Finally, after months of confinement, we find ourselves able to visit with friends again, albeit cautiously, and usually outside. We can go swimming. We can sit on a chaise lounge and drink a tall, cold glass of lemonade. Ahhh! Summer.

For some reason, summer is sort and pitch time for me. I just have an urge to toss out what is no longer needed to make room for the new. For me, fall is the New Year, and I am hopeful it will bring us all good things.

During this year’s sort and pitch I came across this beautiful little poem:

The Edge of Center

All tempest has,

Like a navel,

A hole in its middle,

Through which

A gull can fly,

In silence.

—14th century Japanese, Anonymous

While sitting in the shade, glass of lemonade in hand, I can really connect with that ‘hole in the middle’. It is wonderful, at least sometimes, to be able to connect with that clear, beautiful spot in our souls.

May you be blessed with many such quiet, meaningful, contented moments this summer.

Again this Sunday, I really enjoyed Rick Tamlyn’s words. This week he made a You Tube video called 4 Ways to be More Intentional. He talked about 4 spaces we could choose to go to daily that would lead to us feeling more settled, contented and productive. Here they are:

1) The Human Mess Space.

This is the one where we allow ourselves to go to feel frustrated, upset, and even have a meltdown in if needed! For me, this would be going to the beach, diving in and having a swim. I can go there feeling like a human mess, and every time, within a few minutes of hitting the cold water, I feel so much better!

2) The Grounded Space

This is the place where we go to feel connected, centred, calm and grounded. For me, this is the tiny spiral labryinth in my backyard. When I go there, and begin to walk among the pine cones, sticks and stones, and forget me nots, I instantly feel connected to nature, my breathing slows down and I feel that all will be well!

3) The Creative Space

This is the place we go when we want to be creative. For me, this is my art table, where I can make a collage, a homemade card, or a piece of art for a friend. Here I can easily lose track of time, become focussed on colour, nice paper, and just generally feel like a kid again!

4) The Service Space

This is the place we go when we want to serve and help others. For me, it could be sitting down at my laptop to write a blogpost for you! It could be doing life coaching on Zoom, or offering a Nia class. It’s any place where I can forget about myself, and put my attention on the person I want to serve, focussing on them and their situation, their needs, their feelings, their hopes and dreams. It feels great in the midst of the pandemic to be able to serve.

That’s it! Those are the 4 Spaces. Rick suggested going to each of these spaces daily, for the next 5 days in a row. I am going to take up his challenge, and if you feel so moved, please feel free to join me, and let’s see what happens!

Rick Tamlyn writes a newsletter each Sunday morning. Rick is one of the co-creators of the Bigger Game, a workshop experience that I lead, and he was also one of the co-leaders of a year long Leadership program I took in 2009. This Sunday’s newsletter was especially helpful to me.

Rick made the distinction between managing and creating. He said that the world has changed, and we have to adjust to that. He said we can either try to maintain things the way they have been, or we can be open to creating something new.

The thing that really helped me was what he said next :

“The manager in you wants to maintain what is and the leader in you wants to create something new. Trying to ‘ manage’ activates anxiety. Creating, on the other hand, will activate your aliveness and your zest for life. “

He said, “You cannot experience anxiety and creativity in your mind, body and soul at the same time.”

For the past few days I have been thinking about this last sentence. I have found it to be true. If I am busy creating something- a blogpost, a piece of art, a piece of writing for my next book, it’s true- I get so engaged with that, that I don’t feel anxious. And if I am feeling anxious, the best thing I can do is engage in something creative.

For me, the distinction between managing and creating has been a big help!

I help it will be the same for you!!

A friend forwarded me a You Tube video this morning called The Consciousness Button. The speaker is Caroline Myss, a medical intuitive, who has written many books. She is now 67. She made the video yesterday and she was addressing what she thinks is going on in the bigger picture of our world today. She spoke of something called ‘Vertical Time’, where all change is immediate and profound.

I have definitely felt this way in the past few weeks. Big changes are happening, very quickly, with no time to process or integrate them. What I found really helpful in this 18 minute You Tube video was that it began to put into a context for me what I am experiencing. Now I have some words and terms I can use when talking to others other than, “Boy I feel weird these days.” or “Doesn’t the world feel so weird these days?” I haven’t been able to speak more clearly than that about what I am sensing and feeling.

An amazing thing to me was that right at the end of the video, all of a sudden, Caroline began to speak about how important, powerful and helpful prayer is. She didn’t elaborate on it much, but I thought it was fabulous that just when I had been thinking and writing about how helpful prayer is, across the continent, an inspiring speaker was saying the same.

We are indeed more connected than we know, and what happens to one of us, truly is happening to all of us. This is pretty cool!

Something that I have to learn over and over is the difference between fretting and praying. I know that I have been fretting again when I feel ill at ease inside, not calm or trusting. When I examine myself I see that I have been asking myself questions, such as “What if?” … “Will this ever end?” I am thinking about difficulties, worries and challenges at those times, but I am not praying about them.

Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

I love that these verses give us a clear and simple formula for what to do when we are caught in fretting, stewing and worrying in our minds, feeling scared, hopeless and helpless about various things going on in our world and in our own lives.

For me, the key is to realize what I am doing. “Ah ha!! I am fretting again!!”’ Once I realize it, I turn my fretting into prayer by consciously bringing each concern, one by one, to God. I begin to say, “God, you know about x and I want to give this worry to you. Please help me handle the situation. Please, You do something about it.”

