I wasn't sure whether to write about competitiveness or violence. Why not both? One stop shopping. Save a little time. Yes competitiveness, being competitive, team sports, the job market, getting any little thing accomplished when there are hundreds and thousands of others scrabbling to have exactly what you have or what you want.
This is where global capitalism has brought us to. Not really high tech toys in every fanny pack, and not really a high standard of living for everyone. This ruthless unfettered and vicious competitiveness that has unleashed itself like a horde of furies knows no mercy and takes no prisoners. In many major cities throughout North America, especially here in Vancouver, housing costs have been pushed out of reach to everyone but the most wealthy. Everyone wants to live here, especially wealthy foreigners with bags full of money they have come here to launder. This is beginning to change, however with the new foreign home-buyers' tax but still, almost no one can afford to live here now unless they are prepared to live with debt for the rest of their lives.
Capitalism is a form of violence. It leaves people out. Natural selection. We have swallowed the bait and now we are choking on it. Our vilest, most rapacious tendencies have been declared to be virtues and now everyone must be competitive and must out-compete everyone else or perish. This means that all the gifts, the undiscovered potential, the raw beauty of those who are not strong enough to compete must perish, be extirpated.
This land was taken by violence by ruthless industrialists who fattened themselves on foreign Chinese and other Asian labour. We can boast all we want now about diversity. But really, regardless their ethnicity, it is the winner that takes all. The one with the most money. Equality is still our strong suit, but it really helps if you also have a good bank balance and an investment portfolio.
Saying no to greed and its twin ugly children, violence and competitiveness, does not necessarily have to be a death sentence. We struggle together, we rise together and together we conquer. We just need to get our noses out of our smart phones long enough to understand that we are not alone in this war.
Monday 31 October 2016
Sunday 30 October 2016
Our Dear Little Death Culture 5
Born to Shop. Remember those words? When the going gets tough the tough go shopping. Remember these words? The mayor of New York's first advice to New Yorkers following the attacks of 9-11: Go shopping. Remember those words.
Ah, capitalism, that relentless wheel of progress and greed that never stops grinding and never stops grinding into the dust whoever gets in its way. How we've been sold a bill of goods. What we buy is what we are. We brand ourselves through our transactions, what we wear, where we live, what we drive, where we eat, where we shop, what airline we fly, how and where we vacation and it all involves spending money, buying, consuming, spending money, buying, consuming and consuming and consuming and consuming...
What created in so many of us such a vast, empty and bottomless chasm that can never be filled and nags and craves and always hounds us to fill it, be it with food, drugs, or things or experience? And this is the new face of consumerism. The purchased experience, often in the way people travel. They are not quite so obsessed with accumulating stuff, since fewer people these days have enough space to live in where they can fit their consumer treasures, but there is always the purchased experience.
I am not knocking experience, especially in the form of travel. What I am bringing into question is this whole bucket list mentality. That it really isn't important if the experience is life changing or not. It's treated more like a high, like a drug. Vacation crack. Consume, consume and consume and don't even think of offering anything in exchange except a swipe of your Visa. Don't even think of letting that visit to a village in a Third World country so transform you that you will experience a new ethos of compassion in your own life and work at being the change that you desire to see in the world, in your own community.
There is something fundamentally broken in our culture. It is all about me, about consuming, about filling that empty hole in my soul that only the Spirit of the Living God can fill. But we are generally averse to any form of spirituality that demands something in exchange, like allowing our values to be transformed by the living force of love and actually reaching out in love and care and justice to our immediate neighbours and to the rest of the world around us. Easier to settle for the cheap soporifics of yoga and Buddhist meditation and this is not a slam against Hinduism or Buddhism, but a critique of the consumerist mentality in contemporary Western culture that has totally appropriated and bastardized these honorable disciplines.
Our culture is a Death Culture for the simple reason that it is all based on self gratification, a gratification that always remains elusive because it is a God-shaped hole in our hearts we are trying to cram with stuff that doesn't fit, because God, the God who is love, who made us, can alone fit there and we constantly reject him to our own detriment and to our own spiritual death.
Ah, capitalism, that relentless wheel of progress and greed that never stops grinding and never stops grinding into the dust whoever gets in its way. How we've been sold a bill of goods. What we buy is what we are. We brand ourselves through our transactions, what we wear, where we live, what we drive, where we eat, where we shop, what airline we fly, how and where we vacation and it all involves spending money, buying, consuming, spending money, buying, consuming and consuming and consuming and consuming...
What created in so many of us such a vast, empty and bottomless chasm that can never be filled and nags and craves and always hounds us to fill it, be it with food, drugs, or things or experience? And this is the new face of consumerism. The purchased experience, often in the way people travel. They are not quite so obsessed with accumulating stuff, since fewer people these days have enough space to live in where they can fit their consumer treasures, but there is always the purchased experience.
I am not knocking experience, especially in the form of travel. What I am bringing into question is this whole bucket list mentality. That it really isn't important if the experience is life changing or not. It's treated more like a high, like a drug. Vacation crack. Consume, consume and consume and don't even think of offering anything in exchange except a swipe of your Visa. Don't even think of letting that visit to a village in a Third World country so transform you that you will experience a new ethos of compassion in your own life and work at being the change that you desire to see in the world, in your own community.
There is something fundamentally broken in our culture. It is all about me, about consuming, about filling that empty hole in my soul that only the Spirit of the Living God can fill. But we are generally averse to any form of spirituality that demands something in exchange, like allowing our values to be transformed by the living force of love and actually reaching out in love and care and justice to our immediate neighbours and to the rest of the world around us. Easier to settle for the cheap soporifics of yoga and Buddhist meditation and this is not a slam against Hinduism or Buddhism, but a critique of the consumerist mentality in contemporary Western culture that has totally appropriated and bastardized these honorable disciplines.
Our culture is a Death Culture for the simple reason that it is all based on self gratification, a gratification that always remains elusive because it is a God-shaped hole in our hearts we are trying to cram with stuff that doesn't fit, because God, the God who is love, who made us, can alone fit there and we constantly reject him to our own detriment and to our own spiritual death.
Saturday 29 October 2016
Our Dear Little Death Culture 4
It's everywhere, surrounding us like a damp slightly putrid brown-grey fog and it creeps in everywhere through door cracks and windows and it even slides its clammy little fingers under our clothes and into our beds and into our dreams. Creeped out yet? London fog, perhaps? Does this sound like a Halloween spook? Really, what I'm writing about today, Gentle Reader, is Fear. Fear of poverty, fear of global warming and climate change, fear of child molesters, fear of Chinese millionaires, fear of homelessness, fear of loneliness, fear of Donald Trump. Fear of fear.
Never have we lived in such a dense, intense and fetid climate of fear, and never has there been less cause for being afraid. When you read the statistics you will see that locally crime is down, lower than it's been in four decades. War is down. There have never been so few nations in conflict with each other. We are living longer than ever before. Despite growing income inequality we are still generally better off than our parents' generation. We have a plethora of good, delicious and bountiful food to enjoy from all parts of the world. Even though people, afraid of food scarcity and a breakdown of the global food system, are trying to grow and consume what is locally grown, or locavores.
Everybody, it seems, is afraid of everyone and everything. Men are afraid of women, women are afraid of men, the Republicans fear Hilary and the Democrats fear Julian Assange. Here in civilized Canada the Liberals fear the Conservatives, the NDP fear the Liberals and the Conservatives fear everyone and everything.
Trapped in our cars we fear the other drivers. Trapped on the bus, we feel the almost creepy closeness of the stranger seated beside us and our first reaction is fear. Even after the Cold War, and following the threat of global nuclear annihilation we all live in a state of fear. Even if things are actually better now. Or maybe not quite so bad as when I was young, shortly after the discovery of fire. When we actually had more to be afraid of. And we simply were not afraid. I grew up unafraid. I was a child when I began talking to strangers. When I was fourteen I started hitch-hiking, which I continued to do for another seven years. It was an awesome way of meeting new people and learning more about life. It never occurred to me to be afraid. Not even when I was threatened with sexual assault by some drivers and not even when an angry young aboriginal hit me after I said hi to him on the sidewalk, not even when at thirty-five on my first night in Amsterdam I was robbed at knifepoint.
I could not fall back into fear, and only when I finally let that happen a few years later, just too overwhelmed with trauma to be able to resist, did my mental health really begin to suffer. My recovery really began as soon as I began to take risks again, making new friends, talking to people, going places, getting on airplanes and seeing other countries, learning a new language to communicate better with my Spanish-speaking friends.
There are many possible causes to this epidemic of fear. I think the worst is our interconnectedness through internet technologies as well as our own spiritual emptiness. We see, hear and know too much now, too soon and too quickly about things that are going on all over the world and we are not biologically equipped to process the information. This causes us to shut down and it overwhelms us and we become afraid and it paralyses us.
We need to take a breather from everything, disconnect from social media, go outside, walk in the pure air, surround ourselves with trees if we can and simply slow down and when we see someone walking by to try to get a sense of that person. Here is an idea. Try to think of what that person must have been like as a baby. Hold that thought. And when they come close enough to see your eyes, smile and say hi.
I am dedicating this post to my friend from Peru who encouraged me so eloquently recently to not be afraid should Donald Trump be elected president.
Never have we lived in such a dense, intense and fetid climate of fear, and never has there been less cause for being afraid. When you read the statistics you will see that locally crime is down, lower than it's been in four decades. War is down. There have never been so few nations in conflict with each other. We are living longer than ever before. Despite growing income inequality we are still generally better off than our parents' generation. We have a plethora of good, delicious and bountiful food to enjoy from all parts of the world. Even though people, afraid of food scarcity and a breakdown of the global food system, are trying to grow and consume what is locally grown, or locavores.
Everybody, it seems, is afraid of everyone and everything. Men are afraid of women, women are afraid of men, the Republicans fear Hilary and the Democrats fear Julian Assange. Here in civilized Canada the Liberals fear the Conservatives, the NDP fear the Liberals and the Conservatives fear everyone and everything.
Trapped in our cars we fear the other drivers. Trapped on the bus, we feel the almost creepy closeness of the stranger seated beside us and our first reaction is fear. Even after the Cold War, and following the threat of global nuclear annihilation we all live in a state of fear. Even if things are actually better now. Or maybe not quite so bad as when I was young, shortly after the discovery of fire. When we actually had more to be afraid of. And we simply were not afraid. I grew up unafraid. I was a child when I began talking to strangers. When I was fourteen I started hitch-hiking, which I continued to do for another seven years. It was an awesome way of meeting new people and learning more about life. It never occurred to me to be afraid. Not even when I was threatened with sexual assault by some drivers and not even when an angry young aboriginal hit me after I said hi to him on the sidewalk, not even when at thirty-five on my first night in Amsterdam I was robbed at knifepoint.
I could not fall back into fear, and only when I finally let that happen a few years later, just too overwhelmed with trauma to be able to resist, did my mental health really begin to suffer. My recovery really began as soon as I began to take risks again, making new friends, talking to people, going places, getting on airplanes and seeing other countries, learning a new language to communicate better with my Spanish-speaking friends.
There are many possible causes to this epidemic of fear. I think the worst is our interconnectedness through internet technologies as well as our own spiritual emptiness. We see, hear and know too much now, too soon and too quickly about things that are going on all over the world and we are not biologically equipped to process the information. This causes us to shut down and it overwhelms us and we become afraid and it paralyses us.
We need to take a breather from everything, disconnect from social media, go outside, walk in the pure air, surround ourselves with trees if we can and simply slow down and when we see someone walking by to try to get a sense of that person. Here is an idea. Try to think of what that person must have been like as a baby. Hold that thought. And when they come close enough to see your eyes, smile and say hi.
I am dedicating this post to my friend from Peru who encouraged me so eloquently recently to not be afraid should Donald Trump be elected president.
Friday 28 October 2016
Our Dear Little Death Culture 3
We are a culture of addiction. It is all well and good to focus on actual addicts, especially to illegal substances: heroin, cocaine, crack, crystal meth, fentanyl, and others. Then there are the legal addictions to alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine. We also have gambling addicts, sex addicts, internet addicts, shopaholics, food addicts. Sports addicts? Art addicts (like me!) Religious addicts? How about adrenalin junkies? Fitness addicts. Yoga obsessives.
When we really get a picture of how prevalent are behaviours that could well be considered addictive or obsessive it would appear that drug addicts and alcoholics are merely the tip of the iceberg, or perhaps, convenient scapegoats for the rest of us.
I have long believed there to be something seriously and dreadfully wrong with us as human beings. Something very destructive and self-hating. As though at the core of our being we really resent being alive, despite the biological imperative to live, hence this obsessive thrill-seeking behaviour that helps us get through the grey ordinariness of a typical day. It isn't enough to simply get through the day seeing something to enjoy in your job, your studies, your visit to the store, your drive to work, your walk to the bus stop, your ride on the bus, the person standing behind you in line who had the temerity to want to begin a brief friendly conversation. The bird with the beautiful red under its wings flying nearby, the way the leaves shine in the sun in the summer, the yellow and orange leaves in the fall, the way the frost gleams on a winter day, the sound of rain on your umbrella in the presence of the first daffodils of spring, or the perfect Escher-esque reflection of the naked tree in the pooling water. A sense of gratitude that your heart is still beating, that you are healthy and strong to walk unassisted, that you have access to good food to eat, at least one person on the earth who cares about you, the existence of others for you to love. Appreciation for the friendly cat on the sidewalk or the playful dog who wants a pat on the head.
Addiction, yes, is an illness. But it is a disease that we consent to. It isn't like a virus that we unwillingly ingest. No one puts a gun to your head and forces you to take that drink, that fix, or whatever. But once you're hooked you are indeed sick, but no recovery can really happen without your consent. There is little doubt that there are also genetic and biological factors at play with addiction as well as issues of trauma from childhood abuse and neglect. It is also very telling that we live in a culture where children are still mistreated and abused and neglected and where violence is still very much prevalent in too many people's experience of life.
No matter where or how or caused by whom the spiritual void and the self-loathing that give rise to addiction, we live in a world that seems to be populated by incomplete beings, staggering and stumbling along in search of any overwhelming or heightened experience to help them forget, if for but a few blessed moments of oblivion, their gnawing and relentless emptiness.
There is something inherently selfish about addiction, and somehow I am persuaded that unselfish behaviour is going to be handed by any of us like a gift on a shining platter, nor that the wave of a magic wand is going to fill us with love for our neighbour. I do believe in the realm of personal choice. As unloved and unwanted as we might feel we can still choose to love, to care and to have compassion for others. It isn't easy and it isn't a magic bullet, but even if we have not received adequate love in our lives, if maybe only just a little bit, a tiny seed of love, we can nurture and bring this seed to life in the way we regard and treat those closest to us, even if it's the person sitting next to you on the bus, or the driver of the car in the next lane, or the beggar seated on the sidewalk.
Still, for those who have never known love, have never been or felt wanted, even this is going to be impossible, and these are the ones we have to start reaching out to. If we do this, while allowing the God who is Love to fill our hearts, then we will see miracles, maybe not all at once. Miracles often take time. But this way of reaching out in care, compassion and love to the ones in easy reach is but a first step and this can also help us in our own long road of healing of the empty and broken hearts that make us such easy prey for addiction.
When we really get a picture of how prevalent are behaviours that could well be considered addictive or obsessive it would appear that drug addicts and alcoholics are merely the tip of the iceberg, or perhaps, convenient scapegoats for the rest of us.
I have long believed there to be something seriously and dreadfully wrong with us as human beings. Something very destructive and self-hating. As though at the core of our being we really resent being alive, despite the biological imperative to live, hence this obsessive thrill-seeking behaviour that helps us get through the grey ordinariness of a typical day. It isn't enough to simply get through the day seeing something to enjoy in your job, your studies, your visit to the store, your drive to work, your walk to the bus stop, your ride on the bus, the person standing behind you in line who had the temerity to want to begin a brief friendly conversation. The bird with the beautiful red under its wings flying nearby, the way the leaves shine in the sun in the summer, the yellow and orange leaves in the fall, the way the frost gleams on a winter day, the sound of rain on your umbrella in the presence of the first daffodils of spring, or the perfect Escher-esque reflection of the naked tree in the pooling water. A sense of gratitude that your heart is still beating, that you are healthy and strong to walk unassisted, that you have access to good food to eat, at least one person on the earth who cares about you, the existence of others for you to love. Appreciation for the friendly cat on the sidewalk or the playful dog who wants a pat on the head.
