Integrate!

We write this on the final day of 2005. Nothing actually begins on New Year's Day except the calendar. No seeds are sown; no harvest arrives. The days begin lengthening before January 1st. And yet, it is a day to celebrate beginnings, a day that marks our understanding that even birth begins before we see its signs. Whether or not you write resolutions on this day, you have been continuously planting seeds in preparation for the beginnings that will happen in your life in 2006. As you look toward the coming months, you have a choice: you can watch to see what happens to survive and thrive or you can nurture a garden of chosen plants, enjoying the anticipation of what will come almost as much as the actual blossoms. Like any gardener, you will find that very little is entirely within your control and that even less is entirely beyond your influence. Whatever your gardening choices, we wish you a year of peace, prosperity and pleasant surprises, Linda & Chris

We are used to having five senses and sometimes to allow for the possibility of a sixth sense. The founders of neuro-linguistic programming were pragmatists: they grouped the sensory predicates we most commonly used and discovered three categories would be sufficient: visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic (which included smell, touch, taste and any other sense of living in and through a body). In essence, they took the limitations of language and used those limitations to further limit - or filter -what people would notice. The logic has been questioned, and studies trying to prove the efficacy of noticing and responding to preferred sensory systems have generally been inconclusive. This does not mean that there is no point in becoming more aware of our senses and the impact they have on the way we understand and communicate. It does mean that there is room for further exploration. If we assume that anything that is habitually put into language will either reflect something of which we ...

There is a saying that may have come from ancient Greece: "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit." I first remember reading it somewhere in the works of the poet W.B. Yeats although I have never been able to locate it there again. The saying lingers nonetheless, a reminder of a different way of thinking about the world. The story is echoed in a story told about Oxford College. I encountered it first in a book called "After the Ecstasy the Laundry," and again while reading Gregory Bateson. The link below is another version. The essence of the story is that the foresters at New College, Oxford, planted oak trees so that hundreds of years in the future, someone would be able to replace the oak beams in the Great Hall. http://thetyee.ca/Views/2004/03/24/Planning_Six_Centuries_Ahead/ We all solve problems when solving them means that we make our lives easier or accomplish something we could not otherwise accomplish. Plantin...

It's true that the gleeful, crazed mother in me is chanting "It's almost Christmas" with the same fervour I used when I was six years old. Now, it means: "it's almost finished! Soon I will not have to prepare for Christmas! Hurray!" When the tree falls down on Boxing Day, it will be a signal to take it down, not to spend hours engineering a way to keep it standing until Christmas (it's fallen twice. so far). When I run out of cookies next week, I will tell the teens to make some. Or buy Oreos. I will make no lists between Christmas and New Year's. And still, it is almost Christmas. Sometime in the next three days, I will watch my boys, now grown up and tall, and see them glowing like the lights on the tree. I will listen to a wave of talk and laughter and know that my family is safely gathered. I will remember, through the confusion and bustle and chores that I am unreasonably lucky. That I am blessed. What is born on Christmas Eve after al...

Quick. Think about last year and tell me what you gave to other people and what you received from them. I bet it takes you a moment and most of what was given and received has been so deeply stored that you are unlikely to retrieve it. I also bet that if we could verify it externally, much of what you tell me would have been moved from some other Christmas or event. We assume in the week before Christmas that presents matter: that we need to find the right gift for the right person (at, we hope, the right price). Yet when we look back at Christmas (instead of forward), what do we remember that is important to us? Are there a handful of gifts from different years and different people that come to mind? I remember. . . the year I desperately wanted a clock radio. I cannot imagine why but I really, really wanted a clock radio. We were allowed to open one present each on Christmas Eve. I opened something and then my brothers opened a clock radio! I knew with part of my mind that my pa...