I find as I very deliberately take each item of concern to God, mysteriously and beautifully, peace of mind comes again. I have done something constructive with my worry. I have put my trust in God, my Creator, to bear it with me and to help me.

I love Matthew 11:28 ,” Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Fantastic news! And I have found in my own life, this verse is true!

May it be so/become so in your life too!

I came across a You Tube video today made by Dr Ashok Bhattacharya called The Social Emotional Ripple Effect of a Pandemic, Episode 7 : Brain Fitness.

In just a minute or two, Dr Bhattacharya talks about his model of how our brain is set up and what we can do to exercise all parts of our brain for optimum health. I loved it! Something I hadn’t been doing was focusing on developing my balance. Lately I have started back at it, using exercises from a book I read many years ago called Strong Women Stay Young by Miriam Nelson. Having seen Dr Bhattacharya’s video today, I feel motivated to do these simple balance exercises as often as I can, and certainly twice a week as recommended.

It’s just nice to know there are some simple things I can do to keep my brain fit and my body strong during this time of pandemic.

If you google Dr Ashok Bhattacharya You Tube Video, you will see there are 5 or 6 short, sweet, practical and encouraging videos to watch. Enjoy!

Today, I did something I have not done for many years. I sat outside on my back porch and watched the sun rise. It was a beautiful, calming thing to do! The birds were singing at the top of their lungs, the grass was so green and the world was so quiet. It gave me a chance to experience real stillness inside and around me, an experience I really needed in the face of the reality of the extreme difficulties facing our world today.

While I sat and rested and felt reassured, the affirmation my spiritual director gave me recently came to mind. She invited me to say daily: “At the core of my being I am beloved of God. I am intimately united with Christ through the Spirit. I dwell in the Abiding presence of the Trinity and the Abiding presence of the Trinity dwells in me. This is who I am.”

For me, it is so important in trying, destabilizing times to be reminded of and get reconnected with what is '“true, noble,right, pure, lovely and admirable.” (Philippians 4:8) For each of us, truth will look a little different and our spiritual foundation and traditions may also differ, yet underneath it all, there runs a stream which is life giving for each of us. It is important at times such as these to connect with it, whether it be by sitting out on our porch in the early morning, walking a labyrinth, praying with our rosary beads etc etc. We each know how to do it, and I encourage you to intentionally connect often with what for you is the ‘stream of living water’ in your life.

Since we have quite a bit of time on our hands still, and we have seen all there is to see on Netflix, and tried out a lot of new recipes, how else can we occupy ourselves during this time of quarantine?

We could learn something new!

One day I was scanning my bookshelves for something new to read, and I noticed the pile of financial planning books I have. There were ten of them! I love learning new things about personal finance, and I was wondering how I could do more of that during the pandemic. My friend Sheri directed me to the continuing education site called Udemy. We went there together, and believe it or not, there was a finance coaching course for life coaches. The usual retail price was $200, but it was on sale for $19.99! I signed up!

My favourite thing about the course was the different assessment tools they gave. Many of them came from a free government of Canada website. If you are interested in learning a little more about personal finance, google www.canada.ca and look up the self assessment tool and the financial toolkit pages. I have enjoyed exploring the various topics that are covered and I learned a lot! If you decide to check out this website, I hope you enjoy it too!

Early on in the pandemic, I watched a lot of Netflix movies. At a certain point, I felt like I needed a change. My Mom lent me Pie in the Sky, season 3, on a DVD. This is a British TV show which features a British police man who is also a chef, and who combines his police work with running a fine dining restaurant. During May, each evening we settled in with tea and cookies in hand to watch and we just loved it! This TV series ran for 5 seasons in the 1990s. After we watched season 3, we wondered if we could see more. Fortunately, it is available on Acorn TV. This is a site that offers a lot of British TV series, and as I perused it, I could see I would interested in more of their offerings after we finish Pie in the Sky.

If you go to www.acorntv.com you will see you can try it for free for 7 days, and then you pay $7.49 a month thereafter.

I wanted to share this with you, in case you too need a little change of scenery for your evening view pleasure!

Oh my goodness, the extreme heat of the past 3 days fried my brain and I really couldn’t think straight! Last night around 2 am I awoke with what I would call a tension type headache. I haven’t had a bad headache for several months, so this one took me by surprise. Happily, I remembered a technique I read about many years ago for how to get rid of a headache, if you can catch it early. I am sorry to say I cannot remember the name of the book or the author, but I do remember he was a clinical psychologist. Somehow, he developed this technique for his own use and he said it was remarkably effective if he could go to a quiet room by himself for 10 minutes or so, right after a headache started. In that quiet room, he would think about the headache and ask himself the following questions:

1) What colour is the headache?

2) What temperature is it?

3 )What substance is it made of?

4) If it was a 6 year old, what would it say?

5) If it was a well, how deep would it be?

I know these questions seem strange, but I have always found them effective to get rid of a headache, as long as I caught it within the first half hour.

I once asked a very wise art therapist, Ed Hagedorn, how the expressive arts heal. He said, “They allow us to externalize, transform and then reintegrate a problem or issue.” I think this is how asking ourselves the headache questions works too. We become able to see what the message of the headache is. Once we get the message, it seems the headache has served its purpose, and it can go away. Pretty cool, eh?

I invite you to write the headache questions down and keep them in a place where you can readily access them the next time a headache arises. I will be excited to hear whether or not they work for you too!