I am grateful for families. I think they are indispensable to our growth, nurturing and for the future wellbeing of society. So much depends on the quality of parenting that children receive. I am not going to advocate child-centred parenting or any other form of parenting because, really, every family is different and each depends on so many variables that I couldn't even begin to write with any authority or knowledge on the matter.
But we still have the same basic dynamic: mother and father producing children that are raised principally by mother (dad is doing more than he used to but still has some catching up to do) and in many cases children and siblings raising themselves and each other, or daycares and nannies doing the job instead of mom and dad because they both have to work fulltime all day so they can afford to pay for daycare and nannies. One way or the other, the kids get raised.
A lot is said these days against helicopter parenting. I don't like it either and I am sure that we are seeing a whole generation of helpless neurotics coming of age because mommy and daddy never know when to back off, hand them the roll of toilet paper and say "do it yourself!". I am all for free range parenting, which is basically how I grew up. When we weren't in school and there was nothing on TV, we would be outside from morning till suppertime, playing together, fighting, driving each other crazy, playing doctor, exploring backyards, fields and forests, and making a nuisance of ourselves in the mall. This is how we socialized one another and got ourselves ready for the real adult world. Practice, practice, practice. Outside of supper, there wasn`t a lot of family time and our parents were only around if they wanted to lecture or punish us about something. Or we watched TV together. In the case of my own family, Mom and I watched TV, Dad snoozed on the couch and my brother was generally out somewhere with his little friends. Such were Saturday nights in our household. There was not a lot of demonstrative affection in the families of my era.
I don`t agree that families are central or foundational to society. I don`t think anything is, really, but that families certainly play a role along with many other integrated variables. I often wonder if parents are taking on too much responsibility for their children`s wellbeing. There seems to be a huge culture of guilt with parents, especially younger parents, about not loving their kids enough, not spending enough time with them (both mom and dad usually have to work fulltime nowadays) and they all want to be their kids' best friend. I suppose this works up to a point. A lot of people of my generation reject the concept, insisting that parents already have a specific role in their children`s lives, friendship is not part of the picture, it's conflict of interest, and that kids should somehow always respect, almost fear their parents. I like to think there could be room for both.
Well, I`m not an expert and I`m not going to pretend to be one. There is one dynamic in families that has always fascinated me: sibling relationships. I had an interesting conversation over coffee with a friend this morning. We are both male siblings of a male sibling. He is the elder, I am the younger. He didn't seem to understand that the beatings he used to deliver daily to his darling little brother might have had a negative effect on their relationship as adults. Fortunately, my friend has worked hard to repair things with his younger brother and they have a friendly relationship now. My older brother and I haven't seen each other in eighteen years and we are likely never going to see each other again. I'm okay with this.
More than twenty years ago, as a set of conditions, I wrote him a letter, detailing the abuse I had suffered from him, the trauma and the life consequences for me, and that for normal relations to be restored between us he would have to give me, in person, a full, detailed and contrite apology. My brother has not responded and we will likely never see each other again. As I said, I'm okay with this, as he has always treated me like toilet paper and I would much prefer to have in my life friends who love and respect me as opposed to a brother who hates and loathes me.
It would be nice if more of us would come to recognize the concept of family as extending beyond those who share with us the same genes. That we would start to relate to others with a little more sense of extended family, and greater inclusivity, especially those of us whose families have disowned and abandoned us.
Sunday 30 April 2017
Saturday 29 April 2017
Gratitude 48
I am rather grateful for public transit. This doesn't mean that I love it. Often I hate riding the buses and view them as the kind of necessary evil that we would reserve for old newspapers when we run out of toilet paper. We need public transit for getting around rather quickly when:
1. We don't have a car
2. We don't have a skateboard or roller blades
3. The weather is too crappy for walking
4. We need to get somewhere fast, but not too fast.
5. We have a sudden urge to suffer and experience humiliation.
As a teenager I declined to learn how to drive for these reasons:
1. I did not want to pollute the environment
2. I had a dread premonition of me dying and taking others with me in an accident
3. I instinctively knew that I would never be able to afford a car.
So, it's the loser cruiser. The bus. Squeezed and sandwiched in with the rest of the hoi poloi. It's not a death sentence. It gets me to where I need to go. It's mostly affordable, except...
