It is a year of endings for me. I finished my book and I am waiting for it to be published. I created a multimedia M2eBook to publicize my upcoming book. I am waiting to market this M2eBook till September which will hopefully bring in some personal consultations. I cancelled a conference and will be closing my nonprofit organization, The Creative Soul of Children. My funding from the Unitarian Universalist Association was cancelled due to their budget crisis. This means no money to help subsidize my Involve workshops for churches, so there is only one scheduled so far.
My 25 year old daughter is taking a leave of absence this summer from her job in order to bike from Vanouver to San Francisco. When I reported to several family and friends that she was doing this by herself many expressed immediate worry about her safety. Until hearing these responses it had never accoured to me to be worried or anxious. I started wondering if I was being a responsible parent and why I was not worried. It was also interesting to note that the people who were expressing concern were all men.
When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.--Thich Nhat Hanh
Loving the unlovable means seeing past the behavior to the divine light inside every person. This is often easier said than done. Many of our children with behavioral, emotional and social challenges are very good at pushing adults buttons and getting into trouble. We can recognize that their behavior is not who they are, however we still have to have a relationship and work with behavior that can be difficult. How do we do this?
In the past few weeks, I have had cause to think about the word alleluia in the context of a book by Kathleen Deyer Bolduc titled Autism and Alleluias and the song Alleluia by Leonard Cohen which has recently become very popular. I was asked to review in my blog Deyer Bolduc’s new book and my church choir recently sang the Cohen’s song, arranged by our highly talented Choir Director. Our minister’s sermon used some of the text from the song to talk about broken alleluias in our lives.
I am writing a book titled Don't Fix Me, I'm Not Broken: Changing Our Minds about Ourselves and Our Children. It is a spiritual parenting book about healing ourselves rather than trying to fix our children. I just finished writing a section wondering what it would be like to see your child each day with fresh eyes as if for the first time.
Recently I had a conversation with my brother, the physicist, about the difference between religion and spirituality. I commented that some very religious people were not very spiritual and some very spiritual people were not very religious. He admitted that he had no idea what I meant. I was caught off guard and did not explain. It was a good question, however and one that I have not had to answer.
Recently I was reflecting on the several jobs I have had working with children which took me out of my comfort zone, that challenge my beliefs and caused me to grow without any effort on my part. And when I reflect back it was the few connections I made with a struggling child that stay with me.
I came across this anonymous poem that I had kept from a workshop I attended. It is about seeing past the masks people wear and breaking down the walls holding back love.
