Dear people of the world I love:   Yes you!   And you too! 

 When was the last time you can recall feeling so full of love that you actually felt it spill out past your own perimeter, and extend itself beyond all those boundaries you have wittingly and unwittingly constructed in preservation of your self-hood? Many of you know someone in your life who shares love so openly, and often times that person is a young child not yet encumbered by fear of being so open to the world. What if you as an adult could be that person?

 Just recently I was that person! It happened to me in a shopping mall of all places. Not being much of a shopper this was hardly somewhere that I would typically bliss out in. I was walking and thinking of all the people who like me were stuck for some reason or other in this form of shared misery-milling about in the poor air and poor lights that inhabit our modern shopping centers. When all of a sudden I felt a communion with everyone I could see within my field of vision. And not just a small sense of connection -this was huge- I felt intimately in love with absolutely everyone I came in contact with! I felt the very intense love feeling you usually only share with someone that you know very well and whom you care about deeply, yet everyone I looked at was technically a stranger to me. I didn't know what to do with this very strong feeling or how to begin sharing it with others so I just continued walking, smiling happily to myself and to anyone who looked my way.

 Instead of feeling angry or hateful at the excess in the stores and damning us all for the role we play in perpetuating it through our consumption of goods and services (my usual line of thinking when I am walking in a mall) I felt blissfully detached from a need to change anything; detached from negativity and outcome.  Transformed, I experienced a deep sense of the immense abundance which we carry within and too often fail to recognize in ourselves or share with others.

This was not the first time that I've experienced such a strangely deep opening. It has happened to me on other occasions as well. And strange might not be the best word to describe the sensation because it involves such a profound sense of comfort and familiarity. The feeling is so familiar and comfortable I can't help but think of it as a return to our most natural way of being in the world and would compare it to the feeling you get upon a return home after time away. 

When boundaries are dissolved space arises for greater acceptance and love. We experience connectivity in such a way that there is no room for judgment or fear. This is a place of boundless beauty and goodness and amazingly, even blessedly is within our grasp if we just loosen our grip on self enough to let it appear.

Thankfully, this has been happening to me more, not less often as of late. It helps me be more compassionate towards myself and others I encounter throughout my days. For the presence of such moments in my life I will always be grateful. They serve as reminders to me of what is truly possible when we open our eyes and hearts to what is already there.

I am deeply inclined to think that this dissolution of self into love is possible for everyone-that it is a birthright of sorts, for us all, not just for those who understand it, those who are spiritually inclined or have a language framework to express it. Besides, language fails to paint the truest picture of the profundity of these experiences. Many people become tongue-tied by the lack of cultural references we have in our language system to describe such moments. The word ineffable, or unspeakable is the word that some fall back on to explain their experiences. I truly believe that cultivating a sense of awareness and openness within our own hearts is the greatest pathway towards increasing the presence of love in our lives.

Wishing you all the deep experience of your own abundant heart!

Jill

Feeling a little Blue...

Evidently, it has been some time since I published my first blog post. How often to post is a common dilemma shared by bloggers. For me, I've found that both everything and nothing have prevented me from returning sooner to prattle and ponder with you. That along with my own debilitating notion that penning anything worth sharing comes only once in a blue moon for me! Nonetheless, today I have decided to share this! Enjoy!

Once in a blue moon...

Did you ever wonder where this common saying came from? Admittedly I was an adult when I first learned that a blue moon referred to something other than the oh so romantic hybrid rose genetically altered to appear in a most glorious shade of blue which I used to swoon over in the plant catalogs of my childhood. I did understand that the phrase spoke to those events which took place only on rare occasion (such as "my husband and I go on a date 'once in a blue moon'") but I did not know the origin of the saying until  one evening when our local meteorologist explained it on the evening news. For the purpose of this article I will use the online source EarthSky's simple explanation:
 
In recent decades, many people have begun using the name Blue Moon to describe the second full moon of a calendar month. The time between one full moon and the next is close to the length of a calendar month. So the only time one month can have two full moons is when the first full moon happens in the first few days of the month. This happens every 2-3 years, so these sorts of Blue Moons come about that often.
and:

A blue-colored moon is rare. But folklore has defined two different kinds of Blue Moons. A Blue Moon can be the second full moon in a month. Or it can be the third of four full moons in a season.