When I was very poor, I couldn't afford public transit. I would be walking up to six miles or further to and from my underpaid job. It was great exercise. But by day's end I was always exhausted. It still kind of worked. I've always enjoyed walking. It's meditative and I can really observe, absorb, enjoy and learn about my environment. Certain walking routes have long stuck with me, taking me through the maximum number of parks and tranquil heritage neighbourhoods. Getting to know the exquisite architectural details on certain houses and buildings, looking forward to seeing them on every walk. Rather like saying hi to a friendly neighbour along the way. And trees, gardens, flowers, everything. I have often made friends with gentle neighbourhood cats and dogs along the way and it was always gratifying having these four-legged friends waiting for a pat and a friendly word and often expressing just the affection I might have been needing that day.
I can afford public transit again, and usually I have to take it. Not always. Every day I try to leave early enough to reserve time to walk part way, at least a mile, ideally three or longer.
It was difficult for me to adjust again to riding the buses. Before poverty hit really hard, we didn't have cell phones or smart phones. The buses were much quieter, and way more comfortable places to be on in those days. There were still annoyances, such as Asian women yelling directly behind me in Cantonese or Tagalog, but really, the little white bitches who scream in what sounds like English peppered with the F bomb are often worse. And don't get me started on some of their male counterparts. Seriously, I really had to work on my anxiety threshold for several years when I resumed, in 2004 or so, riding public transit on a regular basis.
I do try to position myself strategically. Usually I try to get the seat just in front of the back door, where I am least likely to be serenaded by some idiots' loud voices behind me in whatever language. I have since learned to be less anxious about the other seats as well, though, it only takes one loudmouth behind me and I have suddenly moved, even if it means having to stand the rest of the way.
It is rather odd being at that awkward age, middle age transitioning into senior citizen. It could be that there are some days when I just look awful and suddenly every person younger than thirty evacuates the courtesy seats when they see me coming on board. Other times I must look so robust and youthful that of course they're not going to stand up for me. Be that as it may, they are also as likely to be too fixated on their little tech toys to even notice that there are other beings that occupy the same universe.
I have learned to be assertive on transit. If I am schlepping with me a giant umbrella and a butt-heavy sack of groceries I simply announce something like: "Hey boys and girls, if you don't want me sitting on your lap, then someone here is going to give up their seat for me." I haven't yet said it that way, but give me time, I'm working up the courage. Neither am I shy about advocating for seniors and people with disabilities left standing, and it does give my sense of schadenfreud the most exquisite pleasure shaming certain young piles of useless DNA into giving up there seat for a frail little old lady or little old man. I've done it before, Gentle Reader, and I will do it again.
1. We don't have a car
2. We don't have a skateboard or roller blades
3. The weather is too crappy for walking
4. We need to get somewhere fast, but not too fast.
5. We have a sudden urge to suffer and experience humiliation.
As a teenager I declined to learn how to drive for these reasons:
1. I did not want to pollute the environment
2. I had a dread premonition of me dying and taking others with me in an accident
3. I instinctively knew that I would never be able to afford a car.
So, it's the loser cruiser. The bus. Squeezed and sandwiched in with the rest of the hoi poloi. It's not a death sentence. It gets me to where I need to go. It's mostly affordable, except...
When I was very poor, I couldn't afford public transit. I would be walking up to six miles or further to and from my underpaid job. It was great exercise. But by day's end I was always exhausted. It still kind of worked. I've always enjoyed walking. It's meditative and I can really observe, absorb, enjoy and learn about my environment. Certain walking routes have long stuck with me, taking me through the maximum number of parks and tranquil heritage neighbourhoods. Getting to know the exquisite architectural details on certain houses and buildings, looking forward to seeing them on every walk. Rather like saying hi to a friendly neighbour along the way. And trees, gardens, flowers, everything. I have often made friends with gentle neighbourhood cats and dogs along the way and it was always gratifying having these four-legged friends waiting for a pat and a friendly word and often expressing just the affection I might have been needing that day.
