My Prayer

Dear God,

In the wake of so much conflict and sadness in the world, I find myself slipping into a dark place.  Please help me to find my way back to the light.  Please help me not to judge those who are making me angry with their views, though they differ from my own.  Please help me to accept that we are all doing the best we can.  Please help me to do my best.

Everytime I hear another person say that we shouldn't allow the Syrian refugees to come into Canada, I want to cry.  I want to rail at them for what seems to be their heartlessness and mean-spiritedness.  In my heart of hearts, I know mostly they are just afraid.  Please God, help them not to be afraid. 

Please help us to embrace one another.  Help us to find the things that bind us as humans.  Help us to understand that it is not skin colour or religion or place of birth that separates us, but rather fear, greed and hatred. Remind us that you did not draw the lines around the countries on the map but created the world for all of us to share.  Help us to find our better instincts. 

Help us to accept what is inevitably coming our way and let it bring out the best in us, rather than the worst.  Help us to be helpers, to provide comfort and refuge to all your children who need it.  Help us to remember that we are all your children.

Please forgive us when we fail.  Help us to pick ourselves up each time we fall, learn from our mistakes and try again. 

Thank you for the many blessings you have bestowed upon me.  For being born in a safe and free country.  For access to education, employment, health care, potable water, shelter, transit and food.  Thank you for family and friends.  I will try to be worthy of these gifts.

Love
Jackie

Heartsick

 "If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." - St. Francis of Assisi

 

The older I get, the less and less I seem to understand the world.  The events of last night in Paris are so far outside my sphere of understanding that I'm not even trying.  My visceral reaction to the news was to feel sick.  Sick to my stomach.  Sick to my core.

Before the Paris attacks, I tried hard to bury my horror over the attacks in Beirut. Our part of the world paid little attention to those terrorist attacks.  But another attack on Paris would get our attention. The loss of European lives would hit close to home.  I tried hard through a long wakeful night after the news came from Paris, to convince myself that Canadians wouldn't go where I feared they would go but it was only a few hours into the day when I saw my worst fears realized.  

Yesterday, the annual Fall Fair was held at my mom's nursing home.  As we have done for the last eleven years, my sisters and I ran the jewellery department at the fair. Other than at the fair, I seldom see the group of women who volunteer at the nursing home.  My mom doesn't attend the activities anymore.  They are a lovely group of women, most twenty years my senior.  One of the loveliest women, Anna, took a few moments out of our very hectic preparation time to chat with me and get caught up on the happenings of the last year.  In addition to her volunteer work at the nursing home, Anna has been working at her church on their project to sponsor six families of Syrian refugees.  They should arrive in Canada before the end of this year.  After the attacks in Paris on Friday night, Anna is having second thoughts. She's thinking that maybe we shouldn't let them in.  What if they are terrorists?  I felt the knot in my stomach growing.

Earlier this year I reconnected with an old friend.  When I posted on my Facebook page a few weeks ago that I have created a new line of jewellery that I am selling for Syrian refugee relief, she was one of the first people to message me with an order.  Today, she posted a petition on her Facebook page, imploring the Canadian government to ban the entry of Syrian refugees.  It felt like a gut punch.  

In less than six weeks, it will be Christmas.  We live in a huge and prosperous country.  Are we really prepared to tell these refugees that there is no room at the inn?  Are we prepared to let terrorists define who we are?  We are Canadians.  We have more than we need.  Let's build a longer table not a higher fence.

Ten Years of Profound Gratitude

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.  Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." - Denis Waitley

Ten years ago today, I spent a long, sleepless night praying for time.  In the early morning hours of November 9, I would head to Princess Margaret for surgery.  It was step one in my breast cancer journey.  I was scared, to be sure.  I didn't want the pain, but I've had enough experience with pain during my life to know I could handle it.  I didn't want the disfigurement but I have enough scars to know I would eventually stop seeing it.  What worried me most was that I might not wake up from surgery and that anguish is what filled my thoughts that night.  I asked God over and over, for the time to raise my son.  Jacob was only fourteen.

My prayers were answered.  Jacob is grown now and I have had ten years of joy watching him become an extraordinary man. I got exactly what I asked for.  A couple of nights ago, I found myself praying again.  I am profoundly grateful for the gift of these ten years but I want more time.  A lot more time.  I want to dance at Jacob's wedding.  I want to hold my grandchildren.  I want to revel in retirement.  I want to see Paris, Sydney and Tokyo.  I want to finish the book I've been working on in dribs and drabs for the past five years.  I want to grow old.

Every morning for these past ten years, I have awoken with gratitude.  Every morning I have started my day with whispered thanks for the time.  I am so lucky.  I am so thankful.  I am so blessed.

Justin

“A country can be great not in spite of its diversity, but because of its diversity. When people come together to create opportunities for one another, the dreams we hold in common will crowd out the fears that would divide us.” - Justin Trudeau

It is as if the country has had a collective case of amnesia and yesterday Canadians woke up and remembered who we are.  In a breathtaking wave of red, Justin Trudeau's Liberals ousted Stephen Harper's Conservatives. Gone are the days of the politics of hate and fear.  

