On Thursday of this week, I attended a memorial service for one of my former students, Brianna.  These are never easy, these untimely leavings of young people from this earth.  This one was no exception.  Held at the community centre across from the school where I taught for so long, just walking through the doors brought back a flood of memories, some wonderful beyond measure, some sad, like this one would be, yet all filling me with sense of rightness, of being exactly where I should be at this moment.  This is community, I thought.

To give a bit of background, this community centre is the same place where both our children performed in their first Christmas concert during their kindergarten year.  This is the place where they both graduated from grade nine.  This is the place that hosted the soccer selections for the coaches during the many years I coached, and the place we held the awards if the weather was inclement outside.  This is where most classes graduated, until 2013, the year of the flood, when we had to rely on a neighbouring community to help us host.  This is where my wonderful friend, Graham hosted his 80th birthday bash, complete with Scottish dancing and meat pie at midnight.  This is where we’ve had class reunions.  And weddings.  And memorial services.  I’ve given speeches here, danced, laughed, and cried here. 

I was thinking about this community centre as I sat there Thursday, having visited with so many old friends.  I realized it was not the building itself at the centre of this community.  The building has certainly been the container for our little community as we’ve navigated life, but it is the people who have made up the centre of this community.

It’s a complex idea, this idea of community; one I find myself trying to sort out this week.  For some community is nothing more than a place, a place where people reside and have social interactions with others who also happen to reside there.  I suppose, considered that way, my little block in my neighbourhood is a community.  But even after being here for more than seven years, I cannot say I feel any strong attachment, other than familiarity, when I think about it.

On the other hand, I can think of several groups I belong to that give me a strong sense of community. My dance group is one such community.  When I think of them, I can almost see a beautiful thread of connection running through us.  Interestingly, the members of this group do not live near one another.  We are spread out across a huge city; some members even join us from neighbouring towns.  For this group, place is not what makes us a community. 

My little hiking group is a community.  We do not live near one another.  In the grand scheme of life, we are quite new to one another.  But we too, have an unspoken thread that runs through us, connecting us in a way I find so difficult to put into words.  The group I work with on our Africa project is like this too.

The Red Deer Lake Community, where I gathered on Thursday, gives me this same sense.  Again, although we generally lived in the ‘same’ area, in fact we were spread out over many, many kilometres.  It was far more than a little walk or bike ride over to another community member’s home.  And yet, that gorgeous thread weaves through us too. 

So, what is this thing I call community?  

Up until this week, had you asked me what my top values are, I could easily have given them to you.  I’ve done years of study and teaching about values.  It is at the centre of so much of my work.  I thought I had mine firmly established.  Family was at the top, followed by integrity, nature and several others that would not surprise anyone who knows me.  I would not, however, have listed community as a value.  I think of myself as a person who loves solitude.  I don’t crave large groups.  And yet today as I sit here, I know without question that community, as I view the concept, is an extremely high value of mine. 

From my perspective, a community provides me with a feeling of belonging.  Yet it is more than this.  Community gives me a shared sense of personal relatedness.  Yet, again, it is more than this.  In the communities of my mind, each member has influence; each member matters, and makes a difference to the group.  Members do not need roles, yet their very presence matters.  Their absence matters too.  Yet it is more than this.  Members of communities share some emotional connection.  Yet it must be more than this too. 

I have wracked my brain to try to organize my thoughts on this.  This week, for some reason it feels vitally important.  This is what I think I know.  In the communities I mentioned above, there is some kind of invisible bond between the members.  There is a deep sense of knowing that the other members of the community are with us on our journey.  They too are travelling a similar road.  They will, of course, stop to see the scenery at different places, they will travel at different speeds and stay in different accommodations.  But should we meet them on the road, we recognize them, and they us.  We would most certainly know, deeply know, that they are with us, that they understand, that they have travelled, or are travelling, our road and that they will walk with us when they notice we could use walking partner.  Not only will they walk, they will carry us when we cannot do so on our own. 

