Richard Rohr wrote about liminal space in his meditation this morning. He defined liminal space as ‘where we are betwixt and between, having left one room or stage of life, but have not yet entered the next.’

There is no doubt this is a liminal time in our personal, community and global lives. We know things are not going to return to the way they were, and we don’t know what our new reality is going to look like. My question to myself this morning was, “How do I stay stable while inhabiting liminal space?”

My bible reading for today was Luke 11: 5-11. This passage describes a friend going to another friend at midnight, knocking on his door and asking to borrow some bread to feed to a friend who arrived late at night. Initially the friend refuses to lend him the bread, but because the man is very firm about his request, he gets what he is asking for. Jesus then says, “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Other scriptures came to mind along these lines:

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication make your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your minds and hearts in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4: 6-7

“ You have not, because you ask not.” James 4:2

What came home to me today was that the key to feeling stable in liminal times for me is to remember to simply ask God for what I need. Serenity and stability come when I take everything ‘in prayer and supplication’ to God.
It isn’t so much getting an answer that brings the feeling of stability, but having a reliable place to take my worries and cares.

This is a principle I learned when I was a teenager, but that does not mean that I have practised it perfectly throughout my life. Not at all! It seems to be a principle and a practice which is easily forgotten in times of stress. So I am reminding myself and sharing with you that we have a God who cares, a God who is ready and willing to hear and take on the burden on our worries and fears. Isn’t that amazing? And isn’t that a great relief!!

I talked with people this week who are finding this time of extended quarantine to be increasingly difficult to bear. Some are feeling lonely and isolated. This morning I read the two great commandments and the second one, “Love your neighbour as yourself”, really struck me. I have been taught this commandment means that to the extent we love ourselves, that is the extent to which we can love our neighbour. I found myself wondering if I am doing as good a job of loving myself as I can at this time, both for the sake of my being able to bear with being quarantined, as well as for the sake of being able to reach out to others who need as much unconditional love as I can muster.

I have found my attention drawn to relating to the news much much more than I normally would. Rather than attending to listening to my soul and what she needs, I was reading every available article about coronavirus. On Friday, I decided to fast from reading the news, and spent a day in my art studio, reading other things, relaxing, dancing, and making art. I went into the time there feeling frayed and tired, and came home feeling 100% better. In short,I felt reconnected with my Self.

Each of us will have different ways of connecting deeply with our Selves. It could be by taking a long, solitary walk or a long, hot bubblebath. It could be by walking a labyrinth, or by spending an extended time journalling. It could be by listening to beautiful music while colouring a mandala, or knitting or painting. What is it for you? Once you come to know what you need to do to love yourself, I encourage and invite you to do that today, both for the sake of increasing your own contentment and serenity, as well as for the sake of having more to offer to others.

This morning I read a message from Lennie Gallant, a favourite East Coast musician of mine. He said, “ Be kind to each other, hold your loved ones extra close and forgive as often as you possibly can. There is a lot of tension afoot, so we got to let stuff go and draw love round us. We’ll get through this difficult time and be ok if we really watch out for each other.”

Truer words were never spoken!

I have noticed that people who appeared to me to be quite emotionally self sufficient are beginning to show some signs of the wear and tear of social distancing and quarantining. It seems to me to be so important to watch for this among family and friends, and then to try to do our best to soothe and ease their loneliness. I have found baking cookies and chatting from 2 metres away while dropping them off works! Also offering to go for a walk with a friend, while staying the appropriate distance apart has worked too. Simple acts of kindness seem to be so powerful right now! Though the distancing is so difficult, I am loving the simplicity of these times.

May we all be able to hang in for a few more weeks, as the curve starts to flatten, holding on to the hope of better days ahead!

I read a quote this morning and I have been thinking about it all day:

“One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed.” Bernard Baruch

I googled ‘Bernard Baruch’ and discovered that he was an Americal financier, stock investor, philanthropist, statesman and political consultant. He was born in 1870 and died in 1965, so he is definitely the poster child for his own quote!

Hmmmm. It sounds too simple! However, upon reflection, I have found that, in my experience, the most true things do seem to be very simple! It is we humans who tend to complicate things!

