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VIDEO – Story Stones 2 – Promise

February 25, 2020

https://youtu.be/wpa9FMz2CeI

TRANSCRIPTION of Story Stones 2 – PROMISE

I’m TinaO from TinaOLife and this is Story Stones, an hour of deep listening and learning together.

I am a storyteller, a listener, and a holder of spaces where we can connect with the Story of Us.

My work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the Christian Tradition.

Myth and story as the guide.

Mysticism as the path.

And the Christian Tradition as the living footsteps.

I’m an artist, a writer, a mom, a runner, and a poet. My faith is in the space between us, where two or more are gathered, my trust is in the Mystery and my practice is listening and communicating from there.

That’s me.

Okay… so what happens in this hour?

Every week we listen in to a word, and it is a listening. It’s not a telling. I’m not here to tell you anything. That’s not my job. The word becomes the invitation and the gateway which you can open with your softening, to hear in the way in which you hear, and be nourished, in the way you are nourished by your connection, and it’s the connection which is the practice we are building together.

And it’s your connection to an understanding of what you may call God, or the divine, or consciousness, or the universe, or the cosmos… I suggest the ‘name’ isn’t important, and the connection is. The name: God can be gateway IN for some, as an understanding of love and safety and home, and for others, a gateway OUT because alot of pain and suffering has happened in the name of God, and I don’t want to pretend that isn’t true.

And I invite you to remember that the name of God isn’t the same as an experience of God which is the divine Mystery. An experience with that mystery is the connection point where we feel met.

In this space I try to be inclusive by using language that is as broad as possible because I’m not attached to a name, I am anchoring this hour together to an experience of a God-connection. That is the pointy end of my ‘ship’ as it cuts us through the water.

And I invite you to use your ‘word’ for God, or to try on this acronym of GOD as the Good Ole I Dunno, or The Mystery if it feels safer for you, because faith doesn’t happen in what we know, it happens in what we don’t know and yet can feel rested within.

This is a weekly practice of our connection through the gateway of a word, or a story stone I choose through the readings of my week. That is all we do here.

This week the story stone is promise.

There is music:

This week it’s a piece by Antoine Bradford called promises, and a classic by John Denver. I have a story stones playlist on Spotify so you can find it later too.

There is a kid’s conversation and reading:

This week we’re taking a peek at an Inuktitut story, originally held in an oral history, or library, and now in a kid’s book by Michael Arvarrluk Kusugak and Robert Munsch called A Promise is a Promise.

There is a bible reading:

This week we’re listening into Matthew 5 – from The Message, pieces from the Sermon on the Mount.

There is a Buddhist perspective from Pema Chodron’s book: The Wisdom of No Escape.

And a beautiful poem by Sara Teasdale called: Since There is No Escape

All of this is crafted as an invitation and exploration of the word: promise.

So… shall we begin.

SOUP

Get comfortable, grab a glass of water or tea, or a bowl of soup, this soup happens to be: a blend of red pepper and tomato soup by Pacific Foods, to which I’ve added some spinach, some cumin and for the non-veggies out there, some sausage. Yummmm yummmm yummmm….

Let’s settle in.

I light this candle to remind us that no matter where we are, or what the story is inside our heads, or the story we are currently living, we are never alone. The mystery of our being and how we are held in this space and time, is always with us. We are loved.

INVITATION TO LISTEN:

Let the story of your morning go. It is not of this moment. Let the story of what you think this is going to be go… it is not of this moment. And let yourself be. Listen beyond the words in your head. Open up to listening to the space itself.

MUSIC

I invite you to listen to the words of Antoine Bradford: Promises on Spotify.

The story stone we are listening into today is the word: Promise.

What is a promise? Why do we promise things? What is the heaviness and the weightlessness of that word? What are we invited to experience within a promise?

Let’s start with something a little interesting: something kids might understand:

FOR THE KIDS

This comes from Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak with Robert Munsch

Kusugak is a celebrated storyteller and author who grew up in Repulse Bay, NWT which is now known as Nunavut. He grew up living a traditional Inuit lifestyle and is the author of twelve children’s books.

This book A Promise is a Promise is kind of a scary book, to me. It’s the story of a little girl who is warned not to go fishing between the cracks in the ice in the ocean because a creature Qallupilluit lives under the ice.

Do you think that’s true?

So why would that story be told? Let’s read a little?

You can listen to the whole recording of A Promise is a Promise by Robert Munsch and Michael Kusugak from a readers theatre performance of the story here:

This is one form of a promise. If you do this… I promise you this could happen… It’s a warning. Where does it come from?