That said, after becoming enlightened as to the frequency of their occurrence, my romantic side couldn't resist the rare opportunity of celebrating the magic of a blue moon falling on the last day of the first decade of the new millennium. Here was a bit I shared with some mystical friends about my plans for that magical eve: 

Shore walker friends,   Dec.31st, 2009

O Happy Night so full of Hope and Possibility
O Night of the New Year's Eve Blue Moon...

Tonight to celebrate the changing of the decade Paul and the kids and I are  packing our hot chocolate and heading out to the north shore to toss any regrets we may carry in our hearts out to sea and whisper in the blue moonlight our deepest desires for ourselves, our family and our world and let them travel the shaft of moonlight out over snowy land and seascape beyond our edges to that ever-bright and ever-hopeful place of greatest beauty... that boundless place beyond the constructs of time and place and self...

Thinking of you all tonight and wishing you all a Happy New Year... Enjoy the spectacular sky...it quite literally took my breath away driving home a short time ago...Thinking of you Jenny and Sr.Moon and I'll raise my thermos cup to you all from a snowbank this eve...Jill 

Perhaps you will be inspired to discover some magic on the next blue moon to occur on July 2, 2015, or at least to find time to spend with ones you love in the meantime!

Bluing Bolete (another magic blue for me):

 

There is something so attractive about a bluing bolete. At first glance, the ones which recently appeared in my heavily treed yard following a warm, wet spell appeared to be hardy fungi. Broad capped, thick stalked and coloured a ruddy, burnished copper they lent the magnificent illusion of earthy strength. What then of my children's discovery that even the slightest touch of their fingertips or a brush by the end of their boot caused a deep bluing to occur on the mushrooms flesh? We bore witness to a staining so akin to a fast spreading bruise that we were left to wonder if fungi can suffer from anemia?

Rest assured, what we had witnessed was not a rapid deterioration of a stunning creature from strong to weak. It was rather the result of a series of chemical reactions so rapid yet complex in their nature that it makes one reconsider how we as human beings negotiate the concept of time, and one which instantaneously brought me back to my own discovery of bluing boletes with my mother during my childhood many years ago.

The blueing reaction is easily explained through biochemistry. A compound called variegatic acid remains colorless unless it is exposed to oxygen. The cell walls of Gyroporus cyanescens are easily broken, exposing the variegatic acid to the air. The oxygenase enzyme converts the variegatic acid to its quinone methide, which is blue. Interestingly, in many other boletes, in the absence of oxygen, variegatic acid is converted to variegatorubin, which is responsible to the red color found in many members of this group. The possible functions of the variegatic acid and its color shifts to blue or red are unknown. Anyone have any ideas? (Tom Volk) 

The chemical reaction which causes the bluing is demystified above by Tom Volk, yet he still leaves the reader with a remaining question- this speaks volumes to our enduring interest in understanding nature; no matter how much we discover about something, blessedly there still remains something to keep our fascination for  further discovery!

Other favourite blues of mine:
~ the ocean blue

~ blue dishes (transfer ware, earthen ware, pottery)

~ blueberries (homemade jam, pie, picking them in late July)

~ denim (jackets, jeans, purses, skirts)

~ twilight

~ forget-me-nots

~ blue beaded lily

~ blue flag iris in wet ditches in June

~ a paper I did for Dr. L.Watson on Jazz and Blues called Black and Blue in America

~ the intensity of sadness

~ the way clouds look on a blue sky in September

~ blue eyes of the ones I love

~ and like my beloved uncle Gerald, my favourite ornaments on a Christmas tree are the royal-est of blue.        

There, I feel strangely better now, hope you do too!

Suffice it to say...

Suffice it to say that I cannot believe that you are reading this right now. Not because I am questioning your ability to read, rather because posting a blog is not something I ever in ten thousand years would have envisioned myself doing. I've long been a proponent of the Luddite philosophy of less is more when it comes to technology(minus their tendency towards violence), and despite many people's queries as to whether I have a website( I don't) or a blog, only now do I finally feel comfortable with the idea of sharing my thoughts in this very public manner. 