I read the quote as part of a reflection posted today by Shelley Klammer, an art therapist I follow and admire.

She offered the following poem:

Everybody

Everything

Every night.

I have written this on a sticky note to post right beside my bed, where I will see it just before I go to sleep. Somehow, I think if I had read this pre-pandemic I might have resisted it, thinking of people and situations I didn’t want to forgive. But now, during the pandemic, this quote is really appealing to me and I want to try it out. In addition to good nutrition, sleep, fresh air walks, making art, walking labyrinths, prayer and all the other practices I have shared with you, I want to add this one to my daily routine, and I want to invite you to join me in it, if it appeals to you, too, to try.

Sleep well tonight!

May we all live long and fruitful lives.. maybe even, like Bernard Baruch, til we make it to age 95!

Did you watch Andrea Bocelli yesterday singing in a cathedral in Italy? It was an amazing experience waiting for the concert to begin, watching the numbers waiting to watch rise until they reached over 3 million people! It was wonderful, during this time of social isolation, to feel united with the people all around the globe, who wanted to hear Andrea sing.

I hadn’t heard him sing for many years, so I was shocked to see how thin and old he was looking. I realized he must be feeling so much grief at the loss of so many lives to coronavirus in Italy. He stood all alone in the cathedral, accompanied only by an organ, with no microphones visible, and began to sing Panis Angelicus. Blessedly, I began to cry and for the next few songs, all the tears that had been stored up inside me during the past few weeks were able to be released. I felt a lot better.

I have been rereading the book The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren, and she says that experiencing grief ‘drops you directly into the river of all souls.’ (pg 311). What a helpful, accurate way to describe it. It was good to find a way to naturally join the river of grief that is being experienced all around the world.

If you didn’t see the concert, it is available on You Tube. Just google ‘Andrea Bocelli You Tube’ and you will find it. May it facilitate you feeling the unexpressed emotions you need/want to feel, whether that be joy, hope, sadness, grief.. or all of them!

I have had the privilege during the past 4 weeks of being part of a telephone tree organized by my church. My job is to phone several folks from the church to inquire after their health and to see if there is anything they might need. Thus, I have been given the opportunity to get to know people more deeply than I would if I were just greeting them at church on Sundays. One woman,age 89, is living alone, yet she has been very content to accept the situation and she has simply hunkered down and decided to reread as many books as possible in her personal library. She says she is really enjoying it!

Wow! That inspired me to look around my own collection of books. I found four or five non fiction books that I either really enjoyed and would like to read again, or liked at the time, but didn’t study as deeply as I wanted to.

One of these books is Reflections on the Art of Living : A Joseph Campbell Companion. It is a collection of quotations and reflections written by Joseph Campbell and selected and edited by a student of his, Diane K. Osbon. I have begun reading a few pages each morning and this morning, Easter morning, I came across this powerful selection:

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “ the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment— not discouragement— you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.
Then when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.” pg 38-39.

Of course, the first thing that came to mind for me today was that Jesus’ death on the cross appeared to be a huge disaster when it was happening. Yet out of that, came Jesus’ resurrection, and all that means for us today. Likewise, coronavirus seems like a huge disaster for our world, yet, out of it may come something good for each of us individually and for mankind and our world. May it be so! Amen

Well, it’s Easter weekend and we are all stuck at home, having been strongly advised not to visit friends or family. We are going to connect with our loved ones online, in all likelihood, and in our neighbourhood, we are dropping off Easter treats to each other! When I do this, I want to include an Easter card for the recipient, but at this time we aren’t able to go to the store to buy readymade cards.

So, how do we go about making a homemade card for Easter, or any other occasion that comes up, while we are at home?

I start with packages of plain stationery and envelopes that are available at places like Michael’s. I keep art which didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted, and then I look for the ‘picture within the picture’, believing there must be a beautiful piece of art in there somewhere! I look for it by moving a roll of masking tape over the piece of art,looking inside the circle that is created for something which looks pleasing to me. Then taking a pencil, I will outline it and then cut it out. You can also do this with a square piece of paper, with the centre cut out. I take my cut out mini piece of art, center it on the piece of stationery and then glue it down using a gluestick. Using a nice coloured pen, I write a message inside the card I have made. I have been using Pigma Micron pens lately, because they use archival ink, which won’t fade over time.