My favourite scene in this story is the part where Allashua is tucked in bed with her parents and getting warmed up after falling in the ice and she says… I went to the cracks in the sea ice and her dad says: Ah, ah, not so smart. I called the Qallupilluit nasty names… and her dad says: “ah, ah, not so smart at all…’

There she is with frozen lips, crying and feeling pretty bad because a promise is a promise and she broke her promise: she did go to the ice on the ocean. She even challenged the promise her parents warned her about, called it names, and basically dared it to come out… doubting her parents. There she is, probably feeling really awful about what she’s done, and what do her parents do?

Take her to bed, make her some tea, hold her and say ‘ah, ah… yes, that wasn’t so smart was it?’. As you read on in the book, they don’t lecture her. They don’t blame her. They don’t cast her away or make her feel really bad – No… they help her, and there’s this great scene where the mom and the dad dance for Qualliliput, even invite them into their house and feed them…

Now it’s a myth, and as in all myths, there’s always all sides of a story. The ‘darker’ sides the ‘lighter’ sides, and everything in between, and this is a story just like that.

Life is never as simple as a one-sided promise.

This Inuit story of Qallupilluit is two-sided. It teaches us about the promise of being loved unconditionally, and the promise that there is danger out there. As the book says on the last page:

A Qallupilluq is an imaginary Inuit creature, somewhat like a troll, that lives in Hudson Bay. It wears a woman’s parka made of loon feathers and reportedly grabs children when they come too near cracks in the ice.

The Inuit traditionally spend a lot of time on the sea ice, so the Qallupilluit were clearly invented as a means to help keep small children away from dangerous crevices.

What promises make you feel like Allalusha or like her parents all tucked up in bed, safe and warm and protected together?

Here’s the thing about listening to a reading, or a story: in the words of mythologist Dr. Martin Shaw, who says: you can’t trap a story, you can only track the. I invite you to listen… to let the words of each reading wash over you and let what is speaking to you speak… no more, no less.

READING

Empty Promises

Matthew 5 33-37 “And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong”

Love Your Enemies

Matthew 5 43-47 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.48 “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

Pema Chodra’s: The Wisdom of No Escape
This next reading comes from Buddhist teacher, author, nun and mother, Pema Chodron, an American born Tibetan Buddhist and ordained nun who has written several dozen books and is a teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. This excerpt comes from her very first book: The Wisdom of No Escape.

“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.”

SERMON

Creator…. God…. Universe… Mystery… As I move forward into the story of PROMISE today, I thank you for complexity, for individuality, for the promise of acceptance, for the one-ness of us, and the place where we can all meet.

I acknowledge the story of us that was here before we got here and the story that of us that will be here long after we’re gone. May the words of my mouth hold your mystery well and be in service to the unfolding of the story of you in us.

The reading from Matthew comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Even if you’ve never read the bible, you’ve heard about the sermon on the mount. Okay… so it’s probably a pretty big deal?

Why?

Within the Sermon on the Mount, at the very beginning we hear the Beautitudes. Ahhh I just love that word: Beautitudes. Lots of oooooh sounds in it. And sounds matter. Just as the Om sound is considered one of the oldest vocal sounds in existence and is considered to be the original, primordial sound, or a mantra of creation. In some sacred circles, the oooh or HU sound said to lead one to transcendence—to God realization and enlightenment.

Last week we listened into the words bless or blessed and blessing which came from the beautitudes. This week we go further into the Sermon on the Mount to listen as Jesus completely changes the rules of morality as they were once known.

He takes on the commandments and humanizes them. He digs under the narratives we have put on top of them, and instead says: listen ‘When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.’, he says: ‘You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.’ And then he says, after challenging us to love our enemies, and reminding us that God (creator, source, universe) gives the sun to warm and the rain to nourish everyone, regardless: if good/bad, nice/nasy; to Grow up. Jesus says: You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.

He takes the promise of fear which happens when we’re commanded to do something, because what usually happens after a commandment… The Or Else statement.

Do this or else…

Going back to Allashua in A Promise is A Promise “Don’t fish through the cracks in the ocean… or else Qallupilluit will get you”.

Jesus takes away the fear from the commandments and instead simply says: Grow Up. You are kingdom subjects. You do not need fear or consequences to motivate you, simply live as the God-created identity you are.

The sermon on the mount challenges the usual ‘or else’ promise and offers us a new one: ‘you are loved’, just like Allashua’s parents when they’re all tucked in bed together.

The hardest line for me in this Matthew reading is: When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

How many times have you had the experience of having your ‘words twisted around’, or maybe even had your ‘words used against you’, or worse had an experience where you sat in silence where only ‘part of the story’ was being told.

Yuck right?

Okay, so I get it.