Today as I sit and write, I understand fully what these communities have given to me.  I understand how lucky I am and how rich my life is because of them.  I recognize that by being part of them, I’ve had a safe place to grow, to raise my family, to explore new passions, to risk making a difference, and to learn how wonderful it is to understand that we have the capacity to dance through life.  These communities have been vital to my well-being.

I hope I am returning the gift to them.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What am I contributing to my community?’
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to find out how to create community.
 

We’ve been shrouded in smoke since Tuesday of this week.  Tuesday and Wednesday were the worst days I’ve ever seen here in Calgary.  Tuesday is our hiking day, and when I left home at seven, the smoke was not too bad.  By the time I met Brenda in a church parking lot less than one half hour later, it seemed a bit thicker, but we were still optimistic that once we drove west to meet Pam, we might drive out of it. 

Another half hour later, we arrived at the trailhead.  The three of us got out of our cars, took one breath and decided that a hike was not in the cards for this week.  We went for a coffee, and as we sat and visited, the smoke, coming in from the north on gusty winds, grew thicker and thicker around us.

On the same morning, Jim had a plan to head out with a new-to-birding friend to check the bluebird boxes on one of the trails he monitors.  It’s a critical time of year for his banding work.  Once the beautiful little bluebirds begin to lay their first egg, he can determine exactly which day he needs to return to apply the bands.  Amazingly, once laying begins, the female bluebirds lay one egg per day until they have laid four to six eggs.  The babies all hatch exactly fourteen days after the final egg has been laid, and they are ready to fledge three weeks after that. 

Being able to count the eggs in the nests at this time of year sets the calendar in place for the banding that needs to be done.  It’s too early to apply the bands when the tiny babies are newly born, and once the wee birds have feathers and learn to fly it’s too late. 

Jim loves, loves, loves his beautiful little bluebirds.  I say this to explain his Tuesday.

As I sat in a homey coffee shop in Bragg Creek laughing and talking with my hiking friends, the thought crossed my mind that I should warn Jim of the poor air quality.  Then I put myself in check thinking that now that Jim is all grown up, he likely didn’t need my help to notice the orange glow all about us, not to mention the incredibly poor visibility and choking smoke.  Did I mention how much Jim loves his little birds? 

Once he got going that morning, all he could think about was the job at hand.  He was excited to see those miniature blue eggs sitting in the nest boxes he and Daryl had built and hung in past years.  Somehow in all his joy, he just kept working through the smoke.  In and out of the car they went, peeking in boxes, counting and recording the number of eggs.  Daryl wasn’t with him on this morning.  The new-to-birding friend likely didn’t feel comfortable mentioning that the smoke was likely not good for their health.  It’s easy to get caught up in Jim’s enthusiasm.  So as the air quality index rose just about as high as the egg count, his excitement and commitment to the job at hand overshadowed the effects of the smoke. 

By four o’clock when he wasn’t home yet, I texted, ‘Are you ok?’.  ‘Great’, came the reply, ‘Just on my way home now’.  As I sat in our air-conditioned house, with a low-grade headache from the small amount of smoke I’d been exposed to, I wondered if he had found a pocket of fresh air and perhaps had been spared the worst of the smoke.  He arrived home very shortly after, not seeming any the worse for wear and extremely excited about the thirty-nine eggs they had counted. 

By morning we had a different story unfolding.  Jim had started to cough, a deep oh-oh cough.  By late in the day, he said his throat and lungs felt raw and sore.  By Thursday his cough was awful, and he was completely out of energy.  I was concerned, and Jim, who has an amazing capacity to simply take things as they come and figure them out, was also worried.  I suggested a call to the doctor to see if he could be seen.  With the long weekend approaching, we knew that if he didn’t get in by Friday, we’d either be out of luck until next week, or end up in an emergency waiting room. 

