A stroll through the late July garden

A stroll through the garden in late July finds quite a few flowers in bloom. The poppies have finished, as have the lovely mauve verbenas and lavender mints, but the roses are beautiful.

The yellow will bloom steadily now until frost. Their blossoms are about 2.5 inches across.

I have a red one like this right next to it but for some unknown reason I didn't get a picture.

The pink minis will bloom until frost as well, the blossoms are only about an inch wide.These are out in the front bed at curbside.

This rose was planted before my time. The plant is about four feet tall, rangy but the colours are fantastic. They are fucshia when they open but the petals are white at the base, making them look almost transparent. The rose is surrounded by wolf willow which has silver foliage and is a perfect foil for the radiant pink of the rose.




The shasta daisies are at their best now, with about half a dozen large mounds of cheerful blooms. 

Still waiting for the echinaceas to open, there are dozens of bristling buds on their three-foot high stalks, but they are not in any hurry to petal out.

Closer to the entry the lime hosta, veronica, astilbes and ligularia are all doing well. The astilbes are just getting started, and the ligularia leaves are starting to show up. 

A close-up of the veronica - can you spot the visiting bee?

Enough for the moment. I spent about half an hour weeding today but the black cedar mulch was a great idea. The weeds root in that top 2" of mulch and can be yanked out with practically no effort.

Talking at cross-purposes

Let us eavesdrop a moment on the "peace" talks, you know, the meetings where diplomats and mighty poo-bahs with testosterone-fueled egos sit around tables in fancy hotels and give fancy speeches, and pretend to listen to each other, all with the aim of stopping the armies, the bombs, the bazookas and tanks, the slaughter of women and children.  If we could hear what actually goes on I imagine it is exactly as this old story told of two debating monks.

                                                   >------------------------------<    

Provided he proposes and wins a debate about Buddhism with the monks who live there, any wandering monk can enter and remain in a Zen temple. If he is defeated, he has to move on.

In a small temple in northern Japan two monks dwelt together as brothers. The elder one was learned, but the younger one was stupid and had but one eye.

A wandering monk came to the door late one day and asked to enter their temple, properly challenging them to a debate. The elder monk, tired and aching in his old bones, told the younger monk to take his place. "Go and debate him, but request the dialogue take place silence," he cautioned.

So the young monk and the stranger went to the shrine and sat down.

Shortly afterwards the traveler rose and went in to the elder brother and said, "Your young brother is a wonderful fellow. He has defeated me."

The elder monk was astonished. "Relate the dialogue to me," he said.

"Well," explained the traveler, "first I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers, representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers, living life in harmony. Then he shook his clenched fist in my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus he won and so I have no right to remain here. I will travel further." With this, he bowed and took his leave.

"Where is that insolent fellow?" asked the younger one, running in to his elder brother.

"I understand you won the debate."

"Won nothing! When I catch him I'm going to beat him up."

"Tell me the subject of the debate," asked the elder one.

"Why, the minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by pointing out that I have only one eye. Since he was a stranger I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers, congratulating him that he has two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, laughing that then between us we have three eyes. So I got mad and was going to punch him, but he jumped up and ran away from me, and that ended it!"

Beyond a wholesome discipline…

There once was a monastery where the rules were very strict. Following a vow of silence, no one was allowed to speak at all. But every 10 years, each monk was permitted to speak just two words.

After spending his first 10 years at the monastery, one monk went to the head monk. “It has been 10 years,” said the head monk. “What are the two words you would like to speak?”

“Bed… hard…” said the monk.

“I see,” replied the head monk.

Ten years later, the monk returned to the head monk’s office. “It has been 10 more years,” said the head monk. “What are the two words you would like to speak?”

“Food… stinks…” said the monk.

“I see,” replied the head monk.

Yet another 10 years passed and the monk once again met with the head monk who asked, “What are your two words now, after these 10 years?”

“I… quit!” said the monk.

“Well, I can see why,” replied the head monk. “All you ever do is complain.”

                                                   >--------------------------------<

I admit a certain sympathy for that poor monk, who was "always" complaining.  Sometimes it feels as if that is what I chiefly do, though I'm actually usually trying to work out a strategy for getting more done than moaning about my lot in life. 

It's difficult to balance my limited energy reserves against what must be done, and when I don't get it right I can end up spending several days in too much pain to do much of anything, which is frustrating. 

But, as I often tell my husband, you just have to do the best you can do. Sometimes that's not much more than sitting in the rocker and watching a video or reading, sometimes it's more. But as much as I tell him that, I feel terribly guilty when I can't keep up.

After a busy week (for me) last week I was exhausted. The last couple of days I've been really tired but today I felt better. I was able to do laundry, make the bed, tidy and dust.  And I made dinner! Just simple steak with mushroom and onions and some bean thread noodles and lentils with a curry and coconut sauce but it was food, hot, on a plate, which is a triumph for me many days. 

But I saw this little photo on Facebook and thought; Well, that's what we do. We do our best, with what we have.

And I guess you can't reasonably ask more of yourself than that, without doing lasting harm.

As Max Ehrmann said in Desiderata:

"Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself."

KIVA and the peanut farmer

Jiguisseme B Group Kafana Mali

In this Group: Mariam K, Kadia Ali, Mariam O, Saran, Assetou A, Toron, Awa Salif, Maria Modibo, Bintou, Mamine B

This month's KIVA loan goes to the ten members of the Jiguisseme B Group, all married women who are, on average, 38 years old and have three children. Most of them live in traditional families in the commune of Kafana, Sikasso district, Mali.

During the winter months, the women work with the KIVA field partner, Soro Yiriwaso, in order to improve their agricultural businesses. This will be their tenth group loan. The previous loans were all fully and correctly repaid.

Saran (in the yellow dress, standing second from the right in the photo) grows peanuts. She will use her loan to buy fertilizer, herbicide, and pay someone to help her work her acre land. She sells her peanuts in Sikasso. Saran expects to make a profit equal to about $150.00 USD, which will enable her to repay her loan and help her husband to provide for their family's day-to-day expenses.

This is a Group Loan

The other nine members of the group each have a small business which they will invest their $95.00 loan in to improve its profitability. In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.

Soro Yiriwaso is a microfinance institution that works primarily in rural and semi-urban areas of Mali to provide underprivileged communities with access to financial services. The organization provides access for disadvantaged clients, particularly women, to new resources and services, fostering solidarity and cooperation among its clients. Kiva lenders’ funds enable Soro Yiriwaso to expand its outreach and target even more under served Malians involved in business and agriculture.

Many Kiva Field Partners implement innovative business practices and offer services in addition to their financial products to meet the needs of the people they serve. For example, many organizations partner with health-focused agencies to provide health care services to their clients who are more likely, as a result of good health, to be able to repay their loan. The inability to treat health related issues, when borrowers did not have access to health care, had the potential to cause them to fall back into the cycle of poverty despite running a successful business.

