Integrate!

This is how February feels in Toronto. If you're not from a northern city, remember this picture as you read the rest of the post. Those of you who love #nlp  might have noticed something in the sentence above. I said that the picture could show you how February feels (not how it looks).  As I am writing, February looks like a bright blue sky shining on clean white snow. It's postcard pretty.  But it's not how most people are feeling in February. Here's a short story about how February becomes the month of frustration. It's cold and icy and still quite dark, so people stay inside. They don't get out to see as many people (the people at the mall or the park make a difference even if you don't talk to them). They don't move as much (who wants to go for a walk when the temperature is below zero, the wind is freezing your face, and there is ice underfoot? They are often slightly chilled (building heating is imperfect) and surrounded by people wh...

There are weeks and months when it feels we are called to stretch our consciousness to extremes. We encounter fear and sadness and excitement and laughter all within a short walk of each other. In the back of our minds, all the regular concerns about work and family and life keep running. The statue of Jesus as a homeless person outside Regis College Waiting for Santa Claus to come I took these pictures last Sunday morning. They ended up being thematic. All day inside the training we encountered the same strange mixture of excitement and connection and old grief and new confusion. It's the nature of the work that people find they are ready to deal with stuff they have left just outside their awareness while they got on with their lives. Life is this crazy mixture and we either stretch to reach all of it or shut ourselves off from information that we could use to make better choices. If you ignored all the world's crises this week because they are overwhelming ...