Addiction, yes, is an illness. But it is a disease that we consent to. It isn't like a virus that we unwillingly ingest. No one puts a gun to your head and forces you to take that drink, that fix, or whatever. But once you're hooked you are indeed sick, but no recovery can really happen without your consent. There is little doubt that there are also genetic and biological factors at play with addiction as well as issues of trauma from childhood abuse and neglect. It is also very telling that we live in a culture where children are still mistreated and abused and neglected and where violence is still very much prevalent in too many people's experience of life.
No matter where or how or caused by whom the spiritual void and the self-loathing that give rise to addiction, we live in a world that seems to be populated by incomplete beings, staggering and stumbling along in search of any overwhelming or heightened experience to help them forget, if for but a few blessed moments of oblivion, their gnawing and relentless emptiness.
There is something inherently selfish about addiction, and somehow I am persuaded that unselfish behaviour is going to be handed by any of us like a gift on a shining platter, nor that the wave of a magic wand is going to fill us with love for our neighbour. I do believe in the realm of personal choice. As unloved and unwanted as we might feel we can still choose to love, to care and to have compassion for others. It isn't easy and it isn't a magic bullet, but even if we have not received adequate love in our lives, if maybe only just a little bit, a tiny seed of love, we can nurture and bring this seed to life in the way we regard and treat those closest to us, even if it's the person sitting next to you on the bus, or the driver of the car in the next lane, or the beggar seated on the sidewalk.
Still, for those who have never known love, have never been or felt wanted, even this is going to be impossible, and these are the ones we have to start reaching out to. If we do this, while allowing the God who is Love to fill our hearts, then we will see miracles, maybe not all at once. Miracles often take time. But this way of reaching out in care, compassion and love to the ones in easy reach is but a first step and this can also help us in our own long road of healing of the empty and broken hearts that make us such easy prey for addiction.
Thursday 27 October 2016
Our Dear Little Death Culture 2
Today, Gentle Reader, we are going to talk about makeup and cosmetics. Not how to use them, nor brand selections, but what an absolute bill of goods that women have been sold. I have seen many women, made up and plain faced. Give me plain faced, any old day. They are beautiful. so naturally and plainly beautiful, so shining with the faces they were born to wear. I think I mentioned in a previous post about an esteemed colleague of mine who spent some time in hospital during her mental health recovery. This is an individual who has always eschewed makeup and simply doesn't care for it. On her file one of the nurses had indicated that since she was not wanting to wear makeup then she must be getting worse.
What does this say about our culture? That a woman's preference to not wear makeup is somehow used to denigrate the state of her mental health? By a mental health professional! That it is considered normal for a woman to be expected to hate her natural looks. Yes, it is! The cosmetics and fashion industries are so clever, so deft and manipulative the way they delude and brainwash little girls beginning with Barbies to hate themselves. Oh, yes, but Barbie also inspires little girls that they can do and be whatever they want to do and be: astronauts, fashion models, doctors, fashion models, lawyers, fashion models, scientists and fashion models. The unspoken message is that they have to look as perfect and as beautifully proportioned and made up as Barbie (a real joke, given how absolutely weird this doll's proportions would be if they were applied to a living human being) if anyone is going to seriously consider their cv.
I have long wondered about this incredible pressure that women are under to make themselves as young, attractive and sexually appealing as possible. And to think of all the adjustments and accessories and virtual self-mutilation involved: makeup, creams and lotions, manicures, foundation garments, hair dye, cosmetic surgery, botox and more, all intended to sell women on the idea that the body and face that God gave them are not good enough and that they have to somehow sell themselves like hookers in order to survive in our contemporary culture of death.
Our Culture of Death is really a culture of self-hatred, a culture based on illusion, a collective loathing of the truth. Whether it's Islamic fanatics forcing women to wear burkas and niqab or else they're considered whores, or whether it's secular consumer fanatics brainwashing women into tarting up like whores because they're otherwise seen as too ugly, it's the same lunacy. Fabric burka or cosmetic niqab, they are all saying the same thing: women as they are, are not good enough and men are very much the arbiters of these lies.
What does this say about our culture? That a woman's preference to not wear makeup is somehow used to denigrate the state of her mental health? By a mental health professional! That it is considered normal for a woman to be expected to hate her natural looks. Yes, it is! The cosmetics and fashion industries are so clever, so deft and manipulative the way they delude and brainwash little girls beginning with Barbies to hate themselves. Oh, yes, but Barbie also inspires little girls that they can do and be whatever they want to do and be: astronauts, fashion models, doctors, fashion models, lawyers, fashion models, scientists and fashion models. The unspoken message is that they have to look as perfect and as beautifully proportioned and made up as Barbie (a real joke, given how absolutely weird this doll's proportions would be if they were applied to a living human being) if anyone is going to seriously consider their cv.
I have long wondered about this incredible pressure that women are under to make themselves as young, attractive and sexually appealing as possible. And to think of all the adjustments and accessories and virtual self-mutilation involved: makeup, creams and lotions, manicures, foundation garments, hair dye, cosmetic surgery, botox and more, all intended to sell women on the idea that the body and face that God gave them are not good enough and that they have to somehow sell themselves like hookers in order to survive in our contemporary culture of death.
Our Culture of Death is really a culture of self-hatred, a culture based on illusion, a collective loathing of the truth. Whether it's Islamic fanatics forcing women to wear burkas and niqab or else they're considered whores, or whether it's secular consumer fanatics brainwashing women into tarting up like whores because they're otherwise seen as too ugly, it's the same lunacy. Fabric burka or cosmetic niqab, they are all saying the same thing: women as they are, are not good enough and men are very much the arbiters of these lies.
Wednesday 26 October 2016
Our Dear Little Death Culture 1
One of these days I will just shut off the radio and stop listening to the news for a year. This isn`t a promise, and not exactly a threat. I heard this morning on the CBC about oil slowly rising in price again and that it should be a little more profitable by the barrel in, say, twenty-four years. Meanwhile, the scientists are trying to warn us that we might not have twenty-four years. We might not have fifteen or even ten years left before climate change has completely destroyed the earth as we know it. I`m not sure if they`re necessarily right about this, not about the danger but the timing, but I`m sure giving them the benefit of the doubt.
If our political leaders are as serious as they have claimed to be about climate change due to global warming then someone please explain to me why they are still promoting these fuels of death: oil, coal and natural gas? Prime Minister Junior has finally declared his honeymoon with the Canadian voters to be over by saying that he will approve pipelines carrying oil and liquefied natural gas to the BC coast for Asian (you mean, Chinese?) markets. Maybe he should start taking off his shirt again?
Of course there is also the car culture. Every time I watch something on YouTube there are car ads, featuring incredibly shallow, vacuous looking individuals extolling the virtues of their new vehicles. As if not one of them has ever even heard of global warming or environmental degradation. They do come across as very ordinary, average, reasonably well-groomed people who like their jobs, their friends, love their families, their girlfriends, boyfriends, their dogs or whatever. As I said, shallow and vacuous.
I do not see a reduction of individual vehicles on the road. Lots of bikes. Maybe about as many buses. Skateboards, too. What is it about our addiction to cars (and to oil, probably the only intelligent thing George W. Bush ever said!)? It's been suggested that the illusion of power, independence and individualism are so seductive as channelled through the car that not having one reduces you automatically to loser status. Nobody wants to be a loser. And the condition of one's ego always takes precedence over the common good.
Do we see a pattern here? The seduction of egoism and the supremacy of self are in themselves the governing toxic influence in our human lives. This spills over into everything we do, possess and profess. The false god of self: the empty, soulless consumer, chronically disembowelled spiritually while trying always but never succeeding to validate the empty craving self. This is what is really destroying us. Fill those gas tanks and keep them full and go burn rubber while doing your part, one BMW at a time to make this planet uninhabitable and to do your part to contribute to the extirpation of our species.
And all because you matter more than anything else in the Universe!
If our political leaders are as serious as they have claimed to be about climate change due to global warming then someone please explain to me why they are still promoting these fuels of death: oil, coal and natural gas? Prime Minister Junior has finally declared his honeymoon with the Canadian voters to be over by saying that he will approve pipelines carrying oil and liquefied natural gas to the BC coast for Asian (you mean, Chinese?) markets. Maybe he should start taking off his shirt again?
Of course there is also the car culture. Every time I watch something on YouTube there are car ads, featuring incredibly shallow, vacuous looking individuals extolling the virtues of their new vehicles. As if not one of them has ever even heard of global warming or environmental degradation. They do come across as very ordinary, average, reasonably well-groomed people who like their jobs, their friends, love their families, their girlfriends, boyfriends, their dogs or whatever. As I said, shallow and vacuous.
I do not see a reduction of individual vehicles on the road. Lots of bikes. Maybe about as many buses. Skateboards, too. What is it about our addiction to cars (and to oil, probably the only intelligent thing George W. Bush ever said!)? It's been suggested that the illusion of power, independence and individualism are so seductive as channelled through the car that not having one reduces you automatically to loser status. Nobody wants to be a loser. And the condition of one's ego always takes precedence over the common good.
Do we see a pattern here? The seduction of egoism and the supremacy of self are in themselves the governing toxic influence in our human lives. This spills over into everything we do, possess and profess. The false god of self: the empty, soulless consumer, chronically disembowelled spiritually while trying always but never succeeding to validate the empty craving self. This is what is really destroying us. Fill those gas tanks and keep them full and go burn rubber while doing your part, one BMW at a time to make this planet uninhabitable and to do your part to contribute to the extirpation of our species.
And all because you matter more than anything else in the Universe!
Tuesday 25 October 2016
Poor-Bashing, Britsh Columbia
BC, I heard again on the radio this morning, is the only province in Canada without a poverty reduction plan. Go figure. We are considered one of the richest provinces with the most robust economy, and beggars and homeless are lining our streets while Chinese millionaires launder their dirty money on our priciest real estate thus pushing housing costs out of reach to anyone who is not obscenely wealthy. And only in the last six weeks, on the heels of the coming election this spring has our prime minister, Christy the Clown Clark actually unveiled a low-cost housing plan that will provide 2900 new units to the tune of half a billion dollars, or, the price tag for a new roof on the BC Place Stadium.
During the Nineties this province was governed by an NDP government with Mike Harcourt, formerly Vancouver's very popular and progressive mayor, at the helm as premier. Under pressure from the rural conservative lobby (he did want votes, despite his party's social democratic platform), Harcourt turned against the poorest and most vulnerable citizens in this province, called them lazy deadbeats and parasites and welfare cheats and slashed provincial welfare rates.
In 2001 the BC Liberal Party, a newly minted coalition of conservatives, neoliberals and rightwing libertarians swept into power, drastically reduced welfare eligibility, tossed hundreds of poor people onto the street, and spiked our homeless population by nearly four hundred percent. In effect, the BC Liberal Party under Gordon Campbell, created our homelessness crisis. It has only worsened over the last fifteen years. And now Christy the Clown is going to shove out Five Hundred Million to see how many votes she can bleed her way in seven months' time with absolutely no guarantee that she won't somehow renege on her promise.
In the meantime we have newly minted legislation guaranteeing as a human right doctor assisted suicide. They wanted to broaden the qualifications and that had even the civil liberties folk on the same bandwagon baying like hounds in heat and lobbying for anyone who no longer wants to live to have the right to be bumped off by a physician, to hell with the Hippocratic Oath. It was only after hearing from an awful lot of Canadians with legitimate claims and fears of this legislation being abused that the criteria has remained at its narrowest, but there is no guarantee that the legislation cannot be reopened at a future date, amended and made available to many other Canadians eager to kick the bucket. And one particularly vulnerable group could be low-income seniors (our most rapidly growing population demographic) who could easily be manipulated into consenting to doctor assisted suicide, thus reducing the financial strain on our public health care system.
This government hates the poor. Otherwise our homelessness crisis would have been taken care of years ago. In the meantime, in the name of unfettered global capitalism, they keep putting band aids on the cancer, not really interested in solving the problem, but preferring rather to let Natural Selection take its course and extirpate from the face of the earth the poor children of God. And don't get me started about criminally low welfare rates and disability pensions that no one can survive on, much less minimum and low wages that remain significantly less than what anyone can be expected to live on with dignity.
All I can say in this blog post to all of you, Gentle Reader, is this: Wake up! These poor and homeless people whom you walk past, judge, ignore and despise every day are your brothers, your sisters, your children, your fathers and mothers. We are our brothers' keeper. It is time that we stopped reserving our compassion for those whom we think deserve it and learn to share our hearts and lives and substance with those whose poverty makes us want to look away in contempt and self-loathing. We hate the poor, or should I say, being poor myself, that you hate us, because you are us and we are you and you in your denial of your poverty simply cannot gut the idea of having to look your smallness and fragility in the face. Own up. We are your mirror. It is time for us all to come together, despite our hating and hateful governments.
If the people will lead, the leaders will follow.
During the Nineties this province was governed by an NDP government with Mike Harcourt, formerly Vancouver's very popular and progressive mayor, at the helm as premier. Under pressure from the rural conservative lobby (he did want votes, despite his party's social democratic platform), Harcourt turned against the poorest and most vulnerable citizens in this province, called them lazy deadbeats and parasites and welfare cheats and slashed provincial welfare rates.
In 2001 the BC Liberal Party, a newly minted coalition of conservatives, neoliberals and rightwing libertarians swept into power, drastically reduced welfare eligibility, tossed hundreds of poor people onto the street, and spiked our homeless population by nearly four hundred percent. In effect, the BC Liberal Party under Gordon Campbell, created our homelessness crisis. It has only worsened over the last fifteen years. And now Christy the Clown is going to shove out Five Hundred Million to see how many votes she can bleed her way in seven months' time with absolutely no guarantee that she won't somehow renege on her promise.
In the meantime we have newly minted legislation guaranteeing as a human right doctor assisted suicide. They wanted to broaden the qualifications and that had even the civil liberties folk on the same bandwagon baying like hounds in heat and lobbying for anyone who no longer wants to live to have the right to be bumped off by a physician, to hell with the Hippocratic Oath. It was only after hearing from an awful lot of Canadians with legitimate claims and fears of this legislation being abused that the criteria has remained at its narrowest, but there is no guarantee that the legislation cannot be reopened at a future date, amended and made available to many other Canadians eager to kick the bucket. And one particularly vulnerable group could be low-income seniors (our most rapidly growing population demographic) who could easily be manipulated into consenting to doctor assisted suicide, thus reducing the financial strain on our public health care system.
This government hates the poor. Otherwise our homelessness crisis would have been taken care of years ago. In the meantime, in the name of unfettered global capitalism, they keep putting band aids on the cancer, not really interested in solving the problem, but preferring rather to let Natural Selection take its course and extirpate from the face of the earth the poor children of God. And don't get me started about criminally low welfare rates and disability pensions that no one can survive on, much less minimum and low wages that remain significantly less than what anyone can be expected to live on with dignity.
All I can say in this blog post to all of you, Gentle Reader, is this: Wake up! These poor and homeless people whom you walk past, judge, ignore and despise every day are your brothers, your sisters, your children, your fathers and mothers. We are our brothers' keeper. It is time that we stopped reserving our compassion for those whom we think deserve it and learn to share our hearts and lives and substance with those whose poverty makes us want to look away in contempt and self-loathing. We hate the poor, or should I say, being poor myself, that you hate us, because you are us and we are you and you in your denial of your poverty simply cannot gut the idea of having to look your smallness and fragility in the face. Own up. We are your mirror. It is time for us all to come together, despite our hating and hateful governments.
If the people will lead, the leaders will follow.
