the hectic holiday season - eating well, taking pauses to rest, frequent hand-washing, getting back to the essence of the holidays, booking a good therapy appointment - but how many of us take time to consider what we might need to feed our spirits during these busy and poignant days? Below are a few ideas to consider as you add a spiritual dimension to your holiday self care plan:

1.  Simplify.  For many, holiday traditions have become increasingly complex, commercial and just a little crazy. If this observation applies to you, consider choosing  the top four values by which you would like to live your holidays and then assess your usual traditions to see if there is an alignment between your values and activities. If not, consider what changes you could make to have a simpler, more authentic celebration. 

This week, someone told me the story of her sister who had moved into a new home right before Christmas. She quickly realized that her new neighbours were folks who went all-out in decorating their home and property. Rather than trying to compete and add more stress to her life, she made a sign, decorated it with lights and wrote on it a large arrow pointing to the neighbours' house and added the word,"ditto"! One of her values was to simplify her holiday customs and, in this one public act, her values and actions were aligned.

2.  Stay centred.  Spend a little time alone. (This is especially important for introverts, those who refresh and refuel through spending time in their inner world.) Use contemplative practices that are familiar and work for you - meditation, centering prayer, reading poetry, connecting with Nature, receptive photography, journalling and others. Reflect upon the meaning of the season and how it may have changed in your life over time. Be receptive to new insights. Pace yourself so you have time to process your feelings. 

3.  Use the Enneagram. Use the Enneagram to help you understand, forgive and accept yourself and others when people push your buttons at holiday gatherings. Recognizing the motivations behind the behaviour of those who irritate you can make Christmas dinners a little easier to take.

4.  Practice gratitude. The last Christmas before my husband died, he gave me one of Sara Brethnacht's Gratitude Journals and wrote on the first page, "Let's try this. I think it will help." And help it did. It didn't take away the pain of our long goodbye or the grief of our leave-taking but, in some magical way, it helped to balance the suffering. Each night we would write down 5 things for which we were grateful and then read them to each other. Later, when he no longer had the strength to hold a pen, we would lie in bed in the dark and whisper our gratefulness to each other. 

For those of you caring for loved ones this season, an intentional gratitude practice could help to balance your pain as well. If you have trouble thinking of something for which to be grateful, try looking at Bro David Steindl-Rast's latest gratefulness video for some prompts. (You will have to listen carefully in a quiet place because the speech of age now complicates Bro David's thick Austrian accent, but it's worth the effort to listen.)

5.  Be inspired. To inspire is to breathe life into something or someone. The word comes from the same Latin root as that for spirit.  We are all inspired by different things - acts of kindness, acts of courage, beautiful poetry, the wonders of nature, great works of art. Choose to spend time with the things that inspire you this season and take the time to savour them, allowing them to sink into your body, healing and energizing your life.

These are just a few ideas for feeding your spirit during the winter holidays. I'm sure you have your own as well. The question is, will you allow yourself to make space to use them ... ? I hope you do.

As I pack to leave for Vancouver Island for my own holiday festivities, I wish each one of you exactly what you need to feed your spirit this Christmas and every blessing in 2020.

Jan

   

John Was a Failure...

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure

without losing your enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

Today I'd like to share a story with you, one I heard many years ago at a midnight service on a snowy Christmas Eve. I still remember the warmth of the small church, overfull with extra bodies and glowing with candlelight reflected from our faces as we listened intently to this lovely story by Robert Fulghum (from his book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It):

 John Pierpont died a failure. In 1886, he came to the end of his days as a government clerk in Washington, DC with a long string of personal defeats abrading his spirit.

Things began well enough. He graduated from Yale, which his grandfather had helped to found, and chose education as his profession with some enthusiasm.

He was a failure at school teaching. He was too easy on his students. 

And so, he turned to the legal world for training.  He was a failure as a lawyer. He was too generous to his clients and too concerned about justice to take the cases that brought good fees.

