Changing the world with our greetings

This post is dedicated to Ross Armstrong who returned to a place called love on Saturday.

He will be remembered by many as the person who greeted them at Trinity United Church.

I went to see Johnny Reid in concert in Ottawa on Saturday night. I wrote about Johnny in two earlier posts, Today I’m gonna try and change the world,  and A place called love  Since I’m not a diehard country music fan, that’s remarkable. But there’s something about Johnny Reid . . .

On Saturday, mid-concert, he slowed things down. Talking to the audience he said when he dies he wants to leave behind “the best of” himself. For him, the best is the song “Today I’m Gonna Try and Change the World.” According to Reid’s song, changing the world can be as simple as greeting a neighbour with a smile, or shaking the hand of a stranger.

A neighbourly greeting, a smile, or a handshake with a stranger can change the world.

When we greet people with a friendly smile, our core message to them is, “You are valuable.” When we shake the hands of a stranger, our core message is, “I’m curious about you. Tell me, so I can understand.”

When we are on the receiving end of those greetings and handshakes, it affects us. For that moment, we know we are valuable. For that moment, we know we are interesting and worth knowing. When we feel valuable, it’s easier for us, in turn, to greet people with a smile. When we feel interesting and worth knowing, it’s easier for us, in turn, to shake hands with a stranger. It’s easier for us, in turn, to affect others.

And so on, and so on, and so on . . .

When someone shows us our value, we remember them forever.

Thank you, Ross. You were one of my favourite people, and I will never forget that you showed me my value.

2 beauty tips for Mother’s Day

Earlier this week I received a message from Emjayandthem’s Blog. The title: Beauty Tips.

I clicked on it expecting lipstick advice or wrinkle reduction tips. Instead, I read four words:
Smile often. Laugh Hard.

Save money on expensive makeup and so-called beauty creams. Everyone is beautiful when smiling or laughing. Even the convulsive snort-through-the-nose laughter is beautiful.

May you create lots of beauty on Mother’s Day.

(Click on Emjayandthem’s Blog to see the Josh Turner “Why Don’t We Just Dance” music video included. It’s fun.)

Paying the ferryman and other rituals of comfort

We saw my brother off to sea one last time on Sunday – along with a dime for the ferryman.

Graham was retired from the Canadian Navy, and it was his wish to have his ashes committed at sea. We did so after the annual Battle of Atlantic commemoration ceremony in Halifax harbour on Sunday morning.

When the navy prepared his ashes for the committal, they placed a dime on the corner of the box. It is naval tradition to send the dead off with a coin to pay Charon, the ferryman from Greek mythology, to carry him across the river Styx.  Our Canadian navy uses the coin with the ship on it, of course—our dime, or what they call the “Bluenose coin.”

I hadn’t thought about they ferryman or Greek mythology before the ceremony, but I found the Bluenose coin to be beautiful naval ritual of comfort.

At times of death, humans seem to need rituals of comfort.

My father was a Mason, and when he died, the members of his lodge held a separate small ceremony. I don’t remember all the specifics of what each person did when they stepped up to my father’s coffin, but they all ended their time with him by pointing up. I presume it was their wish that “up” was the direction he would go. If you were to ask me where I believe people go when they die, I wouldn’t say “up.” I might say “around,” or “among.” But it gave my father’s friends comfort to point up, and that’s all that matters.

I’m not Catholic, but I have many close family and friends who are.  I have stood at funeral homes many times while Hail Marys have been said over the coffin. I can see that this small ritual brings comfort to those reciting and to the family present. When I die, I won’t have formal Hail Marys said over my body, but if it brings comfort to my Catholic family and friends to whisper a few, I hope they will.

At a memorial service for my 103-year-old friend a month ago, we released colourful helium balloons printed with the words, “Bon Voyage.” The colourful balloons (again going “up”) were a joyous ritual of comfort for us.

When I die, if I have lived at all well, my service will be filled with Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, humanists, and every other faith or non-faith. Each of them will need a different ritual for comfort. May I be sent off with balloons, dimes, Hail Marys, pointing fingers, and a collection of many other small rituals to help each person get through the day.

Catching light and other interesting “wow” stuff

I’ll be flying to Halifax this weekend, so how wonderful to read in Marcus Chown’s The Quantum Zoo: A Tourist’s Guide to the Neverending Universe that the faster I travel, the slimmer I get.

Hallelujah to that. (Although, to be fair, runners have been telling us that for years.)

Chown’s book was full of other intriguing possibilities, too.