And there are times when this happens by mistake, where the person recounting the story simply misunderstood the situation, or had their own version of events which was true for them, just not true for you. That’s the easy peasy application of this piece of scripture, especially where Jesus tells us to ‘love our enemies’. Well that’s easy if we just assume they were having a different experience, and so we’ll just give them some grace and be done with it. But that’s not what I hear in this scripture. I hear the last line: GROW UP. Live the way God lives towards you.

Live the way nature lives towards you.

All of these examples feel like and ick.

So let’s take the hierarchical structure out of the God statement and see what happens.

Live the way consciousness lives towards you.

Live the way love lives towards you.

Does nature manipulate?

Does consciousness manipulate?

Does the energetic frequency of love manipulate?

No.

We do.

Because we get freaked out. We get hurt. We get angry. We get protective. We get defensive. We get offensive. We get tactical. We go unconscious with our pain and we manipulate.

There is no faith in manipulation.

There is no faith in control.

The only true control is faith.

For some of us it’s what we talked about last week when I offered: laying it down. For others it looks like co-creation, and group vs. individual connection or consciousness, still others, faith is a complete surrender or submission.

None of these are wrong, or more right than the others, because the one thing they all have in common is acting on the promise of the action of faith.

And yet most of us are Allashua, standing on the shore, ‘testing the waters’. She throws insults out to the mystical Qallupilluit to see if it comes, and when it doesn’t, she thinks, ahhhh… see…my parents’ promise was wrong.

Their ‘or else’ was wrong.

And don’t we do that all the time? Oh we human beings. We are wired for short cuts aren’t we?

Maybe I don’t have to get 8 hours of sleep.

Maybe they’re wrong and I can eat that processed… whatever.

We even head out there sometimes and search for new promises so that we can have what we want.

You know, like those stories of “My aunt Vera lived to be 102 and she smoked and drank for her whole life…”

We start living by the promises we acquire so we can have what we want.

Those kinds of promises usually sound like: ‘yeah… but that doesn’t apply to me because…’

It’s a slippery slope.

In Matthew, we are challenged, we are called, we are seen and told to grow up. Oh mannnn easier said than done.

The only promise I know for sure for sure, so it’s truly a promise I can count on is:

We are born – LIFE
We die – DEATH

So this third promise in this promise triangle that we keep hearing about, and yet testing consistently is the promise of LOVE.

That’s the third side of the promise triangle.

The promise that we are loved.

The promise of who we feel when we live from love.

The promise of the abundance of love.

And yet… you can’t prove it.

You can’t measure it.

You can’t count on it happening.

Unless you remember it, and build a life practice around it.

And for this, I bring us back to Pema Chodra’s offering of: What if there is no escape? What if the only thing we know is that we live and we die. What then?

Her story talks about the tigers above and the tigers below, and clinging to a vine which a mouse is gnawing at. She is going down. And yet she looks over and sees a beautiful bunch of strawberries. Then just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. She suggests: this might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.

There IS no escape.

When we grab the strawberries, not as a way to hide from the tigers, or bargain with them, or control them, or pretend they aren’t there, but simply to enjoy a strawberry… that is also as true as the tigers – we are in the moment, and in that moment, we are the parents cuddled up around Allashua saying: “yes… I see the tigers, and yes, I am here with you”.

There is no escape.

There is DEATH.

There is LIFE.

And there is LOVE.

I recently had a pretty nasty experience where I felt very insignificant, crushed even.

There were tigers above and tigers below and the only way I could find the strawberries was the whisper to myself:

I love you

And this is the practice I offer you.

Simply find a place in your day that is super insignificant, and something you do all the time, like pee… yep… pee… why? Because you do it at least 3x a day, and probably 6-8x per day.

Here’s the radical invitation:

Every time you pee, as you’re washing your hand, I want you to look in the mirror and say to yourself: I love you, I love you, I love you.

That’s it.

And I know it sounds weird… but that moment I had a few weeks ago where I literally felt like I was nothing… I went to the bathroom, and without even thinking about it, I said to myself: I love you, I love you, I love you. And in that moment, I came back into my body, and I found the strength I needed to take the next step.

There are three parts to the promise triangle.

I promise you are alive.

I promise you will die.

I promise you can love you.

I want to promise that you are loved by the mystery, by God, by the Good Ole I Dunno… and I will, but in the moments where you are drifting, one of the ways you can come back is by reminding yourself of the love you have within you.

And you do.

From there, the Good Ole I Dunno connection happens.

You stay soft.

Your heart is soft.

Your thoughts are soft.

You are the child in the adult in the wisdom.

You are growing up.

So let’s talk about the third point of the Promise Triangle, and for that, let’s listen to Sara Teasdale: an American lyric poet with a confessional style of writing. She died in 1933 and most of her work deals with love and death and the spiritual beauty of the natural world.

This is Sara Teasdale’s poem: Since there is no Escape

Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.

What do you hear?

