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Did you know that relationship by definition is the distance between two objects, like the distance between the earth and the moon? If you’re in a relationship with another person, you have to continually create and maintain that distance! Is that what you’re really looking for?

There is an alternative: one word for it is communion. Communion is not the little white cookie they give you in church. Well, it can be that but it’s also much more than that. It’s a being oneness with everyone and everything, where there is no need to make boundaries or separations of any kind.

When you walk in the woods or on the beach, you know how expanded you feel? Like there’s more space between your molecules? And you don’t have to keep score about how much oxygen the trees give you or how much CO2 they take from you? And there’s no judgment of the leaves being wrong or the wrong color or anything else?

What if you could have that feeling in relationship with everything, not just when you walk in the woods? THAT is my target in facilitating people about relationships–to invite people to that place.

Here’s some inspiration for you: a video I shot last week of a walk in Muir Woods, among the ancient redwoods just a few miles from my house. (How did I get so lucky?) Enjoy! You may enjoy it more if you play it full screen!

Click here to play video…

If you’re looking for a relationship, or to make the one you have better, then finding inspiration around you can be helpful.

One such inspiration is the relationship of Julia Child, the famous American teacher of classical French cuisine, and her husband Paul Child.  You can see it on the big screen (well, nowadays your TV) in the movie Julie, Julia.  There’s even more juicy stuff in Julia’s book which I just read, My Life in France.

Why do I say their relationship was a good one?  They cared about each other, but unlike so many people, they cared about each other for who they actually were, not who they wished the other would become.  Julia arrived in France not knowing what she wanted to do when she grew up (at 35) and without speaking a word of French.  Paul was in total allowance and support of her finding out what she wanted to do, and doing that massive project known as Mastering the Art of French Cooking when it took over their kitchen and their lives.

She was willing to receive from him.  He was fluent in French and a wine connoisseur.  She was happy to benefit from his knowledge and learn from him, and enjoy what his talents made possible, without feeling that any of these gifts of his diminished her in any way.

Incidentally, if you’ve seen the movie, you will know there were TWO relationships in it.  The second was the Julie, whose last name I forgot, the women who cooked Julia’s recipes and wrote the blog that became famous.  Julie’s husband demonstrated a lot of allowance for her in her undertaking as well, and I would have mentioned theirs as a good relationship also.  Then I read a review of her next book, called Cleaving (hint!).  In it she pursues the art of butchering but she also has an in his face affair with someone else and somehow I’d be amazed if that couple managed to survive.  Seems to me she threw a good man away, but people choose what they choose because they can.

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