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Make Your Home Where You Are

While listening to the Canada Reads discussions this spring, I knew I wanted to read the winner, By Chance Alone and the runner-up, Homes. By Chance Alone was a poignant reflection on living through a traumatic part of our history as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Homes by Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah with Winnie Yeung is also a reflection. It is impacting the world as we speak. The narrator is Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah as he lives through a move from Iraq to Syria to finding a home in Edmonton, Alberta. What he experiences is expressed beautifully through the eyes of an adolescent. Living in Canada, I have no experience of what it would be like to live day-to-day in a war zone. I am amazed by how life goes on with resilience, as it does for Abu Bakr.

was a poignant reflection on living through a traumatic part of our history as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Homes by Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah with Winnie Yeung is also a reflection. It is impacting the world as we speak. The narrator is Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah as he lives through a move from Iraq to Syria to finding a home in Edmonton, Alberta. What he experiences is expressed beautifully through the eyes of an adolescent. Living in Canada, I have no experience of what it would be like to live day-to-day in a war zone. I am amazed how life goes on with resilience, as it does for Abu Bakr.

The theme that is going to stick with me the longest will be his fear. The story works through his day and we see vignettes of family life in Homs while government and rebel forces lob bombs at each other. Fear becomes a steady state with explosive episodes only occasionally. Even as his family picks up all the worldly possessions that they can carry to fly across the planet to Edmonton, fear continues to be present. It is a different kind of fear. It is a fear that silence brings:

As I went through the old, familiar prayers, something felt off. I paused and listened. What could it be> No bullets nor shattering glass. That was it: the stillness. No voices joined in prayer around me, no cousins having a fit of giggles. An old wooden desk to my right, a stack of plastic chairs to my left: that’s all there was. (page 202, Homes)

This beautiful story reminds me of our common humanity. We all live our lives the best we can, wherever we are.

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A New You

I am searching for a new body. I am like many on that journey. My impetus for this search is the chronic pain that my husband feels.

My husband has been experiencing chronic pain for more than fifteen years. After experimenting with almost all treatment modalities from traditional Western medicine to unusual non-traditional practices, he has almost given up. With a vacation coming up that would be so much more enjoyable if we could, at least, reduced the level of pain that he feels every day. Enter the Hippocratic thought, “Let food be your medicine, and the medicine be your food.”

Navigating the nutritional forest to find a credible anti-inflammatory plan can feel like walking through the trees without a compass or a map.

After deciding on the path–let food be your medicine–for healing, I discovered some ground rules. They are, from Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: 1. Eat food; 2. Not too much; 3. Mainly plants.

Alberto Villoldo‘s book, Grow A New Body, found it’s way to my reading pile. Dr. Villoldo takes a holistic, grounded approach to use the body’s natural ability to heal through eating the right foods and being connected to your spirit.

And we started, we are working through the pre-work to set the body up to win. If nothing else, if the pain is not reduced, the program has improved our energy, elevated our mood, and reduced our brain fog. It is a win for us. We are finding that this eating practice is something that we want to continue.

Is this the only program we could have tried. No. I have three other cookbooks and, at least, two other lifestyle books that speak to the same philosophy and actions.

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Discovering Directions

In several conversations lately, the metaphor of a compass has come up. The compass illustrates our trajectory, our path, and directions. It also helps us to make choices when we are feeling lost. The book, The Riddle of the Compass, is not a metaphorical book. It is a book of discovery though.

Amir D. Aczel gives us a quick history of an invention that opened up the world. It is interesting that there is a lot of mystery around the invention of such an important tool. There is no record of who invented it or when it was first used in travels.

…in the center of Amalfi, a town situated by a small harbor. Above an archway, I saw a bronze plaque with an inscription in Italian. Translated, it read:

All of Italy, and Amalfi, must give credit to the great invention of the magnetic compass, without which America and other unexplored places would not have been opened to civilization. Amalfi commemorates this pure Italian glory with special honors to its immortal son, Flavio Gioia, the fortunate inventor of the magnetic compass.–1302-1902

…In Amalfi, Flavio Gioia was at once everywhere and nowhere to be found. I was determined to find out more about the elusive inventor of the compass, but where?…

…I walked the narrow streets of the hidden part of Amalfi, climbed a set of stairs, and turned around an architecturally undistinguished building to enter the center. “Oh yes, we do have some material on Flavio Gioia,” said the archivist. “But, you know, it isn’t at all clear that the man ever existed.” (pg 5)


It is fun to think that throughout history we have been having trouble figuring out where we are going and where we are coming from–metaphorically or otherwise.

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Four Agreements on Three Questions

Don José Ruiz of The Four Agreements fame has written a newer book to create clarity on you as a powerful, humble human, The Three Questions. I loved the story that illustrated the his points. They say that stories help us remember and that is true of the story to remember the three questions.

Simple stories invite us to reflect on our own lives. One way or another, they represent everyone’s story. If a story is good, it has the power to inspire questions and encourage us to look for answers. If a story is very good, it can get under our skin and dare to see the truth. It can open new doors of perception. These stories leave us a choice: to be challenged by the truth or to close the door and continue walking a familiar path. (pg 7)

The three questions are

Who Am I?
What is real?
What is love?

Like The Four Agreements, Ruiz is able to speak to simple rules to help us live as humans better. As a question “who am I?” is probably one that everyone asks at very points in their lives. As I am asking know.

As we move from one stage of live to another, as my children become their own persons, our answers evolve. This book is one that you can pick up at any time when you need clarity because not only do we ask “who am I,” we ask “what is real” and “what is love.” If we, each, to ask these simple three questions, we can change the world one person at a time.

Things are the way they are in the world not because they are right or wrong. Naturally, there are things we can all do better for the sake of our personal happiness. We can free ourselves of our own tyrannies and give ourselves the sense of safety we’ve been longing for. Because we are free doesn’t mean other “countries” will be free. It doesn’t mean that other leaders will be aware or responsible. The choice for transformation belongs to every individual. We can guide ourselves toward personal independence, but should not coerce anyone else to follow us. Our journey back to authenticity is ours alone and mustn’t be used as an excuse to pressure family members or dear friends.

At any time, we can walk up and see the totality of what we are. We can see life as it is and accept everything we see. We can show how truth walks and talks in the world without attempting to govern others. We can offer our presence–not our rules–to demonstrate the best of what a human can be. (pg 196)