“Life is my lover… there is no way to baffle death”

And there isn’t.

We are promised this one life, on this human plane.

We are promised this one death, on this human plane of existence.

Is there more than what we see here?

Maybe. Probably.

But the only promise we’ve been given is right now, in this place, by this ocean, on this earth, under this sky, with these people.

This is the only promise we’ve been given to do with how we will.

We can be motivated by fear and the ‘or else’ statements.

We can be motivated by love and the promise of unconditional love.

We can be motivated by no escape and the invitation of the strawberries.

What I know for sure for sure, is the promise of this one beautiful lifetime and the love we all have access to, always and forever.

A love we can feed to ourselves:

as nourishment instead of dessert,

as gentleness instead of armour,

as faith instead of proof…

Then a promise really is a promise, and we can be Allashua, and always come in from the cold where we are loved, held and cared for.

And may it be so.

I will close on a song that always reminds me of my mom, who wore Chantilly perfume and one day after our mom had passed, as I was listening to this song with my sister Edna, she looked at me and said… Do you smell that? It smells like mom.

Love knows no time, no plane of existence, no boundaries. Love is the promise.

The song was:

Sunshine on my shoulders
looks so lovely
Sunshine in my eyes
can make me cry
Sunshine on the water
looks so lovely
Sunshine
Almost all the time
Makes me high….

MUSIC

I invite you to listen to the words of John Denver: Sunshine on my Shoulders by John Denver on Spotify.

BENEDICTION…

You are loved by the mystery.

You are held by the mystery.

And you are known by the mystery.

Listen

Let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.….

See you next Sunday at 2pm…

This is TinaO’s Ministry of Story. She is a sacred-listener in a divisive time, cultivating safe containers for real change-based connecting and conversation. She is a Storyteller rooted in Myth, Mysticism and the Christian Tradition. To Tina, communication is a spiritual practice of listening and following the living story of us.

Her faith is in the space between us, where two or more are gathered, her trust is in the Mystery and her practice is listening and communicating from there.

If you would like to receive her weekly Story Stones Sessions in your inbox, click here to have it sent to you.

That Money Thang #1 – Enough is Enough

August 16, 2016

Enough is Enough I said.

So this is where it all begins, or continues. I don’t know anymore. Oh mannnn my relationship with money is like a best selling romance novel – there’s hot and steamy sexy bits with page upon page of anticipation only to be dashed into sleepless nights and heartbreak in the end. It seems drama has kept me coming back for more every single time. How like a twenty-something I am, except I’m 45.

It’s not like I was raised with victim-ish helplessness around paying the bills. There was no yelling or tears or even deathly silence over our dinner table, but rather the clear unavoidable acceptance of just goin’ with the flow, accepting that what we have is all we need and bloody hell, we’ll survive just fine thanks. It’s those debilitating don’t ask don’t tell claws that have messed with my financial psyche. In our house both awesomely good and stupidly nasty surprises like: layoffs, dying cars, bad gambles and winning the legion meat draw happened, so our rag tag bunch of mis-matched sibling (eleven of us, some kids, some not), all pretty much learned not to invest in anything too deeply. Listen, our sandcastle got built up and kicked down daily in an exploding second. What’s to invest in? Why bother? It’s going to be all good right? It all finds its way? It all works out in the end…? Right?

Maybe.

So today, at 45yrs old, after growing up blue-collar broke, then saddled with theatre school student loan debt in my twenties, claiming bankruptcy after a failed marriage in my pre-thirties, making ‘gangsta’ big cash in my forties in the network marketing industry and now starting all over again after a career change, cancer and just plain craziness, it’s time to take on my money story. I think it’s probably a good idea to get that handled before I’m a half century old.

It’s time to step into my story as the main character instead of watching it unfold like a jaded audience member. Now there’s a frickin’ journey I have wished would just happen without me needing to be involved. Wouldn’t that be nice? Mmmmm imagine if financial freedom was as simple as picking a box full of donuts.

Apparently it doesn’t work like that.

So, here’s where it begins.

Champagne was needed.

If this speaks to you, follow along. I’ll be introducing you to my four financial avengers and support team in the weeks to come. They’ll be lifting my confused head out of my own ahemmmmm… you know what, for the next while.

They’re really cool. I think I’m going to buy them each an avenger cape with all the money I save over the next year. I’m sure they won’t let me be so frivolous.

You see, I have a big hairy audacious goal.

I want to buy a house in the Lower Mainland in the next two years. We have no savings, lots of debt, and a double income that adds up to just a single one – currently, but it looks like I’m going to change that. Remember that gangsta money I earned once before? Well, if I can do it once, I can do it again.

I think I just had to GIVE UP first. Clearly what I was doing wasn’t sustainable, and broken dreams cost more than unrealized ones.

