In the spring we began our first membership drive.  ANOTHER WOW!!  And the support has been steady and very sweet.  Many of you have not only become Members, but have chosen to be Sustaining Members by contributing more than $25, the fee for membership alone.  DEEP THANKS AGAIN.  It’s our inspiration to expand.  We have a community to serve. If you haven’t joined yet, please take the time today to become a member.  As our membership blossoms, so does our visibility. In order to receive grants and funding we need your membership.  Many of you ask us how can I support you. Now we can say without hesitation what to do:  JOIN GITCHE M’QUA TODAY!! 

Here’s how to:  www.gitchemqua.org/membership.htm 

In Spring 2006 our board set a strategic plan to expand infrastructure in the organization.  One obstacle to our growth has been program development vs. internal growth. We were always so busy with the next event, that we couldn’t co-ordinate another thing.  So the board supported us to step back this fall from programming to focus on the following areas:  Board expansion, fundraising, volunteer development, website development, and the Being With Our Dying council to name a few structures. 

Throughout the years, we carefully laid a foundation for our organizational growth through Council Way, Enlightened & Entrepreneurial Business approaches, and Charity Law. We also looked towards other community and spiritual leaders like Roshi Joan Halifax and Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo to support our dream. Now we need to raise the building. THAT’S WHERE YOU COME IN.  Now, we truly need each of you to help.   We also need your patience and understanding as we continue to figure this whole thing out.

In 2007 our goal is to see expanded programming that will reflect abundantly our potential to serve. This fall Angie will be attending a month-long silent retreat with Ven. Dhyani Ywahoo, as she deepens her spiritual commitment to practice and change.  I will stand rooted here at the Centre as we continue to gather new members and as we develop a stronger & expanded Board and a newly reformed Being With Our Dying council to guide us. Below you’ll find our fall programs or you can go to website: www.gitchemqua.org/course/events.htm.  There you can register online or contact us in person 416-651-1846 or by email  info@gitchemqua.org  

In Service, Gratitude & Love,

Angie & Andrew, Cofounders of Gitche M’Qua

FALL COURSES:

BEING WITH OUR DYING COURSES WITH ANDREW BLAKE

Sunday, October 29, 1-4:30pm

PREPARING FOR THE INEVITABLE: Living & Planning for Death

No one can know when death will come, so as the Dalai Lama says, “it’s good to have a plan.” Through contemplative, writing and experiential processes we will create a vision for our own dying. Investigating our vision and our fears of end of life may bring us enormous relief and opportunities to visit what is truly important to us today. By talking about these truths, we open doors for healing rituals of death and for inviting important spiritual questions about afterlife.  In this context we will also explore “phowa,” a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, which prepares us for the inevitable.

Sunday, November 12, 1-4:30pm

CAREGIVER AS HEALER:  Creating a Context for Healing Rituals

By investigating the skills of intuition, intention, and presence, we will open to our abilities and our challenges to being fully present. As healers we begin to recognize our own need for healing in order to be fully present.  As caregivers we learn to recognize that the human spirit is not only within the person that is dying, but also within ourselves and within the community.  By ‘being with’ rather than ‘doing to’, we can invite a shared experience for the dying.  Presence may be cultivated through contemplative practices as well as through our conscious intention.  In this class we focus on tools to assist others in preparing for dying by developing inner skills.

Sunday, November 26, 12:45-4pm

MEDITATIONS FOR CAREGIVERS: Awakening the Heart of Tonglen

Mercy, compassion, and love are all qualities of the caregiver.  Through tonglen, the ancient art of “Giving and Receiving,” we will experience gentle yet deep practices for awakening our hearts.  As caregivers we often feel our own helplessness in relationship to the suffering of the dying.  This practice deepens our capacity to receive or be present to suffering, as well as giving our kindness as the potential for opening to the truth of each moment.  By first developing compassion towards our own suffering, we also realize the interconnectedness of this work, which unites us in our humanity, our suffering and our healing.  

Suggested Fees:   (Courses can be attended individually or as a series) 

$45.00 /course

$120.00 for the series

Pre-registration is appreciated, as a minimum number of 12 participants are required to run each session. 