Other examples include institutions that stress the importance of education. This can mean loans that enable parents to start businesses and bolster their income so they can send their children to school, as well as educational workshops on topics that are not financial in nature, such as the prevention of disease and domestic violence.

This month we doubled our usual loan, in memory of our daughter Mary Margaret Isabel. Please consider joining us as KIVA partners and reaching out to lend a helping hand to a hard working business person. 

The illusive mustard seed

There's a story told of a mother who early one morning took her newborn son who had died in the night, to the Buddha, prostrated herself before him and weeping with grief said, "I have heard of your great wisdom Lord. Surely you have a medicine that can bring my baby back to life again."

The Buddha looked on her with deep compassion, knowing that there was nothing he or anyone else could do anything to restore her child to life. But he could not bear to send her away with no hope. So he gently told her, "Yes, there is such a medicine. But to make it I need one ingredient I do not have, which you must search out for me."

"Oh, anything," she responded, "I will get anything you need."

"It is a simple thing," he said. "I need only one mustard seed from a house in this village which has not been visited by death, and has never suffered the grief of parting from one they dearly loved."

The woman rushed off and began calling on her neighbours, explaining what she needed. But at every door she was told with tears of the children, wife or husband, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and grandparents who had been called by death, and of the burden of grief lying on every heart.

At the end of the day she went back to the Buddha, heartsick and exhausted, but with understanding. "There is not a single house in the village where death has not come," she said.

"Now you know you are not alone in your grief," the Buddha told her. "Take your child home, pay your respects and bury him. Your grief is everyone's grief. Loss is universal. Remember and honour your child by extending compassion and comfort to all those who also grieve."

And so it is we live with grief and understand that it is universal. She never forgot her child. I know because 43 years ago I also held a dead infant, which no one could restore to life, and I grieved, and I will grieve forever.  Born sleeping one mother called it. One day active and kicking, and then stillness. My breasts, readying themselves to nurse, felt different, less full. There was a bloodstain.

I called the doctor. "Oh," he said, as if he were talking about losing a mitten or a book he hadn't much cared for. "You've lost it, it's died. You'll go into labour within the week. Come to the ER when you do."

The labour was quick. She was born in the car on the way to the hospital. I ducked into the washroom just inside the door and took her out of the leg of my slacks. She was bloody, and wet, and her skin was peeling off like petals falling from a rose. Legs the size of my thumb, such delicacy. The membrane was still around her head, and I was in shock and felt I might faint in the cubicle. I thought they'd let us see her, hold her, once we were in a room, so I didn't take the membrane off. I should have looked at her face. I never even saw my baby girl's face. She lay curled in my two hands.  I didn't want her exposed to the curious stares of the people sitting in the waiting area of the ER. I wrapped her still, small body in toilet tissue.

I walked shakily to the nurse's station and handed her to the nurse behind the desk.  I don't remember anything else except lying on a gurney. The doctor was behind me. He had her, was unwrapping her. I asked if I could hold her. He said no, it was better if I didn't see "it" or touch "it".

I asked my doctor later what they did with her and he said all stillborns under a certain weight were cremated, no birth certificates, no acknowledgement they ever existed.  He said just forget about "it" - pretend it hadn't happened. But how do you carry a child for seven months and "just forget it"?

Mothers were shamed for grieving a stillborn baby then. You were told not to cry, not to "worry" your husband with it, and not to even acknowledge your loss. And for many years I didn't. I soldiered on, and stayed quiet, until I just couldn't bear to do it anymore. 

"The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same again. Nor should you be the same, nor should you want to."  ~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross 

Mary Margaret Isabel born sleeping 17 July 1971

  

Waiting for Daisy

It's been a month since the landscapers came out and weeded the flower beds, then covered the earth in black cedar mulch. We had lots of rain for a couple of weeks, and for the last few days we've had what passes for hot weather in Calgary, days ranging from 23 - 31 C (73-88 F). The garden has grown like crazy.

Typically not everything has thrived. Several of the petunias I bought turned up their toes and died, as did every geranium. (Was it something I said?) I didn't know geraniums were so picky.You see them blooming like crazy all over town.

 The purple mints that were so lovely earlier have now finished but both the rose bushes I planted last spring survived the winter, as did the mini-rose with orange blooms down in the front of the bed.

The purple sage and the shasta daisies are dancing around nicely with the roses and pink verbena in the front bed. If you look closely you can the coarse foliage of the echinaceas and their fattening buds.

The bed beyond the bike rack has a native shrub called wolf willow, which has silver, granular textured leaves, and a large species rose which is red on the outside edges and white inside. This is a pretty spectacular combination, but between the bike rack and a moving van I couldn't get a good vantage point for a picture, maybe next time.

So at the moment the garden beds are a riot of colour. The poppies threw themselves into producing saucer-sized blossoms that were so vibrantly red they gave my cheap little camera lens a seizure. But they were a short lived delight.

To make up for the brevity of the poppies the Plaintain Lily Hosta has been blooming like mad for weeks. Though I failed to get a good photo you can see how many flowers it has on it.

My eyes are so bad I can't see if a picture is in focus. I take several and hope one will be good. This time I didn't get a good picture. This part of the garden sees only a bit of dappled morning sun, and is home to several hostas, a false spirea which is hanging on by its toenails and a lovely fern at the back, which you almost have to imagine in this photo. 

Two or three pale pink volunteer poppies bloomed right among the stand of purple veronicas, on the other side of the walk, but I was dealing with the flood at the time and had no chance to grab my camera and get a picture. Shame, the combination of frilled pink poppies and lavender spikes of veronica was lovely.

The lime green hosta is thriving next to the veronicas. It's shaded most of the day. Behind the veronica, though hard to see here, is the morning star ligularia. Its huge purple-green leaves wilt down every day, and come back up as the day cools. The flowers are just like big yellow daisies or sunflowers, but the foliage is so interesting.

Closer to the doors the purple-leaved coral bells are blooming, the tiny blossoms hover above the plants like pale pink fireflies, as in all but bright sunlight the stalks are so fine as to be nearly invisible.

And in my little un-raked Zen garden of gravel and three stones, the sedums I planted last year survived being completely covered in a mound of ice and have covered the base of the standing stone once more. They are even beginning to bloom, little splashes of yellow on the green. 

It's what I wait for all year long. 

The 24 Hour Channel called 'Monkey Mind'

                                                                                   

A learned professor of Asian religions traveled a long distance to visit a revered Zen master. The professor was excited by the opportunity to visit the master, and eager to share his theories on how this practice developed or another was influenced by some other teaching. He talked and talked and talked, until his throat was parched.

The master called for a tea tray, set out two cups and began to pour tea into the first cup, and poured and poured and poured. The tea filled and then overflowed the cup, spilled across the table and into the lap of the professor.

