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I am not usually an early morning person, enticing as the slanting sunlight of a fresh day may look.  The problem is, I am too prone to staying up late, getting things done that there never seems to be enough time for. I squeeze those late hours — and then have to sleep in the morning, though I often wake briefly and eyeball the weather, before covering my eyes with a sleep mask and drifting off again.

But last Thursday was different –I had gone to bed early, for me, so I could get up betimes and go join a demonstration downtown, against the privatization of public services and raising of univeristy tuition fees in Quebec, sponsored by a coalition that includes the food depot where I volunteer.  I had been thinking in particular about the problems I recently learned of in relation to Quebec Hydro [check out the excellent documentary “Seeking the Current” about irrelevant hydro dams in the 21st century, at http://www.seekingthecurrent.com/film/ --as they say, if you pay an electricity bill, this is a must-see!].  This no longer social-democratic, but increasingly capitalist company will be charging the public more and more for its hydroelectric power over the next few years in order to pay for their Romaine River project.  Unfortunately, times have changed since the days of building the Churchill Falls Dam, and this project is way more costly — both in terms of dollars and damage to the environment — to build than helping the province to develop many alternatives sources of energy and most especially, to reduce hydro consumption with green building practices.

Having seen this beautiful and disturbing film, I wanted to speak out, and that’s why I managed to get myself down to the metro station at 8:30 am to meet my fellow demonstators and show up at Montreal’s World Trade Centre.  It turns out that not only could I not find my colleagues at the agreed meeting place, but that the actual protest was going on almost entirely in French, which I really don’t speak [that’s a different subject, for another day -- suffice to say I wish I did!].  So after staying long enough to survey all the groups who were represented, long enough for my body to be counted amont the hundreds who turned out, and after enjoying the drum performance going on, I decided to walk up to Sherbrooke and take a bus home again.  Ironically, I would arrive back around the time I was usually just making my first cup of tea!

En route, unfortunately, I broke a law I barely knew existed –I saw a bus coming and hurried to cross an at-that-point-empty street without the correct pedestrian light. I made it to the bus, only to have a police officer tap me on the shoulder, ask for my ID, and rudely demand, in poor English, that I folllow him.  I complied; we ended up at his cruiser where he had me stand, made no attempt to explain what he was doing, and proceeded to issue me a ticket, to my dismay.  In truth, I did go against the light, but as a walker and biker, I often do so — carefully — and I feel chastened by getting the fine; it probably will help me remember to respect the traffic signals more of the time.

The real issue, however, seems more related to the demonstration just a few blocks south than to traffic safety.  Remember, that police officer was not a polite one, and it seemed to me he was almost looking for someone to provoke him into being the heavy law-enforcer.  I don’t know if there were extra police in that area because of the protestors, but I did learn that later on the police pepper-sprayed participants and arrested four people for blocking access to buildings around Square Victoria.  My past experience with political demonstrations did make me wonder, once again, how we have ”evolved” to be a society where human beings in uniforms — often excessively defended ones — are so callous about the real needs of other humans.  And there’s the larger question of how DO we make our voices heard, how do we speak up for the Romanine River system, or for poor people who need better housing, when the big trucks — or guns — roll in?  I am glad I saw the film, glad I made a sign for marchers to carry, and glad I went to demonstrate for a more just world, even if it cost me $37.50 that morning!

You know, one good documentary perhaps attracts another, so I also want to mention an additional must see. “Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?” is a beautiful yet alarming film exploring the relationship between monocrops, pesticides, agribusiness and the growing incidence of “Colony Collapse Disorder” and the global bee crisis.  I saw it the evening afte getting the ticket, and the upshot of my day’s political activities/consciousness raising is a new resolve.  For months now I have been saying to myself and others that I must write to my MP about this or that concern, but I haven’t done it, and now I am determined to do so.  It’s a small gesture, but a place to start.  Stay tuned — I think I will stay up tonight til I have written the first of the series!  There’s a lot on my mind, and a lot we need to do.  I feel ready, feel a kinship with bees and white water rivers driving me forward.