Jim talked to the receptionist who said the doctor did not have any openings, but she put Jim on hold for a minute.  After describing his symptoms to the doctor, the doctor said that Jim needed to be seen and he set up an appointment with his associate for the following morning.  We were both relieved.  Thursday night was nerve wracking.  The last time I’d seen Jim this out of gas was in the days shortly before his heart attack.  Taking no unnecessary chances, we took his blood pressure, found it to be only slightly elevated, and settled in with Ted Lasso to pass the evening.  Jim offered to sleep in our spare bedroom because of his coughing but I opted for less sleep, and the comfort of knowing I’d hear him if he needed me.  Thankfully, the night passed uneventfully.

Friday morning the doctor confirmed what we already knew.  Jim had a significant lung infection.  He’s now on some horse pills and is starting to feel the positive effects of modern medicine. 

We’ve talked about it a bit.  Jim said he did know it was smoky but the intensity of it just crept up on him.  As the day wore on, the smoke increased, and he didn’t recognize how much worse it had actually become.  I found this to be so interesting.  In the same week this happened I spoke to two teacher friends.  When we talked about how this year had been, they each, independently of each other, each working in different school districts, said this year has been stressful, and that the stress has just quietly built and built without them recognizing how bad it has become.

Life is like that.  In a perfect world we would have ‘reflection’ time built into our lives; times when we stop what we are doing, take a little inventory of our life, notice how much we have accomplished, figure out how we are feeling, and make good decisions about how much harder, faster, and longer we really need to push ourselves.  There never seems to be time for this, and we all, at one point or another, become that frog in the water, with the temperature rising ever so slowly, so as to trick us into not noticing how hot it has become.

I’d love to give this gift of reflection to all people. To students working so hard to make it to the end of the year, they don’t even recognize the work they have already done is going to serve them effectively.  To young parents who go from day to day, making sure the little ones are cared for, lunches are packed, appointments are booked, childcare is ready, household chores are complete, not having the time to simply breathe in the miracle of the mess of tiny hand-prints.  To hard working people who always have ‘one more thing’ to cross off their list before they give themselves permission to rest.  To athletes, who always want to do one more mile, one more rep, one more something, when in fact a short day of rest would be far more regenerative.  To those climbing the corporate ladder thinking, ‘just one more rung’.  To each of us who have been raised on a diet of dedication and hard work. I’d love it if we didn’t have to wait for the air to turn orange for us to get the message that we might be overdoing things.

This weekend Jim and I will take time to reflect.  We are lucky.  We have easy access to excellent health care, and it was available to us when we needed it.  We have an air-conditioned home, a place to escape the smoke.  We have the luxury of flexibility.  We have time to reflect.

Our firefighters up north will not have this gift this weekend.  Yet even they, amid the smoke and orange sky, must stop at times, assess the situation and determine the safest course of action.  May they be protected in their work.
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My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How orange is the air in my life?’

Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to take time to reflect.
 

In just a few weeks, the family farm where I spent my teenage years will be the location of a celebration.  Our family will celebrate 50 years on that little farm.  It’s hard for me to believe.  Somehow one year blends into the next, and before we know it a half of a century has passed us by.  My sister, Barb, is putting together a little book of memories from the farm, and she asked each of us to write a couple memories of our own to add to the book.

I’ve had that little task on my mind for the past two weeks.  Just as would be expected, when a family with ten children, eight of them still living at home, move into a modest bungalow on a small farm, there are going to be memories made.  Sometimes when we get together, we find ourselves reminiscing about some of the crazy scrapes we got into, the jobs we had to do, the animals that we raised, the challenges, the hard work, the fun, and generally about the times we spent together. 