The next career he took up was that of dry good merchant. He was a failure as a business man.  He could not charge enough for his goods to make a profit, and was too liberal with credit. 

In the meantime, he had been writing poetry and, though it was published, he didn't collect enough royalties to make a living. He was a a failure as a poet. 

Politics seemed a place where he could make some difference and he was nominated as the Abolition Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts.  He lost. Undaunted, he ran for Congress under the banner of the Free Soil Party. He lost. He was a failure as a politician. 

The Civil War came along and he volunteered as a chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers. Two weeks later he quit, having found the task too much of a strain on his health. He was 76 years old. He couldn't even make it as a Chaplain. 

Someone found him an obscure job in the back offices of the Treasury Department in Washington, and he finished out the last five years of his life as a menial file clerk. He wasn't very good at that either.  His heart was not in it.

John Pierpont died a failure. He had accomplished nothing he set out to do or be. There's a small memorial stone marking his grave in Mt Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The words in the granite read,  POET PREACHER PHILOSOPHER PHILANTHROPIST.

From this distance in time, one might insist that he was not in fact a failure. His commitments to social justice, his desire to be a loving human being, his active engagement in the great issues of his times, and his faith in the power of the human mind, these are not failures. And much of what he thought of as defeat became success. Education was reformed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and above all, slavery was abolished once and for all.

Why am I telling you this? It is not an uncommon story. Many 19th century reformers had similar lives, similar failures and successes. In one very important sense, John Pierpont was not a failure. Every year, come December, we celebrate his success. We carry in our hearts and minds a life long memorial to him. It's a song, not about Jesus or angels or even Santa Claus. It's a terribly simple song about the simple joy of whizzing through the cold white dark of winter's gloom in a sleigh pulled by one horse, and with the company of friends, laughing and singing all the way. No more, no less, than Jingle Bells. John Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells!

To write a song that stands for the simplest joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know, a song about something they've never done, but can imagine, a song that every one of us large and small can hoot out the moment the cord is struck on the piano, and the cord is struck in our spirit, well, that's not failure! 

One snowy afternoon in deep winter John Pierpont  penned the work as a small gift to his family and friends and congregation, and in doing so, he left a permanent gift for Christmas, the best kind, not the one under the tree, but the invisible, invincible one of Joy!

So, if you're feeling a failure for any reason this beautiful and demanding Holiday Season, take care to separate failing at a task from being a failure. Then remember the story of John Pierpont, recognize your capacity to change and grow through experience, forgive yourself and begin again. There are always ways to redeem our failures especially through learning from them and doing things differently another time.

A very Happy Christmas to you all!

Jan

The Presence of Absence at Christmas ...

I notice your absence.

I notice your non-presence and reflect

on the time when you were present ...

Jarod Kintz

Hello everyone,

I've just finished all the happy "work" of the holidays and now there is time to sit back by the fire with a cup of tea to reflect on the holiday experience thus far. 

The winter holidays are usually the most joyful time of year for me. I love everything about them - the lights, the colours, the gifts, the music, the connection with family and friends. This year, however, changes in the pattern of life have subdued some of that joy. One sister, who lost her partner last spring, is grieving. The other sister is far away in Dawson City, without her family, working through the holidays. My dear friends, whose daughter is spending Christmas in a hotel room in a small city in Borneo rather than joining them for Christmas dinner, are missing her presence. And my own traditional plans for Christmas Day have taken a different path this year, asking me to spend most of Christmas Day alone.

At one point during the week, I sat down with my journal to better understand the strength of my emotional response to these "absences". I was sad and angry and lonely to a degree that seemed a bit of an overreaction to the actual circumstances. (After all, I am hardly a Syrian refugee being torn from everything I know or a family caregiver saying goodbye to a loved one who will die over the holidays.) As usual, after digging a little deeper, I realized that the intensity of my response came from layers of similar experiences in times past, times when the presence of absence figured strongly in my life. 

