Category Archives: Inspiration

Thinking our way to true self

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“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” 

Eleanor Roosevelt

“Can you eat an apple by yourself?”

That was the question asked of the children gathered at the front of the church. All of them nodded. Yes, eating an apple was an easy thing for them to do. 

“Could you always do that, or did you have to learn?” 

Roxanne Goodman, a performance instructor in popular voice with Carleton University, started her presentation with those questions. I think she wanted all of us — children and adults — to think and learn and honour our potential.

Every day she works with people who tell her they want to develop stronger, more beautiful voices. The problem is, she says, that those same people don’t have a good perception of their voice at the time. 

In other words, they want to “eat an apple” but they haven’t yet, and they’re sure they’ll never do it as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Lady Gaga, or Elton John.  

She shared a story from her own life to help us on our path to understanding. When she was a young woman she sang a solo in her church. After the performance a gentleman said to her, “You have such a beautiful voice.”

“It’s okay. It’s all right,” she replied. 

Hearing that, he said, “Tell me, am I the only person who’s ever said this to you?”

“Oh no, people tell me that all the time.”

“Do you think that we are all lying to you?” he said. 

After that she asked herself: if she was wrong about her ability as a singer, what else was she wrong about? What else could she do that she was telling herself she couldn’t do?

She started from there, with a new belief that she had a beautiful voice. She studied to learn the technical aspects and how to get the emotion out.

She made lots of mistakes and learned from those too. 

She believes that anyone can learn to sing from their true voice if they do two things: 

  • Appreciate what they already have; believe in the beauty of their voice.
  • Sing from the depth of their being, their essence. 

She pointed out that Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t say we must do the thing we cannot do, but the thing we think we cannot do. 

We sometimes think our way out of facing fears and opening ourselves up to the next step. 

We can also think our way to our true self. 

I apply Roxanne’s lessons to writing: appreciating the beauty of my writing voice, learning the technical aspects and how to get the emotion out, making lots of mistakes, and allowing myself to be vulnerable enough to let my readers see me. 

Can you eat an apple? What else can you do that you’ve been telling yourself you can’t?

Start with one bite. 

Listen to what she had to say: http://www.trinityunitedottawa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Reflection-181118.mp3

Visit Roxanne’s website: www.confidencebooster.ca

Go to the Big Soul Project Christmas concert: Saturday, December 8

Start with one bite.
Four-year-old girl riding a small bicycle with training wheels.

Bicycles and women: Engineering social reform

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I have a new respect for bicycles.

This one in particular. I wasn’t alive in the 1880s, but this bicycle directly affected my life nonetheless. 

First modern bicycle
First modern bicycle on display at the Coventry Transport Museum

John Kemp Starley developed the Rover safety bicycle to replace the precarious large-wheeled Penny Farthings. The safer bicycle allowed more people across more classes to get around, and some of those people were women.  

Plaque reads: Engineering Heritage Award. The low-riding position and chain-driven rear wheel allowed this bicycle to be enjoyed by all. It also played a role in the liberation of women.

Can you imagine biking with a long skirt and petticoats tangling in and around the chain?

Around the same time that J. K. Starley was engineering a safer bicycle (and lessening the impact of fossil fuel emissions hundreds of years later), the Rational Dress Society formed in London, England to protest clothing that deformed the figure, impeded movement or injured a woman’s health.

Many people (men and women) didn’t like the idea of women traipsing about in pants.

How would they tell the genders apart, by gum?

But women of the time wanted or needed to get around, and the safety bicycle made it possible. If only they didn’t have to take their life into their hands every time they peddled along with long skirts dangling around a bike chain. The Rational Dress Society was right: wearing a long skirt while riding a bike was not only irrational, it was downright dangerous.

The demand was too great and the logic too sound. Society changed, and rather quickly for the time. Bicycles allowed women freedom of movement, both in terms of clothing and transportation, and that opened up other areas for them.

Without bicycles, changes to wardrobe might have been a longer time coming.

I doubt that J.K. Starley had women’s rights or environmental protection on his mind back in the 1880s, but those are the unintended consequences of his work.

I have a new respect for bicycles.

Four-year-old girl riding a small bicycle with training wheels.
Thanks to J.K. Starley, my daughter could smile with carefree joy (in pants) while learning to ride a bike that had the same features as his first safety bicycle. (Photo 1998)

Reconciliation: Respect and peace

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In late October we visited the old Coventry Cathedral, eviscerated by Second World War bombs, and saw these decapitated stair steps.

Stairways that used to lead somewhere alone in the middle of a bombed out cathedral

War leads nowhere

The stairway remnants, alone in the vast emptiness of the bombed out church, used to lead somewhere, but now they don’t. War robbed them of their purpose.

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But the periphery of the cathedral serves as a testament to reconciliation. The cities of Coventry in England and Dresden, Kiel and Berlin in Germany have worked together to process what happened, heal the damages and reconcile with each other.

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“Reconciliation” by Josefina de Vasconellos

The inscription below this sculpture reads: “. . . in the face of destructive forces, human dignity and love will triumph over disaster and bring nations together in respect and peace.”

Better yet, let’s try hard together to skip the destructive forces part and simply live in the respect and peace.

 

 

If trees could talk

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I live in a land of timber. How could a simple tree impress a Canadian? But many times on our recent trip to England we stopped to marvel at the wonder of a tree.

Like this giant one at Winston Churchill’s Chartwell estate.

Giant Japanese cedar at Chartwell

We asked the gardener to repeat the name of this tree several times. She stuck with the Latin, which we think was Cryptomeria japonica. (Would it have been too much to ask for her to say simply Japanese cedar?)

And this scenic one at Hampstead Heath.

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But my favourite was this one. This tree could begin talking to me at any second and impart to me grand wisdom about life. I think this tree is telling me to stay rooted in what’s important because I already have everything I need, and to breathe.

What do you think?

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The gifted blind: Leading when others can’t see

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In The Philosopher’s Kiss, a historical novel about the French philosophers who created the first encyclopedia, author Peter Prange describes an 18th Century Paris shrouded in impenetrable fog. The fog, mixed with the sooty smoke of that period, hung dense and unmoving between the buildings.

With the city sounds muted and their sight blinded, people bumped against each other in open squares or walked up to the door of the wrong house. Coach men felt for curbs with their hands. 

In those circumstances the magistrates called on the blind for assistance. The ones who usually passed their days huddled on the stones crying out for alms were paid to guide citizens safely through the city. In those circumstances Paris was a city that only the blind could see.

The passage in Prange’s book turns the old expression “the blind leading the blind” on its head. That phrase, based on a Bible passage:  “Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?” (Luke 6:39) portrays the blind as less able, less than others.

In fact, the blind can lead the blinded. In fact they are the best candidates to lead others who have become over-dependent on only one of their senses.

The passage prompted me to wonder, on what senses have I become over-dependent? What am I missing? 

What unexpected resource have I been overlooking? 

I thole, you thole, we all thole together: A thole word

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Some days I barely manage to thole the Twitter experience. Other days, it sends wonderful gifts.

Last week, @RobGMacfarlane sent this gift:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Fantastic word, that.

Quietly, toughly inspiring, as he says. The simple act of reading the definition fills my “thole” with a renewed vigour.

Sometimes we feel like this lone twig on a barren tree.

lone twig on barren tree

Other days nothing can hold us back, like these robust colourful blossoms.

Lonely twig or robust blossom, I thole, you thole, we all thole together.