Ryan Hreljac was a 6-year-old first grader in a small Ontario town when he learned that there were people in Africa who didn’t have clean drinking water — and $70 would build a well that would give them that good water. Ryan began a campaign to raise the necessary money. Now, 10 years later, his message has reached around the globe and he continues to work towards his dream of clean water through the work of the Ryan’s Well Foundation at www.ryanswell.ca.

This remarkable story dramatically illustrates the potential that is in each one of us to make a radical difference in our world by reason of our presence.

However, what comes to my mind is that it is not only clean, pure water that is in such desperate need. There is also a critical need for truth itself — the symbol that water has so long represented for humankind.

Truth has something to do with love. It has something to do with integrity, and freedom. Truth is characterized by an open heart, fairness, and compassion and respect for others.

The debate that has been raging in the United States this summer about health care reform vividly underlines the great need there is for truth in our world. How sickening the lies and misinformation. How sickening the anger and even hatred revealed.

We cannot all be about the business of helping to provide clean water for people who lack this most essential of commodities.

But we can, if we will, do something about making some truth available — a continuous, dependable supply of purifying, life-giving, soul-saving truth.

We do not need to go anywhere. We do not need to wait for some future time, when perhaps the omens will be more propitious, or we will be more wise, or more holy.

We can drink at the well of truth any time. We can do it right now in this very moment — because truth is what we are, and when we are still, we sense the beautiful presence of that truth with us.

And we can reveal that truth in our everyday living, in our words, actions, and thoughts.

We can have an attitude of respect for other people, and for Nature, and for ourselves. We can be fair. We can allow a little bit of trust to come into the picture. We can stop seeing other people as demons.

As I say, probably the work that Ryan is doing won’t be for us. It won’t be for me, anyway.

But this is the beauty of truth. It will find its own form of expression in us if we let it – a form that is unique to each one of us.

Pure, clean water is essential to our survival. But Truth is essential to our survival also, let alone our happiness — and it flows ceaselessly from the eternal spring of our own being.

Water and truth — how much you are needed is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

How can you and I help America at this turbulent, critical time in her history, with the whole world dependent, in many ways, upon the course which this great nation takes?

I’ve been mulling this question over in my mind this morning after reading two very interesting stories in newspapers today. One story reports on a new Pew Research survey which finds that “The image of the United States has improved markedly in most parts of the world, reflecting global confidence in Barack Obama.”

The other story that caught my eye was very different in nature. It tells how six months after Obama’s inauguration, “A persistent and noisy legion of doubters won’t let go of an already debunked claim — that he is actually a foreign-born, illegal president.”

The AP story points out how the fears and lies surrounding Obama and his birth are being assisted and fanned by people like right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

“I’ve stopped laughing,” New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis wrote. “Too many political and media leaders are deliberately fanning the flames of ignorance and fear, and they should be ashamed.”

People like Rush Limbaugh probably should be ashamed of themselves. They speak what is in their heart, and what is in their heart is not pretty. It is a destructive brew of prejudice, anger, and fear. But if I get upset by Rush Limbaugh, how does that help? It simply makes him stronger. He feeds not only on the energy of those who agree with him – he feeds on reaction too.

I am not here to feed Limbaugh’s ego.

The point is what can I do to help America? What can you do to help America?

We can offer the one thing America needs above all else at this time — the one thing our own lives need. And that is a calm, steadfast quality of character that is gentle, and yet strong. That spreads truth, not lies. That invokes compassion, not bigotry and hate. That reveals and propagates courage and wisdom and love, not anger and fear.

True character is trustworthy. It does not try to tear others down.

True character admits an error, a shortcoming, if it is revealed. It does not resist change, but welcomes it. And most importantly, true character is steadfast and calm in the midst of the emotional storms and distractions that break out in the world — or in our own lives.

Expressing the true character of our own timeless presence is our primary mission in this world.

People like Barack Obama, who are out on the front lines welcoming change and handling change the best they know how, obviously have a vital role to play in what is to unfold.

