Rachael Field's wonderful poem,

Something told the wild geese

it was time to go

'Though the fields lay golden

something whispered snow.....

has been poking at me all Autumn. If you are unfamiliar with the whole of this poem let me recommend you look it up. The image and sound of a V of geese in the late day sky will never seem the same again.

As many of you know, I spend a lot of time preparing my New Years Resolution. I always make it achievable and I always make it a nutshell of an idea so that I can speak about it, use it in my daily conversation and practice it so that it becomes natural and a kind of mantra by the time another year end rolls around. I'm finishing up with patience and forebearance, a two year tall order and a subject about which I am just beginning to feel the depth. Achievement is relative.

The Field poem has been haunting me because it seems to me geese get more signals about how to 'behave' than we humans. All other animals in fact have better 'manners' than people in terms of how to participate for the good of the group and for themselves. Maybe we've just lost touch with how to make good collective choices ...or maybe we just can't hear the instructions. In general this is true. But given the chance....

Having been witness this year to the group support as it unfolds before me; the fundraising, contributions from friend and neighbour, and neighbour of neighbour, and stranger, there is distinct resemblance to my geese. It has been a strong and wavering V that will swoop and bend to catch up a faltering spirit or coax on a tired member of the team. I so enjoy correspondence that results from the various projects large and small, and each note tells of the satisfaction felt by being part of a collective with a positive goal. Makes me feel less of a subject and more of a participant in a good idea!

Left on our own, many of us, (me!) do things that are not only against the good of the group but distinctly against the individual well being.. holding on to negative ideas about self or others. There's something juicily attractive to embroidering a long festering grudge or a self abrading notion. The results of doing so are ugly and destructive. Medical doctors tell us the reasons why they want us to stop...blood preasure, heart stress. Spiritual doctors tell us it will relieve physical pain, lead to greater simple happiness. I believe them! I do! But what is it I let go? And how? Where do I begin?

As always, I believe that change in behaviour begins with change in language. So this year you'll hear me jimmying the word release into my conversations with you. Or maybe with a few days left to ponder before the New Year it will head in the direction of the word forgiveness, a much more grown up word, one I may not be ready for. And surrender will swim in the periphery.

It is from the generosity of the Sandrassecondwind group that I draw inspiration for my resolution for 2008. Yaking it out here on the page I begin to see that surrender may take precedence for shaping my future...becoming more the person I wish to be...recognizing that by surrendering myself to the larger group I become a stronger individual with less room and no time for negative attachments.

Rather a rambling resolution but mine. What is yours?

Happy New Year and thanks to everyone

Love Sandra

PS I managed to spend 7 days with my family in Niagara Falls over Christmas and they were so impressed with the fundraising and so thankful of all of the creative support from so many directions

...and the goose is getting fat

My Christmas wish list is short this year. I'll bet you are guessing I would want those lungs to come my way soon, aren't you? And on the one hand I certainly do. On the flip side, that would mean that some other family's Holiday would be tragic. I cannot balance my own good luck against someone else's despair so I'm hoping for something other.

One person has already given me what I want for Christmas. But I'm greedy. I want it from everybody. That person, who shall remain nameless, wrote to tell me that she hadn't given much thought to transplant before. Oh, she'd thought about me, and she knew my struggles and my triumphs through the last set of lungs. But she just hadn't thought about herself and transplant and what it meant to her or anyone else.

In everyday life it seems quite healthy to not ponder our cornea doing double duty when we are finished with it. It would be morbid to dwell on how some piece of tissue we are currently taking to the gym to keep in shape could work just as well for someone else who has lost theirs in a fire. Likewise, lungs...hard to envisage them doing the heavy lifting in another's circulatory system. Its science fiction thinking. Not the stuff of day to day reality...or is it?

It is most of all our hearts we hate to think of 'giving away'. After all we have pledged our heart to our belief system, broken our heart at the loss of a loved one, opened it to a friend, cried our heart out over the loss of a pet, or a job or the end of an old movie. We keep our heart close to us. And we like it that way.

But my Christmas gift from my friend was just that. She spent a little time thinking about all of her 'bits and pieces' and she decided that giving them away when she was good and through with them was OK with her. She signed her donor card and told her family. She signed it for me. She gave me her heart literally and figuratively.

Best Christmas present I ever got!

The thing is, if we give it away, we get it back..big time.

I have met a family here in Toronto who had a daugher, Vicki. She was involved in a terrible accident years ago. And her family insisted that as much of her daugher's body be used for organ replacement as was possible...an act of generosity in a time of dire stress. This was many years ago. Amber's Mom still, these years later, holds an annual party. The flock of people, children now adults with children of their own, all come because they live on with some part of Amber assisting them and making life for each of them possible.

All organ donation is now anonymous and for good reason but it reminds me that surrender is a kind of total freedom and that we cannot lose ourselves by sharing with others. Maybe it's easier if you think of helping just one other person. What if years from now a person in your spectrum of life needed a heart, a lung a kidney. Wouldn't you hope that it would be available? It will only be available if, right now, when there is no such need for it, everyone who can, signs their donor card and tells their family. Signing alone is not good enough. Families have to know your wishes. Hard? Darn hard. Now? No time like the present... and family is gathered for the holiday. Why not approach it as a family?

Please give me what I want for Christmas. Sign a donor organ card and tell your family of your wishes.

You may find you have given the greatest gift to yourself.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.

Sandra

How to make your wishes known? First tell your family. Second sign a donors' card and carry it in your wallet Download Donor Cards from Trillium Gift of Life Network Also when you renew your health card be sure to ask them to record your wishes on it
Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

ARTFUL BAGS! GET YOUR TICKETS TO ORIGINAL ART ON A BAG AND TEMPTING PRIZES INSIDE. Tickets just $15!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO SEE A LARGER VERSION AND READ THE DETAILS