When people hear this story most will identify with the Zen master. We all know people like the professor, people who don’t know when to shut up. But the truth is that we’re very much like the professor, you and certainly me. It’s a human thing.

There's a commentator in my head, constantly regretting, planning, judging, worrying, fretting, feeling irritated, or fearful, angry or anxious, excited, happy, goofy or scolding. The voice in my head is like that visiting professor - it never shuts up.

Through practice I've learned how to quiet the commentator, at least some of the time. There are still days when it screams what an awful person I am and all I want to do is sit in a corner and sob, usually because I've said or done something that hurt someone else.

And when my commentator, what the Buddha called 'Monkey Mind', will not shut up and I have no strength or energy left to do battle with it, I have to shut it out, change the channel as it were. Sometimes this is through music or a dvd, not recommended ways to deal with the commentator but the best I can do at that particular time, and I leave working on taming my monkey mind to another day. Sometimes it works out well, and I like to think at any rate, patience may overcome what force cannot. A hot shower and a good night's sleep have been the cure for many a midnight's calamity.

Tao de Ching  Verse 15 

…when a man is in turmoil
how shall he find peace

Save by staying patient till the stream clears?

How can a man's life keep its course

If he will not let it flow?

Those who flow as life flows know

They need no other force:

They feel no wear, they feel no tear,

They need no mending, no repair.

On which side of the door did you place your KIA?

There was a young monk who wanted to study with a widely respected teacher. He knew this teacher only accepted the most promising students so he studied the texts, memorized wise sayings and practiced looking impressively serene. Finally he gained an appointment for an interview with the master.

On the morning of his interview it was raining heavily. The young monk set out for the teacher's house carrying his umbrella. When he reached the teacher's house he removed his muddy shoes, closed his umbrella, sat it aside, adjusted his robes and rang the bell.

Once inside he sat where the attendant indicated and waited. After a while the teacher came in. The young monk jumped to his feet.

Now, I drive a bright red KIA Soul, which I park in stall 76 which is to the right of the double entry doors on the south side of our building. I love my little car, which was a gift from my two wonderful sons. It's easy to drive, I can get in and out of it without dislocating anything, the small back trunk area holds the wheelchair, the walker or my grocery cart. It's the perfect car for me.

So I was more than a little perplexed when my neighbour hammered insistently on my door yesterday afternoon to tell me that a tow truck was towing my car away! I wobbled after him as quickly as I could, the driver was securing the last wheel to the trolley as we arrived in the parking lot. My KIA was not in its usual stall.

My first question was; "What is my car doing here? Did you move it?"

"No," he said, "it's been ticketed to be towed for being illegally parked here. We received a complaint that your car was parked in this stall, which belongs to someone else."

It was stall 66. Ten stalls in the line-up short of my stall. (Gobsmack)

I'd made a quick trip to the Walmart the day before, to try and find tomato cages or braces or anything that would keep the topiaries we'd placed in the big concrete pots out front from toppling over. I wanted the bases secured to concrete blocks and buried in the gravel, but I could not get the young men doing the work to do it the way I wanted. They put the blocks in, wrapped a strand of wire around and left the pots perched on top of the gravel. We've had 60 mph winds the last few days, and I've rung myself out trying to wire the darn things down better, but they just flop over again. 

They had no tomato cages, no braces that I could see how to implement. I came home with two iron cage-like things - obelisks - for the garden. They were heavy. Some assembly required. I got them unpacked, clipped off all the plastic rings and tags I wouldn't be able to reach once they were in place and put them together. They were a foot taller than I am, but after struggling to get the first one on I learned that they were too narrow to encircle the topiaries. A real topiary yes, one made of whatever solid material fake topiaries are made of - no.

They were going to stand a good foot higher then the top, and lack a good foot from reaching the gravel at the base of the pot. I could have cried. If I'd had the strength to take them off and take them apart I'd have taken them back, but I had none of that. So I came inside, got some grape ivy greenery I've had for like 20 years and wired the bottom rung of the obelisks to the wire holding the pots.

By now I was wringing wet, weak and getting a bit befuddled, as I do when I'm tired. I slammed the trunk of the KIA, drove around the building and in my haze realized I had driven right past my parking spot. The line of cars in the stalls was unbroken.  I put the car in reverse and backed up until I saw my empty stall with the '6' peeking out from my sign. The car to my left was different than the one usually there, but Jess is a mechanic and often drives a different car home.

"So you want to study with me?" the teacher asked, looking out the window at the falling rain. "Have you prepared yourself? Are you ready to learn what I have to teach?"

"Oh yes," the young monk answered, "I have studied very hard."

I got out of the car, crossed the lot and was puzzled momentarily by the door I found myself at, a single door, not the usual double door I usually come through.  I was not awake.

"On which side of my door did you place your umbrella?" the teacher asked.

The young monk's thoughts flew back to the moment when he closed his umbrella and leaned it on the wall beside the door. He could not remember, his thoughts had not been on the umbrella, but only with the interview before him. "I don't remember," he said, "is where I placed my umbrella of importance?"

"Until you wake up and learn to pay absolute attention to every moment and what it holds I cannot teach you anything," the teacher answered.

The tow truck driver said; "Once we have the wheels off the ground we're supposed to pull the car to the impound lot. But I can see this was just an honest mistake. We have the option to refuse to tow. I'll do that, and I'll call the city but they don't usually rescind tickets."

He got on his radio while I hurried to get my keys. By the time I was back he had my car back on its own wheels and was trying to talk the City out of the ticket, but they said no. But at least I avoided the impound lot which would have cost $480.00 plus the parking ticket to retrieve my vehicle.  As is the parking ticket will cost me $40.00. The person who was parked in stall 76 when I came home will remain unknown. 

Next time I park my KIA I will be awake, even if I am falling down from exhaustion.  A nudge to awaken… so be it.

Clinging and the backward 'C'

Life Rocks!

I must say we've made great progress at the job of purging and organizing this past week. In the living room my goal was to get rid of enough books/dvds to completely empty the bookshelf we'd stuck on top of the secretary desk.

I was a bit ruthless. Dvd's we'd not watched in ages or would not likely watch again went out. A great pile of them. A great pile of books, including some I really loved, but my heart was steel. 

There's a "Freecycle" table next to the front entry downstairs. The dvds went to a friend down the hall who came by while I was busy purging, the books to the Freecycle table. I had my doubts if some of the philosophy and history books would go but they flew.

Contents which were staying were then redistributed between the remaining bookcases, the empty one was cleaned and dusted and carried off to the bedroom where it slid into my closet beneath my clothes and was then filled with my art supplies and such.  There's now a nice neat space in the linen closet for other things.

I bought a nice white square basket for the "disaster" towels; you know - the ones you have to keep on hand for when a grain of rice get stuck in the gasket of the dishwasher and a flood ensues? That new basket went on the top shelf of the linen closet, with the disaster towels rolled in it. Since I can't really reach that shelf I've been throwing the folded towels up there, and they magically unfolded themselves on the journey, arriving to lie in odd configurations on a shelf I can't reach to straighten without a ladder. 