Whether at the very beginning of life when I lived as a boarder baby in a hospital nursery or during the many times in my childhood when my beloved father disappeared without warning on an alcoholic binge or throughout the early years of my bereavement following the deaths of my husband and mother, this "presence of absence" has had a strong, if sometimes unconscious, effect on my life. Now, when current holiday experiences trigger the emotional memories of these absences, my old and new reactions can mix together and become a little over-the-top.  

It is in the nature of life that we live in the presence of absence. Something or someone is almost always missing or about to go missing. Most of us build up an internal file folder of "absence experiences" over time, a folder that has the potential to raise our emotional intensity whenever it is reopened by a current loss or disappointment. 

So, what do we to do when this file folder is opened unexpectedly and all those old pages of absence fall out on the floor with their attendant emotions?

The first step is to recognize that this, indeed, is what's happening. This recognition lets us separate present experience from past emotion, allowing us to respond to the current absence with more appropriate intensity.

Secondly, we can reach out for a "presence" to calm and balance the experience of absence. Tell a trusted friend how you're feeling, write in your journal, pray, meditate, lean into the web connecting all human beings for support and comfort.

Thirdly, make a concrete action plan for doing the best you can with the absence situation that faces you. I have a large turkey thigh in the fridge waiting to be stuffed tomorrow morning, a fire all ready to be laid in the fireplace and a new book on hand to open tomorrow afternoon. I've also booked telephone visits with particularly supportive loved ones, spread throughout the day. It won't be the Christmas I want but it can be a better one than the lonely one I'd imagined.

And, finally, after the holidays have passed, you can consider seeing a good therapist to work at emptying your absence file folder of some of its older pages so that your holiday emotions can gradually become less overwhelming.

Whatever the absences present in your life this holiday season, may each of you find sufficient gifts of peace and joy to balance them. 

  

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Jan

When Christmas Hurts...

I think there must be something wrong with me,

Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I

don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel.

Charlie Brown

Hello, everyone,

Today has been a wonderful day of trimming the Christmas tree, decorating the house and baking the world's best ginger snaps (if I do say so myself!). These winter holidays are my favourite. I love the cold air and sparkling lights outside and the fire and coziness inside, the sounds of carols in the air and the visits of beloved family and friends.

However, for many, the holidays are not such a happy time. This week, for example, three of my friends and family are having serious surgery, one on Monday, one on Tuesday and the third on Wednesday. They and their families are stressed and worried.

When illness, trauma, loss, worry or chronic sorrow fill your heart, the light celebrations of Christmas and the other seasonal holidays can ring hollowly at best or sound a note of pure pain at worst. One of the hardest things about this kind of holiday suffering is that no one wants you to feel it - so family and friends do their best to "cheer you up". It's such a relief when the rare person comes along who will allow you feel exactly as you do without having to "fix"you. Such people are worth their weight in gold.

While checking in with a few of my favourite websites this week, I came across a young woman who, through her music, encourages others to feel their grief and sadness. Her name is Latifah Phillips of Page CXVI and she takes traditional hymns and spiritual songs and changes their words and arrangements to make them more relevant for today. Recently, she took a popular Christian children's song, "Down in My Heart", a typically "go-ey" tune as my husband used to say, and reinterpreted it as a melancholy reflection of pain and grief, written in a minor key.

The dissonance of the song's usual cheer and her own sad arrangement seems to bother her a little for she adds a new refrain:

I can't understand
And I can't pretend
That this will be alright in the end. 

But then she goes on to end the song with a verse from the old hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul", a song of acceptance and trust in the face of suffering. She seems to be saying that even in the midst of great pain we can still find joy. And even when we can't seem to find anything to hope for, we can anticipate that peace will come eventually.

So, I invite you to take a listen and allow this new song, Joy, to companion you through whatever sadness is present this winter season, whether it is the pain of secondary traumatic stress, the grief of losing a family member or friend, or the chronic sorrow of living with a loved one's unending illness or injury. (It's not particularly my style of music - I'm more a Mozart, Schubert or Abba type - but I like Latifah's idea of juxtaposing the happiness of the season with many people's true emotions.) May having your sadness acknowledged in a musical way bring you some peace.

