Growing Versions

I just got back from a trip to New York city, even though it is relatively close to my city, I had not been there before.  It was up until a few weeks ago, only a legend, a character in a storybook. I had an amazing time and I felt like the subway was the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I would descend into a tunnel and emerge into the light in a very different neighbourhood than the one I had just left. The scale of such a densely packed city as Manhattan was a bit mind blowing. I have been to big cities before, but it was quite different than some of the bigger ones I have been.  For one thing, a city like New Delhi really lives inside out.  Poverty and lavish wealth sit side by side.  The same is true in NY but both the wealth and poverty are more concealed in NYC.  It was hard to conceptualize that above our heads at any given moment, there were thousands of people living in apartments (some closet sized, some house size...

We go about our business.  We have ups and downs and we straggle through the winter months. Finally the spring comes, and we discover the beauty of warmth, the scent of trees, we allow ourselves time to rest.  Not the sluggish, hibernation induced stupor of the winter months, but a light drowsiness in the shade of  a tree that leaves us feeling awake and ready to explore. I had a chance to visit Ellis Island a few weeks ago.  It is a major historical site that has a lot of meaning to millions in North America and throughout the world.  I left it feeling much like I do after a time in the midst of nature.  It restored my balance with the realization that historical sites and nature have a lot in common. They are places to reflect, to be held by something bigger than ourselves.

I learned about a new concept when I was away.  My cousin was telling me about "thin moments".  Moments when we feel the closest to God, the moments when the distance between us is much less than usual.  There are "thin places" too when the spirit world is closest to us. I had some of those moments recently.   Spending time on my own and with friends and family getting to know myself, listening to my own voice say things I really think. I think it is possible to have thin moments with yourself.  So many days what I want and need and my self seem distant and far off, almost not audible.  Thin moments can't be chosen but the conditions can be made right.  

When they ask why you love the rain, the ocean, the river, tell them, it's because unlike the people who should have loved you better, the water was never afraid to touch you; even when you were at your most damaged and broken. Nikita Gill

It is the tail end of birthday season 2017.  Just one more to go. This was the first year ever that I didn't lose sleep over kid birthday parties. The older kid had two very grown up outings with friends. The younger invited everyone he could think of to the splash pad. We had a lot of fun planning it together because we got to plan the fun stuff: the type of pinata, what to put in the pinata, the best type of water gun, only fun decisions. We got to the park a few minutes before his friends and picked a random tree to attach this pinata to. After the kids arrived, they quickly discovered that it had been attached to a rather special tree. It had been planted to honour the life of "The Candy Lady", Lizzy Hutchinson.  I have a feeling she would have approved.

I recently took a refreshing and nourishing trip with my mom to two extremely photographed places, Niagara Falls and New York City.  In Niagara Falls especially, you could not not notice the multiple selfie-sticks competing for images along the water front.  People, myself included, crowded together at the look off points to take (near) identical pictures of the falls in spite of the fact that we could easily have just bought postcards depicting it.  It was a way of grasping at the enormity of their grandeur, the oversized scale of their beauty and all the ways they were opening up channels inside us, just like one would expect from an awesome experience in nature.  The falls are awe inspiring and cameras were our feeble attempt to catch the rainbow. Having said all that, close to the falls there is so much mist that I couldn't actually see through the lens of my cell phone. Time after time, I clicked with no real knowledge of what would come of it. This photo i...