When I sit down to do this I often get on a roll and make 5 or more cards at a time, so I have some at the ready when an occasion comes up where a card is needed.

The main thing is, it is so much fun and so satisfying to do. Very quickly an hour can pass in deep contentment, while I totally forget about whatever stresses might have been on my mind.

Happy Easter to all! May you be blessed with an hour of free time to colour, to paint, to make a homemade card, etc. Enjoy!!

I go through spells where I like to colour and yesterday, after a long hiatus, I opened up the book pictured below, Color Me Stress-Free, chose a colouring template and enjoyed a lovely half hour of colouring. Colouring is one of the most accessible ways to make art and also one of the least intimidating. The author, Lacy Mucklow, states in the Introduction that ‘one of the greatest things about colouring is that it is highly successful for everyone-even if you lack artistic instruction or experience-and it can be as nuanced or generalized as the colourer wishes… The act of colouring can also be meditative in and of itself, bringing about stress relief just through the simple act of picking up a coloured pencil or crayon and focusing creativity and thoughts on a single colouring exercise.’

I find that the relaxation induced by colouring is enhanced, for me, by playing beautiful, restful background music while I colour. My favourite CDs to listen to at this time are either Come Away with Me by Nora Jones, or a CD called Luminous Spirit - Chants of Hildegard of Bingen sung by Rosa Lamoreaux. You will know which CDs do the same for you.

I invite you to try colouring, while listening to music, to help you to relax when you are feeling stressed and worried by all that is going on in our world right now. I can pretty much guarantee that after 30 minutes of colouring, your mind, body, emotions and spirits all will feel calmer and more content!

This is my favorite mandala coloring book. It is a real stress relief!

In Grade 8, I was told by my teacher that I had no artistic ability whatsoever, and I believed her. Many people have told me they had similar experiences. Although I knew I had no special abilities to make art, after the teacher made her remarks in front of the rest of my classmates, I never made art again. Both my mother and my grandmother were gifted artists, and I knew I had a good eye for colour, but I had lost my natural and innocent joy and willingness to explore the world of artmaking.

When I began to study life coaching my general joie de vivre increased dramatically, and one day, I saw a piece of abstract art that I really loved, and had the sudden thought, “Maybe, I could make art like that too.” I asked a young coaching client of mine, who was an artist, if she could help me to give it a try. She accompanied me to an art supply store, and we bought a large canvas, some brushes and some acrylic paint. I set the large canvas up on an easel and began tentatively to apply paint onto the canvas. My young artist friend stood beside me, in kind and compassionate support. Some force took me over, and I began to paint feverishly, and at the same time to cry, laugh, and swear all at the same time! My friend seemed to understand, and was able to simply stay by my side while I painted the huge canvas to the place where I felt I was done. It felt like a huge release of grief, anger and creativity. Long story short, I painted 50 more canvases that year, and I had my first art show a year after that. I started going to the Haliburton School of the Arts each spring to take a course on acrylic abstracts. I felt like a new woman, as I had been freed from the lie that I was not an artist.

Here is the truth : ALL OF US ARE ARTISTS!!!

And at times like this in our lives, making art can be such a pleasure, a release, a comfort and a joy. There are many accessible ways to make art, ways that are not intimidating and give us pleasure and a sense of accomplishment and contentment quickly. In an earlier blog post, I described how to make a mini collage. My current favourite way to make art is to use watercolour crayons. The best example of these are Caran D’Ache water soluable wax pastels.(These can be found on Amazon.ca) They look like our childhood crayons, but when you dip them into water and apply them to paper, it looks like you have used watercolour paint. To be honest, I have never learned how to use actual watercolour paints, being content with dipping my watercolour crayons in water, and creating from there. I love making abstract pieces of art still. For the past 10 years, I have been mainly drawn to illustrating quotes that appeal to me. What I do is write the quote at the bottom of a piece of watercolour paper, and then leave it where I can see it. A moment of inspiration will come, and I feel like getting out my watercolour crayons and illustrating the quote. I feel so happy and contented as I do it!