Canadian Thanksgiving was back in October, on the second Monday of the month, when the weather was very warm and sunny, not snowy and blustery as today in Montreal.  Still, I happen to be in thankful mode today, for reasons I will explain below, and I am thinking of many friends and family members in the USA, preparing to celebrate the 4th Thursday of November tomorrow.

I am currently in a little “deep listening” group at the church where I work, and our assignment this week, as it happens, was to read and reflect on “gratitude,” and I’m excited to have crafted TWO poems on that topic.  Here’s one of them, which I am so glad to have had time and space to create!

GRATITUDE

What am I grateful for, you ask?  To begin,

for the match that lit the candle (such a light task) here

beside my desk.  Then, for the entire box of wooden

red heads, made by modern machines these days, but

descended down through ages from our ancestors’ flints,

striking stone upon stone, catching the tender sparks,

the tiny flame to create fire, to bring heat, cook meat,

dry the damp tinder, ward off the winter’s snow and ice,

illuminate the dark night’s unknowns.  For all brightness.

Centuries of building hearths, collecting fuel,

conserving embers, all concentrate in this slim stick,

with its chemical crown, which I hold and strike so quickly

across the sandy paper panel provided to meet its match.

The captive, coloured end ignites almost effortlessly,

so I may see to write here that I simply give thanks

for this common, quick-spent, wand of pale wood,

and for these words that would make poetry.

One of the joys of living in Montreal is that there is a direct , cheap train to New York, and the journey between the two cities is –yes, slow, but– incredibly beautiful!  I first experienced it as I traveled north along the icebound Hudson, one January morning, and rejoiced in writing this haiku:

Train’s journey northward:
winter shoreline, cliffs, ice floes,
wind rough river, light!

Next I took the train when I was in a mental, emotional and spiritual turmoil, traveling to see my likely-dying sister, in early June.  The trees along Lake Champlain were still in that wonderful new-green stage, and the occasional upclose view of huge glacial rock faces, or far off blue mountains was enticing.  When I finally arrived at my sister’s bedside I was so thankful for those calming hours of looking out the window, writing some, reading some, napping, eating, walking . . . I had not known how much I needed that buffer between my regular life and Anne’s hospice situation at my nephew’s home.

Now, during early November’s last warm days, I have made a short round trip on this same route.  I’m wise now about sitting on the left side of the train car for both directions:  lake view southbound til dark; river view on the morning return trip, and then wetlands beside the lake til sunset coming back north.  Once again, I had an abundance of time, and found myself writing a bigger poem, about that phenomenon you surely have pondered, the way birds seem to know to space themselves in relation to one another.  So, recalling how my heart both soared and settled with the birds as I traveled, I offer you this to savour as slowly as the train click-clacked on:

Here are my queries, sent out to the landscape I scan:
How is it that pigeons in a flock will fly in parallel formation?
I’m pondering these questions…. Many starlings perched in line:
how have they all come to stillness, facing the same direction?

What of Canada geese, yes, their migration Vs understood,
but what about them bobbing on the bay in the early morning,
how are they all able to place their white-feathered backsides,
near-triangular, in such regular patterns, a bird checkerboard?

Their soft, living goose bodies, catching the bright light together
–how is that resting alignment achieved, how bird-learned?
How do they know, I have wondered, to orient westward,
each one holding a certain space, their similar shapes
in geometrical progression across the rippling water?

And this morning (sunrise about two hours ago), the day’s glow
points out a row of old pilings, marching along the riverbank,
every weathered pole crowned with a white-grey gull,
maybe ten of them, beaks to the south, all tails turned north,
attentive to some hidden guidance.  These sentinels poise,
mysteriously knowing more of the journey than I do,
their shining breasts perhaps sun-burnished signposts,
showing how we, too, can stand so still, be so attuned.

