Celebrating what can be celebrated is one of the most joyful and inspiring things in our lives. During my recent visit in Germany, we (children, grand children and great grand children, with or without partners), came together to celebrate my parents' diamond wedding -- 60 years of marriage. The photo above is of my mother's colorful decoration of the lunch table with spring flowers and branches from her garden and chocolate lady bugs for the kids. It was a beautiful occasion. Such a lasting and loving marriage is not given to everybody, especially not all that often to the generations after theirs. There was sadness on my nephew's face because he had recently separated from his second wife. I am single, too, but due to everybody else's reluctance, it was up to me to give the speech that my parents felt belonged to such an occasion.

In reflecting on this, I realized that my being single didn't stand in the way of my appreciating and celebrating their love and long life together. We all have experience of loving relationship in one form or another. We all know the moment-to-moment experience of our heart closing with conflict, disappointment or pain, and thus the challenge of keeping our hearts open, or daring to open them again. These are the most deeply meaningful and spiritually growth-full experiences of our human lives. And celebrating others in their loving relationship is inspiring for all of us, as it evokes the reality, truth and power of love in our own hearts. It's contagious and healing at the same time (except if we hold on to a belief that we're deprived, or not capable, of living it, which is not true, ever).

And so the day was an occasion for all of us to bask in the glow of love. No doubt some of us took that in more fully than others, but all of us were touched by Love's grace, even my nephew for whom all of our hearts were beating with tender compassion. We were touched by my parents' love, which created our family, and our love for each other, including all the rough edges, of course! There is no human story without those, but there is also no human story without a touch of Love's grace. It's up to us what we choose to focus on.

I had a very beautiful session with a client today that made me reflect on just how practical Love can be, and how it has a tendency to show up in the most unlikely ways and places. The reason why she had called me was that she – let’s call her Clare –  and her husband were facing a very difficult situation: their son is having a hard time at school and acting out a lot, and they were considering pulling him out and have him home-schooled. She wanted to get clearer on her feelings about all of this before coming to a decision.

Very quickly during and after she described the situation to me, it came to me to ask whether she had spoken to the teacher. When clients share situations with me, I listen at that level, but I am also always open to the expression of Love. When I asked the question, I had no idea where it would lead, but I trusted the fact that it kept coming. It turns out that it may hold the key to a healing embrace and movement in and with this situation, rather than the disconnecting that they had been thinking of.

​The darkness of this time of the year evokes the depths of the unknowable, unfathomable mystery that Life is.
May you come to trust this mystery throughout its dark and light moments, and may you be willing to let your light and love shine no matter how dark or light it seems!

The tragic events in Paris happen as I’m in the process of organizing the next online event on ‘Awakening in the Heart’. My first reaction is shock and dismay in the face of all this violence and the suffering it causes. Then compassion and deep love. As I sit with all of this, I remember that there was a time in my life when I used to hate with a passion: I hated capitalists for exploiting workers, and I hated men for oppressing women. The way this hatred was mostly expressed was intellectual, in terms of philosophical argument, as I was teaching political philosophy at the time. But essentially, it was and is the same as that which leads people into hurting and killing others.

The essence of violence is the distinction between ‘me’ and the other, the one we feel justified to hate. The ones we think we have good reasons to exclude from our heart and from our willingness to be and stay open to. Many years ago, by grace, there came a moment when I was shown that I could open my heart instead of hating. At the time, I was in a conflict with new neighbors whose noise levels were way beyond my ability to cope with. The conflict was going nowhere, and found myself stuck with that old hatred that was now directed against my neighbors. I had been on a healing journey and a spiritual path for almost fifteen years at that point, and much of the habit of hating had dissipated. But it arose in that conflict.

 Somehow the topic of death has come up in different ways over the last few weeks, and it all came together in this new special online event on Facing Death. Death still is a taboo topic in our Western societies, and in the news, it comes up in the context of war, crime, or recently that of the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. In those contexts, death tends to be seen from the perspective of survival, as a loss of life that could have been avoided. And for sure the refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea did so because they wanted to escape suffering and death in their native countries, and their deaths could indeed have been prevented.

I do not mean in any way to belittle the suffering in these situations, and I hold the people affected by them with much compassion. And yet there is a different aspect to death, a different perspective and understanding of it that highlights the preciousness of it as a human experience. Just like birth, it brings us face to face with the mystery of human life. Experiencing death consciously -- the possibility or reality of one's own death or that of others -- can change our life forever. It tends to point us to what is ultimately real and true. This is what this special event is all about. 
 
Joan Ruvinsky, a yoga and spiritual teacher from Montreal, is one of the speakers taking part in this event. She will share her experience of living with terminal cancer and facing death in a very real and imminent way. I will be pre-recording our conversation because her energy levels are by now too unpredictable for her to be able to commit to participating in a live event (the photo of her is taken as she's resting on the sofa). It is rare for people in her situation to be willing to appear and speak in public. I'm very grateful that Joan has agreed to share her experience and insights with us. It feels like a truly special opportunity, and a real gift. So do join me for this event! You'll find more information on the Facing Death event page of the Living from Love website.

I love leading meditation, and I've been offering more meditation recently, including a meditation retreat day in Montreal in September (see last blog post). So I've decided to add a new meditation page to my website. 

On it, you'll find

• all the Montreal meditation events;
  
• a video of a guided meditation on 'Embracing ourselves with Love' from one of the online retreats which people like using; as well as 
• a handout with meditation instructions that I used to give to people during my meditation courses and workshops. It's a bit dated, but people still find it very helpful.

Go check the page out, you'll find it HERE. Or join me for the next meditation evening or retreat day... there's nothing like tasting stillness, love, or deep letting go, when meditating 
with others and being supported by the synergy of hearts and minds united in meditation.

Dear all,  

The meditation retreat day in Montreal at the end of August was a wonderful experience for all of us -- I'm so glad I followed the vision I had of it during a meditation evening this summer! It's always a bit scary to create something new, but it's so worth it when it happens and it turns out to be of benefit for everybody. Here is what two participants reported back about it:

I love sharing meditation, and I'll probably be offering more day retreats in the future. Stay tuned, and who knows, maybe you'll join us next time? (To find out about Montreal area events, sign up for the heart of Love newsletter in the right hand column -->).

Meditation evenings in Montreal continue...  
every Thursday, 7 - 8.30 pm, at the office in Outremont, 1533 Van Horne. I bring my harmonium as people enjoy so much the chanting leading into the meditation (or even replacing the meditation). For more info about the evenings go to the meetup group page.