optimysticaleyes

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New Year 2024

2023 burned through my life like the wildfires that raged through my province, that burned the earth around me as I stood at the window, looking into the wall of smoke. Dry lightening torched the forests, the trees candlelighting in the night as we sat on our deck and the ash rained down around us. Watching the show across the lake as one tree after another after another after another blew up…

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Wildfires

“Nana, are we driving towards the fire, or away from the fire?” Hazel asks me from the back seat. I take a quick glance into the rear-view mirror and see the mostly blue sky that we’re leaving behind, then look at the thick wall of smoke we’re driving into. It’s incongruous. I woke early this morning after three or four hours of sleep and watched the red sky lighten, and turn blue as I rocked…

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Swimming in the Sea of Transformation

Travelling has a way of making time become elastic,of stretching and looping around on itself.Days have lost their meaning, as one runs into another, into another, into another and suddenly we’ve left the month of May. Far from home, from the familiar, from obligations, immersed in a language whose words I understand,but fly around inside my head and too often get stuckon my tongue when I try to…

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Walking Alone

I’m sitting in my bed in St. Rémy with the shutters and windows wide open, listening to the clinking of the dishes and the quiet chatter of the family next door as they eat their breakfast. The resident cat has just meandered down the steps, past the flowering jasmine, having left her nighttime perch (and her hair) on the patio chair below my window. I’m the first one up but I fear I may have…

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Red Threads of Connection

When I finally open my eyes, I’m sprawled in the middle of the bed, covers thrown off and I have to shimmy to reach my phone on the bedside table. It’s just past 7am and with the window and shutters pretty much closed, it’s dark and quiet. And hot. The air conditioning hasn’t been turned on yet. I’ve been waking early these past days, just as dawn begins to creep through the cracks in the…

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A Pilgrimage Begins

The limestone patio beyond the French doors in front of me are glistening in the rain. This is our first morning of what will be a month of mornings waking up in St. Rémy de Province. A month spent pretending that we’re French, eating croissants and baguettes while drinking tiny cups of coffee throughout the day and glasses of wine in the evening. (although my wine will be lemonade) We’ve spent…

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LOVE

I began an experiment last year. With every encounter, every decision, every choice, I asked myself, “How much more Loving can I be?” I was feeling and noticing how I constricted and contracted I was becoming.My body stiffening up and tightening up, mummifying,Reflecting the energy I was pulling in, hoarding, keeping for myself. Filling the cracks, weatherproofing, insulatingAgainst the…

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Inspired by Betty White

Inspired by Betty White

What if,instead of resolutionsWe took vows? Vows of kindnessof compassionof empathy Of lightnessof loveof laughter Of Caring…. Caring about othersCaring about animals and plants and trees and dirt and worms and snails and slugs Even mice and rats and bats and spidersEven those we find scary or repulsive or repugnant What if each day,we looked for the moments of wonder,of awe,of…

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Pondering Faith

This weekend my brother came for tea, and when he had tipped the last of it into his mouth, he took the pruning shears down from my hands – the new red-handled ones – and began to cut and snip and prune the dead branches from the blue spruce that grew up behind the deck. Then he began to cut through the thicker branches, the ones with needles still growing on them. And he pruned and he cut and…

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Curiosity Saved the Cat

Curiosity Saved the Cat

Curiosity, I think, is the antidote to so much of the fear and hatred we see around us. ~ Mira Jacob ~ “Is that a castle?” My almost five-year old granddaughter asks from the backseat, her voice riding waves of wonder and awe. I’m driving her to a weekly art class at Arts Umbrella and we’re stopped on Nelson Street waiting to turn right onto Burrard. Right outside her window is St. Andrew’s…

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Doing What We Can, Where We Can - With Love

Doing What We Can, Where We Can – With Love

I’ve been thinking about this quote for a while, which got me contemplating Sacred Activism….and then I began writing. I do my best figuring out while writing….. I’m told that planning is underway for another round of protests outside of hospitals. And I said, when I found out —that I can’t imagine the moral depravity,the completely empty space where their hearts must surely be beating. A…

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The Call of The Universe

The Call of The Universe

Forest Night Shot with Many twinkling stars. The smoke has finally cleared, the air cooled, and the lake is no longer bathwater warm. Finally, once again, I can look up in the night sky and see the stars that call me home. I can see the moon as she rises over the spruce and cedar trees standing sentry by the narrow dirt road. They are backlit, for a time, my beloved Ladies, those Queens, my…

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Cheerios From Heaven

My shaman friend Lucy came to me last nightAnd whispered in my ear,Mary, it’s always been Mary. And even though her wild woman hairWas smoothed down into a 60’s flip,I knew she spoke the Truth. And even though I’m not Catholic,Have never been Catholic,Can’t even call myself Christian,I wake in the night withAve Maria singing through my soul,As if She herself woke me.As if to say, I’m here,…

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Raising Dragon Slayers

Loïc was throwing rocks off the dock with two of his uncles, a favourite activity for a five-year old boy, when suddenly he stopped, arms full of newly gathered rocks, and studied the trees standing sentry high on the bank. “What is that?” He asked, looking westward. “That’s the sun,” His Uncle Jared responded. “No, it’s not,” Loïc furrowed his brow. He was five and a half and knew what the…

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Used To Be

**take a hard right at the narrows and go all the way to the end of the arm – there you’ll find Salmon Arm** “What is ‘used to’..?” my grandson interrupts, strapped in his seat in the back of the car. He’s been listening to my conversation with his mom while we’ve been stuck in traffic heading into town from our place at the lake. ‘Stuck in traffic’ should be an oxymoron, but instead, now…

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Matriarch

I look at my hands as they type these words and I see my mother’s hands. Same with my feet, I have my mother’s feet, and for that I’m thankful. They are strong and healthy, with straight toes and not a bunion or corn in sight. They are summer feet, in that they look good bare and in strappy, barely-there sandals. My mom starts wearing her sandals as soon as the snow leaves the ground, and by the…