When I read this Neruda poem, I thought of my wife. Sonnet XVII I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without …
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To some it may seem that we are simply cast about like so much cosmic flotsam and jetsam – and on a day when the partner of the moment is dark chaos that is surely the experience. But partners change and the dance moves on – light creative order enters our experience. How wonderful it might be to hold that moment for ever. . . The ecstacy is not in the moment, But in its passage. To hold the moment is to destroy it – The ending of the dance. I think we are all dancers who live fully when …
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Last week I was working with an interesting group of 60 Aboriginal folks who work within the Canadian Forces and the department of National Defense, providing advice and support on Aboriginal issues within the military and civilian systems. We ran two half days in Open Space to work on emerging issues and action plans. In an interesting side conversation, I spoke with a career soldier about fear. This man, one of the support staff for the gathering, had worked for a couple of decades as a corporal, mostly working as a mechanic on trucks. We got into …
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This is my son Finn, one of my teachers, facing huge waves at Ka’anapali on Maui last week. He plays in these waves with no fear at all. Waves that are two or three times taller than he is simply wash over him. He knows what to do, how to dive under the wave, how to swim in and out of currents, how to watch and read the sea, and his fear becomes play. He taught himself to bodysurf. Fear does funny things to us. It makes us change sizes, for example. When we …
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When we are hard on ourselves, or hard on others, isn’t it interesting how it is those small moments that define character? Most of the time we are fine, everything is alright, things are calm. Even in war, soldiers spend most of their time in tedious inactivity punctuated by bursts of frightening violence. Cities are not in a constant state of crime. Governments work perfectly fine most of the time. It is the small aberrations that we notice and these then colour everything. When you become aware of how much fear you don’t have, how …