Caduceus

So, I'm back! In case any of you were wondering... workshop and then a non-internet territory (my mom's house!).

And as I was driving back I got to thinking... You know the symbol of the healing profession... the caduceus... at right? I know it has its origins in Greek mythology with Hermes... but it reminds me a lot of the story in the Old Testament (Num 21:4-9). The Israelites are begin killed by poisonous snakes and God tells Moses to erect a snake on a pole. All who gaze at the pole after being bitten by a snake are healed and live.

The snake is actually redemptive in this story... it has healing powers... Later, in the New Testament, Jesus himself mentions it when he says: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life". (John 3:14-15).

So, there's a link between the serpent on the pole and Christ on the cross. And I probably knew all this before, but for some reason it just really came together... The snake is often seen as the representative of Satan (e.g. story of Adam and Eve in Genesis and even in Revelation 12:14). But what about the redemption of the snake?? What about the event with Moses in the desert, which is really a foreshadowing of Christ on the cross... The redeemed snake... Now there's a topic for discussion....

Sex Abuse Scandal in Germany

The news just got a whole lot more interesting with the news that there is a sex abuse scandal growing in Germany. More to the point... the Archdiocese of Munich, during the 1980s shuffled an abusing priest around... Same as in other diocese's around the world... except the bishop at the time was Josef Ratzinger... aka Pope Benedict.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/15/church.abuse/index.html?hpt=T2

Of course, the Vicar General at the time (second in command), is claiming full responsibility and saying that Ratzinger knew nothing of what was going on... we have to wonder. And what does it mean for the Church and the Vatican, that the sex abuse scandal is no longer just an American thing... or an Irish thing... or an English speaking thing...

Like I said, the news should get a whole lot interesting in the next little while...

Clock vs. Anti-Clock

So, we were out for dinner tonight, three RTS trainers and one of us noticed that the clock on the wall was running backwards. The second hand was actually going counter-clockwise instead of clockwise... And the minute hand and hour hand were going backwards as well. One trainer said they must have put the batteries in backwards... And then the third trainer noticed that the clock was actually a backwards clock... the numbers were reversed... So, although it looked like it was actually running backwards, it was just telling time in a counter-clockwise manner... not a clockwise direction... To see a picture, go here...

http://www.thebackwardsclock.com/?gclid=CIbpzIHcuaACFSZHagodOiouTw

And that got us to thinking... not how many trainers it takes to figure out a problem like telling time... but how it is that we have certain ways of looking at the world that just seem normal to us... What would it be like to use a backwards clock in our house... how hard would it be to shift our thinking around it? It's like driving on the right side of the road vs. the left side. Who's to say which is the "right" side? Same with a clock... who's to say that clockwise is the right way to go... why not have it go counterclockwise... What difference woul that make. Same with reading... we read horizontally left to right... but the Jews read right to left and vertically... who's to say which is the right way?? Which got me thinking... we get so used to things being a certain way in our world, to doing things a certain way that we just take that for granted. We can't even see another way of doing things. Whether it's telling time or reading or handling issues in our lives... What if we looked for something different in our lives?? Something "counter-clockwise"... We joked that if our clockwise clocks were the "clocks"... then this backwards clock would be an "anti-clock"... you know, matter vs. anti-matter... something like that... Anyhow... what could be done "counter-clockwise" in your world, rather than the standard "clockwise"??

Canine Transfusions

I learned something new the other day... Did you know that there are canine blood donors?? That vets have a dog blood donor registry that they can call when they have a patient who needs a blood transfusion?? I had no idea! I guess I never thought about it... never thought about what might happen for dogs if they are injured and lose blood. And... there are cat blood donors too!! I found a UK site that has a registry of potential blood donors. I wonder if Canada has the same thing... or if each vet has their own registry... And doing a bit more research.... there are even horse blood donors! There is something deeply moving about people who would volunteer their pets and animals to help other pets... Human blood donors are one thing... but even there, the number of eligible Canadians who actually donate is very small... And that is helping their own species! But to volunteer your pet to help other pets...  Pets that you might never meet... I wonder if the owners of pet blood donors are also human blood donors??