Christmas Peace ...

Hello, Everyone,

I've finished the cards, the gift wrapping, the baking and the house-cleaning and I'm now looking forward to a few lovely days of sparkly lights, familiar carols, shared meals and the warm hugs of family and friends.

To each of you, whether anticipating a happy Christmas or one of weariness and stress, I wish a deep sense of peace, the peace that transcends understanding and that is so well described by Goethe in his beautiful poem, Peace:

Peace

There is only silence

On the mountain tops

Among the tips of the trees

You perceive barely a breath

Even the birds in the forest

Keep still and are silent

Wait then

Just a little while longer

And you too

will find peace at last.

                   (JW von Goethe translated by Patrizia Collard) 

May each of us find the peace we seek this holiday season, whether in the quiet of Nature, the beauty of a religious ritual, the arms of a friend or at the bedside of a loved one.

With love and deep peace to you all,

Jan

Welcoming What Is ...

Hello, everyone,

How are you feeling today?

The winter holidays are times when we can experience a wide range of emotion from excitement, anticipation, hope, pleasure and joy to guilt, loneliness, anger, regret and sorrow. It is our natural human tendency to embrace the joyful feelings and to ignore, push away or brace against the painful ones. Unfortunately, resisting our painful feelings only makes them stronger.

So, what if we made the counter-intuitive decision to stay present to whatever we feel, whatever is, and even to welcome our painful feelings? What if we decided to practice a kind of "inner hospitality", responding to each painful feeling as we would a small child -  noticing it, acknowledging it, welcoming it, letting it be but not letting it overrun the house? Paradoxically, what we might find if we engaged in such a welcoming practice is that the painful feelings would begin to soften or shift of their own accord.

This notion of "welcoming" is found in different forms in many schools of psychology and spirituality. Basically, it comes down to a few simple, though not necessarily easy, steps:

1.  Focus and sink in. Feel the feeling. Don't ignore it, run away from it or fight it. Stay with the experience until you really feel a connection to the physical sensations of the feeling in your body. 

2.  Accept and welcome the feeling. In the midst of your upset, accept and welcome how you feel. Embrace your feeling with love, kindness and warmth. Say, "welcome", to it and experience the welcoming home of this part of yourself.  "Welcome, fear." "Welcome, anger." "Welcome, sorrow." 

Remember that you're not welcoming an event or circumstance but rather your feeling response to it. For example, the welcoming practice is not about welcoming an illness or injury or losing your job or being abused but about welcoming your feelings about those circumstances.

3.  Swing gently and slowly, back and forth between sinking into the experience and welcoming it, until the feeling softens or shifts or, as one writer says, "until the knot begins to dissolve".

This welcoming practice is not about analyzing or justifying our feelings. It's not about trying to change or fix them. It's about be-ing with them and welcoming them home so we can receive their messages and make them part of our wholeness. When we welcome our feelings in this way, we can stay present to ourselves and what is, no matter what our circumstances. And, as we stay present, we will find that even our painful feelings are ultimately transient.

The 13th Century poet, Rumi, seemed to understand this idea of "welcoming what is", into our lives. Here's how he described it in his poem, The Guest House:

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honourably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

If you would like to know more about the idea of welcoming painful feelings, from a couple of different perspectives, you could read Eugene Gendlin's book, Focusing, or Cynthia Bourgeault's writing on the Welcoming Practice in Centering Prayer.

  

Caveat:  This welcoming practice is probably not the best practice for anyone who is acutely traumatized, actively misusing substances, in early recovery, clinically depressed or with a history of psychosis or difficulty tolerating their own feelings. If you fall within one of these groups, talk to your family physician or therapist before beginning an ongoing welcoming practice.

How the Light Comes ...