Monday 24 October 2016
Can't Complain (And Other Lies)
I practice my Spanish every day, thanks to Fulano. I think I have already mentioned in a couple of posts el Fulano, my invisible Hispanic friend I talk to on the phone in Spanish every day. I do it on my voice mail. Then play back the monologue as a means of gauging my progress in the language. So far so good, except, my voice mail no longer functions and I can`t access the service provider since their website doesn`t respond to me. So... I talk on the phone anyway to Fulano (a Spanish word that means What`s It`s Face in English) and those around me assume (I hope) that I am either a native Spanish speaker, possibly a very pale looking Mexican, or, in the case of native Spanish speakers, that I am a local Gringo who speaks the language admirably well but they`re still not going to be fooled by my accent. Unable to play back my recordings, I wait till I get home, then from my landline phone I talk in Spanish onto my professional voice mail which I pick up on my cell phone. I can still listen to myself in Spanish every day, gage my progress then move on.
Of the many conversations I have with Fulano, one recurring theme is how much I have to be thankful for, despite small inconveniences and necessary trade-offs. And at the end of the day, there is always the present moment, the Divine Present, that gift from God of the present moment that sustains and blesses us if we but give it our notice.
Yes, I did say that I have a cell phone, an antique, an old-fashioned flip phone, courtesy of my employers who pay for it. I don`t have an iPhone and I don`t want one. Not only would I rather invest the money for my annual vacation in Latin America, but I also don`t want to be connected twenty-four/seven. I don't get a lot of emails anyway and there is nothing on social media that interests me, so, no Facebook and no Twitter and no Instagram. Do I feel deprived? Why should I? I have friends who I can see for coffee or a meal and we stay in touch the old fashioned way: email or phone, and then we actually see each other. In person. Weird, eh?
While my client and I today were talking about the importance of learning to tolerate slightly intolerable conditions I expressed my feelings about my job as an example. I love my clients and the kind of work I do. There are a lot of other things that I don't like, which I did not mention to my client, and given my employers' delicate feelings around criticism that comes from low-caste workers they have the power to hurt (I guess that I must be like one of those perennially annoying fruit flies always getting in their face) it would probably be wise to keep my mouth shut, especially around a client.
On the other hand, despite my low wage and poor working conditions and absolute lack of respect from higher management I still get by okay. I have a place to live (thanks, BC Housing and More Than a Roof Housing Society!) and I pay a pittance for rent (thirty percent of my monthly income). My place is small but easy to clean. It gets noisy at times from the elephant upstairs and the douchebags in the hard to house building next door, but earplugs help and my central location does much to streamline my life for me. And I can still live in this fabulously and obscenely expensive city of my birth.
Because I enjoy travel I usually can't afford to eat in restaurants, so I cook and enjoy the exercise in culinary creativity which also enhances my good health. I am vegetarian, which is not only affordable but has blessed me with the blood pressure of a young man less than half my age. Even though my pituitary gland is toast and I have to take a thyroid supplement for the rest of my life I enjoy good robust health and physical strength and energy. I don't have a car (never have), so I rely on public transit which, often not that reliable, encourages me to walk a minimum of five miles a day which also keeps me in good health.
I have almost always lived alone, partly because I'm unmarriageable (there is no room for two on my throne) and my asexual orientation along with my strong Christian spiritual focus makes romantic entanglements unnecessary to me and virtually impossible, which keeps me unavailable to potential partners of any gender. I would like to have closer friends in my life but it is difficult to find people who don't try to sexualize close friendship and intimacy. On the other hand, this encourages me to be a better, kinder and more respectful friend. A bit lonely at times, perhaps, but I never end up regretting that I have somehow sold myself for a mess of pottage.
I could go on. Life is so full of trade-offs, but you know something, Gentle Reader? If we were to really focus on the gains that we make through our trade offs instead of whining and whinging about what we think we have lost we would not only be happier people, but we would also be making the world around us a much happier and more welcome place.
Even though I could complain, I'm not going to. Right now I'm too happy.
Not that this couldn't change of a sudden.
Let's just hope and pray that it doesn't.
Of the many conversations I have with Fulano, one recurring theme is how much I have to be thankful for, despite small inconveniences and necessary trade-offs. And at the end of the day, there is always the present moment, the Divine Present, that gift from God of the present moment that sustains and blesses us if we but give it our notice.
Yes, I did say that I have a cell phone, an antique, an old-fashioned flip phone, courtesy of my employers who pay for it. I don`t have an iPhone and I don`t want one. Not only would I rather invest the money for my annual vacation in Latin America, but I also don`t want to be connected twenty-four/seven. I don't get a lot of emails anyway and there is nothing on social media that interests me, so, no Facebook and no Twitter and no Instagram. Do I feel deprived? Why should I? I have friends who I can see for coffee or a meal and we stay in touch the old fashioned way: email or phone, and then we actually see each other. In person. Weird, eh?
While my client and I today were talking about the importance of learning to tolerate slightly intolerable conditions I expressed my feelings about my job as an example. I love my clients and the kind of work I do. There are a lot of other things that I don't like, which I did not mention to my client, and given my employers' delicate feelings around criticism that comes from low-caste workers they have the power to hurt (I guess that I must be like one of those perennially annoying fruit flies always getting in their face) it would probably be wise to keep my mouth shut, especially around a client.
On the other hand, despite my low wage and poor working conditions and absolute lack of respect from higher management I still get by okay. I have a place to live (thanks, BC Housing and More Than a Roof Housing Society!) and I pay a pittance for rent (thirty percent of my monthly income). My place is small but easy to clean. It gets noisy at times from the elephant upstairs and the douchebags in the hard to house building next door, but earplugs help and my central location does much to streamline my life for me. And I can still live in this fabulously and obscenely expensive city of my birth.
Because I enjoy travel I usually can't afford to eat in restaurants, so I cook and enjoy the exercise in culinary creativity which also enhances my good health. I am vegetarian, which is not only affordable but has blessed me with the blood pressure of a young man less than half my age. Even though my pituitary gland is toast and I have to take a thyroid supplement for the rest of my life I enjoy good robust health and physical strength and energy. I don't have a car (never have), so I rely on public transit which, often not that reliable, encourages me to walk a minimum of five miles a day which also keeps me in good health.
I have almost always lived alone, partly because I'm unmarriageable (there is no room for two on my throne) and my asexual orientation along with my strong Christian spiritual focus makes romantic entanglements unnecessary to me and virtually impossible, which keeps me unavailable to potential partners of any gender. I would like to have closer friends in my life but it is difficult to find people who don't try to sexualize close friendship and intimacy. On the other hand, this encourages me to be a better, kinder and more respectful friend. A bit lonely at times, perhaps, but I never end up regretting that I have somehow sold myself for a mess of pottage.
I could go on. Life is so full of trade-offs, but you know something, Gentle Reader? If we were to really focus on the gains that we make through our trade offs instead of whining and whinging about what we think we have lost we would not only be happier people, but we would also be making the world around us a much happier and more welcome place.
Even though I could complain, I'm not going to. Right now I'm too happy.
Not that this couldn't change of a sudden.
Let's just hope and pray that it doesn't.
Sunday 23 October 2016
Community And Friendship, 13
Even now, twenty years later, I am still being haunted by the ghosts of community past. Even though I have dropped all fantasies and every pretense of ever seeing made real the beautiful vision of Christian community that has never left me, I still live in its shadow. Its distant light beguiles me still. As my family faded, died off, abandoned me, as I lost many friends, as I grew older, people have come to matter to me more than ever. It isn't that I'm not able to be alone. I function well alone and pride myself for my independence. But there are certain things that God calls us to be and do, together. For the life of me I could never imagine trying to live with others again in an experiment of intentional community. I have tried to connect in other ways, through churches and through organizations of Christian social activism only to find these situations to be either unwelcoming, or ingrown and almost incestuous. Having lost all my previous friends, I am in contact with new people, though I am still not sure whether or not I could actually call some of them friends. Perhaps they range somewhere between being friends and acquaintances.
Generally, I find myself wanting something more than others seem prepared to offer, or want themselves. I am certainly not seeking romantic connections, nor a replacement family. Neither do I want an enclosed, cozy circle of friends that welcomes no strangers. I'm really not sure what it is that I want, only that I am feeling a certain lack that cannot be simply filled by hobbies and solitary interests, nor by a purely vertical relationship with God. Our life in Christ is made complete in one another.
The churches tend to be virtually useless as vehicles of community. It all revolves around the institution and God, and we are much more than a mere institution, sacred or otherwise. The Anglican Church, where I have wasted many good years, is especially delinquent. There is virtually no interest in people developing authentic relationships that foster spiritual growth and welcome others, where there is no such creature as an outsider. Anglicans tend to really suck at friendship, community and relationships, I have found. There is a tacit expectation that part of being Anglican is having your own family, your own social unit, and church is what you do on Sundays where you righteously parade before one another, exchange empty pleasantries over weak coffee and stale pastries, (wine and cheese on high feast days) then continue on with your family, professional and personal lives as though the people you meet at church have no further existence to you nor vice versa until the following Sunday. Or you can help out, sing in the choir, give out bulletins or make coffee and tea or whatever. Empty, shallow, and not at all consistent with the Church of the New Testament, nor the work of the Holy Spirit.
I can do only the little I am able to do: keep praying and keep trying to be a real friend to my acquaintances/friends even if they don't seem worthy and to accept with gratitude whatever morsel of friendship they offer me, hoping but taking care to not expect more. Meanwhile to remain motivated by compassion, love and empathy as I try to engage perfect strangers, if only with a friendly greeting and a silent prayer for their wellbeing. People are so busy these days, and in many cases busy being busy, or making being busy a lame and empty excuse for not connecting authentically with others.
We cannot rely on the Church to provide us with the Christian community that we and the world are needing. It is simply not enough. We have to become that ourselves. We have to each avail ourselves to God by living lives of repentance, renewal and reconciliation and thus we can begin anew to facilitate the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our communities. This takes a lot of openness, trust and risk on our parts. And the willingness to really share our lives with others, not just blood family, not just with close personal friends, but with all people, beginning with those to whom God sends us day after day.
We need to learn to pray together, to wait on God together, to listen for his voice, to channel his presence, love and peace to others with some sense of mutual accountability. This for me is real Christian community: sharing our time, our lives, our wealth, our resources, our finances, but before we can begin even this, that we become people of repentance, renewal and reconciliation. This is a task that God entrusts to each one of us who claim to belong to Jesus and each one of us carries with us this sacred responsibility to use our gifts, talents, time and energy to help bring us together as God's people, people of the Cross, people of love.
I would be the last person to guess what form this would take. But it needs somehow to begin and to my knowledge it is not happening really anywhere in this city, or if it is I have yet to learn of it. So, to each person reading this and other posts on my blog, this is my challenge: learn how to know God, to really know him, to open your lives to him, to the touch of his love and to the work of the Holy Spirit. I challenge each of us to walk with Jesus in the way of the Cross, the way of repentance, renewal and reconciliation. We live in a sick and broken world. Together we can help facilitate its healing. Alone, not so much.
Generally, I find myself wanting something more than others seem prepared to offer, or want themselves. I am certainly not seeking romantic connections, nor a replacement family. Neither do I want an enclosed, cozy circle of friends that welcomes no strangers. I'm really not sure what it is that I want, only that I am feeling a certain lack that cannot be simply filled by hobbies and solitary interests, nor by a purely vertical relationship with God. Our life in Christ is made complete in one another.
The churches tend to be virtually useless as vehicles of community. It all revolves around the institution and God, and we are much more than a mere institution, sacred or otherwise. The Anglican Church, where I have wasted many good years, is especially delinquent. There is virtually no interest in people developing authentic relationships that foster spiritual growth and welcome others, where there is no such creature as an outsider. Anglicans tend to really suck at friendship, community and relationships, I have found. There is a tacit expectation that part of being Anglican is having your own family, your own social unit, and church is what you do on Sundays where you righteously parade before one another, exchange empty pleasantries over weak coffee and stale pastries, (wine and cheese on high feast days) then continue on with your family, professional and personal lives as though the people you meet at church have no further existence to you nor vice versa until the following Sunday. Or you can help out, sing in the choir, give out bulletins or make coffee and tea or whatever. Empty, shallow, and not at all consistent with the Church of the New Testament, nor the work of the Holy Spirit.
I can do only the little I am able to do: keep praying and keep trying to be a real friend to my acquaintances/friends even if they don't seem worthy and to accept with gratitude whatever morsel of friendship they offer me, hoping but taking care to not expect more. Meanwhile to remain motivated by compassion, love and empathy as I try to engage perfect strangers, if only with a friendly greeting and a silent prayer for their wellbeing. People are so busy these days, and in many cases busy being busy, or making being busy a lame and empty excuse for not connecting authentically with others.
We cannot rely on the Church to provide us with the Christian community that we and the world are needing. It is simply not enough. We have to become that ourselves. We have to each avail ourselves to God by living lives of repentance, renewal and reconciliation and thus we can begin anew to facilitate the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our communities. This takes a lot of openness, trust and risk on our parts. And the willingness to really share our lives with others, not just blood family, not just with close personal friends, but with all people, beginning with those to whom God sends us day after day.
We need to learn to pray together, to wait on God together, to listen for his voice, to channel his presence, love and peace to others with some sense of mutual accountability. This for me is real Christian community: sharing our time, our lives, our wealth, our resources, our finances, but before we can begin even this, that we become people of repentance, renewal and reconciliation. This is a task that God entrusts to each one of us who claim to belong to Jesus and each one of us carries with us this sacred responsibility to use our gifts, talents, time and energy to help bring us together as God's people, people of the Cross, people of love.
I would be the last person to guess what form this would take. But it needs somehow to begin and to my knowledge it is not happening really anywhere in this city, or if it is I have yet to learn of it. So, to each person reading this and other posts on my blog, this is my challenge: learn how to know God, to really know him, to open your lives to him, to the touch of his love and to the work of the Holy Spirit. I challenge each of us to walk with Jesus in the way of the Cross, the way of repentance, renewal and reconciliation. We live in a sick and broken world. Together we can help facilitate its healing. Alone, not so much.
Saturday 22 October 2016
Community And Friendship, 12
Losing the farmhouse of course presaged the eventual demise of our little community. We really should have known. This simply could not have lasted. We were too idealistic and our dream was simply too beautiful for the likes of us. We were ourselves very limited. I had undiagnosed PTSD and was considered too radical fringe in order to merit any support at all from the Anglican Church. The fellow who left had his own challenges: drug addiction, mental health issues, and a very controlling and domineering personality. The older of the two women was already feeling and showing her deteriorating health and the younger was just such an absolute twit that the very thought of her still boggles the imagination.
We, on the other hand, were also saints. Our notion of Christian discipleship was so profound and all-encompassing that really we all should have belonged to some kind of co-ed monastery or convent, if only we weren't so far too wild for such structured and traditional expressions of Christian community. Despite, and maybe because of, our frailties and our many weaknesses, we were prime candidates for Christ, who has long revelled in making perfect his strength through human weakness. And being saints, we were all, of course, virtually impossible to live with.
We had a beautiful vision for making the love of Christ manifest in our lives and for the people around us. We longed to become a place for people to feel safe, where they could grow, heal and find meaning and purpose in their lives. We wanted to be and provide to others the very sanctuary that we ourselves longed for but could never really attain. We sought to share and to be completely generous and welcoming to all whom we met, the deserving and undeserving for so we ourselves had come to experience the love of Christ.
We presumed to be too much to too many, when we ourselves were wanting, wounded and so incapacitated ourselves. No one would step forward to help, mentor or support us, but we on the other hand would readily scorn and ignore what little support and friendship was to us already available. We also became smug and spiritually proud and arrogant, presuming in our way that we were God's gift to the poor, the marginalized and also to the church which we were zealous to help reform. I quickly came to see where this was all going, that we were rapidly turning into a cult and then I sounded the warning to the others in the community. They turned a deaf ear, so I turned against them and warned the churches to whom we were connected about what was happening. I was viewed as a traitor. I didn't care. I was not going to see the beautiful work that I had been instrumental in starting mutate into something so gross and ugly as some of the cults that had traumatized me. I was not averse to murdering my child since I could now see that I had spawned a monster.
