New Year 2024

2023 burned through my life like the wildfires that raged through my province,
that burned the earth around me as I stood at the window,
looking into the wall of smoke.

Dry lightening torched the forests,
the trees candlelighting in the night as we sat on our deck
and the ash rained down around us.

Watching the show across the lake
as one tree after another after another after another
blew up like birthday candles on a giant cake.
Like sparklers from heaven.

I turn to face tomorrow,
to face the year we’ve been dropped into.
I turn to face tomorrow,
but even that is too far away,
too far away from where I want to live.

The NOW I want to inhabit.

Tomorrow I may be dead.
Tomorrow I may turn to ash myself.

But today, today, this moment, I’m alive.

Today I whisper whisper whisper into my wee grandbaby’s ears
and let her play with my hand that dangles above her,
her tiny hands reaching for my dancing fingers.

She – she is my tomorrow.

And what if I could let my days line up
one after the other like stepping stones?
What if I remembered what it was like to play hopscotch,
to jump to whatever square my smooth stone landed in?

Or what if I pretended to be a tree?
Maybe a weeping willow tree with branches
that blow in the wind and roots that spread wide?

Maybe an oak tree with roots that grow
deep, deep, deep into the earth –
with the gentle patience for slow growth.

Maybe that’s what I yearn for this year.
Patience, allowance, acceptance for what is.
For whatever comes my way.

And maybe I can nurture the seeds I’ve already planted,
remembering that germination sometimes takes time.
That sometimes the roots grow deep before the shoots appear.

Maybe I can remember that even as I reach for the stars,
I’m burrowing down into the earth.

That we are all aspens,
holding hands beneath the soil.

And maybe it’s enough to simply be the hand with fingers
that dance above a tired baby.

Maybe it’s enough to simply BE.

Wildfires

“Nana, are we driving towards the fire, or away from the fire?” Hazel asks me from the back seat. I take a quick glance into the rear-view mirror and see the mostly blue sky that we’re leaving behind, then look at the thick wall of smoke we’re driving into. It’s incongruous.

I woke early this morning after three or four hours of sleep and watched the red sky lighten, and turn blue as I rocked six-week-old Phoebe in my arms, my newest granddaughter. Her mama closed her eyes on the sagging sofa as my son snored in the bedroom below us. They would be packing up and leaving as well, heading back to the relative safety of the coast.

As a sleepy-eyed Hazel ate her bagel, I finished packing the car before taking my dog Rosie out for one last pee. It’s an impossibly clear, beautiful morning. Creepy and eerie. Ash covers my car, covers the picnic table, covers the swings. The remnants of the forest that has burned, that is still burning. The residue and remains of homes, of stores of gas stations.

Less than two minutes after we turn off our gravel road and onto the narrow, paved, lakeshore road, we cross the threshold into the smoke, leaving the pinhole of blue sky behind. I pray a silent incantation to all that is Divine, to the trees that surround us, to the Mother that enfolds us. Keep us safe, keep us safe, keep us safe.

“We have to drive a little ways in the direction of the fire,” I explain to Hazel, “in order to get to the road to drive away from it.”

I assure her won’t be getting close to the fire, just the smoke. I pray that this is true.

My country is on fire, and it looks and feels like Armageddon. British Columbia has declared a State of Emergency, experiencing yet another record year of wildfires. I grew up with forest fires, but nothing like this. Nothing like the entire province burning to the ground at once.

Hazel has been staying with me for the past week at our family’s lake house, where I live for two or three months every summer. On Shuswap Lake – the lake I grew up on, the lake of my hometown of Salmon Arm, where my mom still lives.

A place we call Tall Tree Retreat.
A place I call The Home of My Heart.

Yesterday evening the fire jumped the guard and jumped the highway, closing the highway west of us. We’ve been watching the Adam’s Lake fire as it continued to grow out of control, as it merged with the Bush Creek fire, as the winds whipped it and acted like gasoline.

