Legacy

Life long values 

from our ancestors

settle into our bones

foundations of clay 

to be shaped or discarded

built upon or ignored

unchanged or altered

to become our ancestral legacy.

“The choices we make about the lives we live determine 

the kinds of legacies we leave.”

~ Tavis Smiley,  The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

In Each Moment ~ RESPONSIBLE ~ Theme for July 2025

Rivers flow swiftly…….

Eager to get…….

Suspicious of all……

Posturing against the…….

Owing good fortune…..

Never knowing……..

Situations of many…….

Ideals dashed against….

Boldly standing on one’s……

Life long values…….

Entertaining belief…..

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, 

but it is my chief duty to accomplish 

small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

~ Helen Keller

(1880 ~ 1968)

Life's Journey

1988 St. Mary of the Plains Newsletter
Lubbock, Texas
Orientation day.

Retiring in 2019, I spent an hour or so a day culling papers and nursing journals. I’ve culled my hard copy photos before. Several times. The last time was just two years ago when I shifted my life east from Vancouver Island to my longed for prairies. I really thought I had cut up, cut out and threw out any duplicate photos. To my surprise this afternoon, I still have many.

But that’s not important. In all the photos, I’ve seen life lived in each place I have landed. I have often wondered about the value of these photographs of smiling faces and distant places. Generations of family, colleagues and many, many friends. I don’t look at them every day, or even every year! Pretty ordinary. But when I make my attempts at getting rid of these memories, it always pulls me back to moving forward from a teenager singing in the choir to a senior citizen planning her retirement. Becoming part of a next generation seeing the blossoming of new generations. The value of the photographs does not pay the rent, or buy groceries but shows us our life’s journey.

“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”

~ Eudora Welty

 

Slow Burn ~ ANGER ~ Theme for March 2022

Anger seems a strange theme to choose for this month. After all, locally, nationally and, in fact worldwide, we have seen anger raging daily for the last two years and is still ongoing. It has moved from pandemic fatigue to war in Europe. Many, if not most, have had valid reasons to be angry. Not all reasons have been very socially acceptable or agreeable. I really do dislike being angry so have become more concerned with the value of anger. 

Across time….

Never, never……

Grand schemes……

Extraordinary……..

Reckless and ………

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. 

But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

~ Maya Angelou

Creation ~ 2

Taking stock of 

the past and the present,

before the future arrives, 

is all a-jumble and babble.

Finding the truth of

yesterday and today,

before the future arrives,

is not for the faint of heart.

Creating value and order

from the chaos of yesteryears

gives the future 

a chance for redemption.

“Teach them that rainbows appear after a storm 

to remind them that light begins and ends with all colours.”

~ Frederic M. Perrin, Rella Two Trees - The Money Chiefs

Distraction in Two Parts

Losing Count

Each distraction seems to have real value…… 

There really are only two issues:

  - timing

  - hurry up and get it done.

No - hmmm - three things - the third: ‘I need a break’  

that one doesn’t hold water. I haven’t even started yet.

#4 - I need to change positions, so I’ll go and blanch the beans

Of course #5 is pretty important - 

the phone rang and it must be answered, 

but while I’m on the phone (it’s pretty smart) as well as messages - there’s a new photo on there and my texts: it could be the tax office. But it actually looks like a spam so I’ll make a note to call them to see……

Keep my pen to the page - author Natalie Goldberg’s direction ~

but how does that happen when I lift my eyes to stare out the window

Leaving only a blot or a squiggly line on the page

Did you hear that noise? 

Probably nothing 

- but you never know.

It could be suspicious or just the mailman

I’d better check.

The distractions of my life are like 

the pilling on my old polyester afghan ~

each little pill must be removed right away - 

even if most of them have been there for years. 

Bathroom breaks are important - sometimes with great urgency 

I’ll just clean the sink and sweep the floor while I’m there,

Then there’s the cat who demands my attention 

• that last one is a lie:  he sees me sit down to write, 
• finds a favourite chair across from me and goes to sleep. 

Did I mention sitting down to write 

the story or poem or essay that was playing

jumping around in my head 

while I was distracted by everything else?

When will it become my important distraction?

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.”