I'm not sure if it's just this building or if this is the new norm everywhere, but any time a neighbour comes over they have to inspect our entire place, so you feel an obligation to be at least reasonably presentable at all times. This building has a dozen differently configured units, and each configuration can be flipped right or left, so there are dozens of combinations and there seems to be an obsession about which one you have and how you use the rooms. "Do you have a 'C', or 'Z'? Mine's a backward 'C', or "I have an 'L'." The 'L' is a studio, with the room we use as a living room, plus a kitchen/dining room, plus of course the bathroom and linen closet combo.  Pauline downstairs has an 'L' and uses the 'den' as her bedroom, shoehorning her sofa and living area in the six foot extension past the kitchen cupboards.

We have a backward 'C'. We use the 'den' as a living room, and the kitchen/dining room as kitchen and dining room. Of course we also have a bedroom. A neighbour who visited a few days ago inspected our place then said he has the 'L', uses the den as his office during the day and has a Murphy bed he sleeps on. I know someone with a 'L' who has boxes lining every wall with a single recliner in the middle of the dining area facing a TV on the wall. I don't think she even has a bed. The wall of boxes bristles with hangers and broomsticks, mop sticks, odd bits of unidentifiable metal. I don't know how she finds anything. More to the point I don't know how she keeps from putting out an eye!

I guess what fascinates us about all these others' homes is behind what someone signing themselves as  Sauveteur commented on Apartment Therapy a couple of years back; "Every home tells the story of the person or people who live there. All you need to do is open the door and the story that your house is trying to tell the world will immediately say what you would rather keep a secret."       

When a first-time visitor came a few days ago, I expected him to come in and sit down in the living room as invited. Instead he walked around (I was a bit shocked) and looked at everything. He asked about our configuration, the backwards 'C'.  As we talked he looked around, with bored disinterest, like you look at the health posters on the doctor's exam room wall, at the pictures of my parents, the bleached and long-dead turtle shell I picked up beside a dusty country road 30 years ago, the seashells, the paintings on the walls, the model ship in the case, my "pile-of-books" coffee table. These sentimental "treasures" of mine meant nothing to him. They didn't even rouse his curiosity.

One basic Buddhist teaching is that there is suffering in life, and that we suffer to the degree we crave and cling. So is the secret revealed by my home that I cling too much to the past? The art is old, the photos are of people who are gone. Seashells, such lovely forms but the animals who built them are long, long dead. Old rusting boxes, for pencils, cough drops and dusting powder; and aside from my medical references and nature books (identification of birds, plants, mushrooms, trees, etc.) I prefer old books. Books about people going back to childhood homes and towns and finding the town or themselves irrevocably changed.

There is an antidote to unhealthy clinging in Buddhism, the eight-fold path that shows us how to live with moderation. I'm doing my best to get this place organized and uncluttered, but even more I need to stop clinging to the past. The past is (literally) no place to stay. It's simply the place you journeyed  from, physically but even more importantly, metaphorically; Wendell Berry said;  …the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home. ~ The Unforeseen Wilderness    

What do you do when an @$$hole throws rocks?

"[here] is an idea that is difficult for Westerners to accept: when someone harms us, they create their own suffering. They strengthen habits that imprison them in a cycle of pain and confusion.  …when they harm us, we unintentionally become the means of their undoing. Had they looked on us with loving-kindness, however, we’d be the cause of their happiness. 



But what’s true for them is also true for me. The way I regard those who hurt me today will determine how I experience the world in the future. In any encounter, we have a choice: we can strengthen our resentment or our understanding and empathy. We can widen the gap between ourselves and others or lessen it." *

Ask me about this most of the time and I'm all bobble-head smiley-face you betcha. Buddhism ROCKS! But tonight for a good long stretch of the drive home after a board meeting my gutter "French" got one hell of a workout.

Granted, I wasn't the only one. As we spilled out of the board room the air was positively blue. The atmosphere in the meeting was so taut you could have used it as a trampoline. There was a lawyer at the table, not for decoration, but to try and keep a lid on.

The person who was the cause for all the swearing is married to the person who was president of our board last year. She was doing a great job until she had a stroke which affected her ability to do the job properly. The board had to finally ask her to resign. This made her furious and her belligerent, domineering husband decided to avenge her honour by nominating himself to the new board with the intent of ripping us all (and me in particular) to shreds.

He sent a barrage of angry, verbally abusive e-mails even before the term's work began and tonight he criticized every breath I've drawn since joining the board several years ago. Everything bad that has happened since 2011 has been my fault. 

One of Buddha’s disciples went to him and said, “Master, what do I do about my enemies who throw rocks at me and call me names?”

Buddha said, “You have no enemies. Hatred is a defilement of the mind, a defilement you can mindfully overcome.”

This is my challenge. A test, as it were, not of my (ahem) "French" skills but of my ability to remain calm and compassionate while this 6' 7" man is looming over 5' 0" me, determined to intimidate me, since he blames me for ousting his wife, because as vice-president I had to finish out her term.

I want to experience the world in a positive light, not from a fearful and defensive position. I suspect by the end of this I will have learned a great deal more about mindfully overcoming the defilement of the mind which occurs when someone throws rocks at me and calls me names.

Or I will have taken up voo-doo, the kind where you make dolls, say incantations over them and stab them with pins. I'd say the chances are about 50/50.

*paraphrased from Pema Chödron's book No Time To Lose...

Fatoumata and the peanut farm

Back: Bintou, Fatoumata, Selimata, Djelika, Sitan, Front: Bakoro, Tenin

Our KIVA loan this time goes to the seven members of the group BENKADI 2, all of whom are married women. They average 36 years of age and have six children each. Most live in traditional families in Diomatene, a village in the 3rd administrative region of the Republic of Mali. 

Like Fatoumata, who is standing second from the left in the back row in the photo, they all grow peanuts which are a staple food of the diet in Mali. Like all of her partners in the group she will use her part of the loan to hire someone to plow her 1 hectare (about 2.5 acre) field, and purchase seeds, fertilizer and herbicides to help control the weeds. 

The women work with the microfinance institution Soro Yiriwaso, a partner of Save the Children,  in order to access the funds they need to prepare their fields, plant and reap a good harvest. This group is on their fifth farm loan with Soro Yiriwaso and have paid back all their previous loans.

After the harvest, their produce is sold to customers in the village and at nearby markets. Fatoumata anticipates she will make 140,000 francs CFA ($290.00 USD) from selling her produce. This will enable her to pay back her part of the loan, as well as to help in meeting day-to-day family expenses. (Think about it, six months of back-breaking farm work for a payout of $290.00. )

Soro Yiriwaso doesn't just make loans, it also understands in many cases poverty is not just about lack of money, and the alleviation of poverty requires more than access to capital and an understanding of business. So Soro Yiriwaso also has a Family and Community Empowerment program which offers access to health care services and education for its borrowers and their children.