As the fire burned through 20 kilometres in 12 hours.

I calculated the number of kilometres until it reached the entrance of our only-way-in-and-only-way-out road. If that happened, we would be forced to take our pontoon boat and head out to the middle of the lake, and float as ashes and embers landed over and around us. The other side of the lake was already burning. Communities already gone. People already stranded and being rescued by boat.

“I can smell the smoke.” Hazel wrinkles her nose as we drive deeper into the dark cloud of smoke. “Cloud” is the wrong word. There’s nothing light and fluffy about this. There’s only toxins and ash. It’s like driving into a pyre. An apocalypse.

“The lake used to be cheerful,” she says. “Now it’s haunted.”

She looks out at the empty docks and abandoned boats. Ghostly contours on the River Styx. Then she starts singing the song that’s been stuck in her head for days – Mary Had a Little Lamb – her voice strong and clear.

I join her, and together we sing our nursery rhyme prayer, paving our way forward with trust and faith. Because prayers take all shapes and forms, and I can’t think of a stronger one than the love between a child and her Nana. Between Hazel and me.

Half an hour later we reach the highway and finally turn away from the encroaching fires. I turn on the promised Harry Potter audible book that will accompany us on our long drive back to the coast, and I can feel Hazel relax into her happy place – listening to stories.

I don’t know if I’ll see my cherished lake house again. If the needle-point firs will still be standing when I return.

We drive through smoke, and I can’t shake the images of Lahaina. Of the stories I’ve read. Of the lives lost. Of the grief settling like ashes in the lives left behind.

Oh God. What have we done?

And then I hear Hazel’s magical laugh from the backseat, showering me once more with all that is possible. She is Shams and I am Rumi, spinning, spinning, spinning in her love.

Holding the grief and the mourning and the love and the awareness of the possible.

May those of us who can,
Hold in our hearts, those who cannot.
Until they can stand once more.
Until they can feel the butterfly flutters
Of their own tender hearts.

May the rain quench the fires and cool the earth.

Amen, Amen, Amen.

Noticing

“I wonder, did we know we were happy?” Paulette says as she picks up the photograph with a hand that is lined with wisdom and age. The fingers of her other hand taps the image softly once, twice, then three times.

Caresses it, as if to reach back in time, to sit once again beside the man who was her husband for over sixty years. To feel the warmth of his body against hers, maybe to lean her head once more on his shoulder, to breath in his scent and say, This. This is happiness.

Later, Emilie, Diane and I are eating dinner at ‘Le Marilyn’ in St. Rémy, at a table for three just inside the open-air restaurant. We’ve already been caught by skies that turned dark on a dime with rolling thunder and pounding rain to risk eating under an umbrella this evening.

As we wait for our meals to arrive, we snack on olives with toothpicks, sinking into an easy silence, comfortable together after three weeks.

My own reverie takes me back to where we’ve just spent the day – Forcalquier, a small town in the Alpes-de-Haute-Province, where Paulette lives. She’s a much-cherished friend of Diane’s and before today she was just a name on our itinerary to me.

It’s funny and amazing and wondrous how the sacred can drop into our lives when we least expect it. Even when we’re on a pilgrimage seeking the sacred, when our senses are heightened to see, to hear, to experience. To expect.

And then, and then, and then…..

Close your eyes once,
Lean back in your seat,
Relax,
Let go,
Surrender.

Hand over the reins of expectation to the Universe.

Once you do that,
Maybe, maybe, just maybe…
Then maybe a Paulette will walk into your life.

Maybe she’s nearing ninety but walks the cobblestone hills near her house
with an energy that defies age.

Maybe her beauty will shine as much as her wisdom,
As much as the force of the feminine,
As the Light of the Divine,
As much as the lustre of the grey braid
That rests between her shoulder blades,
That makes me think of my own grey hair,
Hidden by a box bought at Whole Foods.