August 9th, Nagasaki Day

Perhaps this quiet anniversary of the second nuclear holocaust inflicted on Japan in 1945 is an appropriate day to think about bodies, about my own body.  For some months now I have been caught up in my sister’s struggle with, and eventual death from, metastasized breast cancer.  Hers was the fourth death from cancer in my immediate family, and although I don’t actually feel or fear that cancer will cause my human life to end, as well, I have certainly been ruminating on mortality in the weeks since Anne passed on.

Those weeks have been full, partly with all that was needed to finish work so that I would be free for the summer season.  Also, I spent nine days with Anne and many family members before her death, then attended  Anne’s wonderful Quaker memorial “service” in Pennsylvania, and visited our youngest sister afterwards.  After that, at last I could figure out the details of a long-planned trip to England.  In fact, I wrote up the meeting for worship to celebrate Anne’s life on the plane to London!  In between visits to various family members and friends here, I have additionally completed a reading list of books for children about death and dying.  So my holiday time has had an undercurrent of mortality, though generally I have rejoiced in rich relationships, lovely gardens and views, and many good walks.

Along the way I wrote and rewrote the following poem, and as of today, a date when so many people died horrifically, I cannot decide whether to end my poem with a prayer or with a more fearful question about my own eventual death.  I don’t want live in a continually frightened-of-my-fate way, OR to be falsely optimistic, concerning the probability of cancer afflicting my physical self.  I hesitate to seem like a “Pollyanna” who blithely thinks she can buck the odds, but nor do I want to be saddled with fear and anxiety as I live out my good life in my so far resilient body.  And so today I choose the prayerful stance . . . .

Such beautiful breasts

O, the challenges of this tall,

Mysterious, holy body–

Aging, yes, yet whole, highly skilled;

still skiing, bike riding, strong and sturdy,

My cheerful companion through

These long, vigorous years.

Always my spirit has been housed

By vital bones, muscles, skin –

Thick or sometimes thin– by cartilage

And cell tissue, the bold coursing blood,

Nerves, lymph of my lengthy life cycle.

My knowledge of self anchors here–

But I cannot see within this form,

The lanky, friendly frame with which I live,

can’t fully comprehend its dense complexity.

In that sense blind, my brave body carries me forth

to step or stride, hold or heave, rest or revolve:

I love this flesh-and-bone home, however old.

Now, of all my aging physical parts,

My two beautiful breasts most please me,

small, smooth, shapely –are they sixty-six? No, less –

they blossomed with puberty, from buds to bosom.

They have responded –arching, shivering–

To love-making; suckled my milky babes,

Refused brassieres, resisted disease.

These nipple-crowned, creamy half pears

Are no longer pert, yet neither do they appear

Wizened, wrinkled, wasted.  My sweet breasts

Seem almost free of time’s distortions.

No scars or stitches mar their fine whiteness,

No pendulous flesh stretches far toward mortality.

Yet, does terror hide in this present salute I craft?

Mother and two sisters have lost their bodies, their breath,

Their good lives, through harm hidden in their own soft

Chest walls:  cancer robbing them of warmth, beauty,

Of our quiet, quotidian pleasures, of their places.

I protest that unseen foe, mourn my dear ones.

My grief is as much for their breasts, too,

As for their life-affirming smiles, their quick minds

And care-full hearts.  How could those rogue cells betray

Such bountiful softness, ruin those round organs of nurture?

O, may my life curve onwards, bloom further, find fruition;

May my gentle breasts never feel fear’s knife edge.

Well, I haven’t blogged on these pages for ages, though I began a work-related one last month and have been working on it fairly often (see church blog) . . . . That bug-a-boo Time has been even more challenging than usual of late, so I’ve been surveying the “reasons.”  I started by writing a haiku:

All I long to do
Beckons, curves into mountains;
Time undermines them!

Haiku are always a useful  way for me to clarify my thoughts. . . .  And I think that aside from my usual over-ambitions, my days have been overfilled, my sleep curtailed and my mind super-absorbed by what I currently see as three major concerns. The most mundane has been the matter of renting my house in Ottawa anew, when I thought it was settled til the fall. The process of listing, answering queries, checking references, and finalizing a rental agreement needs a surprisingly big amount of time, and having taken all those steps and found the perfect tenant, suddenly I am worried.  It turns out she has a family medical emergency and may not be able to move east. I am concerned for both of us!