I can afford public transit again, and usually I have to take it. Not always. Every day I try to leave early enough to reserve time to walk part way, at least a mile, ideally three or longer.
It was difficult for me to adjust again to riding the buses. Before poverty hit really hard, we didn't have cell phones or smart phones. The buses were much quieter, and way more comfortable places to be on in those days. There were still annoyances, such as Asian women yelling directly behind me in Cantonese or Tagalog, but really, the little white bitches who scream in what sounds like English peppered with the F bomb are often worse. And don't get me started on some of their male counterparts. Seriously, I really had to work on my anxiety threshold for several years when I resumed, in 2004 or so, riding public transit on a regular basis.
I do try to position myself strategically. Usually I try to get the seat just in front of the back door, where I am least likely to be serenaded by some idiots' loud voices behind me in whatever language. I have since learned to be less anxious about the other seats as well, though, it only takes one loudmouth behind me and I have suddenly moved, even if it means having to stand the rest of the way.
It is rather odd being at that awkward age, middle age transitioning into senior citizen. It could be that there are some days when I just look awful and suddenly every person younger than thirty evacuates the courtesy seats when they see me coming on board. Other times I must look so robust and youthful that of course they're not going to stand up for me. Be that as it may, they are also as likely to be too fixated on their little tech toys to even notice that there are other beings that occupy the same universe.
I have learned to be assertive on transit. If I am schlepping with me a giant umbrella and a butt-heavy sack of groceries I simply announce something like: "Hey boys and girls, if you don't want me sitting on your lap, then someone here is going to give up their seat for me." I haven't yet said it that way, but give me time, I'm working up the courage. Neither am I shy about advocating for seniors and people with disabilities left standing, and it does give my sense of schadenfreud the most exquisite pleasure shaming certain young piles of useless DNA into giving up there seat for a frail little old lady or little old man. I've done it before, Gentle Reader, and I will do it again.
Friday 28 April 2017
Gratitude 47
I am thankful for the blessing of loving others despite how disagreeable they make themselves. Throughout the day there are going to be irritations, major and minor. I might even be one of those irritants, and likely, I am. We seldom know, much less care, how we affect those around us, especially when we're out in public, and it is our selfish and chronic self-absorption that we really need to get over, if we really want to coexist well.
My tranquil afternoon walk today was almost ruined by such irritants. I now enjoy Friday afternoons off and like to take advantage of the extra time to go out and walk. Today, following a walk over the bridge and a stop in the local art store to buy pencil crayons, the annoyances slowly began to build up. What helped get me off to a bad start was receiving the sad news of the death of yet another tenant in my building. My building manager, who was being harassed by a campaigner from the NDP (I will be voting for this party this provincial election, despite my opinion of the candidate in my riding), was unable to furnish me with more information, making it more difficult for me to figure out which tenant it was who had died.
There was the couple tailgating me on the sidewalk. There was plenty of room for them to walk around me and they simply didn't bother, so I stopped, turned, and said to them both, "I do not like being tailgated." They did look a little bit shocked as they got the hell out of my way, but I think they both merited and needed that little slap in the face, so, no apologies coming from me. Then I had to let another tailgater ahead. She was a lone Asian woman and saying anything would have been too much like bullying, so I just let her pass and walked slowly behind as she was able to get further ahead. I also didn't want to be unjustly thought of as being racist, and some people from visible minorities will play the race card if a white person calls them on their bad or insensitive behaviour. and a lot of white people, such as myself, often feel cowed by collective guilt and political correctness so we try to be all the more careful not to give offense.
