Kaffee-Klatsching

I have a little group of friends with whom I get together several times a week. Actually, there are five of us who form the core of this group and we have been meeting informally for about an hour a day for about two and a half years. I jokingly refer to them as my Kaffee-Klatsch which is a German term with the following definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Kaffeeklatsch is a German phrase translating literally as "coffee chat". This is the type of casual conversation, small talk and especially gossip enjoyed by housewives who meet in the afternoon for a cup of coffee. Kaffeeklatsch is also used to describe such a gathering itself.

It is occasionally used in a more specific and derogatory sense to mean a group of people who waste time talking rather than doing.

When you work from home as I do, it helps to be able to get out and make contact, remind yourself that there is a greater world out there and to get some intellectual stimulation. The location for this coffee drinking and life-dissection ritual has moved within the neighbourhood over time but has come to rest in a little cafe in East Vancouver called La Bella Napoli. It's a narrow, unprepossessing, little space wedged between an Asian green-grocer and a poultry shop. The north-bound Commercial Drive bus stops right outside the door on its way downtown through the notoriously poorer part of the city. The Napoli is run by a Canadian woman of Italian extraction whose father ran it before her. She's a good business woman and runs a tight ship.

When you walk in the door, she, or one of her employees, greets you by name and knows what your 'regular' is. It's soon on the table without you having to ask for it. The smokers, including her and her husband, are accommodated on an outside deck at the back or on a tiny patio at the front. Often regulars clear their own table and put their cups behind the counter, yelling their greetings as they come and go. Although we're well-behaved cafe-goers, our Kaffee-Klatsch talk about some unusual subjects and are often eavesdropped upon from other tables close by. This past autumn we picked up a guy from another table that way and incorporated him into our group! He's Iranian and is currently teaching theatre to a group of kids in Istanbul, and expected back at the end of July.

Topics of conversation range from art and artists (a lot of that!), to politics, culture, the supernatural, health, biology/chemistry/physics, the media, crossword puzzles, minority rights, conspiracy theories, books, child-rearing, recipes and death, to anme just a few. No holds barred! Our informal founder and the mover behind the group is a German, artist friend of mine who is ten years my senior. Her partner, in his late seventies, is Canadian-American and an accomplished artist and sculptor with a career as a master plasterer behind him. Our third member, a similar age and now also retired, is Danish and our master crossword puzzler. (I tease him by watching over his shoulder) Then comes me, the youngster of the group, and finally, a retired biochemist researcher, born in Hong Kong and also a portrait painter. You could call us diverse!

This diversity is partly what feeds us and I'll hazard a guess that we help to feed the people who sup coffee around us. There are the three, wide-as-they-are-tall, and not very tall, old Italian gentlemen who come in for their espresso every afternoon, removing their hats, of course. They greet us in their broken English and ask after any one of us who isn't there that day. There's the woman who comes in with her two young boys whom we've been watching grow up. There's the tall Estonian photographer, with his camera bag, who drinks espresso and speaks his native tongue with his much shorter compatriot. There's the postal worker who drives a Canada Post delivery truck and lives down the back lane. There's the woman we've code-named 'Shirley Temple' who wears fifties-style flared and petty-coated skirts and her hair in pig-tails. These are just the people who come in in the hour that we do each day! And there's the tourists who come in wide-eyed, having read the blurbs about authentic Italian cafes along 'The Drive', and who don't know what the system is for ordering. Everyone is taken in stride.

Our little group is often joined by any of our founder's three grown kids and her grandchildren. Sometimes we see some of the artists from her and her partner's drawing and painting group, Basic Inquiry. We had a sculptor join us yesterday. I'm getting quite the art education. Occasionally my mother drops by, or my friends when they're here from out of town, or anyone's friends who are visiting. Sometimes our numbers swell to nine or ten and then we have to pull over extra tables.

I've never been a person who liked the night-life bar scene. I don't like music so loud that it makes my ears hurt. I'm not a big drinker. I don't like smoke, or didn't in the era when you could smoke in all the bars. I always wished that there was a local place where I could find someone interesting to talk to for an hour or two without having to 'hang out on the make'. Cafes like the one we frequent build community. They give you a place to go and hear the local gossip, news and issues, and even contribute your two-cents-worth. The concept and the urge to commune is as old as humankind adn it's coming back into vogue.

