At about 4:50pm EST I was sitting with Helen and Dad in a branch of the TD bank watching the black computer screen of the burly, sometimes surly, financial officer as she set up a joint line of credit on the GIC that Dad has willed to me on his passing. The intention was to pay off the loan on the trailer that Gabor, Jason and I lived in on the WPI Tour up until Sept. 22, 2009.
Suddenly a clear white sentence appeared in bold letters near the bottom of her screen. TRANSFER APPROVED LOAN PAID OFF.
I nearly cried, fainted and stopped breathing for two seconds. The enormous unshiftable burden – the physical sign of my failure to manage my life during those seven months, the unending anxiety of a responsibility I can’t meet yet must meet every month – in a split second dispassionately disappeared.
I had no idea of the extent of the weight on my spirit until it was gone. And when it was gone, it was just gone. A pile of papers to sign, two managers to say “Yes”, an electronic ritual to complete precisely – and the white letters simply appeared at the bottom of the computer screen.
Forgiveness has been dispensed.
This does not mean I have no financial concerns. It means I have a path to getting from “red” to “black” to being once again free to powerfully impact my and other’s circumstances with my own money, not just other’s on my behalf.
I owe so much to my parents I cannot fathom the depth. My Mother’s relentless saving reaches from beyond her grave through my Father through his love of me and of manipulating his GIC’s to release me from the shackles and the shame I incurred for throwing my hat over the wall in 2008. I am blessed.
My sense of mission is once again reinforced. Why am I so blessed, so lucky if not for being yet again showered with opportunities to keep on bringing Inclusion. Forward – go forward!
Today I met a young research student, and in a nutshell, a feasible research project is emerging around measuring the impact of the WPIT inclusive video games on the peacefulness of the children and youth who play it. A new “Yes”, a different “Yes”, a powerful “Yes”! Forward – go forward!
Jen was here this morning. Together we explored the nature of standing. For me it was more like having a conversation with my body about the experience of standing – the being of upstanding – of leadership and courage. I am stretching and parts of my body are turning and curving differently. The body of Judith is discovering how to support her stand.
I, Judith, am leading the world, through a planet wide team of young people, into an international culture of abundance, inclusion and peace. It is my destiny and I choose to fulfill this dream.
Showing posts with label permission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label permission. Show all posts
Monday, January 17, 2011
Saturday, December 11, 2010
December 11, 2010
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
Peter has been living in my “spare” room since early September. He gets to stay in return for giving me pro bono one shift a week of personal assistance, and for doing some inclusive community development around this housing cooperative, Robert Cooke.
The other day Peter brought home a “Christmas tree” constructed from 111 Coke cans coated in silver paint which has partly worn away, and a string of Christmas lights so old that Peter is having trouble finding replacement bulbs and sockets. This artefact was constructed by his mother – likely 50 years ago or so. Yesterday he brought home a “wreath” made almost entirely from twigs with barely a speck of green.
It’s funny how something can occur that makes one realize that one – I – actually care about something. The Coke can sculpture is a memento and a sort of heirloom for Peter and so even though in my view it doesn’t qualify as something that has a genre, like kitsch or retro, I recognize that it’s going to have a place in my household. But when it showed up, and especially when the round pile of twigs arrived, I realized that if we’re going to decorate around here for Christmas it better look LIKE Christmas to me.
Now, what does Christmas look like – to me! Well – green for starters. Secondly, not like Good Friday where utter bareness makes sense. My intellect “knows” these thoughts are not relative to any fixed reality, but the rest of me feels that Christmas is about new life, regeneration, hope reborn, and that the symbols of this ought to reflect new growth.
So we nailed the twigs to Peter’s bedroom door and I bought a Santa to sit on top of the pile of silvered cans along with some bows and beads to drape and paste so as to soften the severity of the piece. I also placed a small woven red and green decoration on the front door of our place. Now it’s time to do a little cleaning and to dig out the ornaments that have been in storage bins for over two years and give the pad a festive look.
Possibly one of the strongest effects of my Mother’s Alzeimers was that Christmas became an uncertain experience. There was a point when I was in my mid 20’s that I actively resisted celebrating Christmas. But from the time I was 29 until the year that Mom and Dad first moved into a retirement residence, Christmas varied little.
Mother always insisted that all four of her children be with her for this celebration. I imagine that there were a few years when my elder brother Ian was unable to attend because he was somewhere out of the country with the Canadian Armed Services. Otherwise we all showed up and generally speaking our spouses – permanent or temporary – showed up as well.
Mother always had a fabulously decorated tree. On Christmas Day itself she did not relinquish the kitchen to anyone. The meal was invariably rich, festive and abundant.
There were other invariant aspects as well. For example, my mother (and later my siblings) always took care to place me in exactly the spot where I was to remain for the entire occasion. The sole exception to this was when I moved to and from my assigned spot beside Dad at the dinner table.
In later years, we adopted a different pattern for present giving. At my sister, Rosemary’s, encouragement we put a price limit on the presents and reduced the number that were given. Later, but after Mom and Dad were in the retirement home, Christmas was held in one or other of the siblings homes and we used a Secret Santa strategy which was not only less expensive but a whole lot more fun for all of us.
But mother passed away two and a half years ago and suddenly there was no longer a clear sense that we would all gather in the same place. I do not believe that I have been to a family Christmas dinner since that time and I won’t be this year either.
So I find myself attracted to the idea that Peter would want to decorate our apartment with his mother’s Christmas tree even though, and at the very same moment, I am repelled by its tackiness. My own mother would never have let such a thing exist in her space.
For myself, at this time, I am merely reflecting on how intensely I am experiencing a need to do something that counterbalances both my own mother’s rigidity and Peter’s (and his mother’s) different sense of value. December 25th at 20 Garnett Janes Road Apartment 812 will be a very different day indeed!
Peter has been living in my “spare” room since early September. He gets to stay in return for giving me pro bono one shift a week of personal assistance, and for doing some inclusive community development around this housing cooperative, Robert Cooke.
The other day Peter brought home a “Christmas tree” constructed from 111 Coke cans coated in silver paint which has partly worn away, and a string of Christmas lights so old that Peter is having trouble finding replacement bulbs and sockets. This artefact was constructed by his mother – likely 50 years ago or so. Yesterday he brought home a “wreath” made almost entirely from twigs with barely a speck of green.
It’s funny how something can occur that makes one realize that one – I – actually care about something. The Coke can sculpture is a memento and a sort of heirloom for Peter and so even though in my view it doesn’t qualify as something that has a genre, like kitsch or retro, I recognize that it’s going to have a place in my household. But when it showed up, and especially when the round pile of twigs arrived, I realized that if we’re going to decorate around here for Christmas it better look LIKE Christmas to me.