I’m thinking of Paulette and the transmission we received just by being in her presence. Sitting, now, in a restaurant named for a woman we can only know through imagination, through the filter of a stranger’s interpretation, who has become an archetype, a symbol, and perhaps a reckoning.

An invitation…
A question…
A noticing…

I wonder, do we know when we’re happy?

Swimming in the Sea of Transformation

Travelling has a way of making time become elastic,
of stretching and looping around on itself.
Days have lost their meaning,
as one runs into another, into another, into another
and suddenly we’ve left the month of May.

Far from home, from the familiar, from obligations,
immersed in a language whose words I understand,
but fly around inside my head and too often get stuck
on my tongue when I try to speak.

But still I try.

Still, I feel my way into imagining
what it would be like to live here,
to be born here, to be French.

As I walk through the streets of St. Rémy,
down the narrow, limestone streets,
past the windows of colourful cotton dresses
that beg to be tried on.

Beg to be bought to better clothe myself,
to costume myself,
to make myself French,

I look up at the gathering grey clouds,
purse my lips and scowl the way I saw the shop ladies do.

Ooh là là!

A thunderstorm is threatening,
is almost upon us!
We must walk quickly,
heads down,

Quick! Quick! Quick!
Before we’re caught in the downpour.

I talk to myself as I walk,
practicing French phrases,

Still somewhat incredulous that I’m here.
Still curling into the open-ended question of —
Why?
What will I learn?
How will I be changed?

Because one thing I know for sure —

Is that I’m swimming in the sea of change.
Of transformation.

And when I’m in the middle of that sea,
Soaking in the salt water of all that has come before,
And all that is yet to come –

I’m being undone.
Taken apart.
Dismantled,
Disassembled,
Unstructured.

Every cell and fibre of my Being is dancing in this energy.

This is why I travel.
Feeling the expansion of my heart
Slipping through the sliding doors of time

Come with me.

Walking Alone

I’m sitting in my bed in St. Rémy with the shutters and windows wide open, listening to the clinking of the dishes and the quiet chatter of the family next door as they eat their breakfast. The resident cat has just meandered down the steps, past the flowering jasmine, having left her nighttime perch (and her hair) on the patio chair below my window. I’m the first one up but I fear I may have been Emilie’s alarm clock with the noise of the espresso machine I’ve just used.

Walking through our door yesterday evening from our four days with Véronique felt like crossing the threshold of a time warp portal. Were we even gone? Roni, herself, is a walking portal into the Divine Feminine. Her depth of knowledge, her heart, her humility. She is a walking transmission of the voice of Mary Magdalene for those asking and open to receive.

I’m trying to decipher the notes in my journal, pausing to scroll through the dozens of photos on my phone, and then I stop where we began, standing before the cliffs of Sainte Baume.

I close my eyes and I’m immediately both here and there at the same time.

We can see our destination carved into the cliffs high above us, La Grotte-Sanctuaire De Sainte Marie-Magdaleine. But first lies an almost two-mile vertical hike through a magical forest. We’re gathered around Véronique, as she explains how Mary Magdalene spent the last years of her life in prayer and contemplation, hidden in this cave.

We’ve been joined for three days by another woman I met just an hour ago as we waited in the lobby of our simple hotel for Véronique to come with her van to pick us up. She’s a close friend of Emilie’s and Diane’s and immediately the three of them fall into a conversation and I’m sitting on the fringe, outside the lines drawn by their connection. And not for the first time do I wonder, why am I here?

And I ask this question not as a victim, not in a way to mean, “why am I not included?” Instead, I ask more as a way of opening into the curiosity of why this trip? Why now? Why with these women?

Because all of it is meaningful, even if I can’t make sense of it yet, right now, right this minute.

Later, as I watch the three of them share a group embrace at the entrance to the forest path, I curl more deeply into these questions, witnessing the feelings that flit through my body like a hummingbird, here, and then gone.