Good - Fair - Poor

I've driven the Icefield Parkway (between Jasper and Banff) quite a bit during the last couple of years, sometimes in the winter. They have a display board at each end of the Parkway giving the highway conditions... good - fair - poor. And those are winter driving conditions. But I'm really not sure what they mean! I've driven the highway when the posted condition was Poor and met nothing but bare and wet or even bare and dry road conditions. I've driven it while it was Fair and it's basically perfect winter driving conditions - not a speck of snow in sight. So, in checking the road conditions online, it's always good to take it with a grain of salt. So when I checked it Friday, it said Lake Louise to Jasper Park Border was Fair and Jasper Park Border to Jasper was Poor. Doesn't sound too bad... so I started off Saturday morning and the first hiccup was backed up traffic just outside Lake Louise. Turns out there were a couple of jack-knifed semis in the direction of Field on the Trans Canada, but the Icefields was open... so that was good news! The Icefields however was another story... It had apparently snowed overnight and the snowplows were not yet out... 3 inches of snow became 6 inches of snow became 12 inches of snow... At one point the highway was basically a single lane of tire ruts in the freshly fallen snow. And this was Poor... Yep... I would agree with that!! But the section from Jasper Park Border to Jasper was actually pretty good, plowed and sanded with even bare and dry for some sections. Checking the road reports at the end of the day however, it was listed as Poor as well... Go figure... Moral of the story... don't believe everything you read! Even this!

Consciousness Cleanse

I'm reading/working my way through a book right now called the 21 Day Consciousness Cleanse by Debbie Ford (she of The 10 Right Questions book from earlier in this blog). I'm on Day 6 and... well... everything she's saying is going to show up is showing up! Sigh... Part of me thinks that nothing will happen... so when I read this morning that "by now emotions will be showing up for you"... and yesterday I was just a bundle of raw emotions... well... you gotta wonder! In the RTS workshop, we tell people to trust the process and the process works... and Debbie Ford said the same thing so... maybe there's something to it! I guess I just thought that doing some exercises out of a book for 1/2 hour/day wasn't going to make a big difference... Guess who got surprised!

Virtual "Reality"

We've read a lot about the virtual world... places like Second Life where you can create an online avatar (an online character) and interact as you would in the real world. You can buy property and clothes for your online persona and engage in all sorts of interactions. Apparently some people spend more time in this virtual reality than in reality. A news article on CNN tells the story of a South Korean couple, who both lost their jobs. To escape from reality, and their premature 3 month old baby, they spend marthon sessions in an online virtual reality, where they were raising a girl... To the point that they only fed their baby once a day... and the child died... How does that work?? How does virtual realtiy become more real than reality?? How does it work that we are so averse to reality and to the responsibilities entailed there... that we run to something where we don't have to deal with reality... Drugs, alcohol, video games, virtual reality... it's all the same thing... an escape from our life today... But what would our lives look like if we devoted all our energy to real life than to a Second Life....??

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/07/south.korea.baby.dead/index.html?hpt=T2

Teaching our Kids

I was reading a book the other day... and it related the story of a young girl in the 1930s who was very fidgety in class. She was a bright girl, but the teachers despaired that she would ever amount to anything, as she had trouble concentrating and focussing. They suggested that her mother put her in a "special needs" school. The mother was a little concerned and took the girl to a psychologist. They chatted for a bit while the little girl sat on the couch and tried not to fidget. Finally the psychologist told the girl that he and her mother were leaving the room to talk. As he left, he turned up the radio a bit. Outside the room, the psychologist and mother watched throug a one-way window as the girl started to dance around the room. The psychologist turned to the mother and told her that her daughter didn't have any problems, she was just a dancer at heart, and to put her in a dance school. So that's what happened... and the girl found herself amongst kids just like herself... They learned the same things as regular kids, but in the context of a dance school. She grew up to become a choreographer with Andrew Lloyd Webber. Nowadays, she would have been diagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin!

