The World Kindness Movement

Hi Kids,
This is a moving youtube video about the effects of bullying, and the need in our world for kindness, and a shift in consciousness.

My friend Brock Tully, who appears towards the end of the video, with his white hair and moustache, (so cute!),  has devoted his entire life to promoting kindness. He also speaks out in schools to inspire the students to join in anti-bullying programs.

Brock is very special. I have known him since 1980, when I helped out at his coffeehouse in Kelowna. Brock and Friends changed my life, and Brock has been changing lives through all of the years since. He has cycled around the states four times, covering thousands of miles, speaking in the places he travels through about kindness. Each year he hosts a concert in Vancouver for World Kindness. The next one will be November 4th at the Center for Performing Arts.

This year, I intend to be there! The good feelings at these concerts make them magical events.

Enjoy the video! Here's to more kindness in the world. It can use it!

Still Beautiful

[image from eons.com]

She is ninety,

slim  and bent

with arthritis,

moving slowly,

and with pain.

She can barely walk,

and her hands are

gnarled claws,

bent and curled

and stiffened,

yet, morning, noon

and night,

when she

whisks the chapatis

together,

her hands move

as swiftly as a girl's,

practiced with the

thousands

of chapatis

she has made

for her husband

all the years

of their lives.

Today,

they both were ill,

huddled under blankets,

yet when he called her,

she hobbled over,

tending him

as tenderly

as if he were

a babe.

When she grew tired,

she sat up in  bed,

with an expression on her face

that made me think

of the three year old

she once was,

sleepy and grumpy,

yet unwilling to lay down

and miss

the grownup party

going on

in the other room.

Her long silver

pony tail,

her slim figure,

her oval face,

told me

she was

beautiful,

once,

a young girl

laughing and flinging

her hair

over her shoulder,

eyes alight and mischievous,

enticing her young husband,

her step a light dance

on the earth.

Now,

inch by painful inch,

bent over her walker,

she creeps down the hall

and gifts me with chapatis,

because she knows

I love them.

She is still

beautiful,

so beautiful,

just in

another way.

Turtle's Laugh

[image from google]

Miss Elizabeth has challenged us today with the word: cachinate: to laugh hard: to laugh convulsively and loudly. Well, this is a state of being with which I have considerable experience. My mom used to say "you think everything is funny!" because, basically, everything is. Hilarious.

As a teen, I cachinated embarrasingly loudly, and was a spectacle on the street with my best friend, laughing so hard we'd cry. As a wife, my laughter and general loudness embarrassed my husband. When Steph was a teenager, she would tell me witheringly: "You think you're funny, but you're not." That didn't stop me. I got worse.

Laughter bubbles up frequently, in our family, especially in times of stress. When we get together, cackles abound, peals of laughter from room to room. My great-grandson learned to cackle when he was less than a year old. From his carseat in the backseat we'd hear "blah blah blah", and then he'd cackle, cracking us all up.

But the laughter that always stopped me in my tracks, was Turtle's. Turtle lived in Tofino. Barely five feet tall, he wore an admiral's jacket, a long bushy beard and long flowing dark hair under his admiral's cap. He looked exactly like a miniature sea captain. There was a huge cement statue of a goddess near the town square and the paper once posted a photo of Turtle kissing its behind, which was conveniently placed head-high on Turtle.

When Turtle laughed, everything stopped. His laugh could be heard all over the village center, a loud riveting cackle. We all laughed with him. You couldnt keep a straight face when Turtle's laugh boomed out. He'd doff his cap to the ladies, bending low, with a chivalrous sweep of his arm, letting us walk by. Turtle loved the ladies.

Towards the end of my time there, some busybody must have filed complaints. Turtle was summoned to court and appeared before the judge, his beard tidily brushed in acknowledgment of the solemnity of his surroundings. His brass buttons looked especially shiny that day.

The Judge rattled some papers, peered over the tops of his glasses, read out the charge of disturbing the peace. Turtle made no contest.

The Judge issued his pronouncement. Turtle was prohibited from laughing after 11 p.m. at night, in the interests of preserving the peace of the village.