Then there is my own family’s medical crisis:  my next younger sister has discovered she has metastasized breast cancer, plus been told that it cannot be treated with chemotherapy or radiation. She is by practice very healing-oriented, so is investigating all sorts of alternative treatments and keeping her large support circle well informed –and inundated with reading!   This news is stirring up lots of different reactions for family and friends, and I keep saying it’s as if the tectonic plates of our lives have slipped, as if we’re all dealing with unplanned for tsunamis of emotions.

On a much less harrowing front, my son and daughter have each had some major artistic successes in their lives, and not only have I been absorbed in watching her performance and reading the great reviews, not only have I been glued to tv and internet accounts of his band’s Grammy and Juno awards, but also I have been traveling a lot to go see them (and tend to my house rental business).  In fact, I feel like a yo-yo, albeit a proud and exuberant one, on behalf of both of them! Which begs the question of where I myself figure in all the too-ing and fro-ing, and whether my children’s achievements, splendid as they may be, are deflecting me from my own creative work….?

I don’t have a good answer yet.  Besides, I need to put this tete-a-tete with the keyboard aside, satisfying as it may be, and go sort out receipts for my accountant, so she can prepare my tax return!

Little black holes which seem to swallow up the minutes or days I had thought were abundant– I wonder who else is challenged by time in a similar way? Oh sure, there’s the cliched phenomenon of time flying –there it was, the first of February, then Groundhog’s Day (no shadows in Montreal, where we got 20 cm of snow in an all day storm…), then –bang!– the new moon appeared to usher in Chinese New Year and now it’s almost full and I am dating this page later and later in February. I have been racing, and the clock seems to, too. I suspect the very cliche of this disappearing act means everyone experiences it.

Then there’s my usual tendency to over plan what I will do in a given day –I call that a variant of having the proverbial “eyes that are bigger than my stomach,” always believing I can do X and Y, plus squeeze in Z. I suppose I could adopt a more Buddhist stance in the face of disappearing time, accept the ebb and flow of my weeks and years, but –and here’s the Buddhist rub– I don’t just *think* I can do all those things, don’t just dream of more, of a “W,” or even of an additional “A and B and C,” no, I WANT to do it all! My appetite for all I see, as both what has to be done and what would be good to do, is enormous. I so want to spend some time on this –fill in these italics with your choice– excellent and fun activity, or to tackle that very thoughtful and good project, or to just try an enriching practice…. But as I live through my good days, I don’t get so far down my lists or deep into realizing my hopes as I imagined….

Usually I can be sanguine about the difference between plans and reality (these over ambitions are surely at least common, if not universal), but what of the black holes? Suddenly a half hour to get ready to go to work (or elsewhere) is simply gone, disappeared, and my lunch isn’t packed or the calls I should have made are not, and I have no idea where those minutes went! Sometimes I see that, oh yes, I got stuck washing up or distracted by cutting that snaggy fingernail, yet there are moments that simply VANISH, and this little piece of writing is a mournful salute to those lost pieces of time. In fact, I didn’t get this “Homage to the Black Holes of Time” really finished til today, February 15th! Oh my goodness, there *were* many good hours spent since I began, I know. THlS time I will stop here, not try to do more than post my thoughts du jour.

Thanks for joining me, for *your* time….

a mother and daughter who are new members and keen helpers in my programs!

I work hard at my job as a “Director of Religious Education [DRE]”, the rough Unitarian Universalist equivalent of what I think used to be known as being a Sunday School superintendent. Mostly I enjoy its variety, because in any given day I may practice a story or song to share on Sundays, listen to an upset parent, encourage an unsure teen, decorate a bulletin board, organize some supplies for a children’s craft project or lead a planning meeting. Of course I make many phone calls and write or answer uncountable e-mails, but I generally enjoy those tasks, too. In addition, I treasure the strong relationships I have and continue to build with specific adults and children who take part in our “RE” programs, as well as others in the congregation. I love having both a job with so many different aspects, and a reasonably congruent skill set! Nevertheless, all these different responsibilities can pile up, and I often feel overwhelmed by a to-do list that –perversely– gets longer as the day goes by!

