Here is a gift from the voice of Gloria Wallace.

When I had the chance to interview poet and linguist Robert Bringhurst at the Whistler Writers Festival this year, I said, “you write as if you think language is a living thing.”

“IT IS!” he declared. It is. But it needs us, to bring it to life, to breathe life into it.

Our breath is our life force. This is something many wisdom traditions know and speak to, and is encoded in lots of languages where the spirit and breath are the same.

When we breathe our life force into words, we breathe language into being. And so much more. We breathe ways of being and thoughts and important ideas into the world too.

Your words matter. They have power. Your breath matters. It animates you, and through you, other things to – stories, language, possibilities.

One of my favourite lines of poetry is from Mary Oliver: What will you do with your one wild and precious life? But sometimes, it’s hard to take on the responsibility of your entire life.

What if we ask ourselves: what will you do with your breath today? What will you breathe into being?

I have been fortunate to be in meetings where someone might open with a Lamcal, a prayer, and I could recognize the word for thankyou, and I’d lean in, to see if there were other words I could understand. And sometimes, I would just sit in the beauty of something being breathed back to life – a beautiful way of being.

Open the link to First Voices here:

https://www.firstvoices.com/lilwat/stories/e2806471-22e0-4a3f-bf9e-f0a0570c8091

and you can listen too.

S7éntsa Ékyá7 nilh ti, ucwalmícwts nskwátsits, nilh sGloria ti nsáma7tsa nskwátsits. Húy̓lhkan náhen ti nslámcala.

 My name is Ékyá7 in Líl̓wat Language, my English name is Gloria. I’m going to say the prayer.        

O Ku Cá7a Kúkwpi7

Kúkwstumckacw ti tmícwa, ti qú7a,

múta7 I tákemci wa7 ts̓áqwanem.

Kúkwstumckacw ti ámha sq̓it,

kúkwstumckacw tákem I stsmáltlhkalha

múta7 I tákem I ucwalmícwa.

Áma sts̓ílhas, I7!