Now, what does Christmas look like – to me! Well – green for starters. Secondly, not like Good Friday where utter bareness makes sense. My intellect “knows” these thoughts are not relative to any fixed reality, but the rest of me feels that Christmas is about new life, regeneration, hope reborn, and that the symbols of this ought to reflect new growth.
So we nailed the twigs to Peter’s bedroom door and I bought a Santa to sit on top of the pile of silvered cans along with some bows and beads to drape and paste so as to soften the severity of the piece. I also placed a small woven red and green decoration on the front door of our place. Now it’s time to do a little cleaning and to dig out the ornaments that have been in storage bins for over two years and give the pad a festive look.
Possibly one of the strongest effects of my Mother’s Alzeimers was that Christmas became an uncertain experience. There was a point when I was in my mid 20’s that I actively resisted celebrating Christmas. But from the time I was 29 until the year that Mom and Dad first moved into a retirement residence, Christmas varied little.
Mother always insisted that all four of her children be with her for this celebration. I imagine that there were a few years when my elder brother Ian was unable to attend because he was somewhere out of the country with the Canadian Armed Services. Otherwise we all showed up and generally speaking our spouses – permanent or temporary – showed up as well.
Mother always had a fabulously decorated tree. On Christmas Day itself she did not relinquish the kitchen to anyone. The meal was invariably rich, festive and abundant.
There were other invariant aspects as well. For example, my mother (and later my siblings) always took care to place me in exactly the spot where I was to remain for the entire occasion. The sole exception to this was when I moved to and from my assigned spot beside Dad at the dinner table.
In later years, we adopted a different pattern for present giving. At my sister, Rosemary’s, encouragement we put a price limit on the presents and reduced the number that were given. Later, but after Mom and Dad were in the retirement home, Christmas was held in one or other of the siblings homes and we used a Secret Santa strategy which was not only less expensive but a whole lot more fun for all of us.
But mother passed away two and a half years ago and suddenly there was no longer a clear sense that we would all gather in the same place. I do not believe that I have been to a family Christmas dinner since that time and I won’t be this year either.
So I find myself attracted to the idea that Peter would want to decorate our apartment with his mother’s Christmas tree even though, and at the very same moment, I am repelled by its tackiness. My own mother would never have let such a thing exist in her space.
For myself, at this time, I am merely reflecting on how intensely I am experiencing a need to do something that counterbalances both my own mother’s rigidity and Peter’s (and his mother’s) different sense of value. December 25th at 20 Garnett Janes Road Apartment 812 will be a very different day indeed!
Thursday, December 9, 2010
December 9, 2010
One more article! (I promise I will write anew tomorrow.)
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
Prologue
Many groups of people who are marginalized today have a history of their people that gives an explanation of present day reality. For example, African-Americans
and African-Canadians have stories that tell how their ancestors were enslaved and brought to North America. Stories tell how some were guided by maps encoded into songs as they traveled the "underground railroad" and escaped to freedom.
These traditional stories give current members of the group, especially the children, an explanation for the poverty, discrimination, exploitation and hostility
they experience in the present. As the child grows, she or he may reject these interpretations and adopt or invent others. Even so, the stories have served a purpose. The stories give members of the group a way to defend themselves against the negative stereotypes that are attributed to them by others who have the power to discriminate and exploit.
Even while the material effects of marginalization are being experienced, the child has an inner anchor to sustain a positive identity for herself or himself. It
can be remembered that it is not her or his inevitable fate to be so abused. The opportunity remains to find a way to work for greater freedom and respect.
Children labeled with disability come to this world as members of every cultural group that occupies this world. Almost always they are born to parents who are
not themselves viewed as disabled. Those who surround them are almost always unfamiliar with the fact that handicappist stereotyping disguises and renders invisible the person's actual abilities and contributions. Their parents have no story to counter the negative beliefs about bodies and minds that function in unusual ways. In fact, their parents may very likely be champions of these stereotypes.
In such situations children have no way of knowing that there are other ways of knowing themselves. They cannot know how to resist adopting these beliefs about themselves. In other words, a labeled child has no choice but to understand themselves as broken, as being a "mistake" or a "defect", as being fundamentally incapable and irresponsible, as being a helpless misfit who is less than able.
For better or worse, human beings are easily molded by and adapt to the symbolic realities that we proclaim to each other. If I say the little white pill will take the pain away, sugar becomes a powerful analgesic. If enough of us believe you are dying, you are very likely to die. Consequently, the child who is labeled as "disabled" inevitably becomes a disabled child - broken, helpless and unable.
When I was seven months of age I was diagnosed as having Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a form of Muscular Dystrophy. I was labeled "severely physically disabled". When I was six years old I remember my father telling me that some U.S. doctors were putting children labeled "mentally retarded" to death, saying
that society should not have to bear the burden of caring for these children. Dad, who grew up in rural England, explained that in his youth children with "mental retardation" were able to grow potatoes along with everyone else. They were a regular, accepted part of his community. But children like me were killed. People felt they did not have enough resources to support someone who would likely not be able to grow food.
My father's story was harsh. But that is not what I heard when I was six. I heard that I had enemies and that I had better pay attention. I heard that he and Mom were going against the mainstream and that meant they loved me and that we were all vulnerable. I heard that the way to gain acceptance among strangers was to contribute to the well-being of the community.
Outside of this one occasion I was raised without an orientation to the prejudice daily inculcated into my being. I was in my thirties before it really began to occur to me that I was my own worst enemy. I had adopted all the ableist stereotypes as being realities of my true self. Consequently I cooperated while others,
wittingly or not, hurt my body, deflected my mind, impoverished my circumstances, and diminished my abilities and contributions.
I have long thought that living as a labeled person requires the skills to live as an alien in a misunderstanding, often hostile, foreign territory. It would be helpful to have an orientation to the ways of the foreign inhabitants. I often have wished to have a reorienting story, such as might have been told to me as I sat in my mother's lap, still a babe, if my mother had known I needed such a story. I invented such a story.
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
You are not from here. You are more like the people who are from here than they can imagine. But they find it difficult to see you for who you are or to like you.
You have chosen to live your life among these people. This is a dangerous choice. You made this choice because you love these people. They need you.
You must remember that it takes a long time for most of these people to see that you are alive, and that you have a heart, and that you are trying to give something to them.
Some of them will never see you as anything more than a puppet at best. You must find people who will see that you are alive. You must help them over and over again to keep on seeing that you are alive. If you do not help people to see that you are alive, you will fall asleep. The only life you will have is the life of a
puppet filled with other people's stories. They may grow tired of playing with you; they may break you; they may throw you away; they may destroy you.