Feelings of being excluded, of being an outsider. Not wanted, not needed. Extraneous.

But these feelings are like wispy clouds that barely brush through me and dissipate as quickly as they arise. It’s interesting, these familiar feelings. This sense of looking through the window at the lives and links of others. Outside, looking in. As if they have something I’m lacking. As if I’m the one lacking.

A pilgrimage can often present opportunities to examine beliefs that no longer serve. Or shake up the way we see things, our perceptions. As if to say, Can you see? Can you see? Can you see? While each time turning the kaleidoscope.

We may all be walking the same trail, but we’re each on our own path. Our own journey.

I smile at Véronique and turn away from the tripod of women to head through the canopy of trees, welcoming their cool embrace.

I’m not alone, I’m with my Self, with that ephemeral presence some call God, that I sometimes call Mother Father God Source of All Being.

I’m with my own rising remembering of Mary Magdalene.

She Who Walks With Me.

Red Threads of Connection

When I finally open my eyes, I’m sprawled in the middle of the bed, covers thrown off and I have to shimmy to reach my phone on the bedside table. It’s just past 7am and with the window and shutters pretty much closed, it’s dark and quiet. And hot. The air conditioning hasn’t been turned on yet.

I’ve been waking early these past days, just as dawn begins to creep through the cracks in the half-open shutters, but it’s a delicious kind of awakening. The kind where you don’t have to get up. Where you can lie still, keep your eyes shut and luxuriate, luxuriate, luxuriate, swimming in the wake of dreamland.

After I open the window wide and clip the shutters open, I hop back into bed, fluff my pillows into a pile and lean back, closing my eyes, wondering if I can fall back asleep.

A cool breeze now blows through the window, along with the small chorus of birdsong. I wish I knew what kind of bird they were, or could at least see them, but they remain hidden to me.

Instead of falling asleep I drop into remembering my zoom with Kate and the kids yesterday evening. Hazel holds her arm up to show me the red friendship bracelet still tied around her wrist. I finger the matching one twice-looped around my own wrist and slip into the afternoon we made them – on our last Nana/Hazel day before I left.

That afternoon, as we sat side-by-side on my chaise lounge braiding together Hazel said, “I wish these bracelets had magic powers, and that we could talk to each other through them.” Five weeks of being apart is a lifetime to a six-year-old.

“They do, in a way,” I answered her, “Whenever you need me, just hold your hand over the bracelet and feel me in your heart. We can talk to each other that way – through our hearts.”

And then I tell her that the colour red symbolizes our fertility —

“Fertility?” Hazel interrupts, her brow furrowed.

And I talk about the seeds of our imagination and creativity. About our courage and passion. About what it means to be female, to be a vessel of feminine energy. To remember the truth of our hearts.

Because the power of being a female encompasses more than growing babies (although that’s a pretty amazing thing!)

And as Hazel’s little fingers weave and weave and weave I tell her about the number three. About how it’s considered a perfect number – the number of harmony, wisdom and understanding. That three can also be body, mind and spirit. I tell her about the triad of Maiden, Mother and Chrone.

“That’s you, your mama and me,” I tell her, because even though she’s only six, she’s already walking the path of the power of the Maiden.

Then we tied the finished bracelets around each other’s wrists and practiced feeling into our hearts, into our own heart connection.

And aren’t we all connected?

Each and every one of us.

Each of us facets of the same divine source.

Each of us made from stardust and earth.

Meeting together in the space of our hearts.

I can hear Emilie unloading the dishwasher downstairs, so I pull on my bathrobe to go join her. Even though we’re here to give voice to Mary Magdalene, the dirty dishes still need attending to.

