When I was little there was a song on the kids show Sesame Street that went something like this: Who are the people in your neighbourhood? In your neighbourhood. In your neigh…bour…hood… Say, who are the people in your neighbourhood? It ended with this little bit of wisdom: They’re the people that you meet when […]
Kindness
Seeing with the eyes of the heart
The tiny owl sat in the uppermost branches of the cottonwood tree behind my house. Despite the harassment from blue jays, grosbeaks, chickadees, and red polls, he tucked his head beneath his wing. At that moment, he wasn’t looking for a meal which the small birds could have easily provided had the little owl been […]
We are all the same kind of different…
Beautiful…and a little dangerous It can mean different things, but if you go back to its origin, her name means ‘lily’ or ‘rose’. Most often her name is taken to mean ‘beautiful’. And she was, probably still is, but it’s been quite a few years since I’ve seen her. She was a student at the […]
So you want to be a Life Coach for kids?
I will confess that I likely spend more time on Facebook than I need to. I am careful to curate my newsfeed regularly so that what I see is, for the most part, what I want to see: important or meaningful updates from the lives of my friends, inspiring and uplifting stories, and news from […]
Ordinary is never really ordinary…
On the outside, people generally look quite ordinary. For the most part, we dress the same, we comb our hair, and we go about the world in a similar way. Occasionally you will see a colourful character that stands out from the crowd like the man yesterday. He was seated at a sidewalk café opposite […]
Walking a different path…
There’s a German proverb that says, “Sweep in front of your own door and the whole world will be clean.” That’s good advice. If we worried about taking care of our own dirty doorsteps (choices, lives, children…) we wouldn’t have time to worry about anyone else’s. I had such an interesting chat the other day. […]
When good is better than great…
A couple of days ago I heard the story of a volunteer firefighter. He lived in a town where there were regular firefighters, but if the emergency required extra manpower the volunteers were called out. He wanted to serve his community, but he also had dreams of rushing into a massive blaze and saving a […]
Light from the dark places
“Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen died this week. While I may not have cared for his vocal stylings, you cannot deny the man was a gifted poet. The words above are lyrics from his song Anthem […]
Thoughts on being kind
I woke up early this morning. My eyes popped open at 4:28am. That’s pretty specific, I know, but the first thing I saw was the glowing face of the clock beside me. I knew in an instant, with absolute certainty, that I wouldn’t be going back to sleep because my mind was already focused and […]
The Day of Great Humiliation
Everyone else was laughing. I wasn’t. I was hunched down in my seat, face turned toward the bus window…waiting…waiting until my stop when I could get off that stupid school bus and away from those rotten boys. At the time I was glad there weren’t more kids left on the bus, but I also knew […]