When you find people who can see you, you must learn to live among them. You must learn to believe most of what they believe, and to act in most of the same ways as they act. People who can see you will tell you how to do this. You must listen closely and watch carefully even when it is tiresome. If you do not strive to become like them, the others who cannot see you will drive you away. Even those who can see you will not be able to hold on to you.
However, you must not strive to be completely like these people or you will break yourself.
While you are among these people you must constantly search for ways to hang on to your true self and your true way of being even while you are acting like others as much as possible. As some of these people get to know you better and better they can help you find your true self and your own way of being.
Be courageous in asking these people to help you be your true self. Be courageous in doing this even when it hurts you and when it hurts them. It is your way to love these people. It is your way to heal them. It is your way to help them renew themselves. It is why you are choosing to live among them.
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
Prologue
Many groups of people who are marginalized today have a history of their people that gives an explanation of present day reality. For example, African-Americans
and African-Canadians have stories that tell how their ancestors were enslaved and brought to North America. Stories tell how some were guided by maps encoded into songs as they traveled the "underground railroad" and escaped to freedom.
These traditional stories give current members of the group, especially the children, an explanation for the poverty, discrimination, exploitation and hostility
they experience in the present. As the child grows, she or he may reject these interpretations and adopt or invent others. Even so, the stories have served a purpose. The stories give members of the group a way to defend themselves against the negative stereotypes that are attributed to them by others who have the power to discriminate and exploit.
Even while the material effects of marginalization are being experienced, the child has an inner anchor to sustain a positive identity for herself or himself. It
can be remembered that it is not her or his inevitable fate to be so abused. The opportunity remains to find a way to work for greater freedom and respect.
Children labeled with disability come to this world as members of every cultural group that occupies this world. Almost always they are born to parents who are
not themselves viewed as disabled. Those who surround them are almost always unfamiliar with the fact that handicappist stereotyping disguises and renders invisible the person's actual abilities and contributions. Their parents have no story to counter the negative beliefs about bodies and minds that function in unusual ways. In fact, their parents may very likely be champions of these stereotypes.
In such situations children have no way of knowing that there are other ways of knowing themselves. They cannot know how to resist adopting these beliefs about themselves. In other words, a labeled child has no choice but to understand themselves as broken, as being a "mistake" or a "defect", as being fundamentally incapable and irresponsible, as being a helpless misfit who is less than able.
For better or worse, human beings are easily molded by and adapt to the symbolic realities that we proclaim to each other. If I say the little white pill will take the pain away, sugar becomes a powerful analgesic. If enough of us believe you are dying, you are very likely to die. Consequently, the child who is labeled as "disabled" inevitably becomes a disabled child - broken, helpless and unable.
When I was seven months of age I was diagnosed as having Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a form of Muscular Dystrophy. I was labeled "severely physically disabled". When I was six years old I remember my father telling me that some U.S. doctors were putting children labeled "mentally retarded" to death, saying
that society should not have to bear the burden of caring for these children. Dad, who grew up in rural England, explained that in his youth children with "mental retardation" were able to grow potatoes along with everyone else. They were a regular, accepted part of his community. But children like me were killed. People felt they did not have enough resources to support someone who would likely not be able to grow food.
My father's story was harsh. But that is not what I heard when I was six. I heard that I had enemies and that I had better pay attention. I heard that he and Mom were going against the mainstream and that meant they loved me and that we were all vulnerable. I heard that the way to gain acceptance among strangers was to contribute to the well-being of the community.
Outside of this one occasion I was raised without an orientation to the prejudice daily inculcated into my being. I was in my thirties before it really began to occur to me that I was my own worst enemy. I had adopted all the ableist stereotypes as being realities of my true self. Consequently I cooperated while others,
wittingly or not, hurt my body, deflected my mind, impoverished my circumstances, and diminished my abilities and contributions.
I have long thought that living as a labeled person requires the skills to live as an alien in a misunderstanding, often hostile, foreign territory. It would be helpful to have an orientation to the ways of the foreign inhabitants. I often have wished to have a reorienting story, such as might have been told to me as I sat in my mother's lap, still a babe, if my mother had known I needed such a story. I invented such a story.
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
You are not from here. You are more like the people who are from here than they can imagine. But they find it difficult to see you for who you are or to like you.
You have chosen to live your life among these people. This is a dangerous choice. You made this choice because you love these people. They need you.
You must remember that it takes a long time for most of these people to see that you are alive, and that you have a heart, and that you are trying to give something to them.
Some of them will never see you as anything more than a puppet at best. You must find people who will see that you are alive. You must help them over and over again to keep on seeing that you are alive. If you do not help people to see that you are alive, you will fall asleep. The only life you will have is the life of a
puppet filled with other people's stories. They may grow tired of playing with you; they may break you; they may throw you away; they may destroy you.
When you find people who can see you, you must learn to live among them. You must learn to believe most of what they believe, and to act in most of the same ways as they act. People who can see you will tell you how to do this. You must listen closely and watch carefully even when it is tiresome. If you do not strive to become like them, the others who cannot see you will drive you away. Even those who can see you will not be able to hold on to you.
However, you must not strive to be completely like these people or you will break yourself.
While you are among these people you must constantly search for ways to hang on to your true self and your true way of being even while you are acting like others as much as possible. As some of these people get to know you better and better they can help you find your true self and your own way of being.
Be courageous in asking these people to help you be your true self. Be courageous in doing this even when it hurts you and when it hurts them. It is your way to love these people. It is your way to heal them. It is your way to help them renew themselves. It is why you are choosing to live among them.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
December 1, 2010
Today I am thinking about money. ODSP cut me off last month – again – and although I was able to get reinstated with no great difficulty the deposit did not arrive in my bank until this morning. I would have been in the position of having to draw further on my line of credit to pay my rent if it had not come when it did.
As a child I considered myself rich, but I was very distrustful of money. In grade three I was “befriended” by a girl who was by far the dirtiest and most unsavoury character I had met up until that point. I was in a way her captive audience as I was wheeled about in those days in a manual wheelchair over which I had no control. I imagine that adults, including my parents, threw us together because neither of us had friends and they felt we deserved each other. One day Mother gave me a quarter and sent Darlene and I off to the library to register and get a book. Along the way Darlene took the quarter and with that sort of persuasion that goes: “You really want to do this, don’t you!” bought ice cream. I don’t recall eating any ice cream or what lie we concocted to explain why we came back without a book. I do recall the fear, intimidation and disgust.
As a young teenager my aunts and uncles, particularly Uncle Ted, would give my two brothers and myself dimes and quarters whenever they visited. I couldn’t get out to spend any of it and I enjoyed hoarding it in any case, so the stash in my underwear drawer grew to be $20.00 more than once. However, both my parents would “borrow” from my wallet with promises to repay. Often they didn’t keep those promises.
