There comes a time when heroes are needed.  Beings of great power, wisdom and love to rectify waywardness, confront and transform tyranny and inspire possibilities when adversity obscures vision and joyful transcendence. Our world exists in such a context right now: challenges charge toward us and we meet them, breaking down to break through (thank you, Michael Eisen), struggling to find eventually and suddenly ways to dance with our shadows and wisdom to be whirled from wounds. Take a moment and consider just how much adversity has played part in our lives and the world’s in the last five years alone and notice what feelings flow…

I've been sharing this story much lately as the timing is pertinent to the celebratory initiatives of today, Canada Day. This is my earnest contribution to reclaiming this holiday as a creative expression of something more relevant to the changing currents of our times. I humbly hope we can all consider taking creative control to assert our own perspectives on such matters with respect, kindness and openness...

Unity is not some abstract ideal toward which we merely aim ourselves. Unity is something we can live moment-to-moment as a palpable, living and breathing experience of the shared presence of beingness of which all humanity, all life and even all of what we deem ‘not living’ (such as matter) exists within and is. The defining ethos of our times is a growing, relentless experience and subsequent embodiment of this ultimate sense of interdependent reality. 

It's the dead of Winter here in Canada and that deadness is one of the most mysterious and beautiful powers of this season. Indomitably, Winter slows everything down and forces us inside to shelter from the bitter weather outside. We are urged to take heart by going inward to find the true flame of our soul to warm us. In ways, it's like a forced meditation retreat--we have no choice but to spend more time with ourselves, which can be difficult as we come face-to-face all too often with our inner criticisms, shameful voices and all the verbiage of our negative self-talk.

It can be pretty challenging to be human right now. We’ve never been more aware of ourselves in such a global perspective. With this has come an intense awareness of what we’ve done by being, for the most part, a very unconscious species. The primary, present example is the destruction we’ve wreaked on the environment of planet Earth. It’s horrifying to consider in its entirety and as I spoke to a friend the other day about it, I shared that coming to this immense awareness can be like waking up and realizing we’re in hell. There’s even those of us who decry we need to ‘ascend’ to a higher dimension and escape from our present trials. That’s just how agonizing it is and one can’t fault those for feeling so helpless.

The Winter Solstice is one of the most powerful and mysterious times of the year. It signifies the moment when the Sun is most distant from Earth in the Northern latitude, coinciding in the shortest day and longest night of the year. However, it also marks the beginning of the returning journey of the Sun’s light, culminating at the Summer Solstice.