When I got up into Shaughnessy I thought it would be an ideal day to sit on a bench in the Circle Park. But there was a woman playing catch with her chocolate lab dog, and another woman behind me yapping on her phone, then this white guy just on the other side decided to play jump rope, so there wasn't much in the way of tranquility. But I reminded myself that this is public space. Still, it is not a dog park, so I might have ratted the dog woman out to the authorities. I only didn't because the dog seemed harmless. If it was a pit bull I likely would have made the phone call. Then, as I got walking there were the instruments of audial torture, or leaf blowers and weed whackers, courtesy of gardeners tending the local estates. Well, why should I complain? They also have a right to make a living.
I still made a point of not letting any of this get to me, remembering that these were also people who were getting on with their day and their lives, and who knows what any of them might have thought of me. I stopped in the local Shoppers to buy milk, then ran to catch the bus. There was only room in the courtesy section and I began reading a poem in transit above the opposite window about someone striking up a conversation with the stranger seated next to them on the bus. That was when the stranger next to me, who had not seen the poem, began talking to me, asking me about my day.
It was an interesting conversation and either this elderly gentleman is the hero he is making himself out to be, and really is providing high tech businesses with support on making their appliances such as phones and listening devices cancer proof, or (as I suspect) he has mental health issues and I was being treated to his delusion de jour. It didn't matter. He was friendly and wanted to reach out, and it was very kind of him to invite me into his life if but for five minutes.
Despite the rude woman of size who got mad at me for touching her bag while trying to get past her as I was getting off the bus I have decided to view this day as a success. I might still be feeling rattled and irritable, but I have seen beautiful places today and I have been privileged with meaningful glimpses into the lives of strangers, some of whom will help me to learn compassion. And I am still feeling sad about the death of my neighbour today.
My tranquil afternoon walk today was almost ruined by such irritants. I now enjoy Friday afternoons off and like to take advantage of the extra time to go out and walk. Today, following a walk over the bridge and a stop in the local art store to buy pencil crayons, the annoyances slowly began to build up. What helped get me off to a bad start was receiving the sad news of the death of yet another tenant in my building. My building manager, who was being harassed by a campaigner from the NDP (I will be voting for this party this provincial election, despite my opinion of the candidate in my riding), was unable to furnish me with more information, making it more difficult for me to figure out which tenant it was who had died.
There was the couple tailgating me on the sidewalk. There was plenty of room for them to walk around me and they simply didn't bother, so I stopped, turned, and said to them both, "I do not like being tailgated." They did look a little bit shocked as they got the hell out of my way, but I think they both merited and needed that little slap in the face, so, no apologies coming from me. Then I had to let another tailgater ahead. She was a lone Asian woman and saying anything would have been too much like bullying, so I just let her pass and walked slowly behind as she was able to get further ahead. I also didn't want to be unjustly thought of as being racist, and some people from visible minorities will play the race card if a white person calls them on their bad or insensitive behaviour. and a lot of white people, such as myself, often feel cowed by collective guilt and political correctness so we try to be all the more careful not to give offense.
When I got up into Shaughnessy I thought it would be an ideal day to sit on a bench in the Circle Park. But there was a woman playing catch with her chocolate lab dog, and another woman behind me yapping on her phone, then this white guy just on the other side decided to play jump rope, so there wasn't much in the way of tranquility. But I reminded myself that this is public space. Still, it is not a dog park, so I might have ratted the dog woman out to the authorities. I only didn't because the dog seemed harmless. If it was a pit bull I likely would have made the phone call. Then, as I got walking there were the instruments of audial torture, or leaf blowers and weed whackers, courtesy of gardeners tending the local estates. Well, why should I complain? They also have a right to make a living.
I still made a point of not letting any of this get to me, remembering that these were also people who were getting on with their day and their lives, and who knows what any of them might have thought of me. I stopped in the local Shoppers to buy milk, then ran to catch the bus. There was only room in the courtesy section and I began reading a poem in transit above the opposite window about someone striking up a conversation with the stranger seated next to them on the bus. That was when the stranger next to me, who had not seen the poem, began talking to me, asking me about my day.