At sixteen the government of Ontario decided to give me a “Disabled Child Benefit” which meant that a small amount of money went to my parents on my behalf – something like $100 a month. When this started my Mother told me that I was essentially paying rent now and that I could ask for some things to be done differently. After that moment nothing changed and I never saw any part of the money either.
I know now that my parents paid out lots of money on my behalf and that they often struggled financially especially in the early years of their marriage. There is no person more generous than my Father is and my Mother was. These stories come to mind, not to put anyone down, least of all my parents, but by way of seeing why money means so little to me. I think I basically learned that money could get me into real trouble and that it never really belonged to me in any case so why bother thinking too much about it.
When I went to university the situation changed radically. First, I had a scholarship and secondly I had a benefit under the vocational rehabilitation section of the welfare department with “disabled adults” in its mandate. Thirdly, I had a different allowance from the same Ministry which gave me the capacity to hire students for a few hours every day to give me personal assistance. I had the great good fortune to be supervised by a social worker who interpreted her regulations in the most generous way possible. This meant that even when I worked during summers between terms, or sometimes mid-school year my benefits were never cut. I paid my own tuition, living costs, other people’s and my own beer and had friends!
Skip the dark years of the nursing home and chronic care hospital. $60 a month from the government as a “comfort allowance”. Even then I earned some $$’s on “the side”.
When I fundraised for, founded and became the first Coordinator of Special Services for Handicapped Students in 1977 I paid myself $19,000 a year. The University doubled the next Coordinator’s salary.
I did alright – never brilliantly – in the financial world until 2006 when I decided to retire from a job within which I could do nothing that made me happy. I had savings, a small grant from the Marsha Forest Centre, a small pension and I continued to have self employed income. I co-owned a house and three times renegotiated the mortgage over ten years to give myself another pot of money to draw on.
I left the job in 2006 to give myself a fighting chance to do what I really wanted to do with my life. That turned into being an artist and founding the World Peace through Inclusive Transformation.
I have NO regrets and I am on the edge of bankruptcy. For fourteen months I have marvelled month by month that I have found ways to pay my rent.
I wonder, and my friends do too, what happened to my capacity to have money. Now that I am writing this I see that I may have returned to thinking that money is something I have no control over and that it would pervert me through the Darlene’s of the world if I had it. But I am not eight and I have a very different perspective on what can make someone choose to be a dirty thief. I owe Darlene, her mother and mine an apology.
Now, let’s make some cash!
As a child I considered myself rich, but I was very distrustful of money. In grade three I was “befriended” by a girl who was by far the dirtiest and most unsavoury character I had met up until that point. I was in a way her captive audience as I was wheeled about in those days in a manual wheelchair over which I had no control. I imagine that adults, including my parents, threw us together because neither of us had friends and they felt we deserved each other. One day Mother gave me a quarter and sent Darlene and I off to the library to register and get a book. Along the way Darlene took the quarter and with that sort of persuasion that goes: “You really want to do this, don’t you!” bought ice cream. I don’t recall eating any ice cream or what lie we concocted to explain why we came back without a book. I do recall the fear, intimidation and disgust.
As a young teenager my aunts and uncles, particularly Uncle Ted, would give my two brothers and myself dimes and quarters whenever they visited. I couldn’t get out to spend any of it and I enjoyed hoarding it in any case, so the stash in my underwear drawer grew to be $20.00 more than once. However, both my parents would “borrow” from my wallet with promises to repay. Often they didn’t keep those promises.
At sixteen the government of Ontario decided to give me a “Disabled Child Benefit” which meant that a small amount of money went to my parents on my behalf – something like $100 a month. When this started my Mother told me that I was essentially paying rent now and that I could ask for some things to be done differently. After that moment nothing changed and I never saw any part of the money either.
I know now that my parents paid out lots of money on my behalf and that they often struggled financially especially in the early years of their marriage. There is no person more generous than my Father is and my Mother was. These stories come to mind, not to put anyone down, least of all my parents, but by way of seeing why money means so little to me. I think I basically learned that money could get me into real trouble and that it never really belonged to me in any case so why bother thinking too much about it.
When I went to university the situation changed radically. First, I had a scholarship and secondly I had a benefit under the vocational rehabilitation section of the welfare department with “disabled adults” in its mandate. Thirdly, I had a different allowance from the same Ministry which gave me the capacity to hire students for a few hours every day to give me personal assistance. I had the great good fortune to be supervised by a social worker who interpreted her regulations in the most generous way possible. This meant that even when I worked during summers between terms, or sometimes mid-school year my benefits were never cut. I paid my own tuition, living costs, other people’s and my own beer and had friends!
Skip the dark years of the nursing home and chronic care hospital. $60 a month from the government as a “comfort allowance”. Even then I earned some $$’s on “the side”.
When I fundraised for, founded and became the first Coordinator of Special Services for Handicapped Students in 1977 I paid myself $19,000 a year. The University doubled the next Coordinator’s salary.
I did alright – never brilliantly – in the financial world until 2006 when I decided to retire from a job within which I could do nothing that made me happy. I had savings, a small grant from the Marsha Forest Centre, a small pension and I continued to have self employed income. I co-owned a house and three times renegotiated the mortgage over ten years to give myself another pot of money to draw on.
I left the job in 2006 to give myself a fighting chance to do what I really wanted to do with my life. That turned into being an artist and founding the World Peace through Inclusive Transformation.
I have NO regrets and I am on the edge of bankruptcy. For fourteen months I have marvelled month by month that I have found ways to pay my rent.
I wonder, and my friends do too, what happened to my capacity to have money. Now that I am writing this I see that I may have returned to thinking that money is something I have no control over and that it would pervert me through the Darlene’s of the world if I had it. But I am not eight and I have a very different perspective on what can make someone choose to be a dirty thief. I owe Darlene, her mother and mine an apology.
Now, let’s make some cash!
Monday, November 22, 2010
November 22, 2010
Jen was here today (the masseuse) and will be again on Friday. We have reached another higher step in my managing and being with my body and my pain. This is even more miraculous given that yesterday I felt flattened - virtually defeated - by how unbearable it was to sit and even lie down.
In her remarkably intuitive way she found an older injury, from when I was eight, and released the shock, judgement and distrust looked in my nerves, muscles and bones. With the release came tears, doubt, pain and with them joy, laughter and tentative willingness to believe that I can forgive myself and others for the awkward and incompetent ways we handle ourselves and each other.
The acupuncture needles went deep today, one drawing a little blood. When there is pain, it is the good pain, like picking an itchy scab, that comes with letting go of something that long ago served its purpose and now must be discarded.