Although it’s a fascinating and satisfying profession, I can’t say I am well-paid in terms of monetary remuneration. My salary is adequate for now, however, and my other levels of reward and pleasure in what I do are worth a lot. But there is a particular “perk” to this job that every year inspires and uplifts me, the annual fall conference of my fellow “DREs.” We have a formal association, called the Liberal Religious Educators Association, of which I have been a member since my first months of employment back in 2002. Overall, LREDA is a grand source of both support and information, but each year, when we congregate, my pleasure in this organization peaks.

This year for our “fall con” I got to go to New Orleans, which I have always wanted to visit, and not only did I get lots of insight and challenges about how to help in a situation where there has been, and continues to be, a devastating combination of natural disaster, racism and classism, but I also loved the local culture! To date, I have written two different small essays in response to my experiences: one is part of my Unitarian church’s December 2010 newsletter and can be read on their site (www.ucmtl.ca), and the other essay, entitled “Frenchmen Street lagniappe” is looking for a place to be published, but in the meantime, can be read here.

I went back to Britannia briefly this week, to tend to some business and attend a dinner party celebrating the recent wedding of my neighbour’s daughter.  After many days of desk and computer tasks at the church where I work, it was lovely to be out and about on a bright September day!  I’d had precious few interactions with the natural world in Montreal, beyond getting rained on, as I biked home from my office without rain gear, or strolling through Westmount Park as I ate a lunchtime sandwich.  One day I felt so starved for outdoor time that I took a big pile of papers to deal with into the church garden, got a chair and a recycling box, and set to sorting –seated beside a bank of brown-eyed susans in the sun.

So on my day-away-from-Montreal, of course I delighted in the wide blueness of the Ottawa River and the red maple swaths beginning to punctuate the treescapes around Mud Lake and along the local streets.  Autumn seemed a bit farther along up the Ottawa valley than down on the St Lawrence.  Along with errands and appointments, I made time to walk to the south end of Mud Lake, scanning the water and its stalky margins for a great blue heron, as I always do.  I found a tree trunk to perch on and wrote in my journal for a while, hoping to spot a heron, and did watch a soaring hawk (that I couldn’t identify), plus an assortment of ducks (that I could).

Eventually, however, I gave up on heron sightings, and headed out of the conservation area along a wooded path.  Then, not so much suddenly as in a twinkling, a whirling, of small wings, a chickadee appeared, close by in the bushes.  Curious, I stopped, and he dove down beside me to a damp tree stump area where there were a few husks of sunflower seeds.  It seemed to be a feeding station he was used to, but at that moment it wasn’t a very satisfying one.  Luckily I remembered some cashews stashed in my bag for a snack, and took out a few nut crumbs, holding them up on an outstretched palm, softly calling “chick-a-dee-dee-dee.”  He flew up to my hand, cocked a shiny blackseed eye, and grasped a prize piece in his tiny beak to take away.  I had more crumbs, and he wasn’t gone for long –I repeated my presentation once, twice, three times!  Each time he whirled up to perch and feed I felt victorious, as if I had received some bird-wing benison.  But the chickadee was sated, I guess, by his fourth visit to my hand-station, and declined to return from his distant branch thereafter.  I thanked him, though, feeling totally enchanted by the airy sense of his attentive presence, the faint clutch of his little black claws that my fingers still recalled, and the quiet autumn afternoon that somehow blessed us both.

I topped off my glad exposure to the outdoor world by biking back to the friend’s house where I was staying that night, after the dinner party for which I had come to Ottawa.  The moon was almost full, and sailed above me as I pedaled along for forty minutes, sated, myself, with good company, food and wine, the crisp fall air –and the memory of my chickadee moments.