We all learn in different ways... in fact they speak of 7 intelligences:

1. Linguistic: Children with this kind of intelligence enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles.

2. Logical-Mathematical: Children with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments.
3. Bodily-Kinesthetic: These kids process knowledge through bodily sensations. They are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking.
4. Spatial: These children think in images and pictures. They may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building with Leggos or daydreaming.
5. Musical: Musical children are always singing or drumming to themselves. They are usually quite aware of sounds others may miss. These kids are often discriminating listeners.
6. Interpersonal: Children who are leaders among their peers, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence.
7. Intrapersonal: These children may be shy. They are very aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated.

While we all have aspects of all of these intelligences, we usually have one or two stronger ones. I'm a strong visual learner for example... I do best when I can see things... So, now, the big question... Why do schools today try to shoe-horn kids into just one of these? Boys in particular are much more into Bodily-Kinesthetic learning than girls...

This was all triggered by hearing about a remake of the Black-Eyed Peas song "I gotta feeling" that was done by a bunch of school kids (1600 to be exact)... all to promote reading... Check out the original music video done for Oprah and then check out the kids doing their remake...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G02fRe98y-w  (Oprah Show version)

http://www.schooltube.com/video/e9bd79d29b4d0e6a2345/Gotta-Keep-Reading--Ocoee-Middle-School

The kids were cool to do this... it incorporates music, reading, dance all together... How much better would our kids learned if we taught math through cooking class... taught history through drama class...

Biking Weather

Spring is definitely here... I've been out for a few bike rides in the last few days and I have the mud on my pants and jacket to prove it! There is something about spring that just inspires me... I'm not sure if it's the smell of the freshly exposed earth, the sounds of the little birds, the honking of the Canada Geese, the sight of open water on the reservoir, the warmth of the sun... But it really is like a new birth. New things become possible... new ideas, new vistas, new projects.... or old projects that are resurrected... things that I have put on the back burner for the whole winter look a lot more possilbe in the light of the spring sun. Even the cats can feel it, howling to go outside for a walk, earnestly searching for the first new blades of grass... They want to roll on the warm concrete, bask in the sun and blink with serene bliss... There is something about the way in which they just soak in the sun that connects with my spirit as well. I just want to sit down in a lawn chair and soak it up. It's been far too long... and although I know winter is not quite over yet, the end of the tunnel is in sight... And pussy willows are not far behind!!!

Women and Children First?

I was reading a letter to the editor in the Globe and Mail yesterday and it was a response to an article about the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania. The letter writer said that the general order of entry into lifeboats was as follows:

1. Women and children;
2. First-class men, ship’s officers;
3. First-class passengers’ belongings and ship’s artwork;
4. Second-class men;
5. Liquor, cigars, snooker tables;
6. Potted plants, cuspidors;
7. Steerage-class men, ship’s crew.

Now, I haven't found anything to substantiate this list... especially the potted plants... but I found a list of the Titanic's passengers that outlined the percentage of people saved: men, women, children, broken down by 1st, 2nd and 3rd class (http://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm). It seems that women and children were most likely to survive, although this decreased with class as well. With men, it seems to have been rather erratic, with more third-class men surviving than 2nd class men... Go figure... Clearly the above list is a tongue in cheek look at what it might look like! Definitely a conversation starter that's for sure!

Procrastination

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to procrastinate on things? And how things have a pecking order? I've been postponing some emails for weeks now... but as soon as I sit down to type something for this blog, all of a sudden those emails hit the priority list and I go off and do them... I've noticed that before. Laundry can be extremely interesting when you're trying to avoid doing something else... when normally laundry is ho-hum... It's not that I'm avoiding this blog either... it's just that I'm looking for inspiration... or something! It's certainly a gret way to complete other things!

Speaking of completions, I've been doing a bunch of the physical variety... clearing off my desk and handling a bunch of personal paperwork that has been piling up during successive absences. It definitely does create a sernse of space and peace. Even got the outdoor Christmas lights taken down today! I tell you, sometimes I really have a warped sense of time. I procrastinate on things, because I think they'll take longer than I have time for... When really it doesn't take all that much time at all... And a little bit here and there adds up to a whole lot by the end of the day. Plus, doing those completion things does create a sense of freedom and liberation... Mind you, I'm still working on the 35 (or so) started (and unfinished) books I have on the go. I've completed a few of them, so there is progress coming... It's just a matter of working my way through things and avoiding the book-buying bug!!!