I am now wearing in my left ear five acupuncture “seeds” – tiny pin-like devices that stimulate an energy meridian when pressed. The pressing is mildly painful. I have had one in particular pressed several times today, when I felt hip pain building. It has been six hours that I have been sitting up and I went to Lorraine’s class tonight to talk for an hour and a half. I am nearly pain free, though tired.
Could it be that I have actually found the path that permits my body and my purpose in life to cooperate? Today was the first time in nearly a year and a half that I have felt confidence in the options available to me!
The rest of this day has had a very different flavour. I’m working on five different fronts. (I am tempted to write “suddenly working” but it’s just not that way. This busyness has been building since my birthday.) The Book of Judith, Laser Eagles, World Peace through Inclusive Transformation, the Wisdom City Team, and even Leos Skilled Caregivers have all been part of my life for years in one way or another. Today they all want something from me NOW.
It seems that as I am completing this transition I have become stronger and clearer about what I want to contribute to and get from these “doing” areas of my life. With this clarity and renewed courage have come both genuine partnership and a great deal more engaged conflict.
So now I am busy, and even double booking myself. I am achieving more and also forgetting to do certain things again. And – most interestingly – I am engaged in many more intense conflictual conversations. These are somewhat like fights, but not really. They are, or have the potential to be, ways for people to be honest, to release fear and anger and to also say what they really are unwilling to do or be. Less hiding and greater honesty can lead to much cleaner and effective work.
Previously I avoided such conversations. Now I nearly enjoy them, or at least they frighten me much less. I believe that this fundamental shift that is now happening is that I am allowing myself to recognize that I don’t do things perfectly nor do I have to. This means that I know I am capable of unintentionally doing harm and that I can recognize and clean up what doesn’t work. With less to avoid or hide I am experiencing an “OKness” in being powerful and active. My energy is up, I am nearly TOO busy and I am happy!
In her remarkably intuitive way she found an older injury, from when I was eight, and released the shock, judgement and distrust looked in my nerves, muscles and bones. With the release came tears, doubt, pain and with them joy, laughter and tentative willingness to believe that I can forgive myself and others for the awkward and incompetent ways we handle ourselves and each other.
The acupuncture needles went deep today, one drawing a little blood. When there is pain, it is the good pain, like picking an itchy scab, that comes with letting go of something that long ago served its purpose and now must be discarded.
I am now wearing in my left ear five acupuncture “seeds” – tiny pin-like devices that stimulate an energy meridian when pressed. The pressing is mildly painful. I have had one in particular pressed several times today, when I felt hip pain building. It has been six hours that I have been sitting up and I went to Lorraine’s class tonight to talk for an hour and a half. I am nearly pain free, though tired.
Could it be that I have actually found the path that permits my body and my purpose in life to cooperate? Today was the first time in nearly a year and a half that I have felt confidence in the options available to me!
The rest of this day has had a very different flavour. I’m working on five different fronts. (I am tempted to write “suddenly working” but it’s just not that way. This busyness has been building since my birthday.) The Book of Judith, Laser Eagles, World Peace through Inclusive Transformation, the Wisdom City Team, and even Leos Skilled Caregivers have all been part of my life for years in one way or another. Today they all want something from me NOW.
It seems that as I am completing this transition I have become stronger and clearer about what I want to contribute to and get from these “doing” areas of my life. With this clarity and renewed courage have come both genuine partnership and a great deal more engaged conflict.
So now I am busy, and even double booking myself. I am achieving more and also forgetting to do certain things again. And – most interestingly – I am engaged in many more intense conflictual conversations. These are somewhat like fights, but not really. They are, or have the potential to be, ways for people to be honest, to release fear and anger and to also say what they really are unwilling to do or be. Less hiding and greater honesty can lead to much cleaner and effective work.
Previously I avoided such conversations. Now I nearly enjoy them, or at least they frighten me much less. I believe that this fundamental shift that is now happening is that I am allowing myself to recognize that I don’t do things perfectly nor do I have to. This means that I know I am capable of unintentionally doing harm and that I can recognize and clean up what doesn’t work. With less to avoid or hide I am experiencing an “OKness” in being powerful and active. My energy is up, I am nearly TOO busy and I am happy!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
November 17, 2010
Today was a !banner! day. Yes, those are exclamation marks.
We don’t talk much about having a bowel movement – I am reluctant even to write the word used very commonly around here – “poo”.
Having a poo has become the ULTIMATE signal of progress or regression in my physical state since Oct. 4 when I went to the emergency room and was admitted for nine days. Nearly everything tried before or since that event to relieve or manage my pain has had the effect of slowing my bowels. On that day the situation became life threatening due to bowel/bladder interaction and infection. (Read previous posts!) Since then there has been effort on my part, Jen’s, the medical people, my personal assistants and my friends to get IT to come out right each and everyday. Practically a National project! It hasn’t been all that successful. The regular use of Morphine, and I suppose the added factor of my AGE constantly works against my good results and has led to this need to sustain a virtual preoccupation with the frequency, size, colour and consistency of my …. poo.
Today I had one – (a poo) – unaided by laxatives, stool softeners, suppositories, litres of herbal tea or other intervention. I realize that it is TOO SOON to imagine that life has returned to a pattern of elimination that I might consider “normal”. Just the same this is the very day when I was remembering nostalgically how I used to eat and drink a whack of foods now considered “bad” for me because they tend to exaggerate the bowel freezing effects of Morphine – coffee, bread, crackers, oatmeal, cheese, milk and SO many more.
I haven’t been very good at keeping to a mainly vegetables and herbal tea diet. Initially I was better behaved but I basically felt like I was starving. My masseuse recommended, by the way, that if I was “starving” I should drink more water. It felt like some sort of criminal punishment.
I basically cheat about a third of the time – a little bread here, a miniscule bit of cheese there, some pasta on rare occasions. But today I got curious. If it wasn’t for the Morphine it would certainly look to me that the supposedly healthier diet is actually plugging me up. Shortly after that thought – the awaited event happened.
Crazy - I know. But this six weeks of focus on my body is making me a little crazy!
Well enough about that.
Tomorrow Mike, Kimberly and I are going to present the idea to my circle that we go on a short tour of the east coast of North America for World Peace through Inclusion. Basically I miss the pelicans. But the concepts around WPIT are gelling and I am restless and M and K are ENTHUSIASTIC and it’s clearly looking like time to get on with it.
I’m expecting – even hoping for – push back from the circle. When we go I want to do so with some stability – not in the naïve way that Gabor, Erin and I left. More than anything I don’t want this to be more running off to prove myself, or ourselves. I want us to be welcomed, understood and celebrated.
Gabor and I spent time over breakfast today. Bit by bit we are carving out a way to have a future around WPIT and friendship. It is good.
I’m signing off on the short side of 2 pages today. Maybe that’s enough for my first “real poo” day in a LONG time!