Cities are becoming so big that I find it's hard to make contact - hard to know where to start. I guess I'm shy to some extent and not comfortable sitting beside a stranger and just starting up a conversation. The bigger the community, the less likely I am to do that. Perhaps this is what makes huge cities so potentially alienating for me. I have to say that Lena, the woman who runs the Napoli, is really good at introducing people to one another, and although she's not pushy or interfering, she notices who's alone and chats with them as she swipes the table next to them. Eavesdropping is almost a requirement for cafe life and a reason a cafe needs to be fairly tightly packed with tables. If they're too far apart, you don't meet anyone.

I highly recommend the Kaffee-Klatsch. I'm socially, intellectually and humorously stimulated and feel more a part of my community. Besides, it gives me something to write about!

Sacred

I received the premier issue of a new local magazine in my grocery box last week called Granville - sustainable city living. There's that new buzz-word; sustainability. It is their stated intention to use every article to bring the sustainability of Vancouver to the foreground. I found this issue to be what they purported it would be; informative without being preachy, light, lively and intelligent, and practical. So far, so good. It's going to be coming out quarterly and you can subscribe by going to their web site.

It got me to thinking about a talk that Ben and I gave when we were on a trip to Sweden in 1995. We were invited there by a group who were trying to do business in a completely different way than they ever had. The fellow who originated the idea placed a very tiny ad in the classified section of a Goteborg newspaper saying that he was looking for individuals who might be interested in starting a values-based business from the ground up. It really didn't say too much more than that. He wanted to see what expertise came out of the group and explore ideas from the values instead of laying the values on top of the business idea. He was stunned at the overwhelming response he received - over 300 people. Whittling the group down to a manageable number and interviewing them was much more difficult than he had anticipated and he hired a consultant to help him - who was our contact.

I was asked to sit with the group he had chosen, and who had chosen one another, in a big warehouse loft near the harbour, on a windy October day. They wanted me to do a group reading for them. Not everyone was there that day but most of them were. It was quite exciting, although I don't remember now what exactly I said to them. That's often the case when I do readings. No worries about confidentiality if you can't remember!

Anyway, they could only start this business with a very small percentage of the people who had expressed an interest, so they formed an informal group with the rest. The idea was that they had a common value system and maybe they could do something together, even if it was to get together and talk. Many of them had an ecological/sustainability sort of bent. Ben and I came in to talk to them about emotional/inner ecology as an extension of their values in the business and community sphere.

The idea behind this was that a lot of people who believe in peace can be quite militant about how they go about convincing the rest of the world. And if you take that a step further, they can be less than peaceful, or ecological, with regard to their bodies and psyches. I have witnessed this many times in my therapy practice where some of my clients were little dictators of sorts; not in the outside world but within themselves. They wouldn't stop for lunch, would work seven day weeks, not take holidays and would beat themselves up and criticize themselves viciously. Briefly, our job that evening was to get them to think about practicing what they preached for the outside world, on themselves.

The reason I've been thinking about this Swedish talk is that I was wondering if there might be room for that sort of concept in this new magazine. An article might refer to being able to sustain ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically, just as they are suggesting we do for the city. I wondered when I was driving across the city the other day, just how polluting our city affects our psyches, and whether we pay as much attention to polluting our energy fields and our relationships as we do to polluting our air and water.

I had occasion, when I first moved to Vancouver, to go to a Strata meeting for a friend who was going to be out of town. For those of you who live outside Canada, Strata Councils are groups of condominium owners who get together to discuss and vote on the issues to do with their shared building and building services. There was an agenda for the meeting that night which was loosely followed but certainly didn't stick to the times listed. I witnessed obstruction, petty squabbling, people hogging the microphone, and a chair with few facilitation skills. In short, it was boring and frustrating. To put it simply, people's interpersonal skills were extremely limited.

I was practicing yoga today, part of my commitment to treat my body with respect, and I was considering this issue as I tried to stretch my ham strings. I had to keep yanking my thoughts back to focus on what I was doing. That lead me to thoughts of my body as my temple. Not being a religious sort, I don't hang out in sacred buildings of worship very often, although I like them a lot when I get the opportunity. It doesn't matter much to me what the religion is. If the building is designed to reach 'up' to some 'spiritual' place, I usually find it peaceful and positive.