As I was thinking about which of my many memories I could put down on paper, I found it hard to figure out which ones I should write about.  Might it be about our pet racoon, Rocky, who despite Dad’s insistence, would not be kept in his cage, and often tried to join us for lunch at the outdoor picnic table?  Or perhaps it could be how Dad set up a few boyfriends by challenging them to ride a cow?  I could have written about playing baseball on cold Fall evenings in the pasture, or driving our little Volkswagen Beetle that had been renovated to be able to drive around the fields.   No matter how many stories came to mind I kept dismissing them.  Somehow, even though they were humourous and true, they simply did not capture the essence of the time we spent on that special farm.  What began to take shape in my mind were some of the bigger lessons we learned from our time there.

This time of year, early May, was a time for planting on the farm.  After school, and on Saturdays, it was all hands on deck when the fields were ready for planting.  Two of my younger brothers, were given the huge responsibility of running a market gardening operation.  The soil on the farm was perfect for this, the sandy, well drained fields were just waiting to welcome the wide variety of seeds we tested.  Although they could not yet legally drive, Daniel and David were the bosses, and the rest of us were hired by them to help out.  I can still picture the evening after their very first trip to market.  I don’t recall what produce we had for sale, but I do remember sitting around the kitchen table when they came home, excited to watch them count their money.  No millionaires were made during those first trips, but some incredible lessons were taught to us all.  This was a memory I wanted to write about; my memory about the lessons about the season of planting.

We were always a family of hard workers, but the farm instilled in me the understanding of the seasons.  Not only the seasons of the crops, but the seasons of life.  On the farm we learned that if we wanted to grow something, we needed to plant seeds and tend them.  We needed to be patient and nurture them.  We needed to do our part, but we also needed to count on Mother Nature too.  We knew we would not see results right away.

Sometimes it took days to see new shoots, weeks to see blossoms, months to yield fruit, and even years to reap the rewards of certain fruits and vegetables.  We learned that sometimes, despite our best efforts and care, things beyond our control would interrupt our plans for a fruitful harvest.  All of this has been a wonderful lesson for so many different parts of my life.  This recipe of planting, and nurturing and patience has been true for my relationships, for learning new skills, for progressing in my careers, for raising children, and for aging. 

This Sunday is Mother’s Day.  All mothers understand this concept of planting and patience.  When our children are small, we begin to plant. We plant seeds of love.  Seeds of security.  We plant seeds of good citizenship.  And of family, kindness, perseverance, understanding, sharing, adventure, cooperation, creativity, and so much more.  During those little years, we wonder if any of our seeds are beginning to grow.  At times we wonder if we even remembered to water them. 

What I’ve observed about Mothers is this.  They understand they have made a commitment to patiently be present for not only the planting, but for all parts of the growing and harvest.  They know there will be days when they see growth.  There will be days when the beauty of the blossoms will overwhelm them.  There will be times when the harvest comes, when the children are ready to head off to market themselves. And there will be storms, always unexpected, always worrisome, and sometimes even terrifying.  They also understand they cannot do this important job alone.  They need to count on others to help. Sometimes the help comes in the form of extra hands, sometimes it shows up as a wonderful teacher, sometimes it is in the smallest comment of encouragement.

Sunday, may we remember, honour, appreciate, and whenever possible, spend a few minutes with our mothers, both biological and those who came to our lives to share their mothering with us, the women who understood the significance of the seasons, and who stood and stand with us through the planting, the growing, the harvest and the sitting around the table to count our blessings.

I’m very grateful to the little farm in Strabane for this wisdom.

Happy Mother’s Day.
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to nurture a garden.
 

This morning Jim and I turned on the television to watch the Coronation of King Charles III.  We had it playing in the background as we worked to prepare for a double birthday celebration at our house tonight.  Kaitlyn and Matt both had birthdays this past week and the whole family will be here tonight to celebrate.  We still haven’t seen the entire Coronation ceremony, but we’ve been able to see the guests entering Westminster Abby, and Charles and Camilla, now King Charles and Queen Camilla, arriving by horse-drawn carriage.

I have mixed feelings about all of it, but I couldn’t help but think that today, Charles is in his prime.