So here’s to financial freedom. To what it really means, and not the lip service everyone seems to give it. I’ll write more about that later.

Come with…They say financial empowerment feels pretty good. I’m up for that.

xxT

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and with her Tall Poppy Living for Network Marketers Coaching Program, she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Religion or Ritual?

March 29, 2016

Let’s just open this right up by letting y’all know that I self-identify as a Christian. I’ll also let you know that I truly have no idea what that means, other than I’m a Canadian white girl (like as white bread as they come: German, English, Irish and Scottish) who grew up in a neighbourhood with five churches within a ten block radius and from 9-14yrs old I went to the United Church, and loved it, therefore, I think that makes me a Christian-yes?

Almost 30 years later, although married to a self-identifying atheist, I decided to go back again, taking up a seat in the back at our neighbourhood’s Little Red Church. On my way home from my first visit, I cried and cried and cried big wet tears as I rode my bike down the trail to my driveway. No words. No understanding. No story, just gratitude for a place to rest.

Was that religion?

My parents didn’t go to church, my brothers didn’t pray, and most of my friends were the children of first or second generation immigrant families. Every now and then we could catch a glimpse into each other’s family’s wildly different and colourful customs and practices. We were a gaggle of Italian, Filipino and Chinese Roman Catholic, East Indian Hindu with some Sikh, East African Muslim and all of that peppered with a few tried-and-true good-ole-white-bread-Christians. We were like a religious omelette of Vancouver leftovers.

Yet here’s the thing: None of us were confused. None of us were outraged. None of us needed to change each other. In fact, most of us were wildly curious about the customs of our friends. We saw Mendhi for the first time, touched a rosary, received a red envelope, breathed in incense, smelled curry and drank real chai… these are the gifts of a multi-cultural childhood and teenage life. None of us assumed we were ‘right’ about our beliefs (let’s be honest, we didn’t even know what we believed in or why yet). None of us challenged each other’s life-practices. None of us understood faith, we simply lived, and we enjoyed the wonder of it all.

I think I was 9 years old when I decided to go to church with my new bestie who lived across the street. We were the same age, born on the same day, and we both LOVED to sing. Cheryl’s family went to church every Sunday, so one day, I decided to join them, and I loved it. My favourite part was singing in the choir (of course) and having hot tea with milk and sugar after service (sugar cubes are so fancy). I became part of a community who smiled more often than they frowned and I loved that.

I can still hear the comforting sound of my one precious little 25 cent piece drop and hit the felt bottomed collection plate as it was passed around.

And then there was Easter Sunday. The truth is, I had no idea what on earth we were doing, what the story was about, and why on this particular day women wore hats and men wore suits. What I did know is that once upon a time a long long long long long time ago, there was this guy who had been nailed to a cross to die because he said crazy things that scared people. Then he was laid to rest, only to miraculously go MIA after his massive stone was rolled away. Some lookieloos wanted to check in on him you know.

Who rolled the stone? Was that the Easter Bunny? Is that how the rabbit thing ties in?

But wait then this guy named Jesus shows up again neither as a ghost nor man yet he can speak with his friends. How does that work? But Wow… I mean… wow… That’s a super awesome story. I remember thinking: ‘Do my Italian, Filipino, East Indian, Chinese and African friends know about this?’. But you know how it is, it just never came up in conversation.

So what of this Easter Bunny?

Seems kinda nuts doesn’t it? And I’m not slagging it, or religion either.

But what of it?

and why for it?

I mean a dead guy lives?

a bunny poops eggs?

What? Yup. That’s right. A guy in a robe died so we shall live, and a bunny brings us chocolate eggs. And Yes, we believe in them both.

Why?

Because it’s not about religion, it’s about ritual.

It’s not about believing, it’s about loving.

It’s not about Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, Krishna, Muhammad, Yahweh, Jehovah, Elohim, Allah, Shakti, Zeus, Eostra, the Universe, Source… or anyone else, it’s about belonging.

It’s not about the Easter Bunny, it’s celebration.

What if we didn’t have to choose? What if it wasn’t about some but rather all? Here’s what I think:

We don’t have to choose between God or the Easter Bunny, fact or fiction, belief or ignorance, we can choose the power of ritual, of connection, of meaning instead.

Even typing those words makes me want to groan. Connection… blechhhh it sounds so new-agey and trite doesn’t it? I know, let’s all chomp off some chocolate bunny ears, feet and heads and then hold hands ’cause we’re all ‘c o n n e c t e d’ -k?

As if.