Many of KIVA's microfinance partners offer access to medical care for the borrower and their family members for a small monthly charge. They can receive regular check ups from a physician, as well as low cost medicine and hospital referrals. As you can tell from the photo, several of the ladies were expecting new arrivals when this picture was taken. Access to pre-natal care and a midwife are vital to the survival of Africa's women, where so many die in childbirth or related infections.

The inability to treat health related issues has the potential to cause families to fall back into the cycle of poverty despite running a successful business. Support services also can include educational workshops in disease prevention and domestic violence.

For $25.00 you can help farmers and all kinds of business people in the Third World improve their lives in so many ways by making a small amount of otherwise unattainable credit available to them.
Visit KIVA.org today and find a borrower whose story resonates with you, and lend that 1st $25.00.

How do we find joy and peace?

I went shopping yesterday afternoon. On the way home I was driving in the right hand lane of two lanes, driving just over the upper edge of the speed limit because the traffic around me was moving at the same speed. I was approaching an intersection where I turn right. There is a dedicated lane for this which branches off some way ahead. I signalled my intention to turn before I reached the branch because the curve requires you to slow somewhat.

Suddenly I was passed by a driver who then cut me off very sharply, but at this point I reached the turn-off so I just veered off into the turn lane. The light was red and I had to wait for an opening in the oncoming traffic.

The driver who had cut me off was sitting at the light behind two or three other cars. The passenger, a young man hardly more than a teenager, rolled down his window and began screaming at me, gesticulating and making threatening gestures. My window was rolled up and the fan was on, so I didn't hear what he said, but his face said it clearly enough.

I was puzzled by his anger and its intensity. I had not caused them any delay. They had only just come up behind me before the driver passed me. There was an empty lane in which to pass, and 100 feet ahead of us there were already cars sitting at the red light.  Maybe the fact that I was able to turn and integrate into the cross traffic despite being cut off, while he still sat waiting for the light  to change irritated him, but when you drive you sometimes catch the light green, and sometimes it's red. 

But I had been upset by something just as silly earlier in the day, not as upset as he was, but enough to keep me stewing for a couple of hours. I find I'm quick to talk peace, but slow to practice it. My temper can be ignited in an instant, and if I allow it to erupt I may say and do things in anger which I deeply regret later. In this case I said nothing. I let the matter drop and walked away.

I have been practicing not to respond in anger to provocations that might have had me lashing out in times past. This can be a difficult practice, denying one's self the symbolic victory. Walking away from an argument without having to get in "the last word". The practice of peace often means waging an internal battle with yourself. So why bother? There's certainly satisfaction in telling someone who has their facts wrong and is defending their position in an obnoxious, even hurtful way that they are an idiot and don't know what they are talking about. But it doesn't bring you peace. The other person goes away angry, and after the momentary thrill of triumph wears off you feel the shame of not living up to your own standards.  

An 8th Century Buddhist master named Shantideva had plenty to say about the "do as I say, not as I do" approach to peace. He said these habitual patterns of aggression we practice are the source of constant suffering, our own as well as others, and if we continue in these habit patterns and allow them to rule our behaviour and thoughts we will never find joy and peace.

Aggression begets aggression. The only way to overcome hate and fear is through love. Shantideva had no trouble calling a spade a spade. He said that as long as we justify our own critical spirits and self-righteousness, joy and peace will always elude us. We may well point our fingers at "wrongdoers", but until we learn to deal with compassion with everyone, there will be no peace, in our hearts or in the world.  


How do you feel about it? What's the difference between preserving the peace and being a doormat?  Have you worked out a strategy for a peaceful life or do you just scream when you're angry and let the chips fall where they may? 

A five-minute game and a lesson in life

Although it didn't occur to me for a long while, playing the Chinese tile game of Mah-Jong on the computer is not just a nice quiet way to pass the time, it teaches some interesting lessons along the way.

Barnyard Mah-jong

First of all, in many computer versions you can choose tiles with the Arabic numbers we use every day, 1, 2, 3 etc, and graphics we easily recognize as symbols for the seasons, or you can use the more traditional Chinese symbols. You can even download a set with barnyard animals, fruit, vegetables and a cartoon farmer on them.

The computer lays out the tiles in a specific pattern. The app I use has about 300 different patterns, only eight or nine of which I've actually used so far. You're timed. You have five minutes to remove all the tiles by matching them to an identical tile somewhere in the layout. The catch is that the tile must be exposed on three of its four edges, or it cannot be removed from the board. Difficulty is determined by the layout, as some layouts leave many tiles exposed and some leave only a few exposed.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter Tiles

Obviously the challenge is reduced when the patterns on the tiles are familiar to you, like those to the right. Your brain doesn't have to work as hard at pattern recognition on these tiles as on the unfamiliar Chinese symbol set, but since pattern recognition is a skill we need to preserve as we get older I use the Chinese set. I admit I still haven't completely figured out the matches in the seasonal and flower tiles.

I've tried numerous approaches and I've learned it's better if I organize my search beginning in the upper right hand corner. My brain observes more quickly and accurately working right and down and then to left centre to upper left corner, which is counter-intuitive in a culture in which we read left to right.

In practice of course you search over the entire board, or should, but that's generally a distraction and I will frequently empty 60% of the middle and right side of the board without ever touching the left tiles, except perhaps to pick up a match for a straggler. 

Chinese symbol tiles

These searches sharpen your observation skills, because it's not always easy to see that a tile is exposed. As you search back and forth for a matching tile you work your short-term memory. You often find a different matching set while seeking a particular tile, but to improve your time you need to be able to remember which tile you are looking for though you come across two or three matches which distract you from your original quest.

This is much like multi-tasking in daily life, a skill women are supposedly better at than men. Stir the soup, stop Jr. from climbing a tree, change the baby's diapers, run out and throw rocks at the neighbour's dog who is chasing the chickens, run back in and stir the pot… or keep a single tile in mind as several other pairs pop out at you. I find I am less and less successful at this the longer I play. My fastest times are my early ones. My brain tires quickly, but not as quickly as it did when I began playing.

Then you come to a point where there are still 15 or 16 tiles on the board, and you can't see a match anywhere. You go "match blind". At times the two tiles are adjacent, sometimes one is up in the corner, alone, or doesn't appear to be exposed. But you know there's a match. The solution is there, if you persist. And once you find that one match it often uncovers a tile that then allows you to end the game in seconds.

This says to me that most problems have solutions, maybe not obvious ones. I have to look stop, think, consider all the options. 

