I knew I couldn’t spend the whole evening there. I needed green space. I needed fresh air. I needed some mindful wandering to help me process all of the wonderful things that had happened on my trip before returning home early the next morning.
So I did what I often do – I opened Google maps and looked for the nearest green patch on the map. About a quarter mile away, past the industrial wasteland, across a freeway, and at the edge of the suburbs, there was a strip of green along what looked like a tiny creek. Hmmm… it looked promising.
What a delightful surprise I found when I crossed that freeway and climbed the embankment! There was a protected greenbelt running along the creek, with a beautiful walking/biking path that stretched out for seemingly miles.
I’m happy for groomed trails when I’m on my bike, but when I’m walking, I always look for the “path less traveled”. Sure enough, closer to the creek was a rugged path made for adventurers like me. Everyone else took the easy path – I climbed through the underbrush to find the one closer to nature.
For the next two hours, I wandered wherever my curiosity would take me. I climbed under bridges, I knelt on the damp ground to get closer to the violets, I scampered after bunnies, and tried (unsuccessfully) to take pictures of an elusive red bird. I scratched myself on low-hanging branches, and I nearly got stuck in the mud.
I was my 10 year old self again, finding secret hideaways in the woods on our farm.
It was heavenly. It was like a deep exhale after an exciting but full and intense week.
Wandering is my meditation, my therapy, my brainstorming session, my stress-reliever, my playtime, and my teacher. It fills me up in a way that few other activities do.
What about you? Do you love to wander? Or perhaps you haven’t discovered the beauty of wandering yet. Check out my e-book on the topic. It’s full of goodness, including interviews with a dozen other people who know the power of wandering.
I love being in the centre of multi-cultural conversations that stretch us all.
I honour the messes in life and don’t try to hide them behind polished facades.
I value eccentricity, uniqueness, creativity, play, and spirituality.
I provide safe spaces for people to play and explore and become more fully themselves.
I foster art, music and creative expression of every kind.
I’m curious… which neighbourhood (or park, city, mountain, place, etc.) are you?
Note: To learn more about why I’ve adopted Kensington Market as part of my personal brand, sign up for my newsletter (over there in that box on the right) and read the full article.
I was at a social justice conference once when a well known storyteller got up to speak. I settled comfortably into my chair, preparing to be inspired.
He told a great (and very short) story, and then sat down. I thought he was just taking a break – maybe a musical interlude or dramatic pause – and then he’d get up to tell us what the story meant or how we should apply it to our lives.
Nope. Nothing. That was it. End of story.
I felt cheated. It was, after all, a social justice conference. We’d come to be inspired, to take home a toolkit full of take-aways and lessons-learned. If I remember correctly, his story didn’t even seem to have a social justice lens. It was just a story.
But was it?
The truth is, it stuck with me throughout the day, and into the week – long after I’d forgotten the take-aways from other talks or workshops.
One of the things I learned from his story is this: we don’t always need to hear the moral of the story. Sometimes, in fact, there is no moral. There’s just story. And the story becomes what each of us needs it to be. (Kind of like Jesus’ parables, right?)
I am a meaning-maker, a metaphor-finder, and a teacher. I like to follow story threads to their natural conclusions and then wrap the threads into neat little bows that allow you to take the stories home in pretty little packages to unwrap later. I’m used to shaping my ideas into teaching tools so that you have useful takeaways. It’s what I do and it’s often what I expect others to do.
But sometimes I try too hard and sometimes I do the story a mis-service by giving it only one shape when perhaps what you needed was a different shape entirely. Perhaps the story is still what you need, but through your lens it looks different and I’ve just ruined that for you by prescribing my own shape to it.
I’m finding lately that I’m growing somewhat weary of blog posts and social media updates, mostly because there seems to be too much expectation that we make sure every story has a moral, and every thread is tied.
We want to make sure we’re offering “good content”, and so we tie those threads. The blogging professionals remind us of how many extra hits we get when we can give “helpful tips for an easier life” or “do-it-yourself advice for ending the story as successfully as I did”, and so we give every story a nice juicy moral that readers can apply to their lives.
In doing so, sadly, we lose some of the messiness (and beauty) of life. We take out the really raw bits, because they don’t fit into neatly tied packages. We don’t tell the stories that end unhappily or not at all. We ignore the journeys that don’t conclude in simple and profound destinations.
This is one of the blocks I’ve had lately. This blog is now part of my business, and so I should be giving you good content that will keep you coming back for more. I should be offering you neatly tied packages. And I should do that on a regular basis so that you’ll come back often. And I certainly shouldn’t post this blog near midnight on a Friday. It’s blog suicide.
Unfortunately, many of my stories are messy and rarely do they come to me at appropriate blogging times of day. And often they don’t fit into clean frames or end with simple-to-communicate morals. Many of them are just little pieces of my journey and so the end is simply the beginning of something new. Sometimes (like when a man climbed through my window and raped me more than twenty years ago), it takes me years and years to process the lessons I’m meant to take away from a story. And even when I think I’ve learned all there is to learn, something new shows up a few years later and I realize the story hasn’t finished unfolding itself in my life.
And yet… I know those stories, as messy and unfinished as they are, are worth sharing. So I’ll keep offering them to you, but sometimes I won’t bother tying the threads together. I’ll let you find your own threads and see how those threads weave into your stories.
I am reminded, once again, of one of my favourite quotes.
“I’m not a teacher, only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.”
– George Bernard Shaw
Traveling is what I do. It’s what we all are doing. I haven’t reached the destination, so I can’t give you the “moral of this life-long story”. But maybe I can help you navigate some of the rocks that tripped me up.
Where am I going with all of this? I don’t know for sure. I haven’t figured out a way to end this post with a neat little moral either.