Yet, there I was this past weekend with my family, doing what we do, and fifteen years into a familydom, Easter like most holidays now runs like clockwork: Bunny shows up around 5:30am, hides the eggs before the house wakes, leaves funny limerick riddles leading the boys to their appropriately sugar stacked chocolate baskets, followed by mama cleaning up with a quick wipe of the bathrooms, then a fast sweep/vacuum/dust, switch gears to placing the mighty lemon themed desserts into the oven, pull out the china, set the table, pour my first glass of wine and…wait until the family arrives.

And then we catch up. We talk about the state of the world (and with the upcoming election in the USA – there’s been a lot to talk about), we cook and then we eat.

Every Easter in our house we start dinner with the great egg smash and if you ask any of the kids at the table what their favourite part of Easter is, I gonna bet they’d say The Smash even before they’d say chocolate. Why? Because it’s fun, it’s silly and it’s a ritual. Everyone counts on it happening every year.

My dad who is not my father nor my daddy but is my dad, is American (long story which I won’t explain today) and he often works during these kinds of holidays but when he’s not he brings his American-ism to the table offering a very traditional grace, blessing our food, each other and thanking God for the bounty before us. It’s a lovely practice for each of us as we all bow our head out of respect following our intrinsic Canadian politeness of doing the right thing, and saying grace out of love for me because I’m the one who usually asks.

This year papa was working so there was no ‘grace’ (I suck at that kinda stuff because it’s not authentic for me yet not false either – confusion leads me no where) so as a result, while the ritual of the egg smash did take place, the deeper meaning of the day never really took hold, well, for me anyway.

Not that religion = depth and smashing eggs = superficial (I suppose you could argue that), but rather our chosen go-to-family-activity didn’t invite us to ‘be’ together: to see and be seen by one another. Too much touchy feely stuff I guess.

I tried.

I always think about Todd’s mom on Easter. I’m not sure why. She passed away in the month of February so that’s not it, but man oh man that lady LOVED FOOD and any CELEBRATION around it, and on this particular Easter I missed her. I raised my glass and toasted the moms in our life, the grandmas, the mommy’s, the mamas and hands that hold us. It was an invitation to start a deeper sense of story before we all chowed down, but it just didn’t take. Sometimes it’s just what the day wants.

I missed it. It felt like I ate cake for dinner instead of meal.

I said to Todd as we were debriefing the day later that night:

I don’t think I know what Easter is all about for me. I mean I get Christmas. Even the biblical story of the baby Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Wise Men and the Star of Bethlehem touches on the same themes that Hallmark and marketing does: joy, togetherness, celebration, light, and possibility. Thanksgiving is similarly tied (albeit not a religious holiday), our ritual of feasting and gratitude is rooted in the story of the pilgrims and Indians gathering together. The Indian people taught the pilgrims how to grow corn and to fish, and so the pilgrims honoured them with a feast to show their gratitude. But what of Easter? What is the modern day, accessible story of Easter that has roots that we can all understand?

Surely it’s not chocolate, egg smashing and hunting.

Surely there’s more.

I go back to my roots of religion to find my own answer. I turn to the power of story, to meaning, to symbols, to make sense of it all. I said to Todd as we were laying there and I was clearly wrestling with my own disappointment that this Easter we as a family just didn’t ‘get there’, nor was it particularly desired this time. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t seem to invite a deeper meaning to the table, because frankly, I didn’t know what exactly it was that was important to me. I said to him:

This resurrection story thingy is not about a dead guy dying for our sins and it’s not about a bunny pooping eggs either. While both of those interpretations are ‘true’, those stories both honour birth and rebirth. Maybe it’s the story of Spring, of overcoming the deadness of winter and inviting the newness to live again. Are we celebrating life as we acknowledge and honour the reality of death?

Hmmm… that feels honest. That feels inclusive.

So if Christmas = Joy

and Thanksgiving = Gratitude

then Easter can = Growth

Right?

Here’s how the Easter table could’ve gone this year had I figured this out before Sunday:

Tina (Mama of the table): Happy Easter everyone. Today is a day of honouring our growth, acknowledging what we’ve overcome and celebrating what we’re stepping in to. If anyone has anything they’d like to acknowledge, I invite you to do that here. I’ll start:

Me: This is has been a very complex year as Todd and I find each other again, as I heal my body post cancer treatment, as the big boys get step into teenager life, and I decide that I am indeed a writer. I’d like to acknowledge my own courage and patience this year because I’m not someone who walks slowly and methodically and mindfully forward, yet today I am.

Cedar (6 yrs old): Ummmm…. I’d just like to say, I like the sunshine. I like the chocolate. And I fought with Angus about the playstation, but we like each other now.

Connolly (14 yrs old): Yeah, well, ahhh… Just wanna say I scored a hat trick last night and I’ve been working hard at ahhh showing up more on the ice. I doing better with Math too, and ahhh yes, I want to win the Egg Smash. Thanks.

Angus: (12 yrs old): I’m good. I’m good mom. I don’t have anything to say. Yeah. I’m good.