I became uncooperative with the two women. I refused to indulge their fantasies of grandeur and began to question and challenge everything. I was also in mourning for my mother, dead for less than a year. I became close to some of the street and underground folk we were presuming to minister to and sensed I had a thing or two that I needed to learn from some of them and this distanced me all the more from the two women in my community. There was something of a raw unfettered and unpretentious honesty my friends of the street still had that I was rapidly losing to the two women and I was desperate to get it all back. We became separate entities, more or less, the two women and I. They kept doing their thing, and I did mine.
We moved to another house, in East Van. The younger woman moved out. She joined a fundamentalist church and morphed into an intolerant ninny. To us it was good riddance. The old woman became controlling and demanding now that her maidservant was gone (the younger woman used to cater to her in a way that was almost shameful). We had new roommates. The first didn't work out but the second was a bit of a godsend, a very sane young man. It wasn't going to last. Within a year the old woman found affordable seniors' housing and the other fellow and I went our separate ways. By this time I legally changed my name and so Aaron Benjamin Zacharias was born. And now I was going to be living alone in a small apartment in East Van for the first time in seven years, under a new name and a new identity.
We, on the other hand, were also saints. Our notion of Christian discipleship was so profound and all-encompassing that really we all should have belonged to some kind of co-ed monastery or convent, if only we weren't so far too wild for such structured and traditional expressions of Christian community. Despite, and maybe because of, our frailties and our many weaknesses, we were prime candidates for Christ, who has long revelled in making perfect his strength through human weakness. And being saints, we were all, of course, virtually impossible to live with.
We had a beautiful vision for making the love of Christ manifest in our lives and for the people around us. We longed to become a place for people to feel safe, where they could grow, heal and find meaning and purpose in their lives. We wanted to be and provide to others the very sanctuary that we ourselves longed for but could never really attain. We sought to share and to be completely generous and welcoming to all whom we met, the deserving and undeserving for so we ourselves had come to experience the love of Christ.
We presumed to be too much to too many, when we ourselves were wanting, wounded and so incapacitated ourselves. No one would step forward to help, mentor or support us, but we on the other hand would readily scorn and ignore what little support and friendship was to us already available. We also became smug and spiritually proud and arrogant, presuming in our way that we were God's gift to the poor, the marginalized and also to the church which we were zealous to help reform. I quickly came to see where this was all going, that we were rapidly turning into a cult and then I sounded the warning to the others in the community. They turned a deaf ear, so I turned against them and warned the churches to whom we were connected about what was happening. I was viewed as a traitor. I didn't care. I was not going to see the beautiful work that I had been instrumental in starting mutate into something so gross and ugly as some of the cults that had traumatized me. I was not averse to murdering my child since I could now see that I had spawned a monster.
I became uncooperative with the two women. I refused to indulge their fantasies of grandeur and began to question and challenge everything. I was also in mourning for my mother, dead for less than a year. I became close to some of the street and underground folk we were presuming to minister to and sensed I had a thing or two that I needed to learn from some of them and this distanced me all the more from the two women in my community. There was something of a raw unfettered and unpretentious honesty my friends of the street still had that I was rapidly losing to the two women and I was desperate to get it all back. We became separate entities, more or less, the two women and I. They kept doing their thing, and I did mine.
We moved to another house, in East Van. The younger woman moved out. She joined a fundamentalist church and morphed into an intolerant ninny. To us it was good riddance. The old woman became controlling and demanding now that her maidservant was gone (the younger woman used to cater to her in a way that was almost shameful). We had new roommates. The first didn't work out but the second was a bit of a godsend, a very sane young man. It wasn't going to last. Within a year the old woman found affordable seniors' housing and the other fellow and I went our separate ways. By this time I legally changed my name and so Aaron Benjamin Zacharias was born. And now I was going to be living alone in a small apartment in East Van for the first time in seven years, under a new name and a new identity.
Friday 21 October 2016
Community And Friendship, 11
The two women joining us was a change, a very necessary change of our PH. They were incredibly generous and eager to learn the ministry we were ourselves still learning and they invested a lot of money and time into us and our work. They soon found a house in East Vancouver where they moved and opened a ministry of hospitality, In the meantime we were spending a lot of time in the bars and cafes and on the streets downtown where we continued to meet and befriend local people, many who became regular partakers of our hospitality and not a few of whom abused the privilege.
We tried to meet together for prayer daily and to make decisions through prayer and consensus. Interestingly, the only thing we never fought about was money, We all agreed that it was all to be used for the community and to minister to the needs of others and we gave one another a lot of trust. We were incredibly, almost scandalously generous and we were this way out of our strong desire to honour Christ and his teaching in the Gospel. Even though we felt drawn into the same work together none of us ever really became friends in the real sense, except that the two women were already friends before and one of the women and I became for a while friends after the community ended. The other two were lacking in maturity, emotional stability and judgement and brought a lot of harm to us and the work we were involved in together, especially one of the women who became emotionally and sexually involved with a young man with addictions and mental health issues. She could have been his mother and I basically was begged by the other woman to return from Europe where I had been for two months following my mother's death to help straighten out the mess.
The fellow who originally moved in with me had already left, knowing that I was no longer going to tolerate his abuse. The irresponsible woman, who entertained fantasies of sleeping with him in order to "cure" him of his homosexual orientation, almost left with him.
In the meantime we were all surrounded by and immersed in death as our friends with AIDS, friends with addictions, friends with mental health challenges, friends just sick of the pain of living, all began to drop around us like proverbial flies. My mother died. On top of everything else we could not find any church willing to support or mentor us. We were a little too radical, and I think, unstable for their comfort.
The two women and I ended up living together for two years in the farm house, as the young lover of the unstable one wrecked their ministry and hospitality house. It was a very tense and extremely difficult cohabitation but we did our best and continued in prayer and ministry, no matter how bitterly we had come to hate each other.
We tried to meet together for prayer daily and to make decisions through prayer and consensus. Interestingly, the only thing we never fought about was money, We all agreed that it was all to be used for the community and to minister to the needs of others and we gave one another a lot of trust. We were incredibly, almost scandalously generous and we were this way out of our strong desire to honour Christ and his teaching in the Gospel. Even though we felt drawn into the same work together none of us ever really became friends in the real sense, except that the two women were already friends before and one of the women and I became for a while friends after the community ended. The other two were lacking in maturity, emotional stability and judgement and brought a lot of harm to us and the work we were involved in together, especially one of the women who became emotionally and sexually involved with a young man with addictions and mental health issues. She could have been his mother and I basically was begged by the other woman to return from Europe where I had been for two months following my mother's death to help straighten out the mess.
The fellow who originally moved in with me had already left, knowing that I was no longer going to tolerate his abuse. The irresponsible woman, who entertained fantasies of sleeping with him in order to "cure" him of his homosexual orientation, almost left with him.
In the meantime we were all surrounded by and immersed in death as our friends with AIDS, friends with addictions, friends with mental health challenges, friends just sick of the pain of living, all began to drop around us like proverbial flies. My mother died. On top of everything else we could not find any church willing to support or mentor us. We were a little too radical, and I think, unstable for their comfort.
The two women and I ended up living together for two years in the farm house, as the young lover of the unstable one wrecked their ministry and hospitality house. It was a very tense and extremely difficult cohabitation but we did our best and continued in prayer and ministry, no matter how bitterly we had come to hate each other.
Thursday 20 October 2016
Community And Friendship,10
It began with a dilapidated farmhouse on an overgrown acre of birch trees, cedar and salal, ferns, foxglove and blackberries in Richmond. The rent was incredibly cheap and I was needing a place of quiet and refuge following two very intense years living downtown. I applied my very limited carpentry and landscaping skills to make the place habitable and enjoyed several months of solitude and relative quiet...except...
Within weeks of taking occupancy my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and her care and support became a priority...
except...
My work in the Downtown Eastside with poor, vulnerable and very ill, physically and mentally, adults was already taking a huge emotional toll on me...
except...
I was feeling so alienated from the stuffy and unreachable Anglicans at Snooty Church that I became chronically upset and left.
I was soon attending the local Anglican parish, became friends with the rector and soon was acquiring a vision for Christian community growing out of the little house I was living in. I was also getting lonely, and feeling very burdened about my mother's care and support needs as well as the toll my job was taking on me.
Being still involved in street and bar ministry I met an individual who was seeking Jesus. He converted very quickly and ended up living with me: a rather odd and in some ways very toxic arrangement with a very troubled and controlling individual. We became tightly connected to the local Anglican parish as well as returning to Snooty Church where we attracted a lot of attention and some support, especially given our work and caregiving, thanks to my professional experience, of gay men dying from AIDS (this was 1989, before anti-retrovirals.)
Having to leave my home support position in the Downtown Eastside created new issues as my partner in the faith refused to do anything about employment nor any other form of income. He insisted that God would provide and God did provide in spite of my friend's stubborn resistance against accepting responsibility for his life. Different individuals in the churches came forward to help, some with incredible generosity, others not so much, and the rescues were almost all eleventh hour but God, nevertheless, did provide and generally we did not solicit for assistance. And we weren't exactly lazy loafers. When we had no money for bus fare we would walk the ten miles downtown to spend time with people suffering from AIDS who had come to love us and welcome our presence (there were others who simply hated us for being Christians, even though we were very careful to respect and to not push our beliefs on others).
Summer arrived and people from the church visited, often with gifts and our door and our table were open and welcoming to all.
In the fall, two women from the church joined us and we became a community.
Within weeks of taking occupancy my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and her care and support became a priority...
except...
My work in the Downtown Eastside with poor, vulnerable and very ill, physically and mentally, adults was already taking a huge emotional toll on me...
except...
I was feeling so alienated from the stuffy and unreachable Anglicans at Snooty Church that I became chronically upset and left.
I was soon attending the local Anglican parish, became friends with the rector and soon was acquiring a vision for Christian community growing out of the little house I was living in. I was also getting lonely, and feeling very burdened about my mother's care and support needs as well as the toll my job was taking on me.
Being still involved in street and bar ministry I met an individual who was seeking Jesus. He converted very quickly and ended up living with me: a rather odd and in some ways very toxic arrangement with a very troubled and controlling individual. We became tightly connected to the local Anglican parish as well as returning to Snooty Church where we attracted a lot of attention and some support, especially given our work and caregiving, thanks to my professional experience, of gay men dying from AIDS (this was 1989, before anti-retrovirals.)
Having to leave my home support position in the Downtown Eastside created new issues as my partner in the faith refused to do anything about employment nor any other form of income. He insisted that God would provide and God did provide in spite of my friend's stubborn resistance against accepting responsibility for his life. Different individuals in the churches came forward to help, some with incredible generosity, others not so much, and the rescues were almost all eleventh hour but God, nevertheless, did provide and generally we did not solicit for assistance. And we weren't exactly lazy loafers. When we had no money for bus fare we would walk the ten miles downtown to spend time with people suffering from AIDS who had come to love us and welcome our presence (there were others who simply hated us for being Christians, even though we were very careful to respect and to not push our beliefs on others).
Summer arrived and people from the church visited, often with gifts and our door and our table were open and welcoming to all.
In the fall, two women from the church joined us and we became a community.
Wednesday 19 October 2016
Community And Friendship, 9
It was the leader of this ersatz makeshift community mentioned in the previous post who told me that God was telling me to start going to a high Anglican church. I was twenty-five when I began to attend Snooty Church. The daily mass was helpful for my spiritual nourishment as well as establishing there a sense of community with others there, which is not exactly the same thing as actual community.
The cold cereal, toast and coffee we shared together in the clergy house every morning was a great way of coming together following the Eucharist. Some of us even became friends, after a fashion, though there still remained a certain distance that kept us from actually knowing and enjoying one another. So...Very...Anglican.
I became fond of some of them, as they did, apparently of me. I often wanted to reach across the divide. But not even kneeling together every morning before the same broken and bleeding Christ was enough to truly bond us. And the many profoundly poor street people who lived in the neighbourhood always seemed marginalized and shut out by the upper middle class parishioners of Snooty Church. They simply did not seem to like them much.
This often became for me frustrating, and lonely. I wanted to be close to people. I felt often such a strong love for people there, the upper middle class parishioners and the local poor, but also lacking in the skill, tact and patience involved in reaching across to some of them without alienating. I came to accept this, and at times I blundered horribly.
An evil priest, with backers, really upset the balance. Many were hurt by this morally bankrupt person, I among them. The Eucharist soon became more a cause of trauma than source of nourishment and comfort. The rector turned against me at this horrible man's bidding. I eventually had to leave, broken, homeless and exhausted. No one at Snooty Church offered me so much as a couch or even a garage to sleep in. I was forty-two then, just eighteen years ago.
The cold cereal, toast and coffee we shared together in the clergy house every morning was a great way of coming together following the Eucharist. Some of us even became friends, after a fashion, though there still remained a certain distance that kept us from actually knowing and enjoying one another. So...Very...Anglican.
I became fond of some of them, as they did, apparently of me. I often wanted to reach across the divide. But not even kneeling together every morning before the same broken and bleeding Christ was enough to truly bond us. And the many profoundly poor street people who lived in the neighbourhood always seemed marginalized and shut out by the upper middle class parishioners of Snooty Church. They simply did not seem to like them much.
This often became for me frustrating, and lonely. I wanted to be close to people. I felt often such a strong love for people there, the upper middle class parishioners and the local poor, but also lacking in the skill, tact and patience involved in reaching across to some of them without alienating. I came to accept this, and at times I blundered horribly.
An evil priest, with backers, really upset the balance. Many were hurt by this morally bankrupt person, I among them. The Eucharist soon became more a cause of trauma than source of nourishment and comfort. The rector turned against me at this horrible man's bidding. I eventually had to leave, broken, homeless and exhausted. No one at Snooty Church offered me so much as a couch or even a garage to sleep in. I was forty-two then, just eighteen years ago.
Tuesday 18 October 2016
Community And Friendship, 8
We connected during a public presentation at a church by a left-leaning Mennonite about nuclear disarmament and social justice. I was twenty-four. We spoke at length afterwards over coffee and we agreed to stay in touch. We both believed that God was calling us into a similar, rather delicate field of Christian street ministry. We were also two very awkward misfits which made us rather needy of friendship. Then I defected to his church and was soon a member of his coalition of Christian losers. This was during the days when one could actually survive on welfare and I think I was the only one in this collective who actually worked for a living.
He lived in a rooming house in the West End and his place became known as "the Mission." This man cared about people. He was extraordinarily kind, shared everything, and so strong on his own theology of love. For him love was it. God was love and God wanted us all to know that he loved us. So far so good. To others, this charismatic individual was a pathetic unemployed loser with poor hygiene. He was the axis to which we all clung. We prayed together, we bore one another's burdens and he always had a need to be the voice of God to everyone else. I was young, hurt and in need of a mentor so I listened to him. I became caught up in his personal vortex, one of Jupiter's moons.
When I stood up to him three years later there was no forgiveness. He never forgave me though we did remain friends on some level or other for years to come. He was so full of his own pain, and so willing and eager to share the pain of others. Had his life not been so much like the broken and wounded Jesus I would have easily written him off as a charlatan. But he was not a charlatan. He loved too boldly and too authentically to be a fake. My one mistake was to get trapped in his undertow and I had to learn the hard way to not let anyone do this to me, ever, or should I say to not do this sort of thing to myself?
He lived in a rooming house in the West End and his place became known as "the Mission." This man cared about people. He was extraordinarily kind, shared everything, and so strong on his own theology of love. For him love was it. God was love and God wanted us all to know that he loved us. So far so good. To others, this charismatic individual was a pathetic unemployed loser with poor hygiene. He was the axis to which we all clung. We prayed together, we bore one another's burdens and he always had a need to be the voice of God to everyone else. I was young, hurt and in need of a mentor so I listened to him. I became caught up in his personal vortex, one of Jupiter's moons.
When I stood up to him three years later there was no forgiveness. He never forgave me though we did remain friends on some level or other for years to come. He was so full of his own pain, and so willing and eager to share the pain of others. Had his life not been so much like the broken and wounded Jesus I would have easily written him off as a charlatan. But he was not a charlatan. He loved too boldly and too authentically to be a fake. My one mistake was to get trapped in his undertow and I had to learn the hard way to not let anyone do this to me, ever, or should I say to not do this sort of thing to myself?
