The Unfolding of a Story

When we get to unfold the pages of our story with someone who remains by our side and does not run from the magnitude of it.

And when we get to see our story through the honest and compassionate eyes of another, an illumination takes place that validates us and lights up the corners and edges of our stories. The chapters in our life-stories no longer remain fixed. An intimacy is invoked and Ruah enters in bringing the breath of life animating the space and the meaning in and between the lines.

Old paragraphs, verses, and lines start to breathe again and there is an expansion and a softening in our hearts that allows for seeds of a new perspective to be planted.

 An internal gestation takes place and our stories become pregnant with new meaning and hope. They light the way to a deeper understanding of our meaning and purpose.

Porous Creatures

Earlier this year Jim surprised me with an ancestry.ca dna kit and signed me up for an ancestry.ca account. With a spirit of adventure and with much anticipation I sat at the computer and logged into my account for the first time.

Since the Howatt family tree had already been charted, I had decided to explore my mother's side of the family (MacDonald) first. It amazed me how quickly I was led to my maternal grandparent's information and to my mother's name simply by adding the area where my mother had been born. 

However, I discovered her name had been abbreviated to "Marg" and my immediate excitement shifted to annoyance. My mother called us by our full names, so it was important to me that her full name, Marguerite Alexandra, should be reclaimed.

New to the site I looked for ways to edit information, to restore the fullness of my mothers name, but being new to the site I couldn't find an edit option, so I made a conscious decision to put in my own information and come back to it the following day. So I entered my name and current address, and then clicked back to review the page containing my maternal grandparents, and my mother's and her siblings information before closing.

AND

I was surprised to see my mother's name was no longer Marg, but now was listed as Marguerite.

I don't know how the site's technology allows for such shifts of subtle (not so subtle to my heart) changes and I don't need to know. My focus is on another shift that started unfolding in that moment...a deeper awareness of our potency and how our actions, even small ones, can affect another.

As I unfolded my story, so to was my mother's story affected. Marguerite's Story.

The Mi'kmaq believe that as we heal our lives, we heal the lives of our ancestors seven generations back and we also help heal future generations to come.

And that belief now envelops me with a more personal and deeper meaning.

As porous creatures, each of us an assemblage of over one hundred trillion cells, it is our nature to be affected, to affect and to respond. And although not all of life's situations and occurrences are of our choosing, we do get to choose how we respond: if we are reactionary, or if we move prayerfully and thoughtfully...aware of ourselves, aware of others, and alive to the fullness our choices.