It was an interesting conversation and either this elderly gentleman is the hero he is making himself out to be, and really is providing high tech businesses with support on making their appliances such as phones and listening devices cancer proof, or (as I suspect) he has mental health issues and I was being treated to his delusion de jour. It didn't matter. He was friendly and wanted to reach out, and it was very kind of him to invite me into his life if but for five minutes.
Despite the rude woman of size who got mad at me for touching her bag while trying to get past her as I was getting off the bus I have decided to view this day as a success. I might still be feeling rattled and irritable, but I have seen beautiful places today and I have been privileged with meaningful glimpses into the lives of strangers, some of whom will help me to learn compassion. And I am still feeling sad about the death of my neighbour today.
Thursday 27 April 2017
Gratitude 46
I am grateful for the beautiful spring day, today. It is still a bit chilly (twelve degrees in the sun), but everyone seems to be noting the improvement in the weather. The trees are greener now and the flowers are abundant. Especially the tulips and magnolias! We all seem to flourish when the sun is shining. I am hearing something on the radio right now about solar energy. Unlike the fossil fuels industry, the solar and other renewables offer long term and permanent employment as well as a never ending source of renewable and nonpolluting energy.
I am grateful for the sun, that great blazing daystar in the sky without which nothing could live. It is not a stretch to imagine that so many peoples and cultures throughout the world have worshipped the sun as a god. It is very unfortunate that some of those cultures, the Aztecs come to mind, practiced human sacrifice in order to propitiate the sun god.
Why would it be even considered to slaughter innocent humans to satisfy the imagined blood thirst of an imaginary deity? But the sun was never merely imaginary as a deity, and the idea of worshipping this heavenly body is even now, to this devout Christian, something remotely tempting and seductive.
Even in my art I love employing the motif of a giant yellow-orange sun in a turquoise sky as a brilliant background for my colourful bird drawings. The sun really is the source, the very fount of our lives and our existence. I don't worship the sun. It is a creation of God whom I do worship. But it is also a prototype or allegory of God as we often understand him, the creator and sustainer of all life.
The sun is, of course every bit as dangerous as beneficent, and everyone knows what a hazard solar radiation and ultraviolet light can be to the skin, and the lethal cancers that can result. By the same token the sun also provides us with vitamin D, which is essential to our good health and vitality. And we all know how popular beach resorts and all-inclusives are for foreign holidays because of the endless supply of tropical sun.
To image that our sun is only a minor, mediocre little star on the edge of our minor, mediocre little galaxy, and that we are surrounded by many greater and more wonderful suns and stars and galaxies that we will never really know. This does not diminish the wonderfulness of our little daystar. It certainly does carry us to a place beyond awe when we really begin to think of this universe in which we are privileged to live.
I am grateful for the sun, that great blazing daystar in the sky without which nothing could live. It is not a stretch to imagine that so many peoples and cultures throughout the world have worshipped the sun as a god. It is very unfortunate that some of those cultures, the Aztecs come to mind, practiced human sacrifice in order to propitiate the sun god.
Why would it be even considered to slaughter innocent humans to satisfy the imagined blood thirst of an imaginary deity? But the sun was never merely imaginary as a deity, and the idea of worshipping this heavenly body is even now, to this devout Christian, something remotely tempting and seductive.
Even in my art I love employing the motif of a giant yellow-orange sun in a turquoise sky as a brilliant background for my colourful bird drawings. The sun really is the source, the very fount of our lives and our existence. I don't worship the sun. It is a creation of God whom I do worship. But it is also a prototype or allegory of God as we often understand him, the creator and sustainer of all life.
The sun is, of course every bit as dangerous as beneficent, and everyone knows what a hazard solar radiation and ultraviolet light can be to the skin, and the lethal cancers that can result. By the same token the sun also provides us with vitamin D, which is essential to our good health and vitality. And we all know how popular beach resorts and all-inclusives are for foreign holidays because of the endless supply of tropical sun.
