Just Between Us

When Julia James was working on her Masters Thesis in Physical Geography at UBC, she noticed that most of her best ideas came to her when she got up to use the washroom. A different quality of thought was available when she wasn’t trying to think at all. She was aware of  “the bigger picture, concepts, a shift in perspective.”

Later, when she became a life coach, she noticed that her clients—busy professionals—almost never took breaks.

“They didn’t relax at all—they were so restless,” she says. “They were highly educated, excited and passionate about their careers, constantly going, and they’d lose their sense of direction—where they were headed in all this going.”

Which is often why they hired James as their coach in the first place.

Along with helping her clients to set and reach their goals, James began to suggest ways in which they could renew their energy right on the job.

She developed and produced a series of CDs to help her clients to relax, but, she says, “the step to actually using the tool was too big—so a how to book was needed to coach them through the steps to take that space and time to retreat in their day.”

As supportive as her women’s group has been over the years, Vicki McLeod felt a need to extend her personal work into her professional life—and beyond. She also noticed that many of her colleagues and clients “were doing everything their MBAs taught them and the consultants told them, and it still wasn’t happening—things weren’t changing. Something else was needed.”

So McLeod, a local communications consultant and coach, started an Eldership Circle.

“I realized that if I was going to hold a space for change, I needed a place where I could do my inner work and be fully supported to take it out into the world. So I decided to put out a call.”

The group’s purpose is to create a space where women can help each other in “overcoming personal barriers and prejudices, [creating] conscious awareness of rank and privilege, and resolving inner conflict—all necessary to … heal our communities.” The circle is meant to go beyond personal growth and always points to service. It’s a place where personal development and social consciousness meet.

Face it. When it comes to the arts, we have a terrible reputation. Back East, they assume we mistake Snowboarding for High Culture because of the altitude.

Before I moved here, people said. “Yes, I hear it’s lovely, but … won’t you get bored? I mean there’s no real culture, is there?”

When I pointed to Jane Rule and Emily Carr, I could hear these Easterners think what they dared not say: a lesbian writer and a painter who kept a monkey doth not a culture make.

I will defend both Rule and Carr unto death, but therein lies the trouble. You get defensive, and Easterners grow even smugger.

But then, they’ve never been to the Eastside Culture Crawl! It’s not the number, nor even the diversity of artists represented; it’s an energy and spirit powerful enough to soften even the most cynical eastern heart. In fact it’s enough to make some envious. 

Of what?

Community—essential, wide-ranging, friendly, democratic. The spirit of a community in action, aware of itself, celebrating even as it voices serious concerns for its future …

On the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I’m aware of not only the spirit of that time, but also a difficult-to-name energy at work around last month’s announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize.

 Zeitgeist is usually translated as the intellectual, ethical or political climate of a nation, the “mood of an era.” It is, quite literally, TimeSpirit, and I write the word in the same way that physicist and Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell does when he talks about a felt but invisible force having an impact on how we think and relate to one another. When I work in organizations or with couples, I sometimes feel the TimeSpirits of Racism or Homophobia, as well as the TimeSpirit of last year’s economic meltdown.