SO here goes:

It took me a very loooong time to think of myself as a writer. The very first piece of writing ever to move beyond the confines of my journal dealt with my angst of opening my heart to a world I wasn't sure would receive it. Luckily I had the good fortune of meeting up with a plucky gal/ artist/promoter of the arts named Becka Viau who was looking for someone with a bit of heart (me) to share words on her brand new site in support of the local arts and cultural community in our little town. As one of three inaugural contributors to thistownissmall.wordpress.com I was given the freedom and more importantly, a place to share my voice.   Read my inaugural piece here: http://thistownissmall.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/11/#more-11
For that opportunity I will be forever grateful, and for the tumble-bumble sort of way I came to meet Becka through my youngest sister Janeen ( whom I adore) I will forever be in awe. Mystery unfolds destiny.

At around the very same time I was sharing tea and conversation with a former University Professor of mine Dr. David Weale, only he wouldn't like that I just introduced him as Dr. He is not that kind of guy. He wouldn't even like for me to call him a storyteller extraordinaire or "Keeper of the Island Way". Nope! Not in need of a whole lot other than the basics is he...love...freedom to think...the ability to create...certainly not anything that would build the mighty ego! Forget that. But through the course of those sweet and thoughtful conversations over tea in early 2009 he came to tell me that he was thinking about creating an Island magazine with content by Islanders, for Islanders. Just the Christmas before he had met his delightful daughter in law artist Chloe Cork's parents and been introduced to a mag they publish in Ontario and he fell in love with the concept and format.

Now when we (David and I) became re-acquainted the fall prior thanks to a discussion at the Confederation Center Christmas Craft Fair about David and Chloe's wonderful children's book Doors in the Air, David invited me to a meeting of a little group of people (Shorewalkers). The group had originally come together to discuss another eminently readable book about spirit and place by David Weale  called Chasing the Shore. At the time the group met biweekly at a local convent to talk in an open manner about matters of spirit. They were (and continue to be) a most welcoming and open group of people who have brought both me and my amazing husband Paul much goodness since we first met with them. Wisdom sharing no holds barred. It was here that I first began to feel that I might have a voice worth sharing with the world, here that I was invited to read aloud words by others and words of my own and here that I was really encouraged to share my writing.
I do not have words to express the safety and goodness of these people.I travel through my days with their strength close to my heart to shore me up.

Through the course of our early emails David had come to see that I love to write and he gave me the fantastic opportunity of writing for the inaugural issue of his new Island mag which he and his son Davy and daughter in law Chloe created called RED magazine. Trouble was that despite his faith in my writing ability I had little faith myself, and even less experience. And so after many miserable attempts to come up with a fantastic piece for the mag, my first big rejection came in a little corner office on the corner of Water and Prince Streets; David's office he held for the Festival of Small Halls. It was a gentle rejection, as gentle as rejection goes because David is a very gentle guy, but the humiliation I felt was a deep one. I had let down a man who showed his faith in me as a beginning writer, and even more I had let myself and my family of supporters down. This was going to be the new me; Jill redefined. A Jill of endless possibility.... and it ended before it even began. But wait...that was a beginning....just as this first blog post is a beginning...and in the beginning things aren't always pretty or neat. Just think of childbirth, the beginnings of my three beautiful children were absolutely miraculous and not very pretty at all.

And yes, I did have a first story published in that inaugural issue of RED in the autumn of 2010. It was entitled REJECTED by RED...a fine piece of writing that came flowing out of a pile of tears and snot after I left that little corner office! And thankfully David continues to mentor me, humoring, even honoring my humble offerings!

 Listening to my inner spirit stirrings, trusting in the likely goodness of others and taking a  great big flying leap- of- a- chance with myself has only ever led to the most ridiculously amazing things becoming manifest in my own life! This universe of which I am a paltry, albeit lively part is a strangely demanding and endlessly fascinating creature. I am just glad that I am here now in it...with you.

Jill

A good enough start for sure!!
Love to you Paul Christian for thinking I could even while I wasn’t…