I was truly honoured yesterday to sit with 15,000 other people and listen to the Dalai Lame give a talk on Universal Responsibility yesterday in Vancouver. (You can view the video of the talk online) The Dalai Lama was introduced by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a way that made it feel as if he was introducing a good friend to an audience of good friends. It was a wonderful afternoon. There were many parts of the teaching that resonated, and it will take me a while to process the entire experience. Just being in the presence of these two great …
Elder Sonny Diabo, (Mohawk, Kahnawake)The group I was working with in Montreal this week is assisted by the man pictured above, Sonny Diabo, an Elder from Kahnewake, a First Nation across the river from Montreal. Sonny is a marvelous and generous teacher, and is invaluable to the group. In the contemporary world, we don’t always get time to spend with Elders and so when I have the opportunity, I try to take advantage of it by asking about teachings in certain areas of my life that I am currently thinking about. Recently as evidenced here at the Parking Lot weblog, …
Montreal, Quebec Lucky me, blogging from downton Montreal, where I have been working with a joint working group of First Nations and Inuit organizations and government. I love this city, which is not something you hear every native born Torontonian say. This place is a treasure, a unique incubator of culture and difference that adds heaps of energy to this otherwise homogenous continent. It allows North America to hang around with Europe and African and Asia at all the parties for the cool continents. Without Montreal (and Quebec), NA is the neighbourhood geek with too much money and too much …
Reading about Leon Fleischer in the New Yorker: “There are so few notes,� the pianist Leon Fleisher said, �but so many implications.� The setting was a recent master class at Carnegie Hall. Fleisher, the master in question, was leading four young musicians through the mystical landscapes of the late sonatas of Schubert. He was speaking about the Andante movement of Schubert�s B-Flat-Major Sonata, but he might as well have been describing Bach�s �Well-Tempered Clavier,� or Brahms�s Intermezzos, or any other music in which a smattering of notes conveys a world of feeling. �There are so few notes, but the implications …
Kennetch Charlette I’m nearly moved to tears after reading Ceremonial Healing Theater by Ae Ran Jeong and published at if… (to whom I am hugely grateful). It was offered up as a response to my posting on decolonization as an opening and it contains a bunch of really powerful quotes that support this notion as well as look at how this opening is supported by healing. The article is an interview with Kennetch Charlette, a fine actor and the artistic director of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company. In the article, Charlette explains his work as an extension of the work …