Canada reached a record breaking high temperature to-day. Somewhere has to be the hottest place, and that was Lytton BC, at 40c. Let’s hope it cools off by the time we get there on Friday.

It’s been a warm day in Edmonton too.

Our landlord, Bob, phone half an hour before we were due to meet him for the final inspection of the property we vacated yesterday.

The accumulated strife and frustration which often arise when dealing with a landlord had become focused on this last encounter with him. Without fully knowing it I, and the member who had dealt with Bob in the past, were keyed up for an ‘encounter’. After all most of our meetings were less than easy-going ones. We were conditioned to anticipate trouble. However the place was clean, the holes in the walls were filled, and no damage had been done. And, AND a huge amount of working meditation had gone into dry walling the basement to make it into our meeting room. We had left the place better than we had found it.

Still, the final ‘walk through’ loomed. “Would we get our $900 damage deposit back”? “Would we have to make a case”? Bob on the phone, “Hi. No need to do the walk-through”, “Everything is immaculate”. “You can pick up the damage deposit cheque tomorrow”.

For all the frustrating phone calls about the heating system malfunctioning, the calls pleading for permission to put up light fixture, for all of the receipts still unpaid, I put my hands together and say, THANKS. Thanks for showing me, once again the assumed adversarial relationship with landlords, workmen, and officials of every kind. Thanks because where else is one going to learn to go deeper than fear, frustration, defensiveness and fury than in the hands of individuals one feels powerless to counter.

Tomorrow I will be dealing with the power company and the phone company. Actually, I’ll be dealing with individuals doing the best they can to do their job to provide a service, to customers who are often unhappy even before they arrive at their door.

This photograph was taken two years ago. The trees have grown a lot since then. Edmonton is glad to let the world know they have the largest amount of green space within the city in North America. I’ll have to check that out however that’s what I was told. There is probably a record number of trees as well. In this part of Edmonton, south of the river and near the University the streets are all tree lined as here.

The street where we lived.

It’s not every day I get pebbles in the mail. This will probably be last package of substance I’ll receive at this address in Edmonton. What to do with them, that is the question? Found objects can take on a huge significance, like these stones which were picked up on a long distance coast to coast walk in Northern England last year. A significant walk I understand and now with one trail companion recently dead.

There has been a pine cone, which looks like a hedgehog, moving around the priory. Somebody brought it here and here it has lived, on top of the fridge, on the window ledge, in my pocket and now it’s moved in with the pencils and pens. How those hedgehogs get around!

A member brought a shell back from Vancouver Island, it’s sitting in the hands of Kanzeon; she who hears the crys of the world. Will it travel with Kanzeon to the groups next location, day after tomorrow? Or will it come with me to British Columbia along with the pebbles, and the hedgehog?

I’m packing, packing, packing.
With no time for blogging.

Slow moving objects trying to find their next place of rest.
One monk, one pair of hands and many more things to attend to.

I love the pebbles, there’re coming with me on retreat, they can remind me how to sit still. They are reminding me already. Thank you, I will do the right thing by them.

Ernest Hemingway is quoted as having said, “I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.”

Sitting now, late in the evening. The clock ticking, the computer chattering as it thinks, the click click of the keys, the fan whirring and stopping. What is there to learn?

Oddly, it seems, by paying attention to sound the underlying silence becomes more evident. And listening is at the heart of our practice of meditation. That’s not just listening with the ears, it’s listening with the eyes and the finger tips. Listening like the hen sitting on her eggs, listening with her whole being. One can choose to be as the hen on her eggs however more often than not we are busy pecking out a living, and that’s just fine.

Thirty more tick-tocks of the clock and it will be midsummer day. The longest day of light and my late brothers birthday. It’s really due to him that I continued to write.

We were not close and this very fact meant that he (our shared blood) inwardly called, from a distance. My first retreat at Throssel, a priory then, had him calling me to go and visit him and his family. It was clear that was the next most important thing to do. So, over the years since our childhood we visited, with long gaps in between. With little in common there was nothing of substance to talk about and yet we continued to see each other.

Blood relatives tie us together with memories and they can, and do, set us free with the silence found beneath the racket of separated lives. This was certainly true of my brother and I. It was the often painful song of Johns life which had me venture to sing my own song. A little wider, a little louder. Thanks brothers.