I am celebrating Christmas this month, and this blog is about Christmas. If you do not celebrate Christmas, you can skip this blog, or you can read it with the same kind of interest you read about interesting meals from new places. Christmas makes me think. Mostly, in truth, it makes me think in long lists of things to do and to make and to buy. Sometimes, it also makes me think about the nature of my relationships, and the way boundaries wrap around those relationships to define them and keep them safe. Specifically, I think a lot about who I am in relation to the children I love. I loved each of my sons before he was born, before I knew how he looked, before he had done anything at all. I loved each of them even more once I got to hold him. Each was inexpressibly precious to me by virtue of being - not even by virtue of being himself (since neither he nor I knew what that meant at first) - just because he was. This is why Jesus arrives as a baby:babies remind us that having been b...

I have been reading about the brain and language. Babies are born with the ability to distinguish all the phonemes used in human languages. The synapses that correspond to the language they hear in their first six months or so become stronger, and those that correspond to other languages can disappear all together. What would happen if we all suddenly lost the ability to see or hear the word "problem?" We would not cease to encounter difficulty, but we would have to find another way to express it. The only solutions we would have would be the ones where one substance is dissolved in another. Think about a particular problem. Now describe it to yourself without using the word "problem" in any of its forms. What difference do you notice when you have to choose different words to characterize the situation. What difference will that difference make as you take action in that situation? Now switch your perspective. Think about what motivates people to make changes...

I wonder how much of our holiday discontent results from having too little idea about what we want at this time of year. Our inner seven year olds still want the perfect gift from Santa; our practical adult selves say that "Christmas is for the kids" or that "we don't really need anything." Since the two can't get along in one mind (and one body!), it is hardly surprising that we often find it hard to get along with others. At the same time, we all have some perfect holiday memories. . . memories that tell us what we really want at Christmas, how we really want to welcome the New Year. As you allow those memories to enter into your awareness now, you can notice what catches your attention. . . notice whether you are indoors or outdoors. . . the lights and the colours. . . the smells. . . the sounds. . . notice who is with you and what you are doing. . . then allow yourself to notice the particular set of physical sensations that represent this in your bo...

Teaching places a spotlight on the role that other people inevitably play in our success. No matter how brilliant the teacher, his or her success depends on students who learn. If there is no learning, there has been no teaching. Tonight I watched my son perform in his high school's production of Oklahoma. The production relies on the work of amazing teachers; it would not be possible without their talent and their hours. Yet what is being taught is rarely the same as what is being instructed. While it is true that the kids all learn something of the techniques and technicalities of performance, they learn so much more. So what were the teachers doing that was separate from the instructions they gave and provided for such leaps in understanding and such dramatic (pun intended!) new behaviours? Clearly, they made it possible for students to learn in rich and complex ways: to learn by observing the teachers as models, by following instructions, by experimenting with different ski...

I was born in Alberta and tacky souvenir shops filled with cowboy-and-indian stuff take me back to being about six years old. I think that stuff is wonderful and then I wonder what I am thinking! Maybe some of that six year old longing and excitement is pulsing through my veins this week as my younger son prepares to go onstage as Curly in the musical Oklahoma! (the exclamation point is part of the title. Really.). My parents were both raised in Alberta and cowboy outfits were part of our family history when I was little. When my oldest son was born, my brother returned from a job in Alberta with tiny, perfect cowboy boots for him. Now I have caught my first glimpses of my younger son wearing a cowboy hat and boots. He is very tall and slim and appropriately slouchy. He looks like a cowboy. He looks like my Dad. Cowboy boots make subtle adjustments in the way one stands and moves. If physiology is the foundation of state, then cowboy boots make a range of states possible that wo...

To notice connections is to see the wind: we see the things that are connected and assume that there must be a force that keeps them in relationship. We do not see that force; sometimes we see signs of its influence. We can choose to perceive relationship - to notice a family instead of individuals, or to cheer for a team regardless of who is making the plays. Yet we are sure only of the end points, the people who are connected and not the connection itself. This is why we are so uncertain about our own relationships. We are not exclusively visual people, and yet we rely on what we see with our own eyes to tell us about what is true. And we cannot see ourselves with our own eyes - we can only imagine that we see ourselves or see ourselves in a reflection. Neither can we see ourselves in relationship: we can only see the person with whom we are connecting and try to guess at the relationship from what we see in that person, and from what that person reflects back to us of ourselves...