November 7: Guest Speaker Patti Lindgren

I am Canadian prairie child of the 60’s, daughter and grand-daughter of community builders and real good folk, partner to Rick and mom to my now adult children, Michael and Kayli. I grew up in small town Saskatchewan, in a big connected family full of elders, and enjoyed an idyllic childhood compared to many people in the world at any time, including today. I went to school like most everyone else, where I learned the beliefs, ways, and means of the colony I was born into. After a year’s worth of post-secondary administration training, I went to work. I took pride in my work ethic, learned thirstily as I like to do, and did all right by the general measuring stick of the day. My career took me through the sectors we know as finance, retail, insurance, home building, education, the arts, and the humanities. Along the way, I worked for large multi-national corporations, small businesses, in non-profits, as a freelance consultant and in partnerships with or alongside government. I witnessed, experienced and learned how Canadian society is structured and how its creative cycle works. After working for others for many years, and leaving disappointed, bored, and/or frustrated from each and every experience, I started my own business. Here, I thought, I would be able to do some real good. I soon learned that this was not the case, and that in fact, the better my work by my conscience and standards, the less money I made and the fewer clients I had. What I didn’t know then was that I was entering a portal to an existential mid-life spiritual waking crisis of a nature and magnitude that I couldn’t even begin to fathom at the time. Today I am emerging out into the light once again, a voice for a new conversation and a new consciousness – one of presence and present witnessing, deep humanity, rationale, responsibility, healing and reconnection. I see a future that is either as bleak as hell or as bright as heaven – it’s up to us. I make my vote by the way I walk for a world that works with life, co-created consciously by us, we the people, based in truth and love, with our inherent natural intelligence and genius.