by Christine Nichols
What experience wants to be expressed today? What feelings are unearthed under the heightened sense of anxiety? Where am I today? At this moment?
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I feel excited to write again and to see and connect with my Callanish friends.
I am also feeling disjointed, empty, confused and nervous about finding my words, and then expressing them.
The last three weeks have been such a different, interesting, challenging place to be. At times I feel completely vacant, and at the same time loaded, full of emotions, old ones and new ones.
I find myself sliding into childhood and youth memories, as I am trying to organize fifty years of photos of my life in Canada, and uncovering photos of my family that I had left so many years ago.
I have put up a photo wall in my bedroom, all black and white images from long ago. I found a picture of my mother when she was pregnant with me. She looks so tired, so serious and so resigned, evidence of not knowing how long and hard and devastating this second world war would be. And WHEN would it finally end?
No predictability then, and none now. There is only the realization that my life has to be lived in single moments, in increments, in imponderables and the recognition of where I am and how I can align myself to it.
I am overwhelmed by deep feelings of a general sense of doom, of the unpredictability and the false illusion of being in control.
I have been reading Rumi’s poem The Guest House and the message is clear. Whoever comes to your door needs to be greeted, and by chance, new experiences abound, wanted or not, here they are! I find such solace, such joy and sadness looking at my family gallery. I miss everyone I see, including the innocent, young version of myself. Talking to them in the middle of another sleepless night, I feel such gratitude and quality of being, for they are all part of me.
And my request, indeed my longing, is to recognize the lessons that I have learned, and the many more still to come.
Christine Nichols came to Canada for a year or two of adventure. Fifty four years later she still enjoys her summer days kayaking on the ocean, and her winter days on the mountains-- a tribute to beautiful Vancouver. When cancer entered her world eighteen years ago, she was so fortunate to hear about Callanish and has been a regular participant ever since (“a Callanish lifer" as some old-timers call it). The supportive community, the many life affirming circles, the kindness and the caring of others have carried her through her recurrence last year, full of gratitude and humility for all her fellow travellers.