By the way, you are…

superfragilisticexpialidocious!

(In case you’d forgotten.)

What will You do for the People to Be?

Tags

First Nations people, future, future generations, personal power, positive change, resources, sharing your gifts, sustainability, the land, using your voice

A gray, rainy day. Wishing I was at home curled up with a novel in my PJs. The professor looked around the room at vacant faces and asked, “What will you do for the people to be?”

The people to be are the ones to come after us who are not yet here. First Nations people call them the seventh generation. The land does not belong to us, it belongs to them, and we are only here to take care of it for the time being. We are to ensure that the abundance and beauty of the land remain for those to come. This belief speaks volumes about respect. Respect for the land that sustains us, and respect for all other living beings. For without it, we are all forever lost.

The question awakened me. What do I have to offer to the world? I didn’t know what my answer was at first.

But then a voice whispered in my mind three words: Love, truth and storyteller.

Then I felt my throat get tight. I couldn’t possibly say that in front of a room full of people. They would laugh, they would not understand. But then I realized my pounding heart and sweaty palms had nothing to do with them. I was scared to own what was mine, what I had to offer the world. That would make me horribly vulnerable.

But you can’t connect without being vulnerable.

I am a storyteller who writes the truth with love. Truth is scary and ugly sometimes. But love softens it, moulds it into something broken but still beautiful. What will I do for the people to be? Write. And hope that somehow my words make the world a better place for the people now and for the people to come. We are only safe guarding our home, after all.

What will YOU do for the people to be?

Webs and Feathers and Beads

Tags

dream catcher, dreams, musings, positive, simplicity

A Native American tradition, the dream catcher is meant to protect the sleeper. Good dreams slip through the centre hole and drip down the feathers to the person. Bad dreams are caught in the web and melt away with the first lights of day.

I had a dream catcher as a child. It hung over my bed amongst the flowered wallpaper. Soft brown leather wrapping and wrapping. A string weaving an intricate web dotted with pretty beads. Feathers trailing from the bottom of the circle. It kept away bad dreams usually.

Sometimes I’d just sit and hold it. My little fingers would trace the web, trying to find a pattern. Around and around the web. Circle, circle, circle. Life always moving…even if we don’t see any sort of pattern or direction.

We can act like a dream catcher in our waking moments. Welcoming each new day with the sunshine and letting the mistakes and aches of yesterday fade. Allowing ourselves to enjoy the simple moments and be open to the good all around us. While letting go of our hold on darkness…releasing our problems and not sweating the small stuff and trusting.

Pretend you’re a dream catcher for a moment and see what magic happens…

I haven’t had a dream catcher for years. I feel the need to find one again.

Speak from the Heart

If ya’ll head over here, you will find my guest post over at Courage 2 Create about speaking from your heart, in life and writing…

wishes in my palm

Tags

dandelion seeds, long hot summer days, poem, prose poetry, summer, wishes

i hold wishes with my palm and blow them to the wind like hundreds of dandelion seeds, fluffy and light as air, flying, being lulled along by a breeze…where is not known by breeze or seeds or wishes nor me

but i wish anyways

i wish for light and more light

for long hot summer days, sun kissed skin, peaches warm from sun, juice trickling down my arm, sitting in your red truck, smell of leather, thunderstorms

to never fade away

i smile at a dandelion flower

they’re too pretty to be weeds