If you have opportunity and inclination to go experience Celeigh Cardinal singing in real time in the same space as you, take it. I had this opportunity recently. There were many touching moments: lyrics speaking of beauty and grief, funny moments, and also, this song, when the audience felt a collective, wow.
The youtube video linked below is not of the performance I attended but it is also of a live performance. The song is on Celeigh Cardinal’s album, Boundless Possibilities, 2024. Brennan Cameron is on keyboard.
Thank you, Celeigh, for sharing your gifts, and thank you also to Brennan.
We are always in relationship. We are in relationship with the world around us, with other people, and with what we experience inside ourselves. One relationship we can be curious about is the relationship we have with our own emotions.
Some emotions may be easier for us to experience than others. For one person, anger might feel harder to acknowledge or be with than sadness. For someone else, the reverse might be true. Even joy, contentment, or a feeling of relaxation can sometimes be difficult to experience. What feels easier or harder is specific to each person, and it is something that can change over time.
In this meditation, you are invited to practise offering loving-kindness toward a sensation or emotion that feels easier for you to experience, and then toward one that feels more difficult. You don’t have to choose a sensation or emotion that feels like the hardest one.
This meditation also gives you an opportunity to practise offering kind wishes toward yourself.
Wanting to be outside yesterday as part of the day and also desiring to make something, I recorded this meditation while sitting by a lake. Listening later, I heard the words but also found myself getting lost in the soothing sounds of the crickets and the movement of water.
Movement.
Movement is something I often seem to have conversations about. Moving between this and that. Between pain and beauty. Between activity and rest. Between effort, courage, and taking a break. Movement as essential.
I had the pleasure and good fortune to experience Jann Arden and accompanying musicians in concert this week. It was wonderful. For this post, I offer four lines of lyrics from her song, Good Mother—lyrics that stayed with me after the show (among others). Reflecting, I thought of life; of the journeying humans do; of various people I have met; and of you, too, readers.
I will also post below a video Jann has shared of a live-streamed performance of this song, which you can find on her youtube channel.
If you have the opportunity to see her on tour, I whole-heartedly recommend doing so.
“Sleep is not an optional, lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. It’s a life support system….And the decimation of sleep throughout industrialized nations is having a catastrophic impact on our health, our wellness, and the safety and the education of our children.” —Matthew Walker, Talk at GoogleRead more ›
I wanted to share with you this short video of Dr. Maya Angelou speaking on an Oprah Winfrey Master Class that aired approximately 7 years ago, on January 16, 2011.
