Director's Column... 
 Friday Night Adventures: Risking Abundance
So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry. I Kings 17:15,16
The delighted cries of the children heading down the hill echo around the parking lot where December’s snow is already banked higher than it has been for years. As the Friday night folks begin to gather for their various weekend retreats at the Centre, I sense another, more subdued, sense of excitement--even adventure, filling the hallways. Feeling welcomed with their weekend luggage into a new and, strange, environment (hallways filled with art, sacred spaces and meditaton rooms), people are anticipating something out of the ordinary; a new friendship, a surprising companionship with strangers, perhaps, even a kind of life-change, seeing the world and themselves in a new and deeper way. We are all sitting on a toboggan, just about to go down the hill on a very adult adventure—a retreat.
I realize that I am as excited as the people who are arriving. I have been thinking about the retreat I am about to lead for months, planning and revising, imagining and anticipating. Now, all I can do is wait. There is always so much unknown, so much that comes from the particular people who come to the retreat: what gifts and burdens they bring from their own very unique life journey. I have learned, after many years, to trust this, for it seems to me, this is the movement of the Spirit who gathers us together in ways none of us can anticipate.
While down the hall, a group of ladies have gathered to engage in the time-honoured activity of quilting—and sharing life experiences together, I have prepared a weekend where people can reflect on four basic, human energies: power, authority, love and inner knowledge. What I couldn’t prepare for was the richness and variety of experience that people brought to the weekend: a young woman recently put in charge of a platoon soon to be posted to Afghanistan; two others, who work with young children and see everyday the examples of the impact of power and authority on the young; a professional woman creating a very courageous path through midlife; a retired accountant exploring her inner world with an amazing sense of beauty, order and balance; and several others—myself included—who are reflecting on the new and sometimes painful transformation of our life after children have left home.
Of course, what will happen is also unknown to everyone else as the group gathers for the first time and we begin to tell our stories. This is definitely the ‘top of the hill’--an adventure in adult learning and community building. As I look around, I see excitement mixed with not a little anxiety. Where will we all be by Sunday morning?
The ride down the hill on this toboggan is always exciting, always full of the unexpected. There are some falls and tumbles, some careening corners and close calls and then, finally, the swoosh of excitement as things line up just right for the final descent. By mid-day Saturday, we have entered into a very sacred space of companionship and by the evening gathering, into a still deeper contentment and conversation. We all go off to bed reluctantly.
It really is not a magical thing; so much happens in the course of such a short time simply because we are paying attention to what really matters. Distractions speed up our life so that you can barely remember what transpired a few hours ago; mindfulness slows time down and lets us see clearly. Sunday morning’s final gathering has this quality of slowness and spaciousness. We are talking about our individual paths and anticipating the closure of the weekend when someone chooses just the right metaphor: there is a complex and delicate tapestry in which all of our choices and lives are interwoven. We are each truly responsible for who we become and yet we have a real impact on each other. It is really what we have all wanted to say. It rings suddenly, very true.
Eating our lunch together later, we find ourselves buoyed up with a new lightheartedness. We are all recalling parts of the weekend that affected us most. I am remembering the insight that came to me clearly from this morning’s reflections on the nature of authority: it is about the graciousness that is able to give space to others, to allow them to be, it is really, about blessing--something quite divine and sometimes, also, truly human.
For me it has been a rich time, a time of abundance and not scarcity… a bit of a miracle really.
Well, it is often like that.
Paul
Previous Columns
Summer 2007
LOCAL, LOCAL, LOCAL....
With the wind (and Kathrin) at my back, I began my vacation fairly flying down River Road toward Arnprior. It was day one of our bike tour along the Ottawa River from Pembroke to Montreal and back. I had lots to reflect on as we biked on through Arnprior to Constance Bay on that first day. The
previous evening (Canada Day), I had listened to Russ Christianson from the Ontario Cooperatives Association encourage the steering committee of the Ottawa Valley Food Coop: “What you are doing is really unique. You’re ahead of the curve in Ontario. Relocalizing food is happening all over the world.” It was a happy moment to look back on what had begun a year earlier with Marguerite
Centre workshops by Anna Lappé and then Bob Waldrop (and also John Seed). A core group of local folks had moved from those inspiring ideas toward a new reality—a local food coop. Successful adult education, the practical and the spiritual brought together…. Outside the window (and down the hill at the Corner Garden), I thought for a moment I could hear the tomatoes growing.
Learning why ‘the local’ is so important to our thinking about the future of the earth and our children—that had really been a focus of our year at the Centre. It is about challenging an inhumane globalization, of course, and peak oil, but it is also about recovering our ‘sense of place’—and that really means spiritual place—in our bodies, in the natural world and the cosmos, about being grounded and growing where we are.
There seemed to be signs of this, or better, points of lights, all along our trip. After biking on paths all through the city of Ottawa, we spent the next night in Rockland at a B and B across the street from Tucker House, a Baptist Retreat Centre with its three large gardens and thriving Community Supported Agriculture. In our area, Tucker House had led the way in seeing the connection between the ecological and the spiritual.
Just following the river by bike all the way to Ile Perrot where it emptied into the St. Lawrence, was an act of imaginative relocalizing: can we begin to imagine a post-car world? How will our lives change? How will we holiday? The suburbs of Montreal, seemed very surreal—from a bike. Who made this world of malls and fast food strips, and why? The city itself seemed much more to a human scale: the bike trail led along the Lachine Canal right to the city centre. And everywhere here there was vibrancy, diversity, colour, life.
This was, in a way, a reflection of what has happened at the Centre over the past year. Something unexpected but very natural has grown out of our time of transformation. Nurtured by the support and charism of the Grey Sister community, the Centre has been able to open its doors (and heart) to the local community, to become a space for ‘growth and balance and transformation’ right here and in the now—for seniors, gardeners, groups in need of support networks, young people, a wide range of community groups, the ill and those who care for them. At the same time, our work of education
and learning together has continued and expanded. It has really begun to feel that now there is an on-going community who gather for workshops and retreats here, that the learning is taking root and
producing results.
Coming back from Montreal, riding up the Valley again, it struckme that the really hard work in all of this is the work of the imagination. Can we imagine a different way of living? Can we imagine our little corner of the world becoming a place of vibrancy, diversity, colour and life?
Can we imagine what will become of a mustard seed? That is the work of hope.
“The mustard seed becomes a great tree and all the birds made nests in its branches.”
(For details of the bike trip, check the Bioregion page of our website.)
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