Monday 17 October 2016
Community And Friendship 7
When I was twenty-three I was traumatized from Dilaram and connecting with both new and old friends. C. and I became neighbours in a rooming house in Mount Peasant on a beautiful street full of big trees and lovely character homes. We had been neighbours two years earlier in another such house where we met and became fast friends. Now we were not quite roommates and spending a lot of time together. She also taught me everything I needed to know about lesbians, feminism and patriarchy/rape culture. She was one of my mentors. The house was full of bohemians and other misfits. None of us ever became close but there was a sense of community and a lot of us still liked each other even if our lives were off in different directions.
I was attending the Mennonite House Church, a small collective of politically and socially progressive Mennonite artists and intellectuals. Lovely people, but hard to reach as I had been used to the model of Christian community I had been nurtured on. Dropping in unannounced was not done here and everything had to be carefully planned and agreed on days or even weeks in advance. They were supportive but I missed the intimacy of my old friends from Live-In and St. Margaret's. With C I had a friend but no community. With the Mennonites there was community but no real friendships.
I was contacted by an acquaintance from St. Margaret's whom I knew from when I was fifteen. We began visiting regularly and drew others into our friendship. The prayer group was re-initiated on my suggestion and again was restored to me a sense of real Christian Community: friendship and community. This lasted for about a year. I left as certain changes happened in my life though I tried to stay in contact. It was as though I'd been pulled away from them and landed in a very anarchic, chaotic sense of ersatz community made up some of the most dysfunctional Christians I had ever known.
I was attending the Mennonite House Church, a small collective of politically and socially progressive Mennonite artists and intellectuals. Lovely people, but hard to reach as I had been used to the model of Christian community I had been nurtured on. Dropping in unannounced was not done here and everything had to be carefully planned and agreed on days or even weeks in advance. They were supportive but I missed the intimacy of my old friends from Live-In and St. Margaret's. With C I had a friend but no community. With the Mennonites there was community but no real friendships.
I was contacted by an acquaintance from St. Margaret's whom I knew from when I was fifteen. We began visiting regularly and drew others into our friendship. The prayer group was re-initiated on my suggestion and again was restored to me a sense of real Christian Community: friendship and community. This lasted for about a year. I left as certain changes happened in my life though I tried to stay in contact. It was as though I'd been pulled away from them and landed in a very anarchic, chaotic sense of ersatz community made up some of the most dysfunctional Christians I had ever known.
Sunday 16 October 2016
Community And Friendship, 6
This was the disaster. Moving into Dilaram House in Vancouver. An absolutely stupid move if ever I made one. Even now, almost four decades later, I still feel clinging to me like sticky remnants of spider web the trauma I incurred from living there. Because the Live-In community had gone into suspension there was a void in my life for Christian community. I became vulnerable. I was introduced to the leaders of Dilaram while visiting one of the splinter churches resulting from a grievous split in St. Margaret's. I was swallowed alive by charisma and three months later I was living in their community.
The good things: 1. a daily discipline of prayer and Bible reading, individual and communal.
2. a strong theology of love manifested in daily contact with needy individuals through our counselling centre, crisis line and our presence in the community.
3. the transparent honesty and mutual accountability.
the bad things: 1: the leaders were dictators
2: very little privacy. We all had to share bedrooms.
3: only a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian faith was considered acceptable.
I left in disgrace after nine months. I was considered rebellious because I had gone with a friend to spend an entire Saturday without permission from the leaders (a new rule I had not been informed of). I was summoned to a "council" meeting at 11 pm, was told by a half dozen "elders" (I was twenty-two, they were all at least twenty-four or twenty-five) that my life was cursed and I had to leave the house immediately so they wouldn't be tainted by the curse, which of course meant that in January I was being tossed onto the street at around midnight. I phoned my mother who let me stay with her till I found a place to live.
The trauma never quite went away and even now I still sometimes feel its shadow.
The good things: 1. a daily discipline of prayer and Bible reading, individual and communal.
2. a strong theology of love manifested in daily contact with needy individuals through our counselling centre, crisis line and our presence in the community.
3. the transparent honesty and mutual accountability.
the bad things: 1: the leaders were dictators
2: very little privacy. We all had to share bedrooms.
3: only a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian faith was considered acceptable.
I left in disgrace after nine months. I was considered rebellious because I had gone with a friend to spend an entire Saturday without permission from the leaders (a new rule I had not been informed of). I was summoned to a "council" meeting at 11 pm, was told by a half dozen "elders" (I was twenty-two, they were all at least twenty-four or twenty-five) that my life was cursed and I had to leave the house immediately so they wouldn't be tainted by the curse, which of course meant that in January I was being tossed onto the street at around midnight. I phoned my mother who let me stay with her till I found a place to live.
The trauma never quite went away and even now I still sometimes feel its shadow.
Saturday 15 October 2016
Community And Friendship 5
I returned to the Christian faith shortly before turning twenty, following a dramatic backsliding of some eighteen months or so. Without success I tried to reintegrate into St. Margaret's but they had become already conservative, middle class and politically very rightwing and there was no way they could accommodate me. I ended up as a member of a band of vagabond Christians. Some of us lived together, some not. There was no organization and no charter to who we were, but we were beyond any shadow of a doubt. We were.
The unifying factor was a series of weekend retreats sponsored by a community of Catholic charismatics, known as Live-In. We had in our number an Eastern Catholic Priest of the Order of St. Thomas who had a special dispensation from Rome, due to all kinds of arcane historical details, to serve the sacraments to Catholics and Protestants alike and he became for us a unifying factor. We regularly met every week in the home of a couple from St. Margaret's for worship and prayer. We were people from all walks of life, all branches and experiences of Christendom, all ages, experiences. Many were survivors of extreme trauma, others not so. But the sense of God's love through the felt and experienced presence of the Holy Spirit so united us that these times of group prayer and worship became a refuge of healing, comfort and restoration. Friendships blossomed and flourished here, again without the closed exclusivity of best friends or cliques. We were an open circle, welcoming and widening. Everyone was welcome, no one was turned away for the simple reason that we were ourselves all in love with the love of God and this had become our unofficial mandate. There was joy, humour, sharing, mutual caring and support. We were always welcome in one another's homes. Should anyone drop in unannounced in time for dinner an extra plate was set on the table, no questions asked. We loved one another and those whom God sent to us.
The prayer group was suspended for about a year, then, after I left Dilaram (I will write in my next post about this traumatic episode) I restarted the weekly group and again we grew together until we reached a natural conclusion.
More later...
The unifying factor was a series of weekend retreats sponsored by a community of Catholic charismatics, known as Live-In. We had in our number an Eastern Catholic Priest of the Order of St. Thomas who had a special dispensation from Rome, due to all kinds of arcane historical details, to serve the sacraments to Catholics and Protestants alike and he became for us a unifying factor. We regularly met every week in the home of a couple from St. Margaret's for worship and prayer. We were people from all walks of life, all branches and experiences of Christendom, all ages, experiences. Many were survivors of extreme trauma, others not so. But the sense of God's love through the felt and experienced presence of the Holy Spirit so united us that these times of group prayer and worship became a refuge of healing, comfort and restoration. Friendships blossomed and flourished here, again without the closed exclusivity of best friends or cliques. We were an open circle, welcoming and widening. Everyone was welcome, no one was turned away for the simple reason that we were ourselves all in love with the love of God and this had become our unofficial mandate. There was joy, humour, sharing, mutual caring and support. We were always welcome in one another's homes. Should anyone drop in unannounced in time for dinner an extra plate was set on the table, no questions asked. We loved one another and those whom God sent to us.
The prayer group was suspended for about a year, then, after I left Dilaram (I will write in my next post about this traumatic episode) I restarted the weekly group and again we grew together until we reached a natural conclusion.
More later...
Friday 14 October 2016
Community And Friendship 4
At St. Margaret's Community Church I flourished. It was in some ways similar to the Jesus People, but gentler and more diverse. Being an actual church gave it a sense of stability lacking in the Jesus People. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was strongly experienced and felt there and very present during the services where there were frequent spontaneous prophetic messages, healings and many speaking and singing in tongues. The sense of God's presence and love was generally like a huge electricity that caught everyone in its powerful current. Often we would begin, all of us to spontaneously sing in tongues, and here was one of the unique features of St. Margaret's: the singing was always harmonious, beautiful and flowed with a divine order and rhythm and flow. It could be convincingly argued that God was our conductor.
I became particularly connected with a community house started by a seasoned missionary family that escaped shortly after me from the cult that had swallowed up the Jesus People. Two of their seven children became close and dear friends to me. I was there every Sunday after church for lunch and would spend the balance of the day hanging out with people there. Other kids like me were drawn there and we all became fast and close friends. Some moved in to the house. They were on the streets every day, witnessing and offering help to vulnerable people, inviting them back for a meal, a bed and in many cases a new life in Christ. I met people from all over the world and all walks of life. This was for a fifteen year old boy an incredible life education.
The leader, the family patriarch, did have an authoritarian streak and could often err on the side of intolerance and ignorant conservatism and often there was tension between him and his incredibly bright and open minded children.
At sixteen, my field of contact broadened even more and Big Bird (a woman seven years my senior) who had a resume in radical leftist revolutionary politics and whole earth vegetarianism and social and political activism took me under her wing and I became a regular in her community house. She also had a slight tendency towards authoritarianism as well as a sarcastic tongue that would be the envy of Joan Rivers. We were fond of each other but we also clashed. I met the most amazing people in her home and she taught me a lot about healthy vegetarian food, cooking and nutrition. She also sang like an angel and we often prayed together.
At seventeen I was a regular in a house in West Point Grey with a middle aged Christian woman, her teenage daughter and friends.
We were all connected to St. Margaret's and there was a lovely fluidity to our friendships. We shared everything in our teenage idealism and no one really bothered to claim anyone else as a best friend exclusive to others. We were all best friends and we kept letting the circle widen. Love, the love of God, was our rule.
It didn't last, of course, because it couldn't. My own problems with my family soon swallowed me whole. Unable to cope with a father who hated me, I moved back to live with my mother when I was seventeen, now living common-law with a violent alcoholic with a criminal background.
Even in that small town on Vancouver Island the sense of community continued. My friends visited me; other weekends I took the ferry to Vancouver where I stayed with them. And I made new friends in Victoria through a church I was attending there, with many connections to St. Margaret's.
It all ended when I was eighteen and was forced to move back to Vancouver on my own, unable to connect further with my former friends and stumbling forward to forge some sense of a life for myself.
I became particularly connected with a community house started by a seasoned missionary family that escaped shortly after me from the cult that had swallowed up the Jesus People. Two of their seven children became close and dear friends to me. I was there every Sunday after church for lunch and would spend the balance of the day hanging out with people there. Other kids like me were drawn there and we all became fast and close friends. Some moved in to the house. They were on the streets every day, witnessing and offering help to vulnerable people, inviting them back for a meal, a bed and in many cases a new life in Christ. I met people from all over the world and all walks of life. This was for a fifteen year old boy an incredible life education.
The leader, the family patriarch, did have an authoritarian streak and could often err on the side of intolerance and ignorant conservatism and often there was tension between him and his incredibly bright and open minded children.
At sixteen, my field of contact broadened even more and Big Bird (a woman seven years my senior) who had a resume in radical leftist revolutionary politics and whole earth vegetarianism and social and political activism took me under her wing and I became a regular in her community house. She also had a slight tendency towards authoritarianism as well as a sarcastic tongue that would be the envy of Joan Rivers. We were fond of each other but we also clashed. I met the most amazing people in her home and she taught me a lot about healthy vegetarian food, cooking and nutrition. She also sang like an angel and we often prayed together.
At seventeen I was a regular in a house in West Point Grey with a middle aged Christian woman, her teenage daughter and friends.
We were all connected to St. Margaret's and there was a lovely fluidity to our friendships. We shared everything in our teenage idealism and no one really bothered to claim anyone else as a best friend exclusive to others. We were all best friends and we kept letting the circle widen. Love, the love of God, was our rule.
It didn't last, of course, because it couldn't. My own problems with my family soon swallowed me whole. Unable to cope with a father who hated me, I moved back to live with my mother when I was seventeen, now living common-law with a violent alcoholic with a criminal background.
Even in that small town on Vancouver Island the sense of community continued. My friends visited me; other weekends I took the ferry to Vancouver where I stayed with them. And I made new friends in Victoria through a church I was attending there, with many connections to St. Margaret's.
It all ended when I was eighteen and was forced to move back to Vancouver on my own, unable to connect further with my former friends and stumbling forward to forge some sense of a life for myself.
Thursday 13 October 2016
Community And Friendship 3
This series would be sadly incomplete without due mention of my own experiences of community. Much has been already documented elsewhere on this blog but maybe I could present this in a new perspective. In this series I will offer an overview of my various experiences of Christian community, almost all rather unorthodox and out of the ordinary.
It all began with the Jesus People Army in late 1970 when at the tender age of fourteen I experienced my conversion to the Christian faith. I would never have gone anywhere near a church. There was nothing less hip than church. It was such a symbol of the establishment, of everything that any self-respecting evolving young bohemian would find lacking, inferior, puerile and absolutely boring. The church, ostensibly representing Christ, to me bore absolutely no resemblance to God made human in the form of the preacher from Galilee.
Not wanting to go anywhere near a church where I wasn't likely to encounter Jesus, it was Jesus himself for whom I longed and yearned and the church could do absolutely nothing to provide this for me. I could only access the Lord on his own terms for me and with people whom I could relate to and trust. The Jesus People were absolutely strategic to my entrance into the Christian life. They really did nothing to facilitate me with the church and my later experiments with the church, especially Anglican, ratified my earlier suspicions: the church is not a worthy nor adequate intermediary of Christ, or at least not for a lot of people who would otherwise turn to him but for the church's obstruction of the Holy Spirit.
Many of the Jesus Freaks, as they were commonly known, were hippies or street people. In many cases they came to Christ already having nothing and they gave their lives unconditionally to God, his people and his service. Because of the quality and strength of the repentance and love the presence of the Holy Spirit was very powerful and very intense. This was nothing at all like church and I certainly, through these contacts with these wonderful people, had little or no desire to ever visit a church. People lived together in shared houses, the ancient wooden houses that once filled the slopes of Fairview. They were of course poor but shared everything in common in the spirit of the original Christians from the Book of Acts.
I experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit there, in the basement of their coffee house, which, when I was fifteen, was my second home. The baptism of the Spirit opened wide the floodgates for me and ever since then, as much as I have been willing to walk faithfully with God, I have experienced a close and intimate sense of his presence, love and power in my life.
Of course this would be too beautiful to last, and it didn't. They were taken over by a dangerous cult and I escaped by the skin of my teeth. I found a new spiritual home in St. Margaret's Community Church, which I will write more about tomorrow.
It all began with the Jesus People Army in late 1970 when at the tender age of fourteen I experienced my conversion to the Christian faith. I would never have gone anywhere near a church. There was nothing less hip than church. It was such a symbol of the establishment, of everything that any self-respecting evolving young bohemian would find lacking, inferior, puerile and absolutely boring. The church, ostensibly representing Christ, to me bore absolutely no resemblance to God made human in the form of the preacher from Galilee.
Not wanting to go anywhere near a church where I wasn't likely to encounter Jesus, it was Jesus himself for whom I longed and yearned and the church could do absolutely nothing to provide this for me. I could only access the Lord on his own terms for me and with people whom I could relate to and trust. The Jesus People were absolutely strategic to my entrance into the Christian life. They really did nothing to facilitate me with the church and my later experiments with the church, especially Anglican, ratified my earlier suspicions: the church is not a worthy nor adequate intermediary of Christ, or at least not for a lot of people who would otherwise turn to him but for the church's obstruction of the Holy Spirit.
Many of the Jesus Freaks, as they were commonly known, were hippies or street people. In many cases they came to Christ already having nothing and they gave their lives unconditionally to God, his people and his service. Because of the quality and strength of the repentance and love the presence of the Holy Spirit was very powerful and very intense. This was nothing at all like church and I certainly, through these contacts with these wonderful people, had little or no desire to ever visit a church. People lived together in shared houses, the ancient wooden houses that once filled the slopes of Fairview. They were of course poor but shared everything in common in the spirit of the original Christians from the Book of Acts.
I experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit there, in the basement of their coffee house, which, when I was fifteen, was my second home. The baptism of the Spirit opened wide the floodgates for me and ever since then, as much as I have been willing to walk faithfully with God, I have experienced a close and intimate sense of his presence, love and power in my life.
Of course this would be too beautiful to last, and it didn't. They were taken over by a dangerous cult and I escaped by the skin of my teeth. I found a new spiritual home in St. Margaret's Community Church, which I will write more about tomorrow.
Wednesday 12 October 2016
Community And Friendship 2
They do intersect. I'm just not sure where or how. Friendship and community are not really the same thing. We are in community with others whether we like them or not, and on all the levels mentioned in the previous post and more. A community of friends I suppose has some merits to it, especially given that not all the friends are going to necessarily like each other.
What is a friend and what does friendship mean? It really is a useless word since it can turn into quite a useless catch-all. A friend can be someone you see every day in the same coffee shop. You never see each other anywhere else but you like each other enough to chit-chat. Sometimes the conversations can get deep, profound and mutually supportive and therapeutic. But you'll never know much or anything about each other's lives outside of the café, and you might never want to know. Is this what friendship is?
Or a friend can be someone who lends a hand in time of need. Someone who sees that you have a couch to surf on if you are homeless, or will share a meal with you if you're hungry or will help you network for a new job. You may never see each other again. The memories will be fond, made all the fonder by never having to know each other very well.
Friends can be all your bar buddies. See coffee-shop friends, plus alcohol. You will each have your particular costume, mask and face to wear. You will never really know each other but through the pleasant haze of just one martini too many. Not knowing each other enhances the pleasure.
There are also friends with benefits. But how anyone can live in such a state of romantic/erotic cognitive dissonance with each other and survive as friends is quite beyond my comprehension. I really don't believe this kind of arrangement has much of a shelf-life.
Facebook?
Then there are friends who are rather more like acquaintances, such as many of the people in my life. You will often have interests and personality traits and values in common. You will see each other for coffee or a drinky-poo perhaps every few months, maybe no more than once a month. These arrangements often closely resemble real friendship, but there is never a sense of a real bond or a sense of mutual obligation and commitment to care and cover each other's ass. These are not the people who will invite you for Christmas, and you will probably have other plans for Thanksgiving, and if you should have nothing to do or nowhere to go on those days these will not be the ones who will come to your aid.
How about the friends in your church/mosque/synagogue/temple/ashram/meet-up group? You will all be putting on your best faces and would never dare let anyone see you in a fit of road-rage. Not real friendship.
There is also that rare gift. The real friend. You are in it for the long haul. You are like family to each other without the guilt or emotional blackmail. You can see each other every day or twice a year and it's all good. You will always, or almost always be able to count on each other, and if one cannot help, then they will do their level best to see that help will still come your way. These can be one to one friendships or circles of friends. This quality of friendship comes closest to what I aspire to but unfortunately remains as elusive and unlikely as finding a unicorn.
There is this rather lame old cliché "If you want a friend, then be a friend." It doesn't really work and usually one ends up getting emotionally exhausted and feeling unappreciated and exploited. Or stranded in a prison of codependence and mistreatment and abuse. Yes, I do speak with the voice of experience. However, I have chosen to adopt this as a kind of model with the proviso that this is not going to win me any friends. So, I do what I can to exemplify the kindness of strangers. Not always with success and not always with the desired results. But I still do what I can. Yesterday I tried to help orient an elderly lady to the correct bus route and address of the clinic where she needed to pick up her husband. She seemed deeply and sincerely appreciative. We will likely never see each other again but perhaps I was able to influence in a small way some kind of positive exchange. She is also Asian, Chinese, I think, and I was hoping the cross-cultural contact would be helpful for us both. Today I expressed concern to a young father carrying his baby in a sling while having to stand on the train.. No one on the Canada Line seemed interested in giving him a seat and as soon as one became available (I also was standing) I tried to encourage him to take it. He said he was okay standing. I asked if it was awkward for him standing with his baby. He said it's always awkward. To my surprise later as I left the train he said good bye with warmth in his voice.
None of this is going to win me new friends, but it helps me be kind or at least a little less cantankerous and grumpy and even if I cannot find the friends that I need I can at least act on being to others the kind of friend that I would like to have.
Like Neil Young, I am always searching for a heart of gold.
What is a friend and what does friendship mean? It really is a useless word since it can turn into quite a useless catch-all. A friend can be someone you see every day in the same coffee shop. You never see each other anywhere else but you like each other enough to chit-chat. Sometimes the conversations can get deep, profound and mutually supportive and therapeutic. But you'll never know much or anything about each other's lives outside of the café, and you might never want to know. Is this what friendship is?
Or a friend can be someone who lends a hand in time of need. Someone who sees that you have a couch to surf on if you are homeless, or will share a meal with you if you're hungry or will help you network for a new job. You may never see each other again. The memories will be fond, made all the fonder by never having to know each other very well.
Friends can be all your bar buddies. See coffee-shop friends, plus alcohol. You will each have your particular costume, mask and face to wear. You will never really know each other but through the pleasant haze of just one martini too many. Not knowing each other enhances the pleasure.
There are also friends with benefits. But how anyone can live in such a state of romantic/erotic cognitive dissonance with each other and survive as friends is quite beyond my comprehension. I really don't believe this kind of arrangement has much of a shelf-life.
Facebook?
Then there are friends who are rather more like acquaintances, such as many of the people in my life. You will often have interests and personality traits and values in common. You will see each other for coffee or a drinky-poo perhaps every few months, maybe no more than once a month. These arrangements often closely resemble real friendship, but there is never a sense of a real bond or a sense of mutual obligation and commitment to care and cover each other's ass. These are not the people who will invite you for Christmas, and you will probably have other plans for Thanksgiving, and if you should have nothing to do or nowhere to go on those days these will not be the ones who will come to your aid.
How about the friends in your church/mosque/synagogue/temple/ashram/meet-up group? You will all be putting on your best faces and would never dare let anyone see you in a fit of road-rage. Not real friendship.
There is also that rare gift. The real friend. You are in it for the long haul. You are like family to each other without the guilt or emotional blackmail. You can see each other every day or twice a year and it's all good. You will always, or almost always be able to count on each other, and if one cannot help, then they will do their level best to see that help will still come your way. These can be one to one friendships or circles of friends. This quality of friendship comes closest to what I aspire to but unfortunately remains as elusive and unlikely as finding a unicorn.
There is this rather lame old cliché "If you want a friend, then be a friend." It doesn't really work and usually one ends up getting emotionally exhausted and feeling unappreciated and exploited. Or stranded in a prison of codependence and mistreatment and abuse. Yes, I do speak with the voice of experience. However, I have chosen to adopt this as a kind of model with the proviso that this is not going to win me any friends. So, I do what I can to exemplify the kindness of strangers. Not always with success and not always with the desired results. But I still do what I can. Yesterday I tried to help orient an elderly lady to the correct bus route and address of the clinic where she needed to pick up her husband. She seemed deeply and sincerely appreciative. We will likely never see each other again but perhaps I was able to influence in a small way some kind of positive exchange. She is also Asian, Chinese, I think, and I was hoping the cross-cultural contact would be helpful for us both. Today I expressed concern to a young father carrying his baby in a sling while having to stand on the train.. No one on the Canada Line seemed interested in giving him a seat and as soon as one became available (I also was standing) I tried to encourage him to take it. He said he was okay standing. I asked if it was awkward for him standing with his baby. He said it's always awkward. To my surprise later as I left the train he said good bye with warmth in his voice.
None of this is going to win me new friends, but it helps me be kind or at least a little less cantankerous and grumpy and even if I cannot find the friends that I need I can at least act on being to others the kind of friend that I would like to have.
Like Neil Young, I am always searching for a heart of gold.
Tuesday 11 October 2016
Community And Friendship 1
Well, Gentle Reader, I have to say that the pain and near suicide-inducing isolation I experienced over this Thanksgiving weekend is already yielding a rather interesting fruit. This seems to be coming out of a brief email exchange I have been having with a retired Anglican priest I know, a very dear gentleman, and I mean gentleman in the finest sense of the word. The exchange has been regarding the emergency contact information I sent out yesterday in case of sudden or unexpected death (mine) or hospitalization or loss of faculties or whatever. He wrote that it was good of me to not want my "community of friends" to be left in the dark. I responded that to call them a community of friends is a little bit generous as I have learned that I really have no friends, only acquaintances.
His reply? Rather interesting. He suggested that it's perfectly valid to just have acquaintances and to just muddle on with your life and that people of his parents' generation didn't appear to need friends outside of their marriages and families. I responded that in my case I have no family. The reasons why are indicated in other posts on this blog, Gentle Reader, so I won't bore you here with the details. But the lack of meaningful social connection for many older people, low income, without family and unmarriageable is something very onerous and needs to be addressed. Especially given that my particular demographic has one of the highest mortality rates, from suicide and other causes (Oh, don't you just wish, Gentle Reader! But I am nowhere near bumping myself off no matter how upsetting things become)
So, here, I would like to explore just where we might need, or want, to go with Community and Friendship. This is a bit of a minefield of a concept given that there appear to be as many understandings and definitions for Community and Friendship as there are those who have the understandings and are making the definitions. It is often hard to mention these very words to others because there is no guarantee that we are speaking or even thinking the same thing.
I will mention here the different images that the word community invokes for me:
There is the international community, also known as the United Nations. This is all about huge collectives under national flags agreeing not to bomb the bejesus out of each other and almost nothing to do with persons as individuals.
We have the national community, in our case the entity that is called Canada and the district communities defined by the provinces and territories and then there are the cities and towns along with the rural communities. These have little to do with persons and everything to do with the metaphoric and fictional identity we all share according to our nationality and our place within the nation.
There are also ethnic communities composed of Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese), South Asians, Latinos, Caribbeans, Italians, Middle Eastern, or pick any one you like. Then there are communities based on race: black, aboriginal; sexual orientation etc.
Other communities: online, disabled, mental health, artistic, creative, academic...religious communities, and on it goes.
We have communities that are neighbourhoods, communities that share the same sports interests, the same kinky sex interests, and then we have...
Intentional community which could be secular, political or religious or, other?
There is also the reality of living in community or in a state of community. This could be fixed at a precise location or it could have an organic quality based more on an attitude and quality of life.
No matter which way you slice it, community is collective and pertains to any number of shared characteristics, beliefs, qualities or interests that bind or unite people. It is not about individuals except in so far as individuals impact and define community, in which community impacts and defines individuals, and especially how these individuals impact and define one another...
Which leads us to the theme of friendship and I am going to explore this idea in tomorrow's blog post.
His reply? Rather interesting. He suggested that it's perfectly valid to just have acquaintances and to just muddle on with your life and that people of his parents' generation didn't appear to need friends outside of their marriages and families. I responded that in my case I have no family. The reasons why are indicated in other posts on this blog, Gentle Reader, so I won't bore you here with the details. But the lack of meaningful social connection for many older people, low income, without family and unmarriageable is something very onerous and needs to be addressed. Especially given that my particular demographic has one of the highest mortality rates, from suicide and other causes (Oh, don't you just wish, Gentle Reader! But I am nowhere near bumping myself off no matter how upsetting things become)
So, here, I would like to explore just where we might need, or want, to go with Community and Friendship. This is a bit of a minefield of a concept given that there appear to be as many understandings and definitions for Community and Friendship as there are those who have the understandings and are making the definitions. It is often hard to mention these very words to others because there is no guarantee that we are speaking or even thinking the same thing.
I will mention here the different images that the word community invokes for me:
There is the international community, also known as the United Nations. This is all about huge collectives under national flags agreeing not to bomb the bejesus out of each other and almost nothing to do with persons as individuals.
We have the national community, in our case the entity that is called Canada and the district communities defined by the provinces and territories and then there are the cities and towns along with the rural communities. These have little to do with persons and everything to do with the metaphoric and fictional identity we all share according to our nationality and our place within the nation.
There are also ethnic communities composed of Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese), South Asians, Latinos, Caribbeans, Italians, Middle Eastern, or pick any one you like. Then there are communities based on race: black, aboriginal; sexual orientation etc.
Other communities: online, disabled, mental health, artistic, creative, academic...religious communities, and on it goes.
We have communities that are neighbourhoods, communities that share the same sports interests, the same kinky sex interests, and then we have...
Intentional community which could be secular, political or religious or, other?
There is also the reality of living in community or in a state of community. This could be fixed at a precise location or it could have an organic quality based more on an attitude and quality of life.
No matter which way you slice it, community is collective and pertains to any number of shared characteristics, beliefs, qualities or interests that bind or unite people. It is not about individuals except in so far as individuals impact and define community, in which community impacts and defines individuals, and especially how these individuals impact and define one another...
Which leads us to the theme of friendship and I am going to explore this idea in tomorrow's blog post.
Monday 10 October 2016
Thanksgiving In A Thai Restaurant Alone
It didn't go too badly. I still feel the depression but I will get through this as usual. The only thing that makes it easier is having other people around but this year it isn't happening. My acquaintances, as usual, all have other plans. I don't have friends. Friends don't do this to you. It's even worse during Christmas but at least I can work, get paid for it and dull my own pain a bit by helping my clients.
It isn't all bad. I was able to budget enough money for a meal in a local Thai restaurant and the food, as usual, was superb. I also worked on a drawing while eating, and it was quiet as well, with everyone at home eating turkey with their family and friends. I also had a good six mile hike today in another nice neighbourhood with lots of real estate signs in Chinese.
I'm not going to write off any of my acquaintances. They sometimes do want to see me. I am simply no longer calling them friends because this way, I hope, I won't be putting on any of them the expectations of friendship, which inevitably leads to disappointment.
Today I made up a list of the email addresses of all my many acquaintances and supervisors and bosses from work. I sent them the office number of my apartment managers as emergency contact in case I should die suddenly, which I cc'd to my building managers so they will have an emergency contact list. Being sixty and having already survived a major health crisis in the last year and a half, I know now more than ever that my time here is temporary. I could last another fifty years. I could die tonight. I don't know.
I've already received word from a few worried folk. So, I've written them back to say that I'm okay but really I don't want a repeat performance of when my father died and I didn't find out till almost three years later, since whatever remains of my family couldn't care less if I live or die so I have had to stay away from them for my own emotional and mental health. Not to mention, they never lost my contact info. They just never bothered to call. Don't I come from a lovely family, Gentle Reader?
Even though being ignored and neglected on major holidays can be very depressing, on the other hand, I don't have to put up with relatives who don't like me. It's all about trade-offs, eh?
It isn't all bad. I was able to budget enough money for a meal in a local Thai restaurant and the food, as usual, was superb. I also worked on a drawing while eating, and it was quiet as well, with everyone at home eating turkey with their family and friends. I also had a good six mile hike today in another nice neighbourhood with lots of real estate signs in Chinese.
I'm not going to write off any of my acquaintances. They sometimes do want to see me. I am simply no longer calling them friends because this way, I hope, I won't be putting on any of them the expectations of friendship, which inevitably leads to disappointment.
Today I made up a list of the email addresses of all my many acquaintances and supervisors and bosses from work. I sent them the office number of my apartment managers as emergency contact in case I should die suddenly, which I cc'd to my building managers so they will have an emergency contact list. Being sixty and having already survived a major health crisis in the last year and a half, I know now more than ever that my time here is temporary. I could last another fifty years. I could die tonight. I don't know.
I've already received word from a few worried folk. So, I've written them back to say that I'm okay but really I don't want a repeat performance of when my father died and I didn't find out till almost three years later, since whatever remains of my family couldn't care less if I live or die so I have had to stay away from them for my own emotional and mental health. Not to mention, they never lost my contact info. They just never bothered to call. Don't I come from a lovely family, Gentle Reader?
Even though being ignored and neglected on major holidays can be very depressing, on the other hand, I don't have to put up with relatives who don't like me. It's all about trade-offs, eh?