I wonder what Turtle did with his sense of the absurd after court, and where he put his sense of humour after 11 p.m.

True story.

The Birds of Love

[Port Alberni owl - taken in somebody's back yard

I don't know who to credit for this photo (besides the owl:)]

[for Eric]

An owl

has taken up

residence

in my brain.

Sometimes I can feel her

perched

on my

left shoulder,

muttering

in my ear,

a distracting

refrain.

Owl,

harbinger

of death,

or Oracle?

She carried

 a message for me

from the spirit world,

in the days after

my mother died,

a message

I could not

decipher,

no matter

how I tried.

Owl has
returned again.
I wonder why.
And every night,
now,

I have been

dreaming

about you,

thirty-years-gone-by

love of my life

and, in my dreams,

you love me

this time

so I can

feel it.

You loved me 

then,

I am now sure,

but I was

too incomplete

a person to believe,

you too steeped

in sorrow

to endure.

When I told you

I was leaving,

you opened

the gate of

the birdcage,

released

the widowed dove,

and off she flew.

You could never know

how, all those years,

the dove of my heart

has kept on

circling,

circling,

back to you.

What does this

all mean?

Are you alive?

Or have you

entered

the spirit world

unseen,

sending back

messages

to me

in a dream?

If you are gone,

then now,

for sure, 

you know:

when I told you

I'd love you

forever,

back then,

my words

were true.

I only wish
that I could know

you knew.

There is

a blackbird

singing

in the dead of night

in my

solitary heart,

that takes me back

to that rooftop,

that time in the sun,

a time when

we were

so beautiful

and young,

and every night, now,

I am dreaming

that we have

only just

begun.

Dancing On the Earth

[Lynn Thompson Photography]

Wild Woman remembers

dancing on the earth,

a hundred women

spiral dancing

to the beat of the drums

at the blockades of '93.

Primal, pulsing Woman-power,

faces radiant, joyous,

powerful

with love for

Mother Earth,

in defiance

of the Machine,

whose voracious jaw,

agape,

threatened to devour

everything

loved,

necessary,

and sacred.

Ululations,

wolf-howls,

lush young women

on the cusp

of womanhood,

little girls with

determined, honest  eyes

and rainbows painted

on their faces,

gray-haired women,

wise with living,

all deeply rooted

in the earth,

united in the passion

of this moment

on the road,

a hundred women

dancing on the earth.

[Lynn Thompson Photography.

This is Sally Sunshine, who later that year fell from a balcony

and was paralyzed.]

Traveler Remembers

Traveler

remembers

an evening

at the beach

years ago,

when the entire sky,

filled with

pink puffballs of cloud,

looked

exactly as

the floor of Heaven

must appear.

Almost, she could hear

angel choirs.

Instead,

she listened to

her heart,

which was lonely,

back then,

with love,

with no one

to give it to.

She thought of

the one she loved

who did not love her.

She thought of

a lifetime,

so much of it

spent alone.

In the end,

it's her love

of the sea

and a black wolf

who loved her

that made

everything

come right.

Sunday at the Dump

[Port Albion, where Pup and I lived one glorious summer,

just before we moved to Port. It is fifteen minutes or so outside of Ucluelet, and this was sunset over the pond, every night. Sigh. A mountain on my left turned rose every evening. Pup was in dog heaven.]

Well, kids, it's been a busy Sunday. I am a bit at a loss, without my daily soul card. Owls are fluttering about in my head, but so far no poem.

Sister and I made a dump run, so I made a bit of a dint in offloading Stuff towards my impending move. Also mowed my lawn, which sent my blood pressure through the roof. I am now sporting a lovely reddish purple face, goes with the wild longish hair rather nicely:)

Good to know I wont have to mow lawns much longer. My yard is huge, and hilly.

It is still cool for April, usually is a lot warmer than this. But as I gather that other provinces in Canada are still dealing with snow, I guess open-door, t-shirt temperatures are nothing to complain about.

I am going to browse about online and see what everyone has been up to while I have been so gainfully employed:)

I hope a poem will happen soon. I miss the soul cards!!!!!