Hello, everyone! We have just passed Diwali, Hanukkah, St Nicholas Day, Bohdi Day, St Lucia's Day, the Winter Solstice and several other lesser known midwinter festivals. Soon, we will celebrate Christmas Day.

What is it that all these holidays have in common? The recognition of darkness and the coming of light. The hope for better times ahead when the days lengthen and ever more light will fill our lives.

For some, it is hard to imagine that the light will ever come again. Others are already dancing in anticipation. Others, still, see glimpses of light already here in the midst of the darkness. Whatever your situation this wintertide, whether you are healthy and happily gathering with loved ones, caring for family members struggling with illness or injury, grieving the death of a loved one, working long shifts to keep us all safe and well or withdrawing into the pain of your own burn out and compassion fatigue, may this holiday season, in some way, bring you the gift of light in the darkness.

How will that light come? Let me leave you with the gift of a blessing by Jan Richardson that responds to that very question, a blessing made more poignant this year as she grieves the sudden death of her husband, musician Garrison Doles:


How the Light Comes:
A Blessing for Christmas

I cannot tell you
how the light comes.

What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.

That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.

That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
what is in peril
or in pain.

That it has a fondness
for the body
for finding its way
toward flesh
for tracing the edges
of form
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.

I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.

And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still

to the blessed light
that comes.


And for those of us fortunate enough to be living healthy, happy and well-lit lives this holiday season, may there be opportunities to share our light with those who are still caught up in a season of darkness.


From my heart to yours, a very Happy and Peaceful Christmas!

Love, Jan

6 Soothing Self-Care Holiday Gifts ...

Hello, everyone! I'm glad to be back with you after a busier-than- usual month of teaching, writing and caring for an elderly friend who's had a number of TIA's and falls.

As many of you will know, I love Christmas and everything that leads up to it. But like you, I suspect, all the preparations and festivities can leave me feeling tired and frazzled unless I pay some particular attention to my self-care plan.

This year, I've found some wonderful self-care gifts that you might want to wrap up for yourself or to share with someone you love:

1. A Therapeutic Touch session: Therapeutic touch is a "hands-off" energetic process that promotes relaxation, decreases anxiety, alleviates or reduces pain, accelerates healing, and creates feelings of calmness, peace, well-being and balance in anyone seeking health maintenance and balance. There is an abundance of good research showing the benefits of TT and, oh my goodness, does it work!

Years ago, while I was writing my Master's thesis and stressed out of my mind, my husband (an advanced TT practitioner) decided to gift me with a TT session during his early morning meditation time. I was still in bed but later, when I got up for breakfast, it was all I could do to keep my head off the kitchen table, so relaxed was I!

2.  The Crazy Sexy Kitchen Cookbook: Kris Carr is a New York Times best-selling author, wellness advocate, cancer thriver and subject of the documentary, Crazy, Sexy Cancer.  In her great wellness cookbook, she says that our futures are being written with every meal - both a sobering and a hopeful thought.

This cookbook is an encyclopedia of delicious-ness with beautiful photography and mouthwatering vegetarian recipes. A great gift for cooks and eaters alike!

3. A new "colouring book": Colouring Mandalas: For Insight, Healing and Self Expression was created by Licensed Professional Counselor and Registered Art Therapist, Suzanne Fincher.

The word mandala comes from the classical Indian Sandskrit language. Loosely translated, it means "circle". A mandala is more than a pleasing circle, though. It symbolizes wholeness and is an integrated structure organized around a unifying center. 

In Buddhist and Hindu traditions, sacred art often takes the form of a mandala and Christian churches' rose windows are of mandala design. Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas are some of the most exquisitely beautiful art forms I've seen.

Colouring a mandala is known to induce a relaxation response, bring order to chaos, draw attention away from the stimulation of the outer world, and offer opportunities for insight, balance and harmony. And it's a great activity to share with children and grandkids. This particular mandala book is available through your favourite on-line bookstore, or in Vancouver, through Banyen Books.