Todd (my husband, and daddy to the boys): I just want to say how proud I am of our family and all we’ve done together this past year. To my wife who is stronger today than yesterday and to all of you, we’re so glad you’re all here. Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet, so let’s raise a glass to tomorrow because we can.

Annnnnd on to the EGG SMASH! May the best egg win!

I strive to have my table be a place where everyone is welcome. I really do search for language that includes, rituals that invite and practices that welcome widely. I still go to my Little Red Church when I can. Mostly in the summer as the long hockey season really trips that up, and funny, just like the house I grew up in, I live in a home where I’m likely the only believer. And that’s okay because we’re all speaking the same language, just not the living the same stories and rituals.

Sir William friends — Some of my elementary school friends

When I think back to my circle of childhood and teenage friends, many of whom are still an active part of my 45 year old life, I remember that to us, we weren’t ‘multi-cultural’, we were a gaggle of sneaker wearing, ripped jean sporting and song singing kids. That’s it, that’s all. We created our own community not because we knew the rules or the symbols, we just did it because it felt good.

The rules and absolutes that can be found in religion often divide us, but the rituals we inhabit from their stories are what unite us.

There’s room for both.

Happy Easter – be that the story of resurrection, wabbit ears or something entirely different.

xxT

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and in her Tall Poppy Living for Network Marketers Coaching Program, she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

No pic no time no want

March 15, 2016

Oh boy. These are not the days I usually write about. You know the ones… You have them too. You go to work and pretend to be doing stuff, pushing paper around, clicking pens, opening and closing drawers and going to the bathroom more times than your bladder requires you to. Or maybe you’re at home wandering around, loading the dishwasher, or thinking about it anyway, heating and reheating the same disgusting cup of coffee, pressing START on the microwave again… Perhaps you’re actually up and at it as I am. Yes I had a shower, well actually I drew myself a hot bath with unwind salts and bubbles, after I grabbed my latest Robin Sharma find from my local 2nd hand store and succumbed for a few minutes into the hot water and my nastily drab and dark mood. I gave over. I said:

‘okay bad mood, you’ve moved in today so I may as well hang out with you awhile’.

I’m dressed. I even put on tights and a tunic. I threw an old pair of heels into my purse (so old so so so old is it possible I’ve had them since 1995?) so I can head out to Vancouver Fashion Week later on after my son’s hockey game.

But do I want to be here? Hell no.
Do I want to be productive? Are you freakin’ kidding me?
Do I care if my family eats dinner tonight? Nope. Not a bit.

I’m having as Alexander would say ‘a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’. Yes I am, and I’m not even in Australia. (That’s not an Aussie slam, it’s a line from the book).

Why pretend? It’s just a crap day. The weather doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing. My youngest is getting yet another cold, my eldest is having a teenage temper tantrum about not getting the iphone6 (are you freaking kidding me? Get your head outta your…), and my middle child – well, he’s on the bench as the back up goalie today and I’m…

waiting.

I’m waiting.

For my mood to change, for the sun to come out, for tomorrow to come and rattle my boots and shake my teeth and pitch my resistant soul into the sky like a hot air balloon.

It’s a ‘nothing to say here’ kinda post except to remind me and you and everyone else the universal truth of being ALIVE that – ‘mama said there’d be days like this’.

So suck it up princess and be grateful you have a frickin’ voice in your body to connect to the world with.

Ah yes. See? I feel ever so lightly a bit better already. Thanks for listening. Truth is, for most of us, that’s all it takes to begin to believe that the next moment in front of us is worth opening our hearts for.

Self-indulgent sigh

Self-love sigh

The sound is the same isn’t it?

Xxt

What’s your Relationship Story?

February 11, 2016

If you’ve been following along on our Hump Day Wednesdays with Tara Caffelle, Where Relationships Get Real, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I get the conversation started with questions that I’m personally seeking answers to. We’ve looked at: Why is intimacy so important? , What’s the deal with Nookie November? , and What is a Super Couple? So today, it seems only fitting on Love Week… ahem, on the hump of Valentines Day that we get up close and personal with the relationship lady herself. Here’s my question for Tara:

Okay Tara… this is the tell all question. Most of us fall into a passion profession because we’ve been lead there by our own experiences. Come on now… bare all. What’s your ‘relationship’ or ‘intimacy’ story???

Tara: Oh yes. My own experience led me deep into this work—you’ve got me there. I have always, always been interested in relationships. When I was growing up, I’d watch the adults around me and listen quietly as my Mum discussed life events with my aunts and her friends. I probably learned more than I should have, but even then I can remember being able to figure people out. In my twenties, I remember annoying a date when I fell asleep during the epic battle scenes from Lord of the Rings. What can I say? The battles didn’t involve conversation. There wasn’t anything relationshippy for me to entertain myself with. Jeeez.

