YES!

Today's blog is brought to you the word "Yes." What a great, under-used word. A word and a spirit I try to bring more into my life.

As a parent I try to meet my children with YES more often. "No" is the automatic parental reflex. An innocent "Can I..." and we're already thinking of a reason to deny them. NO to snacks, NO to a quick game of cards, NO to a family outing, NO to second helping of dessert. On my good days I let YES be the automatic response, the default, unless I then think of a compelling reason to say no. YES my boys, I'm here for you, YES we can enjoy life, YES i love you in this positive giving open way, YES.

I want to say YES to my friends' spoken and unspoken needs. YES to my tired wife wanting me to clean. YES to the school committee recruitment, YES to Quaker meeting involvement, YES to the community ready to embrace my involvement. (Of course, Sarah will be the first to tell you I'm a bit too good at this type of Yes; sometimes there's a healthy balance to No also.)

YES to being hopeful about the world, even a Harper-led government and Tea-Party-led US Congress and whoever it is running BC. YES to listening, to honest dialogue, to looking into the heart of those with different opinions and needs and priorities. YES to constructive engagement, YES to solutions.

YES to YES! Magazine, a positive inspiring look at how to make the world better, not at what's wrong with it. Yes to the Canadian Friends Service Committee, YES to Farm Folk City Folk, YES to any organization that brings out the good and builds connection and helps create a world we can all believe in.

YES to Pivot Legal Society, who just put out a YIMBY kit, counterbalancing NIMBY-ism("Not in my backyard") supporting people to say "YES in my back yard."

YES to Chantey Dayal and Chantell Foss and all the artists and poets and dancers who bring creative energy into a hungry world. YES to Dancing Star Birth, which responds to the over-medicalized birth industry not with criticism or judgement, but just with a quiet strength that brings pregnant couples to a place of believing in their own strength and the strength of their incoming baby.

And a big whopping incredulous YES to the founder of Dancing Star Birth, my beautiful wife Sarah, who was brave and crazy enough to say Yes to me 12 years ago and so so many improbable times since (she said Yes to a water buffalo yesterday, more on that soon.) YES to Meg Ryan's fake orgasm - I'll have what she's having. And YES to the country music industry which can unabashedly reduce all this happy drivel to a concise Brad Paisley tune:

She said YES! I said WOW!
She said When? I said How about right now?
Love can't wait, then I asked if she believed in fate
And she said YES.