I believe in all that has never yet been spoken I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving. If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say. May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you …
Day zero here at the Shambhala Summer Institute here in Halifax. The staff of the ALIA Institute have been working hard to get everything ready for us, and today people started to arrive. Over the past could of days the faculty have been meeting in a little pre-institute retreat, building our own field and grabbing the chance to have conversations with one another. We’ve been getting a little taste of each other’s modules, playing with some of the creative process that is going on and generally catching up with each and getting a sense of our field. …
Anchored down in San Francisco awaiting a delayed hop to Eureka California, from where we will drive to the Hoopa Valley and work there for a couple of days. On leg five of the epic journey. So a little time to breathe and reflect on a couple of harvests. First from Geoff Selig who was at the Pembroke Art of Hosting, and who collected the tablecloths from a final day World Cafe on what we have learned about the power of conversation. Second, a harvest poem from the Open Space I ran yesterday in Kelowna. This was …
I’m stranded in San Fransico, sitting on standby for a flight home after narrowly missing my flight yesterday evening due to a big accident on the Golden Gate bridge. So sitting the lounge, guiltily hoping every two hours that someone has some minor misfortune or change of plans that will open up one seat on a day when every flight home is full. Found a poem by Denise Levertov at the excellent Panhala: A Gift Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the …
This Christmas might be the first white Christmas for all of Canada since 1971. To celebrate, I’d like to point you to my friend Jeremy Hiebert’s stunning collection of photos of ice from Lake Okanagan. This is not a photo collection, it is a poem of the highest order. Sit still and watch the slideshow fill your eyes with the wonder of this earth. And to accent it here is a poem from me, using the wonderful language of ice: Crawl to the edge of the fast ice where the ice front holds still as the pancakes …