Live every day. Forgive everything. Love with abandon.

There's a field at Glen Loch that's filled with daisies. They grow up amidst the gravel and when you sit in the middle of them it feels as if the entire world disappears.

Several months ago, it would have been the perfect place to be. But these days, the last thing that I want to do is escape from the world.

Life...is...succulent.
The sun has been shining, I am surrounded by good, honest people, and my days and nights have been filled with a good balance of rich conversation and deep quiet.

I'm feeling able to love abundantly and with abandon.

And I'm feeling loved.

“And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.”

This week I walked to Emmaus.

Not literally, but the much-awaited retreat spoke a lot about the journey. And it has been a journey.

We had the privilege of visiting two of my most beloved places before the retreat began - Ottawa and Kingston. We visited, went to question period at the House of Commons, ate beavertails, visited some more, explored and enjoyed a great deal of good food.

More than anything however, I was reminded of how rich I am for all of the good and solid friendships that I have made along the way of my journey.

“What makes humility so desirable is the marvelous thing it does to us; it creates in us a capacity for the closest possible intimacy with God”

I can't really explain what it's like to live here.





More specifically, I can't explain what it's been like to live through the past 5 months.


I've lived through a vast shortage of assistants, numerous assistants coming and going, an incredibly (and I do mean incredibly) diverse team of assistants, many behavioural and interpersonal conflicts, many incidents that have resulted in a break down of trust and the list goes on and on and on... (and that's just in Orangedale.)





And tonight, Silas asked me what I had learned from it all.





I think that when I arrived here last September I wrote a list of all of the things I had discovered or learned in the short period of time that I had experienced L'Arche Cape Breton.





Certainly, this is not a final version (by any stretch of the imagination) but it perhaps attests to the fact that I am forever learning...

• It's all relative - friendship, love, time, patience
• It is possible to fall in love in the matter of a few short days... it is also possible to realize that the love you seek to feel for another person must always (and only ever) be the same love that you try to feel for all of humanity - it has nothing to do with "like"
• People will leave. They will not come back. They will go to exciting and interesting places. The dishes must still be done.
• Friendship comes in all shapes and sizes. It even (and especially) comes from the woman who bites her hand and spits at you and the woman who tells you to "Fuck off" every night before bed.
• We hurt the ones we love.
• No one tells you that during your early twenties you will experience the most excruciating inner turmoil that you have ever encountered. Or perhaps that was just for me.
• "I am in the world to change the world." But I am not necessarily in the world to save dying AIDS babies in Africa. Perhaps more importantly: "We can do no great things, only small things with great love." I may be here to make someone smile for half an hour, or celebrate a birthday, or share good conversation, or share no conversation at all - just share time.
• Removing myself entirely from all of the things that I love taught me about the things that I truly love and truly need.

• Much of it is all about the depth of living and recognizing simple abundance.