Saturday, November 12, 2016

"Let your Light so shine..."

I have just completed and forwarded an early morning email to Allison hoping to confirm a plan for today that we jigged together during my Remembrance Day morning visit with she and her Mom Joan. Hmmm... where did that all come from???

If you read and will recall... it was in my intended "plan" for observing Remembrance Day 2016 to visit the Band Room at Royal Military College to see the reproduction of my painting gift to Matt Dawe's family as it hung there and to pay my respects through that visit.

I had made a wonderful chicken stew - a supreme comfort food on my winter medley of favorite foods and Deb added her beyond delicious apple sauce to be shared with Allison and Joan. I (as is the usual custom) caught the ladies in their night attire - late risers they are! HA HA!!

While visiting over a nice cup o' Joan's great java we took in some of the National War Memorial service underway in Ottawa with host Peter Mansbridge, CBC's iconic version of Walter Cronkite in the hay day of good television broadcasting. Can't even mention Wolf Blitzer in the same mouthful of words of comparison or praise....

During the ensuing conversation, I suddenly and firstly realized... that I had never seen the National Remembrance Day service... except on the evening news in dribs and drabs. I realized too... the ordeal... no battle that my daughter had experienced in the last year was sadly still unfinished and that she could well need and enjoy my presence here on this particularly cold Remembrance Day.

What happened in my thoughts and planning at that time closely resembles what often becomes the path during my painting process. What I intend at the beginning seems less important... less pertinent and less satisfying to my need and intent. I simple shifted gears... "imagineered" and took the path less travelled to create a new Remembrance Day observance.

"And it made all the difference"... for all of us yesterday.

Strange how the Universe chooses the time and place to visit you. Stranger still... that it can either choose to pick "You" alone... or a group... or a Nation at large. We in Canada were given yet another reason to experience a great sense of loss... that ironically... fell upon us on Remembrance Day,. It will remain after this Nov 11th... as "the day the music died."

Leonard Cohen, our beloved and iconic francophone poet and balladeer passed away on November 10th at the age of 82. Unexpected?... perhaps. But anticipated with any sense of it happening? Not. It seems unfathomable to all who loved and treasured his gifts that his raspy voice would someday be no more. And yet... it is prophesied and given substance within his own imagination and reality.

And his prophetic words ... songs and spirit easily cross the border that separates our two nations. No fence can be built that is strong enough to constrain its message. I could choose any example from the treasury of his music... the music that has guided my life and given me uplifting courage during my own personal Darkness and struggles.

Good bless and us all safe!!! Pray that Cohen's words are correct. Contribute your own peaceful "Light"... you in your small corner... and I in mine!!!

In closing out today, I shall let Leonard Cohen's hymnal "Democracy" ... "Dance us to the end of love."


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