For some of us, what has happened in our country these last years has been bewildering.  We are a nation of immigrants who shuttered our borders.  We are a mosaic of people, proud of our multiculturalism who became obsessed about what was on women's heads instead of what was in them.  We are a nation with a huge social conscience who cut services to our most marginalized people.  We are a nation of lakes and oceans, mountains and plains, trees and tundra, arguably the most beautiful land on Earth and we stopped protecting our environment.

Yesterday, the winds of change blew across our land and today we woke up to a kinder, gentler Canada.  The true north, strong and free.

Vertigo

"Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall." - Salman Rushdie

I've been sidelined by vertigo for the past few days, unable to sit up long enough to take advantage of the dying days of summer.  The mornings and evenings are cool but the afternoons are delicious.  Perfect weather for sitting outside and working on the new jewellery project I have taken on.  Alas, I have fallen behind on my self-imposed schedule.  The best laid plans of mice and men...

For my sixtieth birthday, I had planned to treat myself to a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. As I still wasn't able to wear heels by then, I postponed the purchase for a later time.  I decided the time was November when will be celebrating another personal milestone.  As predicted by my specialist, I am healing slowly, but surely and as I improve, my heel heights have been getting higher and higher.  One sleepless night a couple of weeks ago, after watching the late night news, I changed my mind.  I simply can't justify spending that kind of money on shoes when the bodies of babies are washing up on beaches after they've lost their lives fleeing their war torn homes in Syria.  So I've taken my shoe money and invested it in beads.  I'm making a new line of jewellery to sell for refugee relief.  I don't know how or where I'm going to sell it yet, but I will figure it out. 

I am taking special joy in making these pieces.  They are unlike the pieces I've made before.  No two pieces are the same.  I've been letting the beads speak to me and tell me what they want to become.  And yes, I know that sounds nutty. 

The view outside my bedroom window is changing.  This morning I noticed a kiss of scarlet on the maple tree.  Fall is such a glorious time in Canada.  I hope next year, I will have a chance to share the experience of the emergence of the autumn splendour with some new Syrian friends who will have found safety and warmth here.

Time to Step Up

"It was as if I never left the war."— Syrian refugee girl, describing Greek coastguards shooting at their refugee boat to Amnesty International 

The image of Alan Kurdi face down on a Turkish beach, haunts my dreams.  The deaths of this beautiful boy, his brother and mother have wounded me to my core.  How terrible must things have been for these people to pay smugglers to take them in a small boat from their war torn home in Syria to someplace else - anyplace else?  I don't want to imagine the terror, the horror, the heartbreak.  For the last few days, our media has been filled with news of refugees stuck in a train station in Hungary or worse of the bodies of refugees found crammed into abandoned trucks or washing up on distant shores.  Until Alan, we Canadians, somehow convinced ourselves it was a far away problem.

Here in the second largest country in the world, we haven't been able to find the space to take these refugees.  We haven't had the interest or the will. It is pathetic.  Our federal government committed last year to taking ten thousand Syrian refugees over the course of three years with priority given to those suffering religious persecution.  Ten thousand? Thats the best we can do?  Who cares what their religious backgrounds are?  Last I knew, bombs and guns and weapons don't discriminate.  They will kill you just as dead whether you are Muslim, Christian or Jew.  To date we've only taken 2,100 people.  Our rules are so rigid and our processes so onerous that the Alan Kurdi's of the world don't have a prayer of getting in.

We're in the middle of a too long, too vitriolic election campaign.  I noticed the Tories aren't commenting on Justin Trudeau's hair anymore. Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau are both speaking up about a plan for helping the Syrian refugees.  Mr. Harper has kept pretty quiet.  It is time for Canadian voters to demand more of our leaders.  If we make this crisis an election issue, maybe we will see action.  But we cannot leave it all up to our government.  

I implore everyone to find a way you can help.  Big or small, every gesture will make a difference.  Financial contributions will help.  So will practical help to resettle refugees in Canada.  And if you can't do either, a letter to your Member of Parliament demanding we do better and a vote for those who will would make a very good start.

 

 

 

 

 

Such Problems

“Through money or power you cannot solve all problems.  The problem in the human heart must be solved first.”  - Dalai Lama

I'm going through another one of those periods in my life when I am reluctant to pick up a newspaper or watch the news on television.  The world seems to be soaking in murder, mayhem, terrorism, natural disasters and vitriolic politics.  Never mind the news.  I can't even stand the political commercials that will consume our airspace until the federal election in October. 

Because there is so little to watch on TV and I can't stand the news, I often turn to mindless watching while I colour or craft.  I can pretty much repeat the dialogue of every episode of Murdoch Mysteries by heart.  When I'm really strapped for something to watch, I turn on Say Yes to the Dress.  It is pap but it doesn't require any effort on my part. I was thinking last night about how totally ridiculous many of the brides are.  Last night, a twenty-something woman sobbed unconsolably when she couldn't get the dress she really wanted because the $8,400 price tag was too high for her $5,000 budget. Really?  Such a first world problem.  I don't know that I have the heart to watch anymore.  Surely there has to be some middle ground between mayhem and self-absorbtion.

I'm extremely busy with work these days which is good. I'm still trying to get to my mom's every day.  I've finished my colouring book and bought some new beads.  I'm not feeling much like heavy reading. While I certainly won't wish the summer away as it is my favourite time of the year, I will be happy when the fall viewing season starts.  Until after the federal election though, I will be looking for a way to watch it commercial free.