Please note: Gitche M’Qua’s charitable purpose is provide these educational opportunities, fees are charged to cover our operating expenses and to compensate instructors. Please contact us if you have financial limitations. Also, a limited number of scholarships are available for hospice volunteers and caregivers without income.  Please contact Andrew directly. 416-651-1846

Andrew Blake MT BA is a practicing Psychotherapist, hospice volunteer, meditation teacher, and one of the cofounders of Gitche M'Qua. In his capacities as cofounder of Gitche M'Qua, he is co-creating a multi-disciplinary model for assisting and working with the dying. His work has emerged out of the need to find bridges between spiritual and psychological life, as well as the modern need to integrate traditional & alternative models of healing into our living.

SPECIAL EVENTS:

Thursday, November 2^nd, 7:15-10pm

HONOURING THE ANCESTORS:  Celebrating the Day of the Dead

In many cultures, such as the Mayan, death is celebrated as a time to not only remember our loved ones, but as a time to feed their spirits with our prayers and kind thoughts.  Join us for an evening of drumming, prayer, and storytelling, as we honour those who have crossed before us.  The ancestors live in our DNA and they are also our roots to remembering where we come from. Together we will create an ancestral altar where we honour the traditional and familial foods and objects, as offerings to the dead. In acknowledging the ancestors, we open to our Spiritual Family that unites us all. We will end our celebrations with a multi-traditional feast!!

Suggested Donation:  $25

Led by Andrew and other friends of Gitche M’Qua, all donations from this evening will go to the Centre.  This event is inspired by a Mayan ceremony led by Okhi Simine Forest in 2003.

AN ALMOST ANNUAL HOLIDAY CRAFT SHOW: 

Saturday, December 9^th, 10-5pm

This almost annual event is a joyous community time to reconnect and to generate abundance to support Gitche M’Qua.  The fabulous food, friends and finds make this festive day a gift all around.  We are currently looking for presenters—artists, craftspeople, importers, etc—to assist us in creating an even better show.  Please contact if you know someone who might be interested.  Also we ask members to help us make this a sumptuous show, let us know if you can bake or cook something, or offer a 2-hour shift to help during set-up or at the event.  To volunteer click here.  Mark this date in your calendar and celebrate with us again!!!

A FURTHER UPDATE:  A STORY ABOUT GITCHE M’QUA’S LAND

(As some of you know we had a turbulent & unexpected spring; obstacles can be disguised as harbingers of growth, albeit challenging. Many new beginnings have some tough endings.  Some new beginnings are even accompanied by death.  As our board member Steve Vaccaro described it, “obstacles are full of hidden potential.” This is truth of emptiness he said. This is the view from the Enlightened Business perspective based on the work of Geshe Michael Roach in the Diamond Cutter. At threshold this spring, he reminded us that when you trust a vision or when you have a dream, things may manifest in hidden or unseen ways. The story of the Gitche M’Qua land has a few surprising & otherwise hidden twists.)

A long time ago now, as Gitche M’Qua reached the zenith of his illness, he realized that everything in his life must change.  Everything, at least, that wasn’t aligned with his Sacred Purpose.  Leaving his job & his company and his identity as a land developer, he undertook to heal himself.  Chinese medicine, naturopathy, psychotherapy, allopathy, diet, ceremony, sound, as well as prayer & meditation were his allies & disciplines.  Good friends in his circle knew of his struggle and offered him 100 acres of land near Owen Sound to build his dream whatever it was.  At first, the purveyor of fine wines thought: maybe, finally, I will have my dream of a vineyard in Tuscany or Owen Sound.  But, another dream emerged.  Gitche M’Qua saw community gathered on the land.  The land would heal us he believed. Just being on land away from the endless preoccupations of our city life, the land would transform us.  As community gathers many will come in need, in some kind of transition be it physical illness or any kind of deep personal change.  We will invite the teachers & healers to be there to guide us.  Gitche M’Qua turned to Angie and Andrew and asked, “I am the builder, I’ll build it, but you know the healing community, will you bring us together?”  The first meeting was held Thanksgiving Monday in 1997.

