A Word for 2016 ...

What is your word for the year ahead? 

A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold in your life?

Christine Valters Paintner

Hello everyone!

Here we stand on the edge of 2016, a new year full of promise and possibility. Thresholds such as these are times when we can consciously choose to relinquish the old, the tired and the overly familiar to step into a new space with arms and eyes wide open, ready to receive whatever gifts await us in the months ahead.

Thresholds are in-between places where the old is gone and the new has not yet arrived. In many spiritual traditions, these thresholds are seen as sacred places where the veil between earth and heaven is particularly thin. They are places where we can pause to reflect upon the past, deciding what wisdom and experiences we want to take forward with us into the new year. They are also places where we can look ahead with intentional openness to all that is to come. The ancient Celts, who honoured such thresholds, believed that there were unseen presences in these liminal spaces waiting to support us as we step onto new paths.

A more concrete support for the journey, one about which I've written in the past, is the process of allowing a word to "choose you" and act as a guide through the new year.  (You can click on the link to see the steps in this process and "receive" your own intuitive word for 2016.) 

As I look back over the past few years, I can see the positive effect wrought in my life by receiving and reflecting upon each guiding word. There is a clear (to me) connection among the four words I've "received" since learning about this enlivening tradition and I can see, in retrospect, how each has built on the one before. The words I've received thus far are act, veriditas, suppleness and alive.  I will be excited to see what my unconscious will produce for 2016.

As we each wait for our word to come clear, let me leave you with one of Jan Richardson's lovely blessings (you know how I love the notion of blessing!) along with every good wish for this new and beckoning year.

Blessing the Threshold

This blessing 

has been waiting for you

for a long time.

While you have been 

making your way here

this blessing has been 

gathering itself

making ready

biding its time

praying.

This blessing has been

polishing the door

oiling the hinges

sweeping the steps

lighting candles

in the windows.

This blessing has been

setting the table

as it hums a tune

from an old song

it knows,

something about

a spiralling road

and bread

and grace.

All this time

it has kept an eye

on the horizon,

watching,

keeping vigil,

hardly aware of how 

it was leaning itself

in your direction.

And now that

you are here

this blessing

can hardly believe

its good fortune

that you have finally arrived

that it can drop everything

at last

to fling its arms wide

to you, crying

welcome

welcome

welcome.

Welcome to 2016, dear friends!

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

oops ...

Hi everyone!

I understand some of you are having trouble accessing the song, Joy, from the last post. I've changed the link to the YouTube version so you should now be able to access it through the last paragraph in the December 13th post.

Sorry for the difficulty.

Cheers, 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.

Share A Secret - Support World AIDS Day ...

Started in 1988, World AIDS Day is not just about raising 
money but also about increasing awareness, fighting 
prejudice and improving education. World AIDS Day is 
important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away. ... 

Its time people treat the AIDS patient equally with dignity and pride and stop treating them like down-trodden people. This year, try and do your bit. If you cannot lessen their problems, do not increase them.

India.com

Hi Everyone!

Today is World AIDS Day and as you'll know if you read this site regularly, it's a day that holds a special place in my heart, having lost  Barry, a dear mentor, teacher and friend through AIDS a number of years ago.

One of the greatest barriers to HIV-AIDS treatment and support worldwide is the shame, secrecy and stigma associated with the conditions, even now in 2015. While things have improved mightily in some places since the strange, new and frightening virus first appeared in the 1980's, we still have a long way to go in countering the stigma that surrounds it. People in many parts of the world still keep their conditions secret from family, friends and employers, and even from their health care professionals, for  fear of being ostracized or worse. As a result, they can wait too long to get the treatment they need and the support they deserve.

While reading various World AIDS Day articles on the internet this morning, I was struck by a video by Prince Harry introducing his hashtag #FeelNoShame Campaign. Prince Harry, who founded, Sentebale, a charity in Lesotho, Africa for the support of vulnerable children fighting extreme poverty and the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, challenges us to take a step toward breaking the stigma of HIV/AIDS by sharing a personal secret on social media in exchange for his.

The power of shame lies in secrecy. When we take our courage in both hands and honestly admit to something that causes us shame, we break its hold on us and we open the door for others to do the same. So, why not join the movement of brave people sharing their secrets today and do your bit to counter the shame, secrecy and stigma of HIV/AIDS?

(And, for those of you who would like to go even further with your support, please remember that "(RED) Partners" (Apple, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Le Creuset, dre, beats by dr. and others) will donate 50% of the profits from (RED) products to the Global Fund HIV/AIDS to provide life-saving antiretroviral medication to pregnant women around the world. Ticketmaster and Live Nation have also partnered with (RED). November 9th to December 20th, the ticket sales companies will display a (RED) button on their websites, allowing patrons to donate $10.00 during purchases.)

Thank you to each of you from each of us who has loved someone with HIV/AIDS.

When Disappointment Strikes ...

We must accept finite disappointment,

but never lose infinite hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Hi everyone,

When was the last time you felt disappointed? Disappointments are emotional experiences most of us could do without, even though they seem to be a persistent part of life. Several people I know have experienced significant disappointments in the past month, including myself.

A young friend, scheduled to have surgery for a painful gallbladder condition last Friday, developed a skin rash and the surgery had to be cancelled. Friends travelling in Borneo found that they had to quickly revise their plans when the smoke of the Indonesian fire season and an active volcano cancelled flights and, thus, their dreamed-of boat trip to Camp Leakey. Another friend, recovering from surgery for a heart valve problem, has not seen the improved exercise tolerance he'd hoped for. And, after all my talk about looking forward to being "fed by my senses" while on Vancouver Island for the Thanksgiving weekend, I spent the holiday at home in Burnaby with an aching back after being rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver.