4. A typing interview with an Enneagram professional: Learning your Enneagram (ennea = nine and gram = picture) personality type is a gift that lasts a lifetime. It begins an adventure of self-discovery and personal growth that can help you to understand and be more compassionate with yourself and with others. It will also offer a lifelong path to becoming your best and most authentic self.

While it is possible to learn your type through books and on-line resources, an Enneagram workshop or an individual typing interview with an Enneagram professional can help you to make a more accurate determination of your type. (The Enneagram shows us both our strengths and shadow side and we all have a tendency to sidle away from acknowledging our shadow side.) A good Enneagram teacher or counsellor will gently hold up a mirror so you can see your reflection more accurately. 

There are several "schools" and training programs of Enneagram theory. Try to find someone who is certified in a school that resonates for you. You can start looking for a local practitioner through the Enneagram Worldwide or The Enneagram Institute websites.

5. Daily Joy: 365 Days of Inspiration: The National Geographic Society has published a lovely new daily reader just in time for the holidays. Daily Joy is a beautiful collection of 365 National Geographic photographs, each with a short inspirational quotation and I have to admit that I'm dipping into my copy already. 

This book is ideal for early morning contemplation or for a calming thought at the end of the day. Divided into 12 monthly sections, it covers topics such as renewal, love, authenticity, growth, courage, perspective, adventure, purpose, freedom, fulfillment, wisdom and faith.

6.  Peggy Cappy Yoga DVD: I've never been particularly drawn to the notion of yoga but, during a recent PBS donation campaign, I was introduced to Peggy Cappy's Yoga For the Rest of Us DVD's. Now, I'm hooked. I use her DVD's three times a week between my aquafit classes and I love them.

The Back Care Basics  DVD is a particularly good gift for those of us whose caring work involves lifting, carrying or steadying those who are unsteady on their feet.   

 I hope these few ideas will help to make the holidays less stressful for you all. If you have any other ideas to add to the self-care gift list, we would all be glad to hear them!

    

Holiday Greetings ...

I am, like many of the rest of you, up to my ears in holiday preparations. The tree is up, likewise the Dickens Christmas Village. My favourite carols fill the air. I have thought about doing some baking, but that's about as far as that's gone!

Next week, I will make my annual trip to Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, with my car filled with gifts for family and friends and my heart filled with the anticipation of happy hours spent in the warm love and laughter of dear ones. I will be away until December 28th so won't be posting again until the New Year.

In the meantime, I wish you the blessings of peace, joy, healing and comfort this holiday season and leave you with these words from Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, found in this year's Callanish Society Christmas card:

We give thanks for places of simplicity and peace.

May we find such places in ourselves.

We give thanks for places of freedom and beauty.

May we find such places in ourselves.

We give thanks for places of refuge and love.

May we find such places in ourselves.

May we begin to mend the outer world

According to the truth of our inner life.

Peace...

Peace, according to a variety of dictionaries, means freedom from war, mental calm, quiet tranquility, and living harmoniously in relationships and in society.

At this time of year it is easy to lose track of our sense of peace so I leave you for the next two weeks with the gift of two poems - poems that I hope will help you to rest in the moment, to b-r-e-a-t h-e out the stress and to b-r-e-a-t-h-e in the peace. The first is an adaptation of an old Celtic prayer and the second was written by Mattie Stepanek, a 10 year old boy with muscular dystrophy whose writing touched the hearts of thousands during his short life.

Deep Peace

Deep peace of the running wave to you.

Deep peace of the flowing air to you.

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.

Deep peace of the shining stars to you.

Deep peace of the infinite peace to you.

December Prayer

No matter who you are,

Say a prayer this season.

No matter what your faith,

Say a prayer this season.

No matter how you celebrate,

Say a prayer this season.

There are so many ways

To celebrate faiths,

There are so many faiths

To celebrate life.

No matter who

No matter what,

No matter how...

You pray.

Let's say a prayer

This season,

Together, for peace.

Mattie Stepanek, December, 1999

Warmest blessings and deep peace to you and yours this holiday season,

Jan