Some men (and some women) will be pleased to know that every breath you take could contain an atom breathed out by Marilyn Munroe. People working in the penthouse suites of tall buildings will learn to their chagrin that we age faster at the top of a building than at the bottom. It’s also interesting to know that a cup of coffee weighs more when it is hot than when it is cold.

My favourites, though, are these:

• Atoms are mostly empty space. Without all the empty space, the entire human race would fit in the volume of a sugar cube.

So much for needing personal space.

• If we were able to catch up with a beam of light, we would see a stationary electromagnetic wave. This is impossible. (According to some complex equations worked out by James Maxwell.) Since seeing impossible things is indeed impossible, we could never catch up with a light beam. 

Infinite, elusive light. It reassures me to know that something out there can’t be captured, tied down and made to conform.

It makes me wonder what else might have the same elusive quality?

“As a science writer I am constantly amazed by how much stranger science is than science fiction, how much more incredible the Universe is than anything we could possibly have invented.” —Marcus Chown

When is quitting the right thing to do?

I give you a story from Canadian First Nations storyteller, Albert Dumont.

A man was laying brick one day when he looked up into the sky to see a crow chasing a hawk.

The crow was cawing and trying to peck at the hawk’s tail feathers. The hawk was tormenting the crow, allowing him to get just oh so close and then with a great swoop of his wings he’d soar out of sight. This carried on for some time.

Finally, the man saw the crow spiralling out of the sky in a dead fall. The crow had exhausted himself and died. He hadn’t known when to quit.

In today’s society, a decision to stop doing something is not always looked upon kindly. We call it “quitting,” and we mutter about “letting others down” or “not living up to expectations.”

Sometimes giving up is about saving ourselves, before we exhaust ourselves and die.

“Todos tenemos 2 dilemas: cuando empezar y cuando parar.”

“We all have 2 dilemas: when to begin and when to stop. “  —Paulo Coelho

The Way: a reformed atheist’s poetic struggle with elusive spirit

This photo came into my Facebook feed last week. My reaction: “I’m not making things up. I’m experiencing things that you scientists haven’t figured out how to explain—yet.

This morning I read in the paper about a University of British Columbia study that showed that faith diminished after study subjects performed analytical tasks, or looked at Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

These are timely for me, because I spent last weekend in a Healing Pathway workshop. Think Reiki, with scripture thrown in. So, I spent my weekend working with something I could not see or measure.

Now, I am someone who insists on having one hand on tangible science while the other explores the divine. When I don’t have something solid to hold onto in the one hand, it creates some apprehensions and discomfort.

Most times a healthy balance is in order. It’s not wise to launch ourselves into airy-fairy ethereal worlds without ever touching down. But I don’t believe it’s wise to ground ourselves too thoroughly in the science either, for it would deprive us of gifts of intuition.

I couldn’t see or measure what was going on over the weekend, but I could feel it. In fact, I was left trembling by it.  I decided at the end of the weekend that I had to let go temporarily of my need for the solid facts on the science side of the equation. Science just isn’t there yet, but I believe it will be some day. Should I deny myself extraordinary experiences in the meantime? Nope. So, out of my weekend experience, this poem came through me to you.

And my message to science is this: Catch up, will ya? Find the way.

The Way

© 2012 Arlene Somerton Smith

A tree waits in a mid-summer field,
shimmering elm arms stretched wide,
refuge

A speck blooms on the golden horizon,
takes the silhouette of a man,
slow

He stumbles to the gnarled grey trunk,
breathes deeply of respite and rest,
slumps

Knees drawn up, head cradled and rocking,
soul carved hollow by pain,
waiting

A figure long of robe materializes,
neither male nor female,
cosmic

At a distance the figure waits and watches
for we must ask, that is
the way.

The man looks into eyes that hold infinity,
reaches out his trembling hand,
“Please.”

Palm to palm, light radiates through the pair from
the sire universe and the birthing earth,
aglow

The man unfurls with peace and power,
receives the healing, for that is
the way

When the light retracts, hands release,
the long-robed figure recedes,
vapour

The man trembles, rises, re-arms,
resumes his journey on his path,
doubting

Along the road he meets a friend. Smiling,
and curious the friend asks, “Who was that
stranger?”

Shrugging, “Oh, that? That was nothing.”
He turns. The tree and the long-robed figure,
imperceptible

Uneasy, two men continue down their road,
laughing and clapping each other on the back,
analyzing

But a tree and a figure wait in a mid-summer field,
when needed you will see them, for that is
the way