~ C.S.Lewis

~~~~~

In Defense of Distractions

I sit and I stare

Out the window

At the screen

Across the room 

I’m stiff and restless

The floor needs sweeping

I hear the mailman

The dishwasher needs emptying

I need to think

I know what I want to say

It’s time to feed the cat

Get up and rearrange

I look around me.

Shake my shoulders

I feel the chaos around me

Chaos of my own making

My legs want to move

My arms are tired from being still

I know what I want to say

But I need something besides my pen

Drifting through ordering

chaos into order - my mind quiets

disordered words surround me ~

returning to the page, I write.

“Art has to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”

~ Saul Bellow

Both?

Important beliefs are 

seeded into our very core ~

qualities of human love and kindness

to be warped and distorted

 

or

nurtured and tended carefully.
Our only choice?

Which direction to follow  ~

or do both directions have value?

“The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.

We’ve all got both light and dark inside of us.”

~ J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

(spoken by Sirius Black)

Strawberries, Blackberries and Cheese

Bits and pieces

Here and there

Putter a bit and

Read a bit more.

Set a direction

Map out a course

A mile just a piece 

of the journey we’re on

So stop to eat

or revel in sights  ~

bits and pieces of value

for any old trip!

“Writing is like sewing together what I call 

these ‘buttons, these bits and pieces.”

~ Sandra Cisneros

To ReCreate: A Verb

Journal March 2008 - “I gathered my confidence around me like a ragged coat…..” 

There are times when I read some of the many words I have penned and wonder: Who wrote that? Nope - that’s my journal and my handwriting. Do I remember the specific day or time even though it is dated and timed? Seldom. I have been tempted to just dump all my journals. In the past, I have been sorry for such a rash act. Of course, throwing something out that hasn’t been used or looked at, or in the case of clothes, worn for years should be easy. As long as it’s not looked at again. When it comes to my journals and the writing practice I’ve struggled to develop, it becomes a different issue. But I digress. 

Yesterday, my confidence in the value of my life and the way I live it was challenged when I realized that yes….I am no longer employed as a nurse or anything else. I’m no longer even interested in returning to a nursing career. What I do have is an unflagging interest in the puzzle of word crafting. Creative expression of a moment, a story, or personal experience. In my case, creative expression of my nursing experience. Retirement, only three months old, is still in its infancy. I can accept a long gentle learning curve or rush headlong into it risking my self-confidence in this new phase. So once more I gather what confidence I do have around me like a ragged, and very much repaired and mended, coat. Get out pen and paper ~ or this lap top ~ and review and reshape my dreams of so long ago. Recreate my writing life from my experiences, my strengths and my hopes.

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

Water Rush

Lynn Canyon Park, Suspension Bridge

Hearing a thundering rush of water 

from a road side echoing 

through tall pines thrills my heart

but to see that very water 

crashing, frothing and roiling

through deep cuts in the canyon 

below a suspension bridge

sends the thrills deep into my soul.

Walking the swaying, bouncing suspension bridge ~

just a value-added part of the adventure.

“What makes you think what happened to you on Earth wasn’t an adventure?”

~ Lev Grossman, The Magician King

Storm Warnings

Weathering the storm might be easy when distant early warning signals and reporters tell us a storm is imminent. A storm 

that will take down power lines and phone lines and any lines of communication frightening us in an attempt to warn us. 

But if we listen and do what the birds do, we will hunker down and find safety before listening to weather reports

with their amazing virtual cloud maps of raindrops and wind sketches, snow flakes and jagged slashes of lightening. 

Whether we choose to pay attention and gather up protection in time can make weathering a storm difficult - or easy - well relatively easy. If the storm is only a big  - but short - blow hard 

with slashing rain or sleety icy snow we can curl up in a big - and dry - comfy chair with a good book or a warm blanket to crochet 

and just have a cup of tea while the angry storm rages 

outside. If the storm catches us on a highway, 

driving directly into it, we will just have to white knuckle the steering wheel that wants to spin out of control and keep our foot on the gas. 

Weathering a storm that sneaks up and smacks us down 

before we can cover our heads, get our gear for all weathering 

or dive into the house is survival at it’s most critical. 

We may not know what gear we need, where shelter is to protect us 

from weather that seems super human ~ ready to fight all comers.

With weather like that I become a tiny human being fighting 

a blown up Hulk all green and puffed up with muscles that frighten me! Can you imagine how small a child feels when the thunder rolls and the lightening splashes and slashes across the sky. I can - sort of - because my dad showed me thunder clouds, and lightning and told me how far away a storm was by the lightening strikes. He taught weather and storm so it wasn’t big and scary but amazing and beautiful. But weathering any storm is possible even in David and Goliath situations if we choose the right spot, roll out of the way like a ninja or just go to ground and pretend we are dead hoping to fool the monstrous storm so it rages off and picks on something it’s own size - like a mountain or the middle of an ocean. 

Weathering a storm does not depend on 

academic degrees or financial portfolios 

but depends on a degree of common sense and 

knowing the value of nickels and dimes to use 

when a storm shows up - announced or unannounced. 

Weathering a storm you may be by yourself but 

if in a community of any size at all then holding hands and sharing hope, shelter, water and food will show that together we can all survive unless of course in sadness because some will succumb - and then we share their grief. And if we pay attention we will learn that weathering any storm has planted many seeds - watered them ferociously while stirring the earth and our hearts and when the storm passes we have already grown new spaces in our hearts.

“A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.”

~ Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way