A Pilgrimage Begins

The limestone patio beyond the French doors in front of me are glistening in the rain. This is our first morning of what will be a month of mornings waking up in St. Rémy de Province. A month spent pretending that we’re French, eating croissants and baguettes while drinking tiny cups of coffee throughout the day and glasses of wine in the evening. (although my wine will be lemonade)

We’ve spent three days in Paris and already my body is telling me enough already with the gluten and the dairy! Today we go shopping for fruit and almond milk and gluten-free bread – just enough to temper the tastes from the many visits to the boulangeries.

My two dear friends and I are on a pilgrimage. We’re not walking the Camino with backpacks and blisters and only three pairs of underwear. We have six pieces of luggage between us, a mid-sized Peugeot, and many changes of shoes for our temperamental feet. One doesn’t have to punish the body, or lean towards the ascetic to be a pilgrim — a pilgrimage is made through travelling with intention.

We’ve journeyed to a distant and unfamiliar land on a spiritual quest. With each step (and yes, with each glass of wine, piece of baguette, and much joy and laughter) we will be circling closer to our own divinity, to the rising remembering.

Emilie, Diane and I have been planning this trip for years, long before Covid shut down the world, long before we began to journey virtually via zoom, sitting in place, going inward while watching a screen. Now, we are finally here with the scent of jasmine greeting us and red poppies growing wild along the roadways.

We depart early tomorrow morning to meet Véronique, our escort for the next four days. Who will guide us in the footsteps of Mary Magdalene. Not the Mary of the bible, edited to be subjected, to be pushed down, pushed away, and disempowered. Rather, the reclaimed Mary of feminine lore and legend.

We are here to deepen our learning, to uncover our buried knowing, and to bring home the empowered strength of the feminine. I am not religious, and it took me years to redefine my relationship with the word “God.”

I’m working to balance the force of the masculine and feminine energies that flow through me, that flow through all of us – to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Patriarchy has done so much damage to humanity and to the world, but we would do well to keep the positive aspects of the masculine. To keep the strength and the courage – and bring to it the fierceness of the compassionate heart. To bring the full force of the feminine heart to bear a much-needed counterweight.

LOVE

I began an experiment last year.
With every encounter, every decision, every choice,
I asked myself, “How much more Loving can I be?”

I was feeling and noticing
how I constricted and contracted I was becoming.
My body stiffening up and tightening up, mummifying,
Reflecting the energy I was pulling in, hoarding, keeping for myself.

Filling the cracks, weatherproofing, insulating
Against the fear,
Against the news,
Against the hatred and the horns and the shouting.
Building a barrier against falling into the chasm.

Who do you love best? Hazel asked from the back seat of my car.
Your mama or your dad?

And that threw me,
that at five years old,
she is already rating love
and who deserves it most.

Who do you love best? She asked

I love them both the best, I answered.
And then tossed it back to her,
Who do you love best?

My mama, she says.
Quickly, confidently, with conviction.
Because my daddy always tricks me.

And that’s true, he does, he has a trickster nature,
but it’s wrapped in puppy playfulness, never cruelty

Maybe he’s teaching you discernment, I said
and that’s a very loving thing to do.

And then we talked about that big word,
about judging, about trusting and about betrayal
another big word.

And we talked about curiosity,
about feeling into our hearts,
feeling for the truth, for the love, always the love

And I asked her,
Does your dad love you?
Can you feel his love?

Yes, she said, yes.
He makes me hot chocolate, but not too hot.
And he makes me laugh,
He’s goofy and funny.

Yes, I said, that’s the trickster in him.

He’s a shapeshifter, she said, just like me.
Because she knows about shapeshifting
and she’s learning the language of her soul,

How to rise above and be the witness,
but that it’s also okay to fall into our bodies
and cry and cry and cry sometimes.

Because though we come from the stars
we’re also human.

And a friend called me later that day,
asking me to play Lady MacBeth
In a production coming up soon.