I have wondered if we miss spaces like that in our modern lives. Maybe it's less important to go to church or synagogue or to the mosque or whatever, at designated times, than it is to remember to build sacred rituals or moments or spaces into our everyday lives. I remember trying to convince my architect brother once that the houses he designs ought to have some sacred component to them. That, in fact, every home should have a sacred component. I feel this is particularly true for those of us who do our 'sacred' work, or work that is sacred to us, from home.

I was in a home in West Vancouver once, when a friend of mine was house-sitting. It had a meditation space that you reached through a hidden panel in the stair wall. It was carpeted and had a small window that looked out over a beautiful garden and a view of the Burrard Inlet. You could hardly stand in it because it was designed for the owner to sit and think or meditate or read. She had incorporated her sacred, spiritual space into her house.

Hospitals and airports have nondenominational chapels in them and I wonder if we shouldn't have something along the same lines in schools, shopping malls or community centres. Not because we're ramming any religion down anyone's throat but so that there's an 'away' space, to borrow the term of an American architect who wrote The Not So Big House. I think we need spaces where we can remember who we are and what we're doing on this little blue planet, third from the sun.

To bring the sacred space concept back to my body, or anyone's body, maybe our bodies are our ultimate sacred spaces. I was daydreaming this evening about what would happen if someone were to say to be that I could only have a job that I really wanted if I would agree to eat a diet that had pesticides in it and/or work ten-hour days and six-day weeks, and/or work in an office where there was no natural light and no fresh ventilation. The idea isn't completely realistic but I was playing out a 'what-if' in my mind. Come to think of it, I know someone who is doing consulting work and that is exactly what she is being asked to do. And thinking back to my days in the corporate world, I was asked to do this. My office was a concrete box that had originally been designed as a storage closet. It had impersonal, mass-produced hotel artwork, no plants, no fresh air, and no natural light. I felt like a mole.

What if this was my option and I refused to take the job saying, "Sorry, my body is my sacred place, my sacred responsibility, and I have a commitment to keeping it strong and clear. I must give it regular rest, fresh air, stimulating views and balanced nutrition, including food, education, and spiritual space, in order that it continue to operate at peak capacity for a long time."? Just imagine! Come to think of it, without explaining it in those terms, I did just that in 1990 and I never went back.

But if we don't make such a stand, how can we treat our cities better than we treat ourselves? If I put poor quality food, air, thoughts into my body and mind, then I am likely to put poor quality water into the sea. If I accept not having anything inspiring to look at at work, then why wouldn't I settle for the garbage that is on television?

There is one definition of sacred in my Webster's dictionary that speaks to this thought:

sacred: secured as by a religious feeling or sense of justice against any defamation, violation or intrusion; inviolate

It strikes me that just as we have to look after nature's temple that is this beautiful and bountiful place in which we live, and look after our sacred spaces which are the homes where we need to withdraw to renew ourselves each day, and look after our relationships which are the emotional sacred spaces in our lives, we must also look after our most intimate temples; our bodies which house our hearts, minds and souls.

This gave me pause to wonder how I'm doing on that score. Yoga is a start for me but I'd like to walk more. How I allow others to treat me is another angle. Most of the time I think I'm all right on this one - but there are a few exceptions. What I eat is yet another. Where I spend time and who I spend it with is yet another. I could do better I'm sure but overall I think I'm doing all right, but it's worth thinking about.

Listen for the whoosh

Can you feel the world speeding up? Einstein tells us that speed and time are connected and that speed is relative. I believe this to be true. He was specifically referring to where you are and how fast or slowly you might be moving relative to the speed of what you are measuring.

But I agree with Neale Donald Walsh that time is directly related to how fast you are moving and that events just 'are'. How we see things, or our perception, is what makes the difference in our experience of what we look at. Imagine a huge landscape on the wall in a museum. If you stroll past it, the landscape, like what you would see out of a train window, seems to be 'moving' slowly. Actually, it is you who are moving past it slowly. And if it were three-dimensional, or even four dimensional (now there's a mind-bender!), you would be moving through it slowly.

I think that these days we are moving through our perceived world at a greater speed than we were even as recently as this 'time' last year. If I had to take a guess, I would say that it's because we are 'quickening'. By that I mean that we are learning more about our souls and who we are, resulting in our energy field, or our aura, vibrating at a higher frequency. It is my understanding that pure love has the highest vibration of all energy. It stands to reason that the more we understand and love ourselves, and others, the faster we vibrate.