And  if there are no tiles left on the board which match in that configuration, the app shuffles the tiles, and then progress can be made. Beating my head against a wall which can't be fixed gets me nowhere. Sometimes you need someone to shuffle the tiles. This may be advice from a calm, reasonable friend, your doctor, your spiritual adviser; the person you trust to listen. Someone who has your best long-term interests at heart, and won't just tell you what you want to hear. 

And then I look at the timer, and while occasionally I finish under in 5:00 minutes, it almost always says 5:28, or 7:45 or 8:10. And I don't care, because I'm here to relax, not stress out. Decisions made in haste are often regretted.

You can't step in the same stream twice…

From Claire and Dave's Round the World Adventure

Or so says an old Zen proverb. The water, representing time and life, flows on. And your own body is in a constant cosmic dance of atomic change, the exchange of mass into energy, of the chemistry into electricity into thoughts that jangle along from neuron to neuron in your brain, sparkling in and out of existence. No, you are not the same "one" moment to moment. A single thought can change your entire perspective on life.

It's something we talk about a lot, how do we stay here, in this moment, not resisting the lives we have, which many would see as restricted but which we enjoy.

Tony said this morning after we'd finished our coffee, "I'm trying to think of myself as a twig floating on a stream. Some days I move right along with the flow, some days I'm caught in an eddy and all I can do is circle round and round. No energy to escape it, no use fighting." And he headed off for a rest, after having been up for about 45 minutes.

The slipstream we call "life" moves, and we can never step in the same spot twice. If I scoop it up in my hands it spills through my fingers. I have in the past resisted and found myself circling in eddies of frustration and anger, sliding over precipices of fear and guilt and dashed on the rocks of hostility and remorse. Now I'm working on refusing to attach drama to the trivial events of the day, checking my impatience, training myself to bear ordinary discomforts and live in serenity.

No matter the circumstances life is best lived in the moment. I can't see what I'm rushing toward. The past is gone and cannot be changed. Feeling anger at how I was treated decades ago (or yesterday) just makes me unhappy. Letting go of those feelings, they are free to flow away. Holding on to grudges from the past is like throwing a dam across life's stream and then fighting to keep my head above ever-deepening water. It burns up enormous stores of energy. 

The buoyancy I need to stay afloat is only present in the moment, as my ever-changing self steps in the ever-changing stream of life.

Rip Van Winkle - a Metaphor for Growing Old?

Almost everyone knows the story of Rip Van Winkle who was the main character in a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819.

Van Winkle's story was set in the years before and after the American Revolution. Van Winkle, a colonial villager of Dutch ancestry, lived in a village in the foothills of the Catskills Mountains. He preferred to wander in the woods and spent more time telling stories to the children than he did working his farm or keeping his house in good repair. His industrious wife nagged him constantly.

One day, when he found his wife's nagging unbearable, Van Winkle hiked up the mountainside with his dog. From high up the mountain he heard thunder, and as he looked around he saw a man wearing clothing worn generations earlier in Holland. The man was carrying a beer keg up the trail, hailed him by name and asked for his help.

Together, they carried the keg up the mountain until they came to a hollow where Rip discovered the thunder was from a group of ornately dressed, silent, bearded men playing a noisy game of nine-pins. He did not ask who they are or how they knew his name. Instead, he drank some of the beer offered from the keg and soon fell asleep.

He awoke to discover shocking changes in himself. His musket was rotted and rusty, his clothes were rags, his beard and hair were long and white and his dog was gone.

Stumbling down the trail to to his village Van Winkle found no one he recognized. He learned that his wife had died and that his close friends had died, fallen in war or moved to other places. He was also disturbed to find another man called Rip Van Winkle was his own son, now grown up with children of his own.

Rip learned he had been away from the village for at least twenty years. However, an old resident recognized him and Rip's grown daughter took him in and cared for him.

And so we came to ask ourselves as we talked tonight; did Washington Irving actually write Rip Van Winkle's story as a metaphor for growing old?  For us it aging has not been a gradual dawning. It's really just hit us psychologically in the last little while. Suddenly we need grab bars and a bath bench and arms on the toilet, daily help to shower and care for our home. Admittedly this has probably come a good 10-15 years earlier for us than for the average Canadian. Even though we both have excellent general health we both have muscle disorders that compromise our strength and balance. This diminishing strength does not mean a reduction of one's worth as a person, but it is certainly something you need to be prepared for psychologically.

But we both admit it "getting old" seemed to occur so suddenly, though it's not actually been sudden. It seems one day we were 25, 35. We were young. Our children were small or running in and out the door, in school. There was always "Winkle's stress" of keeping up with business, suffering a fractious boss, dealing with house repairs, mortgage payments. Parents who didn't approve. Foster children who needed all the love and acceptance you could pour into them and more. Times of illness, financial struggles. These were the cares, and the joys, of youth. 

Did we sleepwalk through those times, drinking deeply the draught of everyday life while those who peopled our childhoods died, fell in wars and moved on? When your mother dies when you are 35 you don't realize that 35 years later she will still move through your dreams, but as in life, on her own terms. The thunder of anger long cooled will echo in your dreams, but so will the sweetness of baby kisses and of the kisses that led to those babies.   

One day you wake from your living slumber, look in the mirror, and see that you are actually old. And like Rip Van Winkle, you awaken to it all.  Or maybe you have just awakened, period.

Is there a story, a myth, that you have found personal meaning in that's perhaps a bit out of the ordinary, or different than a superficial reading of the story might suggest?  

 

Glorious (glorious) Garden Day!

My garden beds out front had definitely gotten away from me, weed-wise. There were several four-foot-high yellow alfalfas, as many goat's beards that tall and a volunteer Artemisia absinthium which I swear grew overnight into a bush three foot high and just as wide.  The dandelions were galloping along at a fearsome rate and bindweed was strangling everything it could drag itself to and throw a hook on.

Ian had come last Sunday and planted eight annuals, red and white petunias, and red geraniums, and a lovely Red Twig Dogwood Cornus Alba 'Elegantissima', because once the bulbs have fizzled there's not much going on in a perennial garden for the next few weeks, and I needed something that will just sit there and bloom all summer.

The poppies have enormous fat buds, but so far show no sign of opening. Everything else is gulping in sun and moisture and warmth and growing like stink, but blooms on most will come and go. I'm so desperate to fill in the empty space between my dark-leaved coral bells that I left a vigorous sulpher cinquefoil, a decision I am bound to regret in time.

I finally called Kevin, our landscape maintenance contractor, and cried "Help!" I asked him to send two sturdy young men I could supervise, as they tend to leave the weeds and pull the flowers. And I ordered a truckload of  shredded cedar mulch, the kind that's dyed black. It will warm the soil in spring and keep the bleeping weeds down.

So, we arranged for  two young men at 2:00 pm today, and instead I got two young men at a quarter to 10:00, which meant I was still in my jams and had just poured my morning cuppa when the phone rang announcing their arrival. Aiiiiii. I dressed, wet down my cowlick, grabbed my pruning shears and the walker and wobbled my way downstairs.