There’s been one relationship in my life that, even though it has shifted and actually ended, has informed almost every piece of my work and how I hold my clients.

I met my (former) husband when I was 21 at what was the very beginning of what we now know as online dating. (Writing that makes me feel like such a dinosaur! Next I’ll tell you how I had to walk uphill both ways to school in the winter with bearskin shoes!). In any case, we met and fell in love and lived quite happily together for about 14 years.

In 2010 we split up very amicably, even sharing custody of our basset hound. As it happened, at the tail end of our relationship, after YEARS of floundering in various careers and never feeling completely fulfilled, I had (finally) found what I felt I was called to do… That was coaching.

As we navigated separating after such a long time together, we carefully designed how we wanted to be.

In coaching, we say that we “design our alliance,” which means the coach and client decide how it’s going to be when they’re together. We talk about what feels respectful, and what will be the most effective, and we form a team that will help the client reach their outcomes. When my husband and I decided to part ways, I brought a lot of coaching-esque stuff into our conversations: I expressed that I wanted to land in a friendship at some point, and that I didn’t blame him for what was happening. We continually asked for what we needed (space, patience, silence, etc) and were able to transition through a whole lot of grieving into a space where we held on to our friendship.

As we navigated separating after such a long time together, we carefully designed how we wanted to be.

Our friendship, after all, had always been a great part of our life together.

That process showed me, first-hand, how relationships can be, even as they end and especially as they end. Until then, I’d been working primarily as a life coach with individuals (and I still do), but I began to work more specifically with relationships, recognizing that we have them with everyone in our lives (from the barista who gets us our coffee in the morning to the person we land in bed with at the end of the day). I realized they could all be designed and customized to fit the people in them.

This led me to working as a doula, supporting parents who were about to welcome new babies into the world. As I met with those couples, I noticed I was always asking the same questions:

What are you doing for your relationship before this little person arrives?

Have you considered that you will never again be “just a couple” and will forevermore be a “family”?

These conversations were incredibly satisfying; I loved knowing I was having an impact on how the world would greet and care for those sweet little muffins.

From there, I became an educator for The Gottman Institute; I guide couples through both The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and the Bringing Baby Home programs, and I fold this work into all that I know about sex, communication, relationships, leadership and designing a union that works and lasts.

But along the way I realized I also had some work to do on myself. It would take courage, openness and tremendous strength.

While my ex-husband and I made an excellent Team together (IKEA assembly skills: MASTER) and were the very best of friends, there was a layer of intimacy that was missing between us that I see more clearly now that I am out of it. I know now that there was a fundamental “holding back” between us.

In 2008, before we separated, we went through a bit of a relationship crisis and realized the outcome was uncertain. We actually had a successful open relationship for the last few years of our marriage, and within that there was experimentation, both together and apart. I was introduced to the world of consensual non-monogamy, which has given me an open-minded acceptance that I bring to my work (many of my clients come from non-monogamous relationships and seek support in making them work).

Since our separation in 2010 (and at the time of writing this in February of 2016) I have essentially been mostly single and in a constant journey of growth and exploration . I have learned the difference between physical intimacy (I used to readily hand over my body and think I was allowing someone to get close to me) and emotional intimacy—the In-to-me-see intimacy.

But along the way I realized I also had some work to do on myself. It would take courage, openness and tremendous strength.

The former is no longer satisfying to me, and although the latter challenges me every day to bare my inner layers, I challenge myself to do it because I know it is ultimately a more satisfying way to live.

I no longer tolerate small talk about the weather; I seek Big Conversations that leave my soul touched and my mind fuller.

In late 2014, my beloved ex-husband began to struggle with his mental health quite seriously. In May of 2015, he took his own life.

As someone who knew him for half of my life and loved him as a partner and a friend, it was both an honour and tremendously stressful to support him during the last six months of his life. I speak openly about it so that the stigma around mental health can be brought into the open.

There is not a single moment that he is not with me as I do my work in the world. His life and his death have helped me to zero-in on what is really important: our relationships, our connections, the way our children see us communicating and relating to each other, and the safe place to land that we all deserve.

So yes, Tina, to answer your question: my work comes from the very core of who I am and what I believe to be true in this world. I am humbled by the growth and transformation I get to see in each and every client session.

Get real like sexy real, Tara

Tara Caffelle is a Relationship and Communication coach. She is passionate about creating connected, almost-uncomfortable-to-watch relationships that are based in Sexy Communication and Big Lives worth rolling around in.

Tara is based in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver and offers custom-designed coaching programs. To claim your free 90+ minutes and see what might be possible for your own super coupledom (or persondom), find a time here.

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.