We don’t talk much about having a bowel movement – I am reluctant even to write the word used very commonly around here – “poo”.
Having a poo has become the ULTIMATE signal of progress or regression in my physical state since Oct. 4 when I went to the emergency room and was admitted for nine days. Nearly everything tried before or since that event to relieve or manage my pain has had the effect of slowing my bowels. On that day the situation became life threatening due to bowel/bladder interaction and infection. (Read previous posts!) Since then there has been effort on my part, Jen’s, the medical people, my personal assistants and my friends to get IT to come out right each and everyday. Practically a National project! It hasn’t been all that successful. The regular use of Morphine, and I suppose the added factor of my AGE constantly works against my good results and has led to this need to sustain a virtual preoccupation with the frequency, size, colour and consistency of my …. poo.
Today I had one – (a poo) – unaided by laxatives, stool softeners, suppositories, litres of herbal tea or other intervention. I realize that it is TOO SOON to imagine that life has returned to a pattern of elimination that I might consider “normal”. Just the same this is the very day when I was remembering nostalgically how I used to eat and drink a whack of foods now considered “bad” for me because they tend to exaggerate the bowel freezing effects of Morphine – coffee, bread, crackers, oatmeal, cheese, milk and SO many more.
I haven’t been very good at keeping to a mainly vegetables and herbal tea diet. Initially I was better behaved but I basically felt like I was starving. My masseuse recommended, by the way, that if I was “starving” I should drink more water. It felt like some sort of criminal punishment.
I basically cheat about a third of the time – a little bread here, a miniscule bit of cheese there, some pasta on rare occasions. But today I got curious. If it wasn’t for the Morphine it would certainly look to me that the supposedly healthier diet is actually plugging me up. Shortly after that thought – the awaited event happened.
Crazy - I know. But this six weeks of focus on my body is making me a little crazy!
Well enough about that.
Tomorrow Mike, Kimberly and I are going to present the idea to my circle that we go on a short tour of the east coast of North America for World Peace through Inclusion. Basically I miss the pelicans. But the concepts around WPIT are gelling and I am restless and M and K are ENTHUSIASTIC and it’s clearly looking like time to get on with it.
I’m expecting – even hoping for – push back from the circle. When we go I want to do so with some stability – not in the naïve way that Gabor, Erin and I left. More than anything I don’t want this to be more running off to prove myself, or ourselves. I want us to be welcomed, understood and celebrated.
Gabor and I spent time over breakfast today. Bit by bit we are carving out a way to have a future around WPIT and friendship. It is good.
I’m signing off on the short side of 2 pages today. Maybe that’s enough for my first “real poo” day in a LONG time!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
November 10, 2010
Today it is very tempting to give up my idea that this is about expression and simply to paste in some of the writing that I have been doing today, to try and sustain some order in my life.
At the beginning of all this writing was (and still is I think) a sense that Cycle 3 offered an opportunity for me to express myself in ways that I didn’t see or didn’t choose previously. I invented a distinction between expression and communication. “Communication” is all the speaking, writing, art work, etc. that I might do in order to influence, negotiate with and manipulate the world of people trying to get each other to do things with and for each other. “Expression” is speaking, writing, art, etc. for its own sake or perhaps for no sake at all! Of course there is no clear boundary.
Today I was writing email and ended up producing a large piece in defence of my financial situation and how I have managed it over the past – 28? – years. As the evening grows late it is tempting to simply paste in that email. The rest of the temptation is that the entire requirement to write that email came from another large message that questioned my situation and financial management. It pissed me off royally and I would love to just take a virtual slap back at the writer by making the whole thing public. Of course it’s going to get public anyway – this particular email that I responded to was sent to nearly every member of my family.
So what am I actually angry about?!? I think it is that (sucky baby?) I am unwilling to explain and defend myself, what I believe in and the pathways that I have chosen and WILL choose to fulfill my life.
It would be blissful, although clearly naïve, to imagine that in Cycle 3 I have gained enough trust and permission to do as I please without question. Sigh! It is not to be, is it?
At the same time I don’t want to get sucked into filling these two pagers with communication. Even though lots of people read these, the point of doing this is not to promote my “case”, but for me to actually get to see what my case is. As a friend said this morning, these writings are like verbal collages. After they are done and often in the process of doing them I get to understand myself and my world with a fresh perspective.
A strong theme has emerged in the past week. I have received many, many gifts over the years and particularly in the past few years as I have been living on a limited government pension. Many of these gifts have been financial. People who give me money frequently seem to feel that they are helping me out of a crisis. I believe that in the past I have actually believed myself that I was in a crisis. I guess I sometimes was!
The truth is though that there is a distinct difference between being in a crisis and being able to benefit from other people’s generosity. To define it somewhat simplistically – a crisis is when I am out of options. Many times when I have requested money from others or accepted money that wasn’t requested the appearance of that money has seemed like a very good option or at least the best option at the time. But rarely was it the only option. In other words, I have felt that I was making a choice in accepting the offer and not in any way agreeing to give up my capacity to choose what my next step in life would be.
It has become quite clear in both trivial and larger ways that many times people who are giving me money are then expecting me to make similar choices that they imagine they would make in my circumstances. In fact people often feel the right to insist that there is a path that I should take. Consequently over the years I have collected a number of people who are close to me who carry a bag of stories with them of how I have somehow failed to keep up my end of a bargain – a bargain that I was unaware of or only dimly aware of making.
Once again, I have no interest in blaming people for this. Even more so I have no interest in continuing the pattern. I see that it has been part of a convoluted pathway that leads me to either make poor choices or try to avoid certain situations or take on more than is good for me to take on or try to do things that I don’t want to do or to do things that make no sense to me. In another blog called “Ah, but that’s another story” I have written about how the process of receiving the benefit called the Ontario Disability Support Program limits and warps the lives of others who have been labelled disabled. I am now beginning to see how receiving largess is affecting me in similar ways.
I imagine – I dream – that I can gather the people who have been and continue to wish to be generous with me in some sort of large dialogue, and see if we can come to a basic agreement about what is the purpose of their generousity and what do they actually expect of me. This would give me the choice to turn down some people if the expectation is too different from the life that I intend to live. On the other hand it would give others and me a chance to be honest in a way that has not been possible in the past about how I make the choices I make and why I do some of the things that others find so odd.
I believe that people would come to realize that I largely steer my life through three lenses. The first is a strong sense that I have always felt that I have a God given purpose – a vocation. This sense is shifting strongly – I have written about this previously. I feel that I have more space than ever to have a personal enjoyment of my life as well as vocational accomplishment.
My second lens is a commitment to be served by my personal assistants in a way that benefits them and leads them to be able to live their lives more strongly conforming to their own sense of what is right for themselves. This leads to some intense dialogue and deep relationship – not with everyone of course – but with a large number of the people who have been in my life over the years. Many choices that I make are in the context of supporting these relationships.