Much depends upon them.

But you and I have a vital role to play also. Much depends upon us, too.

“I am responsible,” says the voice of our own true character speaking from the depths of our own being.

How can you and I help America? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” declared Emerson. Personally, I think that integrity is the very base of a truly happy and blessed life. When someone is true to their integrity in their living – one way or another, the whole world knows it, the whole world is lit.

My father, Reginald Foster, had integrity. The time came when he had to stand by that integrity — just as it comes for each of us in our lives. At the age of 61, Dad, a veteran London journalist, suddenly found himself at the center of a whirlwind that had to do with a British spy named Vassall and leaks that had been made to the press concerning Vassall. The government, in its wisdom, set up a tribunal to investigate these leaks, and the bottom line was that my father and a colleague were given an ultimatum: “Tell us who gave you the information for your stories or you’ll go to prison.”

Was Dad going to be true to the journalistic ethics instilled in him since he first became a reporter on the London Daily Mail at age 19 – that is to say, never disclose a source – or not?

In a dramatic face-off in a crowded, hushed chamber, Dad politely told the judge he was sorry but he couldn’t do what the judge wanted. It would be most untrue not only to himself, he told the judge, but to many brave colleagues who had perished in WW2.

Dad was given a six-month sentence, later reduced to four months, and he and a colleague became known worldwide as “the silent reporters.”

We never know when we will be called upon to make the same kind of choice my father had to make in that long-ago situation — whether we will be true to ourselves and our values and principles or not.

Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, no one else is involved, or we think no one else is involved. And usually the issues are minor, or so it might seem. But the truth is, nothing is minor, or unimportant. Am I going to acknowledge, to myself at least, that something I said to another person was out-of-place? Am I going to recognize an unworthy or destructive thought for what it is?

Integrity, ultimately, is about honoring oneself, it seems to me – honoring the truth at the core of our own being. In a sense, it’s realizing we don’t have a choice. Dad wasn’t really trying to be a hero or impress anyone when he stood up and spoke as he did. He just didn’t have a choice.

Without integrity, our lives become hollow. We are a house divided, as the prophet said. And though our lives may glitter on the outside – or not — any real meaning or happiness continually eludes us.

What a different story, when integrity is present. When we surrender the delusion of choice, so that all that matters to us in any moment is to express what is true, and right, and helpful, in that moment, as best we may, we find a source of strength and comfort within ourselves that never fails.

In my Dad’s case — while he would no doubt have avoided prison if he could – it actually worked out in quite a positive and creative way for him. He became good friends with a number of inmates. He became good friends with the warden. His health improved, too, because he was relieved of the bother of going to a pub for awhile.

Most of all, he was able to live with himself – to keep on embodying the unique, indomitable spirit that was his until virtually the day he died, still youthful in spirit, at age 95. “A joke for every occasion,” he liked to say. Maybe it wasn’t quite true all the time. But it was true most of the time.

True integrity — the day Dad was sent to prison is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

There is a gracious hand on our lives that is in no way interested in destroying us, but in leading us step-by-step to freedom. To serenity. To truth, and peace, and the fulfillment of our mission in this earth.

There is one key requirement though, I have found, for this process to work as it should. I must be willing to keep on keeping on even when it seems obvious something or someone is trying to destroy me.

I spent 36 years of my life at a spiritual community in the interior of British Columbia. I thought my life in this community was going to last forever. The leader, whose example of true character, divine character, in action drew me and others to the community in the first place and held me there, almost despite myself, warned of “drastic changes” coming. But I guess it just seemed rather theoretical.

Well, guess what. It wasn’t theoretical at all. Drastic change did come. The leader died, as people tend to do. My own wife died, too. And at the same time somehow, the money and effort and sense of purpose that had supported the community — and caused it to flourish — began to dissipate.