Fred and Kyle hit the beds and the way of the weed was gone. GONE.  That Artemisia was a pill to get out. For something that had grown up in two weeks it had a formidable root system that required digging, then prying out with a long handled shovel and, in the end, pruning shears to get the roots. We had no choice but to leave some root in. There were other plants too close. It's gonna come back. I'm going to fight that thing until the day I turn toes up or sell this place. But for now it's gone.

Still needs a bit of broom work

It took a good two hours to get all the beds weeded. But once the weeds were gone out came that beautiful black mulch. Boy the colours just pop against that mulch. Every leaf and every (right now sparse) blossom, though the Puschkinia scilloides (striped squills) are blooming. I wanted the shredded stuff because the nuggets get off in the lawn and when picked up by the mower they become unguided missiles.

After the beds were mulched we set the new topiaries in the new pots we bought last fall. I still have to go out and finish those off. I have ivy to wire in around the base, but we anchored the topiaries with a concrete block so our famous wind (or one of drunken tenants) doesn't pluck them from the pot and hurl them into the street, which is what happened with our last topiaries. 

It was a good four hours work for two and I probably did what one of them did in 30 minutes, but I worked off and on the entire time. But it looks great. I need to replace two shrubs which were severely damaged by the winter, and am not sure what to plant. Needs to be hardy to zone 3, deciduous, able to take morning sun, but not requiring full sun. Any suggestions?

KIVA Loan for June 2014

Domero, 58, lives in Pana-on, Misamis Occidental, Philippines. He is the father of three children, and provides taxi and transportation services in his village to make a living. For more than six years, he has earned well enough to provide for the family. A previous KIVA loan was used to buy spare parts and accessories for his motorcycle and was successfully repaid.

Now he needs a small loan to cover licenses renewal costs so he can continue to provide services to his customers. His goal is to buy a new motorcycle which will be more reliable.

Domero has been a member of GDMPC since 2009. In the future, Domero hopes to expand and improve his business to earn a better living.

Gata Daku Multi-Purpose Cooperative (GDMPC) was founded in 1992 by 32 farmer-members to empower people by providing livelihood opportunities and other support services. Today, it has over 15,000 members located in upland, lowland and coastal regions of the Philippines, and offers credit, savings, education, and various social services. KIVA is lending partner with GDMPC, and KIVA lenders like us can extend a helping hand to people like Domero, who have no access to bank loans. We can help them succeed through their own hard work. 

The lotus in a sea of fire

It hasn't been the greatest week; I've had a couple of subluxed ribs and a hip that cried "foul ball" with every step, and a frustrating realization that physically I've lost a lot of strength this year.

Then there was the deep and painful sadness of losing my dearly loved niece. That same day, after an absence of over two years, our youngest son arrived, and though he was supposed to be on holidays he spent most of the time at his brother's working. We did have a nice dinner together, and one evening we talked for a couple of hours, but we did not have the time together I'd hoped for. There is a discomfort I do not understand between us, like marching in a parade with a jagged piece of quartz in your shoe that you cannot stop to remove.

Today one of the men who stood for office at the AGM, who has not yet been legally integrated as a board member, inserted himself in the middle of a contracting dispute he knows nothing about, called the contractor to issue orders, and then publicly tore into our building manager in a rude, insulting and hostile manner. In his correspondence he made it clear he intends to "go to war" against both the management company and the board members who served last year, and that he plans to make our lives very unpleasant.

So here we have a week ripe with grounds for practice. Pain, death and loss, confusion, heartache, expectations, disappointment, anger and dread. Now, does that sound like your life as well? Maybe no one in your family died this week but I'll bet you had your share of the rest, in one form or the other.

Lotus blossom by Leesa Brown

Did I jump up from my chair and say "Whoopee! A chance to practice!" No, I sat here and shed more than a few tears and said some words that shouldn't pass the lips of anyone according to the Buddha, who took a dim view of swearing. But Martin Bayne has a nice phrase, "Turning the stream of compassion within," and despite my initial reactions, that's what I'm working on doing.

I can't do much about my pain, except ask that my doctor allow me to go back to my former dose of pain meds, so I can function. I have lived with grief before and will again, unless I beat everyone else I love to that punch. Susan and I had talked about her impending death. She was very strong. She was not afraid of death so much as the process, which is a pretty rational fear, and a good argument for the patient's right to die when they have had enough. I am missing her already.

I'm at a loss about the young man who is my son, hoping the problems we had were the result of his unexpected deadline and not some unnamed issue. I know how easily one can lose that connection. I hear from too many people whose bonds with their children have slipped, leaving them broken-hearted and adrift.

Which then leaves me wondering how I deal with my feelings of anger with our bully. He's had a difficult time this past year. He's a man of enormous intelligence and courage. He has overcome an injury he was told would leave him a paraplegic, and in the last year he has left his wheelchair and braces behind, he's retrained for a new job and is working again. I know these good things about him, I like him very much, yet he was hostile, disrespectful, and verbally abusive, which did not fit into the picture of him I know.

Joan Halifax says; "…compassion is comprised of the capacity to see clearly into the nature of suffering. It is that ability to really stand strong and to recognize also that I'm not separate from this suffering. But that is not enough, because compassion, which activates the motor cortex, means that we actually aspire to transform suffering. And if we're so blessed, we engage in activities that transform suffering. But compassion has another component, and that component is really essential. That component is that we cannot be attached to outcome."

That's a hard concept to accept because I want to feel less pain, physically and emotionally. If I talk to someone I want them to feel better, to not be angry, bitter, ready to lash out and certainly not to blame me for the pain they are feeling.

When you try to express compassion for someone, you find it has enemies. People will say, "I don't want your pity!", "You don't understand what I'm going through!". Righteous indignation and moral outrage are the enemies of compassion. This is a big deal for me and something I need to sit with. How do you express moral outrage, or even opposition to a philosophy without losing compassion for the person who defends it?  Suggestions welcomed. (The first one that comes to mind is to mind my own business, but sometimes it's impossible to do that.)

But the first person you must have compassion for, before you can extend it to others, is yourself.  So once again I fall back on Lewis Richmond's mantra:

May I be filled with loving kindness
May I be free from suffering
May I be happy and at peace

May we be filled with loving kindness
May we be free from suffering
May we be happy and at peace

May all beings be filled with loving kindness
May all beings be free from suffering
May all beings be happy and at peace

All of us, you, me, the boy, the bully and the returning soldier...  

Torn…

I was out in front, murdering dandelions, waiting for the landscaper to show up when my neighbour Pauline on the ground floor popped out on her patio and asked if I'd seen her place since her son-in-law and his dad redid it?

The short answer is no. She'd gone to her daughter's for two weeks while the son-in-law and his dad, who are professional contractors, gutted her place and completely redid it. I didn't even realize she was back.