Sunday 9 October 2016
Loyalties, 7
It is rather quaint these days to be blogging. Everyone, it seems, has the attention span of a hamster, thanks to Twitter. I refuse to go on Twitter. I cannot do anything in 145 characters or less. I can't even tell the time in 145 characters or less. (right now it is exactly five, fifty-six in the afternoon, Pacific daylight savings time) Okay, I lied. I did that in just eight-six characters. I have to fill space with words. It's fun. It's also pretentious. I don't care. It's still fun...if you don't have to read it, anyway.
This is the last of my Loyalties series. It is a cool Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend. The sun is shining. I treated myself to a long walk that took me for around seven miles in some nice neighbourhoods with spectacular views and tonnes of real estate signs in Chinese and concluded in a pleasant coffee shop where I am working on Scarlet Macaw number six, of a series of seven, in my sketchbook.
I am reflecting today on the general sense of isolation and friendlessness that I often feel around Thanksgiving and Christmas, when my friends basically abandon me because I don't fit in with their holiday plans. The fact of the matter is very simple. I have no friends. I have acquaintances and people I go for coffee with. They are not real friends and I have to accept this. I am old now, or at least older. I fit a particularly vulnerable demographic: old, low-income single male. We are the most likely to get sick and die prematurely. Even if we do everything necessary to take care of our health the lack of being loved or cared for still affects our immune systems and this makes it less likely for us to heal and more prone to dying early. We generally have no surviving or interested family and, being one of the least attractive categories on any level, the least likely to be befriended by anyone who doesn't have an ulterior motive.
Those of us who do well usually try to adapt to our circumstances and do our best to stay in touch with others while looking after ourselves. We also tend to comfort ourselves with illusions of friendship, until the holidays and we're suddenly alone. Even then, I often try to see if there is at least one person around to have coffee with or share a meal. Sometimes yes, often no. But I am never going to be considered a priority. I have no right to this kind of expectation.
I don't think it's a matter of writing everyone else off who seem to express interest in me. Rather it's a matter of learning to be realistic. If I go on believing that I have no friends, then two good things can happen to me: holidays won't feel excruciatingly lonely. It's a bit easier on Christmas because then I work and taking care of others helps take my mind off of myself. It doesn't take away the pain but it does help dull it a little. Having no friends, no one is obligated to share the occasion with me. And, when my acquaintances behave like friends it can be a pleasant surprise, just as long as I don't let this lull me into believing that they are actually friends.
I am writing this because I have not been invited anywhere for Christmas in almost ten years. nowhere for Thanksgiving in over a decade. People who know me know that I'm alone with few resources and not a lot of people in my life. If by this time I haven't learned that I have no friends then I must be incredibly stupid because no real friend would allow someone to suffer like this year after year.
I am not going to let this become an excuse to prevent me from reaching out to others in friendship. I am, by nature, a friend to people, and to not be this is to stop the flow of God's love in me and would become for me a kind of spiritual suicide. Similarly, to perceive others as friends would be to place on them a sense of obligation and this can easily become a prison for them, unless they really were my friends.
As painful as it often is, I am going to do my best to let go of illusions of friendship with anyone and everyone I know. I will embrace the solitude that is the present moment, and the present moment in which God dwells will embrace me. It will not be the same as having secure people in my life whom I can trust, but it's better than nothing.
And since pain is part of love, I will still go on loving.
To anyone reading this who thinks of themselves as my friend I ask that you not take what I have just written personally, but to understand that somehow I have to cope and be able to live with this cold gnawing isolation that never seems to leave me. Please be patient with me. Thank you.
This is the last of my Loyalties series. It is a cool Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend. The sun is shining. I treated myself to a long walk that took me for around seven miles in some nice neighbourhoods with spectacular views and tonnes of real estate signs in Chinese and concluded in a pleasant coffee shop where I am working on Scarlet Macaw number six, of a series of seven, in my sketchbook.
I am reflecting today on the general sense of isolation and friendlessness that I often feel around Thanksgiving and Christmas, when my friends basically abandon me because I don't fit in with their holiday plans. The fact of the matter is very simple. I have no friends. I have acquaintances and people I go for coffee with. They are not real friends and I have to accept this. I am old now, or at least older. I fit a particularly vulnerable demographic: old, low-income single male. We are the most likely to get sick and die prematurely. Even if we do everything necessary to take care of our health the lack of being loved or cared for still affects our immune systems and this makes it less likely for us to heal and more prone to dying early. We generally have no surviving or interested family and, being one of the least attractive categories on any level, the least likely to be befriended by anyone who doesn't have an ulterior motive.
Those of us who do well usually try to adapt to our circumstances and do our best to stay in touch with others while looking after ourselves. We also tend to comfort ourselves with illusions of friendship, until the holidays and we're suddenly alone. Even then, I often try to see if there is at least one person around to have coffee with or share a meal. Sometimes yes, often no. But I am never going to be considered a priority. I have no right to this kind of expectation.
I don't think it's a matter of writing everyone else off who seem to express interest in me. Rather it's a matter of learning to be realistic. If I go on believing that I have no friends, then two good things can happen to me: holidays won't feel excruciatingly lonely. It's a bit easier on Christmas because then I work and taking care of others helps take my mind off of myself. It doesn't take away the pain but it does help dull it a little. Having no friends, no one is obligated to share the occasion with me. And, when my acquaintances behave like friends it can be a pleasant surprise, just as long as I don't let this lull me into believing that they are actually friends.
I am writing this because I have not been invited anywhere for Christmas in almost ten years. nowhere for Thanksgiving in over a decade. People who know me know that I'm alone with few resources and not a lot of people in my life. If by this time I haven't learned that I have no friends then I must be incredibly stupid because no real friend would allow someone to suffer like this year after year.
I am not going to let this become an excuse to prevent me from reaching out to others in friendship. I am, by nature, a friend to people, and to not be this is to stop the flow of God's love in me and would become for me a kind of spiritual suicide. Similarly, to perceive others as friends would be to place on them a sense of obligation and this can easily become a prison for them, unless they really were my friends.
As painful as it often is, I am going to do my best to let go of illusions of friendship with anyone and everyone I know. I will embrace the solitude that is the present moment, and the present moment in which God dwells will embrace me. It will not be the same as having secure people in my life whom I can trust, but it's better than nothing.
And since pain is part of love, I will still go on loving.
To anyone reading this who thinks of themselves as my friend I ask that you not take what I have just written personally, but to understand that somehow I have to cope and be able to live with this cold gnawing isolation that never seems to leave me. Please be patient with me. Thank you.
Saturday 8 October 2016
Loyalties 6
I would imagine that from reading this series it could be assumed that I must be some miserable ungrateful wretch. Well...not exactly. I have said before and I am saying it again. I like living in Canada. This country is better than a lot of the current global options. I am not going to say it's the best country in the world. That is a very subjective assessment, particularly popular among those who have never gone outside of this country. It is also more likely to be said by the comfortably housed and incomed. The growing population of poor and low-income Canadians might have a rather different perspective to offer. And those of us who were born here and have felt stranded in lives of poverty and limited opportunity (there are more Canadians of this stripe than one would like to assume) are more likely to feel betrayed by Canada.
Canada is notorious for not loving its own people. This country bends over backwards to cater to immigrants, but for those of us who were born here? And no, I am neither xenophobic nor anti-immigrant and the rest of you please don't bore me with your go-get-a-job bullshit. I have worked bloody hard all my life and now I am pulling twelve glorious bucks an hour less than five years from retirement. I do feel grateful for living in BC Housing, but my gratitude goes to God. Canada, under Paul Martin and Jean Chretien, dismantled our national housing program. Had something been available sooner, when I was needing it, I need never have suffered from homelessness. Had this country done more to invest in a secure social safety net, I need never have experienced such grinding poverty as to have to subsist on weeds picked in the back yard of the dilapidated farmhouse I was renting. Had this country done more to invest in education I would have been able to make it all the way through university and a better paying job. Had this country done more to invest in employment I (and many others) need never have languished in the humiliation of being stranded for all of my working life in low wage employment. Had counselling supports and intervention been available to me when I was needing them at the tender age of eighteen, kicked out of both my parents' homes because my father hated everything about me and my mother was trying to escape from her violent alcoholic boyfriend I would not have wasted so many years of my youth floundering and struggling to survive. Had there been mental health supports available in the Seventies, perhaps my childhood onset PTSD might have been caught and treated with supports in place to help me get into university or vocational training and land decent employment.
Canada does sweet fuck all for it's most vulnerable, the working poor, those struggling with undiagnosed psychiatric disorders, those who qualify neither for welfare nor disability but still need extra support. I couldn't even get help for much needed dental care and had to suffer years of near crippling toothaches since my low wage employment didn't cover dental treatment and neither did, nor does, our public health care system.
My life, the quality of my life are much better now, but only because of certain too little too late interventions. If this country really cared a rat's ass about its own people, these supports would have been there for me, and for many others, years ago.
I might stop voting. I really do not feel like part of this country. I have no reason to. This doesn't mean that I'm not grateful for what I have. I am very grateful. To God. I have all that I need now. And I enjoy my life. I simply don't care sweet fuck about being Canadian.
As this country has treated me like garbage I owe Canada nothing in return.
Canada is notorious for not loving its own people. This country bends over backwards to cater to immigrants, but for those of us who were born here? And no, I am neither xenophobic nor anti-immigrant and the rest of you please don't bore me with your go-get-a-job bullshit. I have worked bloody hard all my life and now I am pulling twelve glorious bucks an hour less than five years from retirement. I do feel grateful for living in BC Housing, but my gratitude goes to God. Canada, under Paul Martin and Jean Chretien, dismantled our national housing program. Had something been available sooner, when I was needing it, I need never have suffered from homelessness. Had this country done more to invest in a secure social safety net, I need never have experienced such grinding poverty as to have to subsist on weeds picked in the back yard of the dilapidated farmhouse I was renting. Had this country done more to invest in education I would have been able to make it all the way through university and a better paying job. Had this country done more to invest in employment I (and many others) need never have languished in the humiliation of being stranded for all of my working life in low wage employment. Had counselling supports and intervention been available to me when I was needing them at the tender age of eighteen, kicked out of both my parents' homes because my father hated everything about me and my mother was trying to escape from her violent alcoholic boyfriend I would not have wasted so many years of my youth floundering and struggling to survive. Had there been mental health supports available in the Seventies, perhaps my childhood onset PTSD might have been caught and treated with supports in place to help me get into university or vocational training and land decent employment.
Canada does sweet fuck all for it's most vulnerable, the working poor, those struggling with undiagnosed psychiatric disorders, those who qualify neither for welfare nor disability but still need extra support. I couldn't even get help for much needed dental care and had to suffer years of near crippling toothaches since my low wage employment didn't cover dental treatment and neither did, nor does, our public health care system.
My life, the quality of my life are much better now, but only because of certain too little too late interventions. If this country really cared a rat's ass about its own people, these supports would have been there for me, and for many others, years ago.
I might stop voting. I really do not feel like part of this country. I have no reason to. This doesn't mean that I'm not grateful for what I have. I am very grateful. To God. I have all that I need now. And I enjoy my life. I simply don't care sweet fuck about being Canadian.
As this country has treated me like garbage I owe Canada nothing in return.
Friday 7 October 2016
Loyalties 5
I want to reassure anyone reading this series of posts that I am not a treasonous ingrate when it comes to living in Canada. I do not love this country. I do not hate Canada, either. I certainly do not love its governments or institutions. I don't hate them. They simply do not, er, resonate with me? Right now I am listening to the radio, CBC, our national broadcaster, and there is a piece right now about a Chinese mining company with interests in Canada using slave labour in Eritrea, that little country bordering Ethiopia that also has a growth industry in exporting refugees. Yes, it's that bad. Given how bad life can be for ordinary people in a lot of other countries maybe I should feel at least a little grateful for living in Canada? I don't have to love this country, this myth, this beautiful fiction. But I could do a lot worse than live here.
There are other countries where I wouldn't mind emigrating to. I did mention Costa Rica, and yes I speak Spanish fluently. Perhaps Mexico or Colombia? There would be trade-offs. Perhaps somewhere in Europe? Spain, where I know the language, without the Castilian speech impediment? Great Britain, where I also know the language without the BBC speech impediment? How about the Netherlands? Scandinavian countries? Maybe Germany, where I neither know nor want to learn the language. Even though half my DNA is German (the other half is Scottish), I speak English with a light Scandinavian accent (don't ask why, I certainly can't figure it out) and Spanish with a Brazilian Portuguese accent (ditto!) But German? If hell had an official language it would have to be German!
Whoops, this just in! After listening a little more carefully, it turns out that it isn't a Chinese mining company employing slave labour in Eritrea, but a Canadian company. Canada the hypocrite! This isn't to let China off the hook, a country legendary for its cruel and inhumane treatment of its citizens, and here is Prime Minister Junior (Justin time) all set to be Beijing`s Canadian blow boy. Just what this country needs, while Vancouver has been made unliveable to everyone but the wealthy thanks to Chinese foreign real estate investment in this city. Nothing against the Chinese people, by the way, for all you thin-skinned liberals who want to squeal Racist!!!! I like the Chinese people and have generally had very positive experiences with Chinese-Canadians. As for the millionaire scum trying to buy up my city, I don`t give a rat`s ass what their nationality. They are millionaire scum regardless their passport. That they happen to be Chinese is very unfortunate and hugely unfair to other Chinese people given the number of covert bigots we still have in this country who are always eager to lunge at a vulnerable target.
I could do a lot worse than live in Canada. Did I say that this is an incredibly beautiful country despite the horrible climate? Our cities are clean and mostly liveable and human and equal rights are enjoyed by all but the poorest and this is my single great sticking point with this country, besides the military. Poor-bashing is still widespread in this country and despite the measures being taken, too little too late, by our federal, provincial and municipal governments to alleviate homelessness, your average Canadian is very slow to change and those are the ones who are most likely to demonize and stigmatize us, the poor.
No, I don't expect to be any less stigmatized for being poor in another country, perhaps more. But I am a poor person living in Canada, making me among the least equal of Canadians. I have been systemically marginalized all my life because of this. The scars are deep and I am never going to forgive this country for what I have suffered. I will try to forget it and move on. But I am never going to love Canada.
.
There are other countries where I wouldn't mind emigrating to. I did mention Costa Rica, and yes I speak Spanish fluently. Perhaps Mexico or Colombia? There would be trade-offs. Perhaps somewhere in Europe? Spain, where I know the language, without the Castilian speech impediment? Great Britain, where I also know the language without the BBC speech impediment? How about the Netherlands? Scandinavian countries? Maybe Germany, where I neither know nor want to learn the language. Even though half my DNA is German (the other half is Scottish), I speak English with a light Scandinavian accent (don't ask why, I certainly can't figure it out) and Spanish with a Brazilian Portuguese accent (ditto!) But German? If hell had an official language it would have to be German!
Whoops, this just in! After listening a little more carefully, it turns out that it isn't a Chinese mining company employing slave labour in Eritrea, but a Canadian company. Canada the hypocrite! This isn't to let China off the hook, a country legendary for its cruel and inhumane treatment of its citizens, and here is Prime Minister Junior (Justin time) all set to be Beijing`s Canadian blow boy. Just what this country needs, while Vancouver has been made unliveable to everyone but the wealthy thanks to Chinese foreign real estate investment in this city. Nothing against the Chinese people, by the way, for all you thin-skinned liberals who want to squeal Racist!!!! I like the Chinese people and have generally had very positive experiences with Chinese-Canadians. As for the millionaire scum trying to buy up my city, I don`t give a rat`s ass what their nationality. They are millionaire scum regardless their passport. That they happen to be Chinese is very unfortunate and hugely unfair to other Chinese people given the number of covert bigots we still have in this country who are always eager to lunge at a vulnerable target.
I could do a lot worse than live in Canada. Did I say that this is an incredibly beautiful country despite the horrible climate? Our cities are clean and mostly liveable and human and equal rights are enjoyed by all but the poorest and this is my single great sticking point with this country, besides the military. Poor-bashing is still widespread in this country and despite the measures being taken, too little too late, by our federal, provincial and municipal governments to alleviate homelessness, your average Canadian is very slow to change and those are the ones who are most likely to demonize and stigmatize us, the poor.