A Stroke of Insight

Have you read this book?? A Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor... I bought it in the Winnipeg airport the other day, desperate for a book. I've been seeing it in Chapters on and off and never bought it. Jill is a brain scientist who had a burst-blood-vessel stroke and lived to tell about it. It severely affected her left brain functions (reading, writing, movement, numberrs) and it took her 7 years to recover. She was able to rewire her brain so that she could recover... She speaks a lot about the right side of the brain, the side that wasn't affected by the stroke, and how different it is to live out of that side of the brain. She suggests several ways in which we can get a more balanced outlook to life... all of us strongly left-brained people! Meditation is... of course... one of those methods! It's a very readable book and only took me about 3 hours to read, so finished by the time I landed in Calgary! She gives pointers on stroke indicators and how to help someone who has had a stroke... Soft and slow is the answer... and recognizing that stroke victims are wounded... not stupid! Everybody should read this book!

Spring?

I think spring is coming... maybe... We have +12 C here in Calgary and that's quite the shift from -20C in Winnipeg this past week! Maybe it's just coming from that deep freeze temperature... but I was out there in my shirt sleeves today! It's funny isn't it... in the fall +12 feels really chilly after +20 and +30... but in the spring, +12 feels positvely balmy! It's all relative I suppose... The cats have been chomping at the bit to get outside and chew some grass... whatever dead strands they can find... I think they might have cabin fever... It's that time of year when Canadians (at least those not in Vancouver) come blinking out of their houses and soak in some of that oh-so-delicious sunshine... Sort of coming out of hibernation... And it does feel good!

I've already had 2 posts this morning about not having this entry up! I only had post-dated entries to March 2... and what with the workshop that concluded yesterday, didn't get a chance to post for today! But... we're caught up, and I'll get to get cracking here!

P.S. Meditation

Hmmm... I just realized yesterday's blog post really didn't talk much about meditation! Anyhow... I am beginning to sense that taking the time for quiet.... taking a meditation class... getting down to the basics... all of those things are necessary for my own well-being and balance... I have resisted that sort of stuff in the past, seeing it as a waste of time... Remember, I'm all about doing... not being... But, this book by Deepak Chopra (Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul) speaks of different ways of meditating... And I think there are a lot more options out there than I had realized... Walking meditation--like that idea!! Journaling meditation--like that idea too! Sitting meditation--but with different options that make it sound a lot more palatable... Maybe the truth is, I've had a story about meditation and that story hasn't always been true or accurate... That's one of those things I know I should be doing... and yet haven't been doing... Time to stop that and get cracking don't you think?? Does anybody have a similar experience?? How do you meditate?? It doesn't have to be just the Buddhist way... there are probably all sorts of Christian ways of meditating as well...

Meditation

You know how you can go through life, knowing that you should be doing something different... but able to ignore it for quite a while? Yeah... whether it's exercise or self-care or meditation... I'm sure we all have things that are niggling at the back of our mind, but we're able to ignore them for quite a while... In fact, we can stuff all sorts of things down into the basement of our little house. But after a while, the basement starts to get a little stuffed and it's time to tackle things... That's sort of been me and my attitude towards prayer and meditation and quiet time and all that sort of stuff... Yeah, yeah, I tell myself, I'll get around to it at some point, but right now I'm too busy... Besides I'm doing just fine without it... Uh-huh... Maybe it's a middle-age thing... maybe this makes not sense to us when we are younger... But at some point it becomes imperative that we take that inner journey... not just the outer journey... We need to delve deep into our spiritual life... into our emotional life... and see what treasures there are to be found... I'm reading a book right now by Sarah Ban Breathnach called Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self... along with her other book Simple Abundance... I do like to read a few books at the same time... Anyhow... this seems like a mid-life thing for women, to turn from the journey without and explore the journey within... So, I'm game... not sure what I'll find... but it sounds exciting... and scarey... and all sorts of other things... Just fear talking... cut through it and get moving!