Almost a month later and almost time to return to Montreal, too. What paradoxes we humans are –at least I certainly am! I don’t like things to change; I hate getting ready to go and feel sad to be saying goodbye again to my favourite haunts. Yet, in another way, I don’t think I would love it here as much if I lived in Britannia all year round. Some part of me craves difference and new vistas, too –but today I mourned my departure, longed for it all to stay exactly like this late afternoon late summer scene in warm sunlight, as I biked home from the library along the river and through the back way to Mud Lake. As I turned away from the river, there was a big heron, poised in the long reeds, and I shouted out “Ho, heron!” to him, saluting his presence, conscious I only have three more days for these precious, soul-grounding sightings.

When I reached the back end of the lake, I stopped and picked a small bunch of purple loose strife for a bouquet, and then pushed my bike along the lake edge of the filtration plant grounds. The reflecting water was so still I could hardly tell it wasn’t sky, white clouds floating across it, along with white water lilies, green lilypads and tiny white waterfowl feathers, an occasional duck arising in alarm. Then I got to a midpoint not far from the road, where I often pause to survey both directions of the lake, and after looking way out opposite me and to the right, towards the beaver lodge, I looked left, and gradually my eyes came back to rest on the bushes immediately in front of me –and THEN I finally saw the young great blue heron who was standing still as a grey stick, right there, barely 20 feet away. I thanked her and cried big tears of farewell, trying not to blow my nose and frighten her. Remembering again the importance of quiet centering, affirming my own precious goodness, I felt my inner self gradually become calm, and said another “Ho, you heron!’ that was a farewell for now.

I am big on feeling securely anchored, and always root in lovingly wherever I live –but I am especially attached to my own little house in Britannia, on the West side of Ottawa. After working in Montreal since late last August, living in a little “three and a half” apartment (Montreal’s term for a one bedroom), and after about a month of visits here and there in June and half of July, I am back in my old home for the summer! It’s lovely to see the leafy green morning light in my bedroom or to stand at the sunny sink and wash dishes, looking out at my flourishing (and weedy!) garden….

Whenever I come back to Britannia, I try to get over to the conservation area behind my street as soon as I can, so I can check out the general state of nature in and around Mud Lake, as well as search specifically for herons. This return has not only yielded an entire tree of perching herons in a new location that I have never seen before, but also a spectacular beaver show!

Friends and I walked all the way around the lake last Sunday evening, and as we circled back from the road at the north end, we started seeing and hearing beavers –adults AND kits. Turned out there’s a brand new lodge in Mud Lake, right beside a rock platform that gives viewers a terrific vantage point –and somehow, the beavers don’t seem to mind humans standing there. We saw at least three adults and four kits the first night, occasionally hearing a little chirping noise that seemed to be beaver talk, as they swam about, their tails like long, hidden propellors, noses like prows, with small perky ears defining their heads low to the water.

Then Monday night we went back, to see what else we could see –and at first, there were no beavers, only the cold beady-eyed stare of a huge snapping turtle very close to the shore! Finally he dove away, with an ominous flip of a spiky paw, and –at least that night– no apparent baby beaver meal. Soon after the adults began circling and diving, and then two of them locked into some sort of territorial struggle, we guessed, with a lot of pushing back and forth and very sexual sounding noise (but surely beavers don’t mate outside of their lodges?). Later an adult started gnawing on a branch and it seemed as if s/he were calling to the kits, who joined him/her to feast, which we could hear quite clearly as “mmm, mmm, nibble, nibble” sounds.

While we stood and watched all this, we also spotted two herons flying overhead in the pink sunset light, returning to the heronry I know is about a mile away. It all seemed so rich, especially as this whole conservation area is in the shadow of distant apartment high rises, and its peace is undergirded by the hum of distant traffic. Ironically, my friends say these beavers gave them more creature sightings than on their entire recent canoe trip in the Algonquin wilderness. As for me, I feel truly welcomed home –and I plan to make frequent pilgrimages to my nightly beaver show place. The Mud Lake scene is way better than summer movies!