No, I don't expect to be any less stigmatized for being poor in another country, perhaps more. But I am a poor person living in Canada, making me among the least equal of Canadians. I have been systemically marginalized all my life because of this. The scars are deep and I am never going to forgive this country for what I have suffered. I will try to forget it and move on. But I am never going to love Canada.
.
Thursday 6 October 2016
Loyalties 4
I live in two countries. I live in Canada and I live in Heaven. Although there are some who would take issue, they are not the same country. I stand by my statement that Canada is a beautiful fiction and little more. This country began as the colonizing powers, France and England, systematically robbed the First Nations of their land here, eventually consigning them to rot on reserves and making every effort to destroy them through the practice of cultural genocide, also known as Native Residential Schools. Only in recent years, since the Sixties has Canada begun to make nice: publicly subsidized health care, social services safety nets, Employment Insurance, Multiculturalism. Not quite the vicious survival of the fittest ethos that was then the dominant norm, though the lovely liberalism that was brought in by the Pearson and Trudeau administrations of the Sixties and Seventies has since worn rather thin thanks to global capitalism and we are still basically putting lipstick on a pig here (I don`t mean to be insulting to pigs) and we have only begun to make reparations with our Indigenous peoples as well as members of visible minorities.
Basically, until the Sixties, this country was a British-Eurocentric, racist, white supremist entity that feared, shunned and hated anyone who was different from that mould. We still have a long way to go, especially since the damage inflicted on this country by the Harper years.
I am a Christian, a person of faith. My loyalty is to my God, not to my country. I do not take the extreme measures as certain extreme Anabaptist communities: the Old Mennonites, Hutterites and Amish, by refusing to vote. I may not love this country but I live here, among many other people, and, no, there are certain civic obligations and responsibilities that my Christian faith does not exempt me from. As a Christian in a post-Christian culture I feel obligated to live out my faith and to express as clearly as possible the values of my faith. I am not a pro-life anti-abortion crusader but I do feel called upon to speak out and live in a way that honours the environment and basic human rights and I will continue to do my part by voting for elected officials who best reflect my values and to do my level best to promote and endorse these values. But talk, as they say, is cheap and it is much better to live in a manner that reflects the love, mercy and justice of God.
I vote, I write this blog, I sometimes exchange emails with politicians and journalists. Mostly I pray and try to live faithfully and work well and compassionately with others. I would never consider running for office. Too many conflicting loyalties and my real loyalty is to Christ. My real home is with Him. Which I suppose makes me a citizen of...the World?...the Universe? And, yes, of course, I am also a citizen of Canada, a sad and disillusioned one all the same, but I am still part of this country no matter how much love has been lost between us. If I focus on loving the people who live here and forget about the patriotism crap I think I'll do okay. Sort of.
Basically, until the Sixties, this country was a British-Eurocentric, racist, white supremist entity that feared, shunned and hated anyone who was different from that mould. We still have a long way to go, especially since the damage inflicted on this country by the Harper years.
I am a Christian, a person of faith. My loyalty is to my God, not to my country. I do not take the extreme measures as certain extreme Anabaptist communities: the Old Mennonites, Hutterites and Amish, by refusing to vote. I may not love this country but I live here, among many other people, and, no, there are certain civic obligations and responsibilities that my Christian faith does not exempt me from. As a Christian in a post-Christian culture I feel obligated to live out my faith and to express as clearly as possible the values of my faith. I am not a pro-life anti-abortion crusader but I do feel called upon to speak out and live in a way that honours the environment and basic human rights and I will continue to do my part by voting for elected officials who best reflect my values and to do my level best to promote and endorse these values. But talk, as they say, is cheap and it is much better to live in a manner that reflects the love, mercy and justice of God.
I vote, I write this blog, I sometimes exchange emails with politicians and journalists. Mostly I pray and try to live faithfully and work well and compassionately with others. I would never consider running for office. Too many conflicting loyalties and my real loyalty is to Christ. My real home is with Him. Which I suppose makes me a citizen of...the World?...the Universe? And, yes, of course, I am also a citizen of Canada, a sad and disillusioned one all the same, but I am still part of this country no matter how much love has been lost between us. If I focus on loving the people who live here and forget about the patriotism crap I think I'll do okay. Sort of.
Wednesday 5 October 2016
Loyalties 3
Ah, yes, the True North Strong and Free. O Canada, we stand on guard for thee...O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. Doesn't that just give you goose bumps, Gentle Reader? No? Maybe...Nausea? Before I get strung up for treason, allow me please to explain a thing or two. I am not a traitor to my country. I simply feel no natural love for this place. Even though I was born and raised in this country, and even if I would be among the first to agree that in Canada people tend to enjoy a very superior quality of life...
Compared to....
Uganda?
I do appreciate and respect what Canada represents, and this is in some ways divergent from the reality that is the beautiful fiction, Canada.
I love the multiculturalism in this country and indeed I think that Canada is the only nation that really does multiculturalism well. It isn't perfect, but it is a work in progress. This also squares well with Canada's still-evolving national identity. This is still a young country. I am also happy with the relative respect for individual rights and freedoms that we enjoy here. I never have to worry about a fateful knock on my door in the middle of the night, of being taken away never to be seen again for writing things on this blog that some politicos would find offensive. Despite the near dictatorship under Stephen Harper for the last ten years there is still a sense of freedom here that does make Canada the envy of many nations. The natural beauty is almost unparalleled, and many regions of this country are counted among the most beautiful on earth. We celebrate equal rights for all people: of all races, religions, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations. We also enjoy relatively free public health care and publicly funded, if meagre and well below poverty level, pensions for low-income seniors.
There is some support for the poor and disabled, but the support available is lamentably poor and this country could well afford better care for its most vulnerable. There is also no government funded post-secondary education and only an inadequate student loan program that plunges people into decades' worth of debt following graduation. There is also still a general public stigma against the poor and poverty. Being poor is still viewed as being so shameful that it is almost seen as a mortal sin, a sign of laziness, lack of ambition. They don't want to work. Meanwhile there is a growing population of middle class Canadians who are living from paycheque to paycheque and not really that far from finding themselves lining up at the food bank or having to sleep in low barrier shelters.
I am particularly disturbed by the subtle militarism in this country. It has always been there, of course, and the Harper government squandered ten years trying to rewrite Canadian history, trying to frame us as a great military power. Peace keeping was shelved and there was a process of rearming the Canadian military. World War I was rewritten as the birth of the Canadian nation and the War of 1812 became the major turning point in the formation of Canada. Remembrance Day observances became more de rigueur than ever and if you were a pacifist you were expected to keep quiet about it. The war dead were reinvented as sacred heroes sacrificing their lives for Mother Canada. If you weren't wearing a red poppy pinned to your lapel you kept a low profile. If you had the colossal gall to wear a white poppy, a symbol of peace, you might get yelled at or even beaten up on the street. Seriously. Here in peaceful Canada.
The militarism in this country, however covert, is for me repugnant and is also for me the ultimate deal breaker. If I were married to a spouse named Canada, otherwise good looking and nice, if rather boring with good manners, I would quickly be consigning myself to sleeping on the couch or in the guestroom to escape from my spouse's nasty bad breath, snoring, and tendency of farting most aromatically in the sack every night, not to mention the deplorable love-making skills.
Canada, I do not stand on guard for thee. In war, everyone loses and the shedding of blood, no matter how apparently just the cause, is just and merely that: the shedding of blood. Costa Rica abolished their military in 1948 and their only foreign invaders happen to be tourists and they happen to enjoy one of the most equal societies and highest standards of living in Latin America. And if I could emigrate there, I probably would, given that I already speak fluent Spanish!
True North Strong And Free My Ass!
Compared to....
Uganda?
I do appreciate and respect what Canada represents, and this is in some ways divergent from the reality that is the beautiful fiction, Canada.
I love the multiculturalism in this country and indeed I think that Canada is the only nation that really does multiculturalism well. It isn't perfect, but it is a work in progress. This also squares well with Canada's still-evolving national identity. This is still a young country. I am also happy with the relative respect for individual rights and freedoms that we enjoy here. I never have to worry about a fateful knock on my door in the middle of the night, of being taken away never to be seen again for writing things on this blog that some politicos would find offensive. Despite the near dictatorship under Stephen Harper for the last ten years there is still a sense of freedom here that does make Canada the envy of many nations. The natural beauty is almost unparalleled, and many regions of this country are counted among the most beautiful on earth. We celebrate equal rights for all people: of all races, religions, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations. We also enjoy relatively free public health care and publicly funded, if meagre and well below poverty level, pensions for low-income seniors.
There is some support for the poor and disabled, but the support available is lamentably poor and this country could well afford better care for its most vulnerable. There is also no government funded post-secondary education and only an inadequate student loan program that plunges people into decades' worth of debt following graduation. There is also still a general public stigma against the poor and poverty. Being poor is still viewed as being so shameful that it is almost seen as a mortal sin, a sign of laziness, lack of ambition. They don't want to work. Meanwhile there is a growing population of middle class Canadians who are living from paycheque to paycheque and not really that far from finding themselves lining up at the food bank or having to sleep in low barrier shelters.
I am particularly disturbed by the subtle militarism in this country. It has always been there, of course, and the Harper government squandered ten years trying to rewrite Canadian history, trying to frame us as a great military power. Peace keeping was shelved and there was a process of rearming the Canadian military. World War I was rewritten as the birth of the Canadian nation and the War of 1812 became the major turning point in the formation of Canada. Remembrance Day observances became more de rigueur than ever and if you were a pacifist you were expected to keep quiet about it. The war dead were reinvented as sacred heroes sacrificing their lives for Mother Canada. If you weren't wearing a red poppy pinned to your lapel you kept a low profile. If you had the colossal gall to wear a white poppy, a symbol of peace, you might get yelled at or even beaten up on the street. Seriously. Here in peaceful Canada.
The militarism in this country, however covert, is for me repugnant and is also for me the ultimate deal breaker. If I were married to a spouse named Canada, otherwise good looking and nice, if rather boring with good manners, I would quickly be consigning myself to sleeping on the couch or in the guestroom to escape from my spouse's nasty bad breath, snoring, and tendency of farting most aromatically in the sack every night, not to mention the deplorable love-making skills.
Canada, I do not stand on guard for thee. In war, everyone loses and the shedding of blood, no matter how apparently just the cause, is just and merely that: the shedding of blood. Costa Rica abolished their military in 1948 and their only foreign invaders happen to be tourists and they happen to enjoy one of the most equal societies and highest standards of living in Latin America. And if I could emigrate there, I probably would, given that I already speak fluent Spanish!
True North Strong And Free My Ass!
Tuesday 4 October 2016
Loyalties 2
There appears to be a ratio between wealth and patriotism. Or maybe not. I would imagine that the One Percent really doesn't give a shit as long as they can profit at whomever's expense, however, wherever and whenever. Then there are the poor and the very poor, such as me, who have always fallen through the cracks, coming out feeling somehow betrayed and cheated by our own country. I would imagine that those in the lower-middle, middle and upper-middle income brackets would be the most likely to swallow the patriotism Koolaid. By the way, Gentle Reader, I have absolutely no stats to back up any of these claims. This is pure, unadulterated speculation and if you are able to prove me mistaken, then please do. I welcome all input.
I have heard many times, over the years, about what a wonderful country I live in, the best country in the world according to armchair experts who likely have never travelled much farther beyond a shopping mall over the US border. We have a social safety net. That's right, in this land of food banks, legislated poverty and rampant homelessness, no one need go without sufficient food nor a roof over their head.
Here, where I live, in the glorious province of British Colombia, if you find yourself unemployed and have exhausted your life savings, except whatever you need for the mandatory six week wait for your first welfare cheque, you can partake of the government largess for a whopping $610 a month. If you have a disability and can survive the paperwork, the refusals and the appeals you can get it topped up to around $990 a month. You might also qualify for government subsidized housing if you survive the ten year wait list.
Of course you have to learn to budget: get everything second hand and watch out for bedbugs; get your groceries at cheap markets but shop carefully because you will probably have to skip on the expensive stuff, like fruits and vegetables. If they do successfully hound you into finding low wage and soul-destroying work you will find yourself doing notably better should you be already living in subsidized housing. Otherwise you will be subsidizing your rent with the survival portion of your welfare cheque for a bug infested room in an unsafe neighbourhood for up to the ten years you are going to have to wait for government subsidized housing. If you are on the disability pension and you want to go to vocational school or college they will pick up some of the costs for you just as they will give you something towards dental care. If, like me, you are working poor, you get nothing. The low income workers appear to be the most overlooked and most despised citizens of Canada. In my experience, I have only been able to get dental work done because I happen to live in subsidized housing, which also allows me to eat decently if cheaply (vegetarian) and even to vacation somewhere in Latin America for a month every year. Fortunately, despite the abysmally low wage, I also happen to love my job.
I'm one of the lucky ones. But after all the years I have had to endure unsafe or inadequate housing that usually swallowed more than half my paycheque, leaving me too broke and exhausted to go back to college or save any money or even be able to live a little more comfortably from paycheque to paycheque?
Because of the way this country boasts about its generous treatment of its poorest citizens while making it impossible for us to survive with dignity or successfully climb out of the poverty trap, why should I have any love for Canada? It simply does not exist, neither this beautiful fiction called Canada, nor my love for it, and is never going to exist. This doesn't mean that I have no sense of civic responsibility. I vote and I hound and hector our elected representatives about housing, poverty and the environment. I do everything I can to show love and compassion to others, if very imperfectly, not because I'm Canadian and not because they are Canadians (or not) but because it is the decent and human thing to do. Despite this country.
Canada is a beautiful fiction and if I want fiction I'll find it in the library.
I have heard many times, over the years, about what a wonderful country I live in, the best country in the world according to armchair experts who likely have never travelled much farther beyond a shopping mall over the US border. We have a social safety net. That's right, in this land of food banks, legislated poverty and rampant homelessness, no one need go without sufficient food nor a roof over their head.
Here, where I live, in the glorious province of British Colombia, if you find yourself unemployed and have exhausted your life savings, except whatever you need for the mandatory six week wait for your first welfare cheque, you can partake of the government largess for a whopping $610 a month. If you have a disability and can survive the paperwork, the refusals and the appeals you can get it topped up to around $990 a month. You might also qualify for government subsidized housing if you survive the ten year wait list.
Of course you have to learn to budget: get everything second hand and watch out for bedbugs; get your groceries at cheap markets but shop carefully because you will probably have to skip on the expensive stuff, like fruits and vegetables. If they do successfully hound you into finding low wage and soul-destroying work you will find yourself doing notably better should you be already living in subsidized housing. Otherwise you will be subsidizing your rent with the survival portion of your welfare cheque for a bug infested room in an unsafe neighbourhood for up to the ten years you are going to have to wait for government subsidized housing. If you are on the disability pension and you want to go to vocational school or college they will pick up some of the costs for you just as they will give you something towards dental care. If, like me, you are working poor, you get nothing. The low income workers appear to be the most overlooked and most despised citizens of Canada. In my experience, I have only been able to get dental work done because I happen to live in subsidized housing, which also allows me to eat decently if cheaply (vegetarian) and even to vacation somewhere in Latin America for a month every year. Fortunately, despite the abysmally low wage, I also happen to love my job.
I'm one of the lucky ones. But after all the years I have had to endure unsafe or inadequate housing that usually swallowed more than half my paycheque, leaving me too broke and exhausted to go back to college or save any money or even be able to live a little more comfortably from paycheque to paycheque?
Because of the way this country boasts about its generous treatment of its poorest citizens while making it impossible for us to survive with dignity or successfully climb out of the poverty trap, why should I have any love for Canada? It simply does not exist, neither this beautiful fiction called Canada, nor my love for it, and is never going to exist. This doesn't mean that I have no sense of civic responsibility. I vote and I hound and hector our elected representatives about housing, poverty and the environment. I do everything I can to show love and compassion to others, if very imperfectly, not because I'm Canadian and not because they are Canadians (or not) but because it is the decent and human thing to do. Despite this country.
Canada is a beautiful fiction and if I want fiction I'll find it in the library.
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