Disappointment. The dictionary says it is the feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one's hopes or expectations. It disorients us, floods us with sorrow, triggers anger and frustration and uses up energy and focus that could be channelled in more productive ways. If we hold on to it, disappointment can also make us physically or emotionally ill through creating chronic levels of stress.

Some disappointments are predictable and preventable like those that occur when we hope that someone will do something for us but then neglect to tell them what it is that we want. Other disappointments, like my friends' cancelled trip to Camp Leakey, are totally unavoidable. It's important to be able to differentiate between the two so we can respond appropriately.

And how DO we best respond? 

If the disappointment is unavoidable, there are a few things we can do to help us arrive a place of greater peace and acceptance of the unexpected happening:

1.  Treat the disappointment as a small (or large) death - the death of an expectation or a dream. Give yourself permission to grieve that death and fully express your feelings, whether sorrow, anger, guilt, fear or envy. Express them to a trusted friend, write about them in your journal, pray or meditate about them, use expressive arts to release them,  consciously process them through physical activity or see a therapist to work them through. You may find that you feel a little worse to begin with but keeping your feelings buried can cause them to fester so it's usually good to give them room to surface. 

2.  Exercise self-compassion -  Allow yourself to recognize how hurt you feel and treat yourself with all the kindness and compassion you would a friend in similar circumstances. This means avoiding harsh self-criticism or taking responsibility for circumstances beyond your control. It also means asking for whatever support you need to process the experience  

3. Make positive meaning from the situation - I'm not one of those people who believes that "everything happens for a reason" but I do believe that we can take any unfortunate incident and, ultimately, make some positive meaning from it. We can do this through intentionally altering our perspective and through taking in the good. (It may be difficult to see any good at the time of the disappointment, but for many of us, time, intention and perspective allow a glimpse of something life-giving in most unexpected happenings.)

4.  Don't give up hope -  My husband and I struggled with chronic disappointment over the years his heart failure followed its inevitable course. Again and again, we made plans for activities or visits with loved ones, only to find that we had to cancel them at the last moment because he was too tired or had chest pain or was short of breath. (Or that our loved ones had colds or flu and were therefore "off-limits".)

Rather than teaching us to give up hope and avoid planning, these experiences helped us to continue planning while adjusting our expectations. We learned that we would probably have to cancel 80% of the plans we made, but that to enjoy the remaining 20%, we needed to continue making those plans. (We also recognized that we needed to educate our family and friends so they could expect cancellations and have contingency plans in place to mitigate their disappointment.)

If, on the other hand, disappointments are predictable and preventable, they can provide an invitation to reflect on our patterns of attraction and behaviour so we can see what part we play in our own disappointments. Do we enter into relationships with people who are unworthy of our trust? Are we expecting outcomes that cannot possibly occur? Are we wanting something from someone who does not have it to give? Are we expecting more from ourselves than we can reasonably accomplish at this time in our lives?

All disappointments, whether large or small, can be opportunities to learn and grow - if we can open ourselves to that learning. While I wouldn't wish a disappointment on anyone just so they could have a learning experience, I'm sure there are sufficient disappointments in our lives to offer repeated opportunities for reflection and growth. No one wants to be disappointed but there can often be a gift in the experience.

What Makes Me Grateful ...?

... to live with ... eyes wide open, to breathe in 

the colours of mountain and sky, to know the sound of leaves rustling, the smell of snow, the texture of bark.

Jan Philips

Hello, everyone!

As Thanksgiving weekend approaches this year, I've been increasingly aware of, and grateful for, the gifts of my five senses.

Always a sensory person, I've been particularly aware of the richness of these gifts over the past few months. I don't know whether it's the glorious intensity of the tree colourings after this summer's drought or the experience of meeting the father of a young woman blind in one eye and missing much of the vision in the other or the photography course I've been enjoying since the beginning of September, but I seem exquisitely aware of my sense of sight and, by extension, my other senses as well.

I know it is my five senses that will provide me with the deepest refreshment this Thanksgiving weekend. Sight will feed my soul as I drive through wooded hills to the ferry, taking in the palette of autumn leaves and rocky cliffs rising high above the ocean. Hearing will fill my mind with CBC's North By Northwest  in the early hours, a playlist ranging from the Beatles to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto later in the day and two full days of precious conversations-that-matter. A heart-softening sense of smell will introduce me to the particular new-baby fragrance of a little girl who joined our extended family this week. Taste will sate us all as we enjoy an abundant dinner cooked and shared by many. And touch, found in the warm hugs of loved ones, will help to fill the empty spaces.

I don't know what your situation will be this weekend. You may be one of many working to keep us safe and healthy or you may be a family caregiver working 24/7 to keep a loved one comfortable. You may be surrounded and nurtured by loving family and friends or you may feel alone, exhausted and overwhelmed. Whatever your situation, may one of your five senses offer you, perhaps unexpectedly, at least one small thing for which you can be grateful this Thanksgiving.

Let me leave you with the Thanksgiving gift of one of Celtic poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue"s, many poems of blessing  - this time, a blessing for our senses.

A Blessing For the Senses

May the touch of your skin

register the beauty

of the otherness

that surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned

to the deeper silence

where sound is honed

to bring distance home.

May the fragrance

of a breathing meadow

refresh your heart

and remind you you are

a child of the earth.

And when you partake

of food and drink,

may your taste quicken

to the gift and sweetness

that flows from the earth.

May your inner eye

see through the surfaces

and glean the real presence

of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify

the desire of your eyes

that you might glimpse

the infinity that hides

in the simple sights

that seem worn

to your usual eyes.

 A very warm and Happy Thanksgiving to you all!   

Jan