I found myself with no alternative but to leave, one cold, fall morning, drive to Vancouver and start a new life. I had no material resources. The community had been run on a cooperative model, so there were no savings in my pocket. I had been a reporter and editor, later an author of sorts — but I was now 63. What did I have to offer the world I had left as an idealistic young man bound and determined to find the truth? Not too much, it seemed to me.

My despair was very real, very profound. The best I could do, on a rainy, miserable day in Vancouver, was walk through Chinatown and buy a Chinese wooden sword as a symbol I was not going to suffer defeat without a fight.

What have I learned, from that and other trials and tribulations? I have learned that the timeless words of William Cowper, “God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform,” are true, and very beautiful. And I have learned that instead of judging the events and people that show up in my life, it is much better to stay open to the possibility there is magic just waiting to be revealed.

Just the other day, I received a comment to one of my posts that at first I wasn’t quite sure of. It seemed a little off the subject. But then I realized it wasn’t off the subject at all, but was simply offering a different perspective — a valuable perspective.

I have learned, most of all, that this gracious hand of which I speak has but one purpose, to lead us step by step to an ever increasing experience of freedom — the freedom of our own immortal reality that already exists at the core of our being.

I have learned that there will always be new dimensions of joy and purpose and peace to be discovered that might have remained unknown and untouched if change had not broken down the habit-forming walls of my previous existence.

Let us rejoice in that gracious hand of love and truth that rests upon each one of us. As long as we are willing to stay in the game — it will never let us down.

There is a gracious hand on our lives is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

The things a guy has to put up with from his spouse. It gets a bit much sometimes, I gotta tell you.

I can give you a perfect example. This happened just yesterday morning, so it’s all quite clear in my mind. JoAnn and I were going to the gym — she likes to drive us over when we go for our workout, three times a week.

“Are you ready Papa Bear?” she asks, as usual. “Yes,” I say. So she goes into the garage and gets behind the wheel.

I follow a few minutes later after grabbing a couple of cookies to keep me going during the drive to the gym, and picking up the sunglasses I’d forgotten.

I climb into the passenger seat and close the door. JoAnn turns on the ignition ready to back into the drive way. Suddenly, just before we start to move, I think of something else. “Sorry sweetie,” I say, “I’d like to get a drink of water before we go.”

It was a perfectly reasonable request, wasn’t it? You have to think about things like this, getting enough water, particularly when you start getting a bit older.

So I was a bit surprised, quite frankly, by JoAnn’s response.

“Your brain seems to work fine once you get in the car,” she said, a touch of what almost seem like sharpness, I thought, in her tone.

Actually, I was stunned. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Where was the sweet, caring woman I loved so much?

But being the objective, fair-minded person I am, I decided it was just possible there was something here I needed to look at. Unlikely, but possible. So I began to look at the possibility it was quite understandable JoAnn reacted the way she did, said what she said.

I remembered what happened a day or two before on our previous visit to the gym. I got into the car, ready to go, and suddenly realized there was a stone in my shoe. “Just give me a minute, sweetie,” I said, perfectly reasonably, I thought. “I need to get rid of a stone in my shoe.”

It got worse and worse, though. The more I thought about things the more I remembered the many, many times when – at the last minute, after getting into the car — I remembered something I had forgotten, something I needed to do. I needed to go to the bath room. I needed to get a snack to take with me. Didn’t have my water bottle. And so on and so forth.

It was a great one-liner, of course, that my wife came up with. It gave both of us a big laugh, actually, at the time, and I’m blowing this up a bit of course, just for the fun of it. And yet there is something I’ve taken note of also. My wife not only delivered a splendid one-liner — better than any of my one-liners for the whole past month combined — but she was perfectly justified.

I’m going to try very hard to turn over a new leaf. The next time we’re going somewhere and she’s driving, and she asks, “Are you ready?” — I’m not just going to say, “Yes, dear.” No. My plan is to actually BE ready.

I’m going to put my brain in gear before I get into the car.

What a surprise it’s going to be for the love of my life.

Old husband finally learns new trick is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age