So, after the landscaper left I parked my shoes at her patio door and had the tour. I don't know which emotion I felt first. Envy and covetousness are high on the list. Her place is smaller than ours, basically two rooms and a bath, so about 360 sq ft. The area we use as a kitchen/dining room serves as her living room as well, and her "den" serves as her bedroom.

But her redo was so well done I was hard pressed to figure out what was missing. Her walls have been repainted a pale dove grey with crisp white trim. The floors are a high class walnut laminate except for the entry and bath, which have grey slate tile.

Her maple kitchen cupboards have been replaced by white glossy ones with modern handles. That maddening corner jog which hogs half of the storage room in the kitchen has a nifty two-tiered lazy Susan which turns and then pulls out so you can use that entire corner. She has a new granite counter top, new sink and taps. Up on top there's an angled corner cupboard. New white "railway" backsplash and new stainless steel appliances, including an 18" wide dishwasher.

In the bathroom the fixtures are new, and there's new laundry room cabinetry with built in laundry hampers. New high-quality closet doors which slide, allowing access to everything inside. Everything colour matched and simple and clean and slick, including framed prints from the WalMart. Restful to look at. Fantastic. It looks like something from a magazine.

I came home, threw away my bag of dead dandelions, flopped in my chair and looked at our living room. Just the one room. There are too many books, and too many bookshelves. The coffee table is enormous and we bark our shins on it regularly but it's shaped like a stack of books and has three drawers handy for old birthday cards and bits of junk you are too lazy to walk to the garbage can with, like empty spools of tape, and lists of to-do's I won't ever.

From where I'm sitting I can count ten large seashells, a rolled up python skin, a turtle shell, a pine cone a foot long, 15 paintings, 14 boxes (I seem to have amassed a collection of boxes, most of which arrived by way of inheritance. One of them is full of miniature dolls and toys.) There are three clocks, two of which don't work, three model ships, a half dozen baskets and a naked paper mache cherub hanging from a bracket near the door.

An embroidered valance from India hangs off one bookshelf.  A Buddha raises a hand in blessing (or defense), a butsudan sits unused (but decorative) behind him. A prayer bowl, a few bells and framed family portraits complete the disarray of object d'arte within my gaze. Aside from the furniture of course, a flowered sofa, two burgundy rockers, a Windsor chair and an antique secretary. Oh, and the TV, DVD player, three computers and i-pad and two readers.

Anyone in his right mind would have to admit this is altogether too much crap in one 11 x 12 ft room, but aside from the mundane sofa/chairs/TV/electronics every piece has a story attached. I picked up the abalone shell from a tidal pond on Metakatla Peninsula in 1978, the piece of coral came by way of Tony's dad who got it in the 1940s from the Red Sea, the conch was picked up on a island beach after a storm by my friend Audrey, while she sailed around the Bahamas with a friend in the 70s. And 75 years ago the snake made the poor decision to drop from a branch onto the head and neck of Tony's dad in Ecuador. It skinned out to about seven feet, was preserved by who knows what method and has spent many a year rolled up on shelves and mantels.

There's an olive wood Bible box, which was a gift from Tony's great-uncle Albert to his grandmother in 1901, acquired in Jerusalem, and the list goes on. Every object suggests a person, most of them long vanished from our lives but still very much in our hearts and memories.  

The whole point of this rambling missive is that while I absolutely love Pauline's new digs, they could belong to anyone. They could be an upscale hotel suite. The thing that's missing is any hint that Pauline lives there. There's no hint of the wise-cracking heels-up-kicking Pauline herself. The personality is missing.  I didn't see a single shelf, box or basket. Where the dickens is her stuff? You can't get to be 72 years old and not have accumulated any stuff! It's not normal.

So yes, I'm torn. Between sleek, modern and beautifully serene (i.e. stuff-free) and the hodge-podge of memories represented by this roomful of items I probably couldn't even get a thrift shop to take. It's all tat (i.e. rubbish, the kind of junk sold to unsuspecting tourists) as the English would say, but it's my tat, and for now I'm hanging onto it, and even mourning a few pieces that disappeared along the way.

Where do you stand on the issue? Are you happiest with a zen-like atmosphere or do you treasure great-aunt Agatha's doilies and still have them draped over the back of your sofa? How does your home reflect you, or does it? 

The best way to find yourself ...

 ...is to lose yourself in the service of others." - Mahatma Gandhi

It's very quiet here. The only sound is the clock's regular ticking off of seconds. But it's not an empty silence. It's comfortable and full of ease.

In the kitchen it looks like a snack bomb went off. Our condo association annual general meeting (AGM) was last night, and I like to set a good table for the 100 or so people who show up, so there are bits and pieces of leftovers piled on the countertop and table, a box half-full box of cookies, likewise two boxes of crackers, some chips in a bowl, all flavours dumped into the one bowl at the end of the evening. Bottles for the recycling, a 12 pack of diet coke which somehow was overlooked and never made it to the table. I have a job ahead of me there.

I remember the first AGM I attended here, three years ago. It lasted two hours and there was no place to sit. There was a lot of anger, a lot of shouting and the Calgary Police TACK Team, in full body armour, wearing helmets and carrying assault weapons interrupted the meeting when they burst into the lobby half way through the meeting, on their way to take down a drug dealer on the 4th floor. I remember wondering what we had gotten ourselves into!

But when they called for volunteers for the condo board I raised my hand. I figured it was a way to get to know your neighbours. Now fast forward three years.

The next year I insisted we provide chairs and refreshments, or as they call it in Canada, "a lunch", regardless of the time of day. Not only did enough people come out so that board members didn't have to go door-to-door begging people to come so they could make a quorum, the atmosphere changed completely from hostility to friendliness.

Last night had huge potential for frustration. We're switching to a new state-of-the art security system which is keyless, and all 186 owners had to attend to pick up their entry devices, a small tag that goes on your key chain. The pickup was badly organized by an inexperienced manager, which meant the owners had to stand in line twice for an hour or more to get their tags.

Despite this people were on the whole, cheerful and remained pleasant. The meeting itself was brief and ran smoothly. We pulled the food, soft drinks and coffee out, laid the table for a buffet and everyone dug in. There was laughter and the noisy roar of happy conversation.

Again and again people came to me all evening, introduced themselves and said how much they loved this, so much different than the old AGMs. Time and again I was hugged and kissed and patted and thanked for looking at this not as just a building, but as a community - with people from all over the world as neighbours and for valuing the diversity here, for fostering inclusion.

It was healing, it was what I needed. An hour before the meeting I learned my beautiful niece Susan had passed away at 3:00 of cancer. She was a wonderful example of how much one person can do in and for a community. I never knew her to be critical or negative, and she was a wonderful role model for me and to all who knew her. She was loved by many. I will write about her later, when I can bear to do so, but last night I was smiling through tears because I was following her lead - it's what she has done for the past five years.