So I’m just going to leave you with what it is… some of the thoughts finding space in my head.
It’s no secret that I like labyrinths. I visit them often and am very happy that the beautiful Carol Shields labyrinth (in the photo above) is just across the river from where I live. It was at the centre of that labyrinth that I stood with my candle in a small circle of women, welcoming 2012.
It’s also no secret that I love metaphors. I’m a meaning-finder, and I love to wrap the complexity of life around the simplicity of a good metaphor.
The labyrinth is a great metaphor for life. Here’s why…
1. The journey to God is a path that leads along many deceptive twists and turns to the centre.
2. Though it often feels like we’re getting lost, if we keep following the path, we’ll eventually end up where we’re supposed to be.
3. When we’re weary and feeling lost, all that is required of us is that we put one foot in front of the other and carry on.
4. Sometimes we get really close to the centre, and think our journey is done, but suddenly we round the corner and there’s a whole new lesson we need to learn before we can rest.
5. Each time we pass a familiar place, we wonder “haven’t I been here before?” Those moments offer us the opportunity to lean even more deeply into the lessons we’re meant to learn and the beauty we’re meant to see at those places.
6. God is both the centre we seek and the path that gets us there. What we need is to trust the centre and to trust the path that leads us to it.
7. The path to God requires that we commit our body to it, not simply our minds. Get up and walk – God is in the movement.
8. To hear Spirit whisper, we have to be willing to be quiet.
9. Like all rites of passage and initiation ceremonies, walking the labyrinth is structured as a pilgrimage with three parts. First comes the journey inward, toward the sacred space where change happens. Next, time is spent at the centre, where the new life begins. Finally there is the journey outward, the return of the transformed person to the world, often with a new identity.
10. We don’t get straight paths in life – only winding roads that never show us the final destination and that keep taking us to places we don’t expect to go.
Some days she wants to spin you around the floor, and show you off to all the world.
Other days, she turns her nose up at you and points out how far you fall short of the popular girls in the room.
One day, you’re on top of the world. Your work is being noticed, you’re getting lots of teaching jobs, people tell you how meaningful your words are, you’ve written a book you’re pretty proud of, you get great feedback from students who take your courses, and someone wants to interview you on the radio.
You’re the hot dance ticket, and Ego whispers big, bold messages in your ear. “You’re awesome! Look how great people think you are! You’ve got special talent and it’s about time people noticed. You deserve all of this attention. Not like those wallflowers at the edge of the room – nobody wants to dance with them. But YOU… YOU are the talk of the town. It’s all about YOU!!”
And then, only a day or two later, everything changes. Nobody’s paying attention to you, hardly anyone’s reading your blog posts, the only people who hear you on the radio are your husband, brother, and friend, you get some negative feedback from students, and you realize your work is about to dry up and you don’t have much lined up after all these courses end.
You’re no longer the hot dance ticket. Ego sneers at you and whispers criticism in your ear. “You’re good for nothing. You put all this effort into your work, and nobody pays attention because you’re just not that important or interesting. You’re failing. You shouldn’t put your neck out like that and risk getting hurt. You really should give up and go get a postal delivery job instead.”
In the blink of an eye, everything changes.
And yet… nothing really changes.
You’re still doing the same things, you’re still following your calling, you’re still pouring your heart and soul into what feels like your right work, and you’re still being faithful to the God of your understanding. Nothing has changed.
The only thing that changes is the story you’re telling yourself – the story you’re letting Ego convince you is true.
Neither story is the whole truth.
You are neither the most awesome dance partner on the floor, nor are you the biggest failure.
Ego may think she has your best interests at heart, and part of her job is to protect you from harm, but she cannot be trusted. She’s fickle and unreliable.
You are not Ego’s stories about you.
You are doing your best, you are faithful, and you are showing up for what has been asked of you. You are good enough.
How do you stay grounded when Ego wants to either sweep you off the floor or bury you under the floorboards?
Here are some of the things that work for me.
1. Remind yourself that the outcome is not your responsibility. Do the work, be faithful, and then surrender. You are only responsible for what you’ve been called to do – you’re not responsible for how people receive it.
2. Grab your camera, go outside, and find a tree or flower to photograph. Remind yourself on a regular basis that each flower and tree grows and blooms exactly the way it is designed to grow. It makes no difference what anyone says or thinks of them – they just grow. Your job is to do the same. Grow and blossom. Do what God designed you to do.
3. Receive both your best press and your worst press lightly. Ask yourself “what am I meant to learn from this?” and then set it aside. Walk away and carry on, holding the best learnings from both, but letting go of the stuff that holds you back.
4. Get back into your body. When Ego whispers in your ear, go for a walk, start dancing, grab your yoga mat, or go for a swim. A healthy, engaged body is one of the best defences against Ego’s lies.
5. Write a letter to your ego. Tell her you’re glad she’s looking out for your best interests, but you just don’t want to dance with her anymore. Tell her you’d rather dance with Truth. And Humility. And Faithfulness.
6. Make a bowl mandala. Draw a large circle on a square piece of paper, and fill it in with colour. It doesn’t matter what it looks like – it only matters that you do it. Start adding words on top of the colour. Consider it like a bowl, meant to hold everything that’s taking up space in your mind – the lies that Ego wants to tell you, the truth that Real You is trying to remind you of, the prayers you want to whisper to the God of your understanding, the prayers God whispers back – whatever shows up. Consider it a mental cleanse and dump everything in the bowl. Welcome whatever new wisdom wants to show up to fill in the space the cleanse leaves behind. (For more on mandalas, check out my offerings. There are still a few spots left for Mandala Discovery which starts on Friday.)
