October 19, 1990 in Peterborough, Ontario was a dark and cold autumn day with sleet falling and grim grey cloud. The only light at all was the fact that I met my beloved partner Caitlin Frost that day. Here is my anniversary poem for her.
On a sleet driven day
when the sky split into a million bits of darkness
and rained down on the groggy morning
I could never imagine
that what was falling
was me for you.
May you all know the love I have been lucky enough to be blessed with.
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Nenan is a child and family services initiative serving the treaty 8 region of northeastern BC. Have a look at their work here for simple, direct, culturally based ways of engaging everyone in their community as they create a new system deeply rooted in culture and integrated world views.
Nenan has utilized the Circle of Rights Community Empowerment Process (formerly Triple A) in many communities in the north-east providing an invaluable wealth of information on the strengths, assets and resources- specifically culturally based, as well as risks and challenges to supporting children and families. A deep exploration of community values has also been undertaken providing a wonderful foundation from which systems and services will be built upon.
A grounding principle of the Circle of Rights approach is that the wisdom of Elders and community members, including young people, will be central to the redesign of services for children and families to ensure the strengths of the past and present are respectfully applied to creating holistic, strength based services for children today and for generations to come
There is a fine art in doing this work to surface the values that are inherent in the language and way of life and translate them into principles and ways of working without trivializing them or minimizing them or creating boiler plate statements. The 15 projects that are gathered here at the conference I am co-hosting in harrison Hot Springs are feeling their ways through, and producing marvelous work.
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Lots of travel this week. During the time I was away in Ontario working with labour educators from a number of Canadian unions I heard a great line from a Canadian Auto Workers educator that sustains him when he is challenged while doing good work: “You don’t always have to like th emembers, but you have to love them.”
I was reflecting on that line this week after I hosted an Open Space on Bowen Island, in my home community to provide a space for my neighbours to discuss a proposal to turn some of Bowen’s Crown Lands into a National Park. The proposal has received a mixed reception among islanders, but there has been some outright hostility as well. This week, a guy I consider a “howyadoin’?” friend, lambasted me for running a meeting that appeared to be “a ruse to appease the public.” I informed him that I was hosting the meeting all on my own, without anyone paying me to do so that a variety of views could be heard. His response was still negative, but in the end, like my friend in the Auto Workers, I had to conclude you don’t have to like your fellow islanders, but you have to love them.
And God love them.
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- Drove from Hawkestone to Thornbur y Ontario villages wrapped in a beautiful warm fall day. Happy Thanksgiving all! #
- "The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance. The night wind revolves in the sky and sings." http://bit.ly/cos1zV #
- A beautiful starry night here in Port Elgin, on the shores of Lake Huron, where a thin October moon has fallen into the bay. #
- Cool wind off the lake. A faint smell if snow on the air. Beginning art of hosting with 50 union educators tonight. #
- Tonight, cool air, clear skies, stars dancing in the wind above Lake Huron and the sweet smell of fallen leaves underfoot. #
- Back home for a day: a little soccer, a community #openspace and then off again for a couple of weeks into the world. #
- #openspace underway on Bowen Island on issues and opportunities around the National Park proposal. 66 people age 5 and up. #bowegov #
- Lovely #openspace on Bowen Island today…lots of creativity in the room. Off to Harrison Hot Springs to soak in the mountains. #
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A lovely little passage from a book I am reading at the moment, that describes the allure of living with shadow. We are captivated by fog.
I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was–the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the Unseen, and clamouring and clanging in confident speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear.
— Jack London, The Sea-Wolf