The third lens came to me when I was twelve years old. I was sitting in the back of a church, behind a sea of adult heads, unable to see the minister or any of the activities that were taking place. I was miserable having recently been thrown out of Girl Guides because of my “disability”. I was encountering other barriers as well, and was rapidly learning that the world planned for me to fade away in a small room in my parent’s house.
I heard the minister read that God is love. It occurred to me that either this was a heinous lie and God had no interest what so ever in me or that God would participate with me in opening pathways for me to live a full life. As full as I was then, and now, of passion to have and do it all, I could not imagine the hell that lay before me if I was to be stopped at every turn.
And so on that day I choose to believe that God is indeed love and that that love would be expressed in my life by my always being able to find a way.
Of course how I see God now has changed from when I was twelve. However the principle upon which I live my life has not changed. I believe based on no evidence what so ever, but simply as a belief, that there is a way and I will find it. This has always given me the courage and the permission to pick up pieces, look for new pathways, make new friends, try new projects, ask boldly and otherwise live in search of possibilities that I do not yet know exist.
But the extreme way of looking at it that a twelve year old had perhaps is not the best way to look at it now. Perhaps my friends and family and I really could work out a way that would take out some of the concern and distress that they feel for my safety and sanity and still leave me with the freedom to choose new relationships, opportunities and pathways as they show up day by day.
I am looking forward to this dialogue.
At the beginning of all this writing was (and still is I think) a sense that Cycle 3 offered an opportunity for me to express myself in ways that I didn’t see or didn’t choose previously. I invented a distinction between expression and communication. “Communication” is all the speaking, writing, art work, etc. that I might do in order to influence, negotiate with and manipulate the world of people trying to get each other to do things with and for each other. “Expression” is speaking, writing, art, etc. for its own sake or perhaps for no sake at all! Of course there is no clear boundary.
Today I was writing email and ended up producing a large piece in defence of my financial situation and how I have managed it over the past – 28? – years. As the evening grows late it is tempting to simply paste in that email. The rest of the temptation is that the entire requirement to write that email came from another large message that questioned my situation and financial management. It pissed me off royally and I would love to just take a virtual slap back at the writer by making the whole thing public. Of course it’s going to get public anyway – this particular email that I responded to was sent to nearly every member of my family.
So what am I actually angry about?!? I think it is that (sucky baby?) I am unwilling to explain and defend myself, what I believe in and the pathways that I have chosen and WILL choose to fulfill my life.
It would be blissful, although clearly naïve, to imagine that in Cycle 3 I have gained enough trust and permission to do as I please without question. Sigh! It is not to be, is it?
At the same time I don’t want to get sucked into filling these two pagers with communication. Even though lots of people read these, the point of doing this is not to promote my “case”, but for me to actually get to see what my case is. As a friend said this morning, these writings are like verbal collages. After they are done and often in the process of doing them I get to understand myself and my world with a fresh perspective.
A strong theme has emerged in the past week. I have received many, many gifts over the years and particularly in the past few years as I have been living on a limited government pension. Many of these gifts have been financial. People who give me money frequently seem to feel that they are helping me out of a crisis. I believe that in the past I have actually believed myself that I was in a crisis. I guess I sometimes was!
The truth is though that there is a distinct difference between being in a crisis and being able to benefit from other people’s generosity. To define it somewhat simplistically – a crisis is when I am out of options. Many times when I have requested money from others or accepted money that wasn’t requested the appearance of that money has seemed like a very good option or at least the best option at the time. But rarely was it the only option. In other words, I have felt that I was making a choice in accepting the offer and not in any way agreeing to give up my capacity to choose what my next step in life would be.
It has become quite clear in both trivial and larger ways that many times people who are giving me money are then expecting me to make similar choices that they imagine they would make in my circumstances. In fact people often feel the right to insist that there is a path that I should take. Consequently over the years I have collected a number of people who are close to me who carry a bag of stories with them of how I have somehow failed to keep up my end of a bargain – a bargain that I was unaware of or only dimly aware of making.
Once again, I have no interest in blaming people for this. Even more so I have no interest in continuing the pattern. I see that it has been part of a convoluted pathway that leads me to either make poor choices or try to avoid certain situations or take on more than is good for me to take on or try to do things that I don’t want to do or to do things that make no sense to me. In another blog called “Ah, but that’s another story” I have written about how the process of receiving the benefit called the Ontario Disability Support Program limits and warps the lives of others who have been labelled disabled. I am now beginning to see how receiving largess is affecting me in similar ways.
I imagine – I dream – that I can gather the people who have been and continue to wish to be generous with me in some sort of large dialogue, and see if we can come to a basic agreement about what is the purpose of their generousity and what do they actually expect of me. This would give me the choice to turn down some people if the expectation is too different from the life that I intend to live. On the other hand it would give others and me a chance to be honest in a way that has not been possible in the past about how I make the choices I make and why I do some of the things that others find so odd.
I believe that people would come to realize that I largely steer my life through three lenses. The first is a strong sense that I have always felt that I have a God given purpose – a vocation. This sense is shifting strongly – I have written about this previously. I feel that I have more space than ever to have a personal enjoyment of my life as well as vocational accomplishment.
My second lens is a commitment to be served by my personal assistants in a way that benefits them and leads them to be able to live their lives more strongly conforming to their own sense of what is right for themselves. This leads to some intense dialogue and deep relationship – not with everyone of course – but with a large number of the people who have been in my life over the years. Many choices that I make are in the context of supporting these relationships.
The third lens came to me when I was twelve years old. I was sitting in the back of a church, behind a sea of adult heads, unable to see the minister or any of the activities that were taking place. I was miserable having recently been thrown out of Girl Guides because of my “disability”. I was encountering other barriers as well, and was rapidly learning that the world planned for me to fade away in a small room in my parent’s house.
I heard the minister read that God is love. It occurred to me that either this was a heinous lie and God had no interest what so ever in me or that God would participate with me in opening pathways for me to live a full life. As full as I was then, and now, of passion to have and do it all, I could not imagine the hell that lay before me if I was to be stopped at every turn.
And so on that day I choose to believe that God is indeed love and that that love would be expressed in my life by my always being able to find a way.
Of course how I see God now has changed from when I was twelve. However the principle upon which I live my life has not changed. I believe based on no evidence what so ever, but simply as a belief, that there is a way and I will find it. This has always given me the courage and the permission to pick up pieces, look for new pathways, make new friends, try new projects, ask boldly and otherwise live in search of possibilities that I do not yet know exist.