Earlier this week, in a far less well-known place, with far less glamourous attire, Pam, one of my hiking friends, and I, were walking along a path in the foothills chatting about the prime of life.  I was telling her that I’d been talking to our son, Greg a few weeks ago about life.  Greg has a very demanding job. It’s demanding from a thinking perspective and also from a time commitment perspective.  Greg’s free minutes have become preciously few indeed.  On his birthday, I mentioned to Greg, that right now, and for about the next ten years, he would be in the prime of his life.  I told him that while work could absorb every single one of those years fully, I hoped he could find some time to squeeze in the things he loves, the things that fill him up outside of work.  I hope it was a gentle suggestion I made for him to try to not let these precious prime years slip away.

Pam and I agreed that those mid to late thirties, to mid to late forties, were indeed prime years.  Our bodies felt great, the future looked like it still stretched long enough in front of us we could be a bit nonchalant about it, we were in secure jobs, had our families well on their way to being grown, and we were still being tapped on the shoulder occasionally for interesting work.

Since then, I’ve wondered about this idea of being in the prime of our life.  Some older people think that any person younger than them is in the prime of their life.  I’m a bit amused by that thought.  I’ve seen plenty of people of all ages who definitely are not in their prime.

So what is this thing we call the prime of our life?

I’m lucky to be at a stage of life, where I have such a broad view.  I have a front row seat to the very earliest years of life as I enjoy the stages of little Ben and Andy. 

I have connections with former students, now in their early twenties, definitely feeling like they are in their prime, experiencing independent living, new jobs, university graduations and new relationships.  I love to watch their confidence grow and see their way of interacting with our world.

I see our own kids and their partners, all in established careers, juggling the demands of relationships, family, work, friendships, finances, fitness, and home ownership.  They do it so well.  I long for their energy and think this, surely this, is the prime of life.

I hike with my hiking friends and dance with my dancing friends, both activities filled with such laughter  and support.  These women and I, I think, we are in our prime.  We are so grateful to be able to do what we do, and so fortunate to have found others to do it with.  I get lost in the joy of both activities.  Surely this is what it is to be in ones prime.

I call my mother-in-law, amazingly recovered from her long hospital stay in the early months of this year and marvel at her interest in life.  At 93, she is now officially retired from her position as an Anglican priest.  This retirement phase is new to her.  I’m guessing it’s still a bit fluid.  She’s still receiving requests for plenty of church related things, and if she ever started saying ‘yes’, her calendar would overflow.  I must say I know from personal experience that sitting with her as she says a prayer is a blessed thing indeed.   Could this, this grace she has, indicate this to be her prime of life?

By definition, the prime of life is when we are in the peak of our powers.  Society has often helped us narrowly define this as either physical power, or power related to a position we hold, a title. 

I have witnessed it differently.  I’ve never been declared the strongest or fastest physically.  I’ve never held an ‘important to society’ title.  And yet I do feel like I’ve been in my prime.  When I think of my life, the stages already lived, and the stages yet to come, I recognize it hasn’t been one single time period that was it.  The prime time.  Rather I have had many moments of prime.  Moments when I thought surely life cannot be better.  Surely there cannot be anything I will feel better about or more grateful for.  In among these moments there must have been many, many non-prime moments.  Thus, I can only conclude that we create our prime.  Our prime is when we have the wisdom, no matter our age, to pause, even ever so briefly, to breathe in the blessings we have in our life, and to take time to create these moments for ourselves and for others.

Tonight, King Charles will no doubt sit with family and celebrate his incredible new title and responsibilities.  I hope he takes time to pause for a moment of gratitude. After all, he is in his prime.

I too will sit with our family.  I will still have a sore knee, and I’ll be exhausted when the party is over.  I don’t have a crown to wear or an outfit hand-made by a famous designer.  I do have a cone-shaped party hat, and if I’m wise, I too will pause, look around my table and recognize that right now, right this minute, surrounded by this family of ours, this too is my prime.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What prime time am I creating?’
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to create prime times.