And I looked down at the palms of my hands
to see if there were still flecks of blood on them
from pulling the knife from my back

And for a moment I can feel his fist around my heart,
still squeezing, squeezing, squeezing,
even as he handed her the knife

Does it hurt where you come from?
I asked the knife in my back,
the hand holding the knife,
blood pooling and dripping.

Does it hurt where you come from?
Is it full of sharp edges and sharp words and
Broken glass that cut open your feet
so you can’t trust where you walk?

We are not born knowing how to love,
she answered back to me.

Because the knife was a woman,
a long steel-blade,
a cross-fit champion full of hard edges.

And I wanted to take her hand then,
ice cold as it was,
and wrap it in my heart
and say, here, here, here is where love lives,

You can live inside my heart
until yours warms up,
you can find the love that overflows like blood
from the fist that he is squeezing.

Drops of blood I string together
and wear against my innocence,
Like my grandmother’s pearl necklace
Like a talisman of healing

And then I felt Rumi and Shams
whirling and whirling and whirling
a dervish deep inside my soul

Dancing the song of Love
Elton John’s Tiny Dancer
tap tap tap dancing the love alive

And Hazel laughed and laughed and laughed

And isn’t she made of both of us?
And isn’t that divine perfection?
His fist around my heart and my heart in his hand

Letting go, letting to, letting go
Heartbeat by heartbeat by heartbeat
Mine, his, hers

Inspired by Betty White

What if,
instead of resolutions
We took vows?

Vows of kindness
of compassion
of empathy

Of lightness
of love
of laughter

Of Caring….

Caring about others
Caring about animals and plants and trees and dirt and worms and snails and slugs

Even mice and rats and bats and spiders
Even those we find scary or repulsive or repugnant

What if each day,
we looked for the moments of wonder,
of awe,
of beauty?

What if we really did live like Betty White?

What if we found a way to laugh
Just once,
If only, just once,
Every day.

Just think….

All those moments,
Each day,
Every day
Added up,

Strung together
like a paper chain we learned to make in school

And what if —

Like the children we once were
we believed
once again
In the possibility of All Things?

If we believed in
the wonder, the magic, the awe, the laughter

Imagine what a year we could live…..

Pondering Faith

This weekend my brother came for tea, and when he had tipped the last of it into his mouth, he took the pruning shears from my hands – the new red-handled ones – and began to cut and snip and prune the dead branches from the blue spruce that grew up behind the deck.

Then he began to cut through the thicker branches, the ones with needles still growing on them. And he pruned and he cut and he pruned and he cut and he pruned and he cut, reaching higher and higher, dragging the fallen branches into a pile near the back gate.

Until after he stepped back, the red shears hanging by his side, all that was left was a tall tree trunk crowned with a perfect Christmas tree at the top.

And suddenly, the deck was bathed in sunlight. Sunlight that had been trapped and blocked by the branches of the blue spruce.

And isn’t that what faith is? The sunlight behind the branches? The hands that took up the shears? The sister who handed him the shears?

And the next day I sat on a bench by the ocean. The one in front of the community gardens, full of kale trees, and the heads of sunflowers, and the last of the rainbow swiss chard. And I watched the paddleboarder and the woman who scrambled over the boulders in front of me because it was low tide and the beach now uncovered.

And isn’t that faith? To know the boulders are there even when the sea rises high above them.
To know the sun is behind my back, even as the rain clouds dance their way across the strait in front of me.

Isn’t faith the bird with the wings of hope that dances in Emily Dickinson’s heart? Or is it her soul?  
Is it Faith that sings Hope alive, or is it the song that transmutes Hope into Faith?

The edges of my life are outlined in Faith, painted by the brush held by Death.
Like a cashmere blanket that greets me at the end of a long day, She wraps Herself around me,
Even now.

And isn’t Faith like Love? Ephemeral, gossamer and always there, even when I forget.
Especially when I forget.

And Faith is knowing that you are there, reading these words, feeling my love,
Knowing that time and space are constructs
That can never keep us apart.