Joseph Campbell said, “ Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need.” That’s how I feel about making art now!

Whether it be watercolour crayons, pen and ink, coloured pencils, regular crayons, or paint, I invite you to pull out what you have available around the house, and take some time in a quiet, favourite spot to make a little art. You don’t have to show it to anyone. You don’t have to ask yourself if it is ‘good art’ or not! You can simply enjoy the process of making it. Have fun!!!

Finally! It’s a beautiful day! We are all longing to get outside! Besides going for a walk or looking in your garden for some signs of life, what else could we do outside?

We could build a homemade labyrinth!

A few years ago, I took a course about labyrinths and I fell in love with them! Most of us confuse mazes with labyrinths. A labyrinth has a single path. There are no choices or intersections and the path leads unfailingly into the center. Mazes, on the other hand, have multiple paths, and myriad choices, most of which lead nowhere. Mazes are meant to trick or confuse us. Labyrinths are meant to bring us peace and clarity.

The earliest form of a labyrinth was the simple spiral. The most beautiful form of labyrinth is the medieval eleven circuit laybrinth which is found on the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. ( Google that and you will easily find it and can see it for yourself.)

Robert Ferre says in his introduction to the book Living the Labyrinth that “we generally see our lives as mazes, not as labyrinths. It is easy to feel that we are off the path, that success is not assured, or that it comes only with luck and struggle.” He then says something so surprising and so reassuring. “Our spiritual quest, I feel,can be summarized as a single obligation: to switch from life-as-maze to life-as-labyrinth. The transformation from maze to labyrinth requires us to dismiss much of our conditioning, to reevaluate our identity, and to apply a new context to our lives. With life-as-labryinth, we discover that all paths are part of the One Path, leading unfailingly to the center, where, despite appearances and differences, we will eventually all meet. No one will be lost. If we are alive, we are on the path.”( pg x-xi )

With all this in mind, I want to invite you to make a simple spiral labyrinth in your own backyard. I made one a few years ago completely out of materials I found lying around the yard- including stones, sticks and bricks. If you look at the photo below, you will see the one I made. The paths are about 18 inches wide, and the whole spiral is about 10 feet wide. You can also make a spiral by using a long piece of rope, or even a brightly coloured piece of yarn. In the center, I added a concrete brick to sit on, because often I like to stay in the center of the spiral for awhile.

Once we have this done, what do we do next? Jill Kimberly Hartwell Geoffrion, a noted labyrinth facilitator says that we walk into our spiral/labyrinth to ‘ ask, listen, receive and be grateful.' At the mouth of the labyrinth we think of a question we have, a scripture we want to pray, something we want to ponder more fully. Then we enter the labyrinth and walk slowly towards the center. When we reach the center, we stand or sit quietly, waiting for God to speak to us. We receive what God has to say. Then we slowly walk back out to the entrance with gratitude in our hearts.

In her book Living the Labyrinth, Jill offers suggestions for thing we can ponder. Here are a couple of my favourites:

1) Like a snake shedding its skin as it grows, walk the labyrinth when it is time to let go of something. As you walk to the center, imagine your old skin dropping away. In the center, welcome sensations of renewal and growth. As you walk out, become aware of your expanding reality. After crossing the threshold, give thanks for what has been, what is, and what will be. (pg 58)

2) If it seems very difficult to disconnect from troubling thoughts, go to a labyrinth and pray. Let the movement of your body and the winding pathway help you to find peace. Keep walking until your mind quiets. It may take two or three or even four walks to the center and back out. As you finish your laybrinth experience, give thanks for where your walk has brought you.(pg 76)

I am happy to share more of Jill’s suggestions for walking a labyrinth with anyone who would like more. I have been walking my little spiral labyrinth in the backyard for the past 3 summers and i really love it. Though it is a very simple and small example of a labyrinth, it works for me, to bring clarity and calm. I am hopeful it will do the same for you!!

This is the labyrinth in my yard. You can easily make your own labyrinth too!