To take yet another slant on things, physicists talk about 'field theory'. To be extremely simplistic about it, field theory says that any one thing that changes in a field of energy affects the whole of that field. Nothing in it can remain unchanged as long as one thing changes. It's a bit like ripples going out in a pond. Because people are energy too, imagine how this affects a family.

For example, imagine I have a eureka and realise that I have been codependent for years, that it's making my life miserable. Further imagine that I resolve to change my behaviour and stop being codependent. Even if no one else in my family agrees with me, even if they in fact think I'm out of my mind, they will still be affected because my change in behaviour will affect theirs. They will still have to react to me, even if it's to take me off their Christmas list.

So, take another jump here and imagine that there are loads of people around the world who are working on their self-awareness - have been, some of them, for the last 30 years. They've been reading books, going to seminars, getting coaching or therapy or healings, talking to one another, and they are beginning to see things differently than they ever have before. Perhaps this means that they are treating the environment with more care, or they are voting against war, or they meditate every morning, or they believe that the way they treat people determines in large measure how others treat them, and these are the ripples they have been sending out into the world.

Up until now, they may have been feeling that they are failing to make a difference with their lone little voices, or actions, in the great wilderness of the planet's messes. they may have thought, 'what difference does it make that I am more aware when no one else seems to take me seriously and corporatins are still setting the agendas?' But I think that this year, 2007, is the year of critical mass. I believe that there are finally enough of us doing these seemingly little things that we are finally making a difference. There comes a moment when we reach the tipping point and the balance shifts. When it does ... whoosh! It will feel like everything is going at a millions miles an hour. That will be because there is so much happening, there is so much to pay attention to, that it will feel like time is speeding up.

It's somewhat like being on a ship. It could be going very quickly but without any point of reference, without anything to look at except ocean and more ocean, it may look like you're sitting still. But you wouldn't be. If you were on a train and the city were speeding by, you might even be going more slowly than the ship, but it would appear as if everything were moving faster.

Granted, my physics is a little rusty here and very simplistic to boot. I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying about time and being confident that we are making a difference after all, because I don't think it's erroneous even if my specific ability to explain Einstein is a bit off. I'm just blogging here and I may not have read up on my Einstein sufficiently. Maybe my scientist friends can clarify for me!

What I'm really trying to say is, don't give up. Change is coming and you might even be able to feel it already. Sometimes we don't know that a bird is singing an exquisite song until someone tells us to listen carefully. I'm suggesting that you listen for the sound of the tipping point - for the whoosh.

Creating doors

Welcome to my first official blog for all of you who have been in contact with me over the last few years. I invite you to be a part of this cyber-community of like-minded folk.

I had the feeling about a month ago that I was a little robot who's become stuck marching into a wall. My frustration level with the lack of forward movement in some areas of my life was mounting. I feared I might just keep marching until my batteries run out. I said this to someone who suggested very matter-of-factly that I create a door in my wall and walk through to see what's on the other side. I've given that suggestion a great deal of thought and I've concluded that the best way to make a door is to do what makes my heart sing - which happens to be communicating.

Shortly after that, one of my oldest and dearest friends closed down her old blog and started a new one. That was the next clue for making a door ... create a blog. Since then I have figured out how to do it and done a little practicing. I hope this will serve to remove some of the glitches that occasionally pop up when I try to do something new.

I will start my blogging by saying that I believe that 2007 is the tipping point that I have been awaiting for a long time. When you get to the tipping point it only takes one more thought, one more action, one more voice, one more question, to finally make the difference.

For many years I felt as though I was whistling in the dark and hoping I wasn't alone. Book stores didn't carry the kinds of books that I found interesting. There was no ticky-box on forms for the profession I was in. I had to explain the terms and language I used in conversation because otherwise no one could follow what I was trying to explain.

But now, I am at long last encouraged to see that things are beginning to shift. There are people on mainstream network television who do what I've done for years. There are whole book stores full of what I like to read. I can even get some of these books in my library! Reiki doesn't have to come with an explanation attached. There are schools that teach coaching. Something is shifting and it seems to be in the right direction.

Blogging has arrived in the mainstream and I can use it to talk directly to the people who think there is value in connecting our spirits to our daily lives, and even to our careers. This is progress and we should celebrate it by talking to one another. In an effort to do just this, I will endeavour to post to this blog once a week. Please feel free to comment and make this a two-way process.

For this week, I will leave you with a great question... How can you create a door in your wall?