Gitche M’Qua healed himself, even though he died.  That story is much longer and for another time.  However in the final stages of his coma, Angie received a message from her husband: You must continue the vision. I want to be buried on the land.  With devotion and commitment, Angie approached Marie and Lorie, the donors of the land, asking if they still would offer of their land to further his dream.  That evening after they had left, after the land was offered to his vision, he died.  Now that’s an old story now for some of you.  Let me continue. The vision grew into developing a city based-community to support Gitche M’Qua’s vision with another goal of becoming a charity.  At that time the land could be donated to the Centre. In 2000 dear Marie died rapidly from lung cancer, and, as life evolved, Lorie entered a new relationship. Not every new partner would sign up for a whole community living on the land next door.  So in 2005, Gitche M’Qua lost the land, but never the vision.

As mysterious seeds of hidden potential continued to grow, Angie and Andrew had simultaneously been searching for land in the area.  They recognized that Spirit had guided them to area in Grey County. Quickly their newly found agent from Meaford, Mike, sent them an email. He wrote succinctly:  THIS ONE HAS A GOOD AURA.  Later when they walked onto this land, they knew immediately that any 171-acre property with 2 ponds, 6 springs, a small lake, a river, mixed hardwood & coniferous forests, meadows, wetlands, and a host of wildlife, must be it!!  While Angie and Andrew knew they would one day live close to the Centre, they saw that this land was large enough to house the Centre and their private home. This is where the mysterious seeds of hidden potential started sprouting.  An anonymous supporter met with them as spring was watering those winter-energized seeds, and offered to support them to purchase the land.  As they story goes they were both speechless.  One cried and the other had a hot flash.  As of April 27, they became stewards of a land that has never been home to any humans (that we know of).

Now any good story needs some other characters. As Angie & Andrew were busy dreaming & watching frogs on lily pads, new friend’s of Gitche M’Qua, Shari & Andrea, really ran with it all. Shari, a psychologist & Andrea, a palliative care nurse, had been helping the Being With Our Dying vision council for Gitche M’Qua for the past year.  Well, it so happened that Shari had a second home in the Grey Bruce triangle, about 10 minutes from the new land. A beautiful, restored schoolhouse backing onto pine-forested Crown land.  And Andrea, Angie & Andrew’s newly adopted “heart-daughter” proceeded to buy acreage up the street from Shari’s.  She’s so excited because it has a driveway that will some day lead to her straw bale cabin.  Now we’re not suggesting that everyone move to Grey County, but you’d be amazed who already lives there or who has a secret little getaway there. Angie, through her own healing, has been discovering the power of this land and dreaming a future home for Gitche M’Qua with Shari & Andrea.  The whole thing is just quite extraordinary.

So we have the land again.  One generous gift nourished a vision; another one planted it into reality.  We are so grateful.

Just before purchasing the land Angie asked for blessings from the father, her ninety year-old Papa, Eugenio.  Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo had reminded them of the importance of including the family.  Papa, a very active & nearly blind man who walked everyday and who never missed a good meal, said, Wonderful, one day I’ll hunt rabbits and will cook fettuccine con coniglio. Five days after the land deal closed, he passed peacefully into the Light surrounded by his beloved family.  However, all this proved too much for Angie’s immune system.  Her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome had returned with a strong message: listen to your body.  Through the summer months Angie has retreated to the land to heal.  The Earth reveals so much to us:  a garden of green moss covered rocks to meditate on Oneness, a bubbling spring surrounded by yellow lady’s slippers to awaken the fairy realms, a family of pied-billed grebes (tiny ducks) who play endlessly and generate delight and joy, 3 giant white Great Egret’s hiding visibly on Halcyon Pond to awe us, a grandmother turtle like an ancient rock floating on a calm evening showing us the face of the Earth Mother, moist forests and wetlands revealing a psychedelic array of toadstools,  and an remarkable spring flowing red with a mysterious substance like red Sedona clay that Angie calls the ”Womb of the Earth”.  The land heals us.  Angie is still healing.

So Gitche M’Qua’s vision is very alive; the land too dreams us.  As radiant & bright colours begin to blanket the land, many more seeds explode from pods or jostle themselves free only to return next summer.  Gitche M’Qua’s ashes will one day return to the Earth, blessing the foundation of his dream.  HOW WONDERFUL!!