But the extreme way of looking at it that a twelve year old had perhaps is not the best way to look at it now. Perhaps my friends and family and I really could work out a way that would take out some of the concern and distress that they feel for my safety and sanity and still leave me with the freedom to choose new relationships, opportunities and pathways as they show up day by day.
I am looking forward to this dialogue.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
November 6, 2010
Last night it occurred to me that I have an extraordinary degree of permission. It was such a powerful thought that I started writing this before the clock turned midnight!
There are a few ways this is true for me. The fact that I am writing these pieces, that others are asking for them and reading them, is one way. Mostly I lie on my bed and a friend and/or personal assistant types for me and reviews with me the result, then posts it. (This afternoon I am up in my chair and typing for myself with the Morse Code puff/sip interface.) There are layers of permission and facilitation that go into my words being published and received.
Obvious to anyone familiar with the disability labelling process is that the dual truths of the amount of effective medical support I have received and the reality that I live in a beautiful home of my choosing are elements of permission rarely achieved in our culture by someone of my circumstances and NEVER achieved in many parts of the world still. I do not mean to imply that this is solely a “disability” issue. Last night I saw pictures of a Nigerian village where the ground everywhere is soaked in unrefined oil spilled “accidently” by Shell operations. Permission to live, thrive, learn, contemplate and express is granted to few indeed in such a situation.
Beyond this is the level of open space that I have been writing about as a key aspect of my burgeoning Cycle 3. Suffice it to say again that I have a personal sense of having completed my “task” in life, without having my return ticket called in. I have permission to do something unique and unnecessary with my time and capacities, including permission to do nothing at all – (unlikely!)
Yet a fourth level is that I am experiencing a flow of abundance toward me that gives me a certain degree of freedom from want and necessity. Some of this is due to the simple good fortune of being a citizen of Ontario, Canada. This gives me access to bounty that often seems precarious, like a borrowed garden hose with too many holes and kinks. Nevertheless I have access to many participation supports, from a food bank to a top quality water system, to a medium quality transportation system, etc. Amazing resources!
On top of this – and most importantly! – is the heart warming level of generousity expressed towards me by my friends, family, personal assistants, and even friends of friends of friends, etc. Food, medicine, healing energy, entertainment, equipment, money, labour, information, flowers, encouragement, light heartedness, concern – this and more continue to be made available to me so that my path will not become too steep for me to take.
Yet I remain free to design that very path. No strings!
I imagine that there are four social mirrors within which this extraordinary level of permission exists. First, people experience me as being trustworthy. Largely I have done well enough in making good use of the resources and supports I have had in Cycles 1 and 2.
Secondly, there is hope. I have been creative in the past. I have (not alone, of course) both found my way around some big obstacles and I have also created new pathways more than once – personal assistance, support circles, Gifted capacity, peace through Inclusion. Around me people have come to expect that some answers may become available.
Thirdly, there is the anti-boredom factor. I am colourful, quirky, stubborn, eccentric. In a world where “sameness” is mandated everywhere I am at the VERY least a relatively non-threatening distraction as I go about my business in peculiar ways. Cool!
Lastly there is a dimension of the epiphany in my life – the point of intersection between the “here and now” everyday world and the infinite and eternal, non-historical, source of life itself. Somehow people quickly acknowledge that I have been blessed with a deep connection that apparently others have less access to. This gives me a certain confidence and direction that takes me to a different level with many people.
I feel a rich sense that this extraordinary level of permission is for a purpose. I get that this permission INCLUDES that I have a large say in what that purpose will be and is now. Still I am searching for another, perhaps clearer or stronger clue. What can Cycle 3 be about that is worthy of the great privileges that are mine?
There are a few ways this is true for me. The fact that I am writing these pieces, that others are asking for them and reading them, is one way. Mostly I lie on my bed and a friend and/or personal assistant types for me and reviews with me the result, then posts it. (This afternoon I am up in my chair and typing for myself with the Morse Code puff/sip interface.) There are layers of permission and facilitation that go into my words being published and received.
Obvious to anyone familiar with the disability labelling process is that the dual truths of the amount of effective medical support I have received and the reality that I live in a beautiful home of my choosing are elements of permission rarely achieved in our culture by someone of my circumstances and NEVER achieved in many parts of the world still. I do not mean to imply that this is solely a “disability” issue. Last night I saw pictures of a Nigerian village where the ground everywhere is soaked in unrefined oil spilled “accidently” by Shell operations. Permission to live, thrive, learn, contemplate and express is granted to few indeed in such a situation.
Beyond this is the level of open space that I have been writing about as a key aspect of my burgeoning Cycle 3. Suffice it to say again that I have a personal sense of having completed my “task” in life, without having my return ticket called in. I have permission to do something unique and unnecessary with my time and capacities, including permission to do nothing at all – (unlikely!)
Yet a fourth level is that I am experiencing a flow of abundance toward me that gives me a certain degree of freedom from want and necessity. Some of this is due to the simple good fortune of being a citizen of Ontario, Canada. This gives me access to bounty that often seems precarious, like a borrowed garden hose with too many holes and kinks. Nevertheless I have access to many participation supports, from a food bank to a top quality water system, to a medium quality transportation system, etc. Amazing resources!
On top of this – and most importantly! – is the heart warming level of generousity expressed towards me by my friends, family, personal assistants, and even friends of friends of friends, etc. Food, medicine, healing energy, entertainment, equipment, money, labour, information, flowers, encouragement, light heartedness, concern – this and more continue to be made available to me so that my path will not become too steep for me to take.
Yet I remain free to design that very path. No strings!
I imagine that there are four social mirrors within which this extraordinary level of permission exists. First, people experience me as being trustworthy. Largely I have done well enough in making good use of the resources and supports I have had in Cycles 1 and 2.
Secondly, there is hope. I have been creative in the past. I have (not alone, of course) both found my way around some big obstacles and I have also created new pathways more than once – personal assistance, support circles, Gifted capacity, peace through Inclusion. Around me people have come to expect that some answers may become available.
Thirdly, there is the anti-boredom factor. I am colourful, quirky, stubborn, eccentric. In a world where “sameness” is mandated everywhere I am at the VERY least a relatively non-threatening distraction as I go about my business in peculiar ways. Cool!
Lastly there is a dimension of the epiphany in my life – the point of intersection between the “here and now” everyday world and the infinite and eternal, non-historical, source of life itself. Somehow people quickly acknowledge that I have been blessed with a deep connection that apparently others have less access to. This gives me a certain confidence and direction that takes me to a different level with many people.
I feel a rich sense that this extraordinary level of permission is for a purpose. I get that this permission INCLUDES that I have a large say in what that purpose will be and is now. Still I am searching for another, perhaps clearer or stronger clue. What can Cycle 3 be about that is worthy of the great privileges that are mine?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)