To image that our sun is only a minor, mediocre little star on the edge of our minor, mediocre little galaxy, and that we are surrounded by many greater and more wonderful suns and stars and galaxies that we will never really know. This does not diminish the wonderfulness of our little daystar. It certainly does carry us to a place beyond awe when we really begin to think of this universe in which we are privileged to live.
Wednesday 26 April 2017
Gratitude 45
I an very grateful for rest. It took only a much needed nap for me to put my day in perspective. Things had gone enjoyably as I had only one work assignment today, a meeting that went very well. My afternoon session was cancelled and I still get paid for it. And the weather was suddenly something wonderful. I could hang out with my sketchbook in my favourite coffee shop, then walk and wander outside through this beautiful spring day to my heart's content.
While in the coffee shop, the sister of the owner was on duty, a woman near my own age who is very pleasant and friendly. I made progress on my drawing and said hi to a friendly patron. Then I felt tired. I did have just a little bit under my needed quota of seven hours of sleep last night and sometimes I get by well on just over six. But today I must have needed a bit more, and I'm not getting younger. A friend who is also of a certain age advised me recently that I have to accept as a feature of aging the need for more rest.
It was still a mostly enjoyable walk. It was warmer, sunny and the flowers of spring spectacular. I practiced my Spanish throughout on my phone and I seem to be doing rather well. Then, came the first fly in the ointment. A young idiot male decided to take his very large pit bull for an off leash romp through a local park. This is not an off leash zone and I have at times been dangerously harassed in public parks by off leash dogs. I called city hall and was told that someone would be sent over to talk with the young man.
When I arrived at Sixteenth and Granville I just missed the bus. Knowing how late they can be, I cursed my fate, not wanting to have to stand and wait for another half hour for the next bus that ought, but sometimes doesn't arrive in under ten minutes. So, I continued to walk. Seven blocks later, at Broadway, there were still no buses. I continued to walk, an extra mile altogether, as far as the Granville Bridge, where a number four bus was just turning towards me. Had I simply stayed at the first stop, there is no telling how much longer I would have waited, perhaps a half hour or worse.
I noticed a message on my voicemail from the animal control guy, who wanted to know details about the off leash pit bull in the park that the woman from city hall should have given him. Or perhaps he wasn't listening the first time. Or maybe he's scared of pit bulls. Who isn't? I would already be too late to call him back, since I had placed the call a half hour earlier and was already boarding an incredibly crowded bus where I would have to stand. Perhaps the young idiot with the loose dog never got spoken to. Oh, well....
I arrived home with a letter waiting for me, news about my Canada Pension. It turns out that I will be receiving around twelve dollars less every month than what I was originally told. This will not have a catastrophic impact, but, following standing room only on an extremely crowded bus that I had to walk a mile to get on, that was the breaking point and I found myself feeling miserable and feeling very sorry for myself about the absolutely crappy treatment that this country reserves for its senior citizens.
A light quick lunch of Breton crackers and cheese (domestic Gouda, cheap, rather nice) helped replenish my blood sugar and already my mood began to improve. I made a pot of cocoa, relaxed with my sketchbook in my recliner chair while listening to the Mozart Requiem, followed by the Charpentier Te Deum. I drifted off and remained where I was for over an hour. I am heating leftovers for dinner now, and feeling a lot better.
Of course the treatment of seniors, especially those of us who have been working poor all our lives and have contributed to this country in so many ways, is scandalous and certainly violates some very reasonable human rights expectations. A lot of us don't have the good fortune of subsidized housing and have to subsist on tiny pensions while paying market rents. I know that I will be okay. I am resolved to stay where I'm living, which is certainly better than ending up in a low barrier shelter. I also know that when I turn sixty-five, which will occur in exactly ten months, four days, six hours and eight minutes I will also qualify for Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement, topping everything up to a more or less liveable cipher, but liveable only because I will be paying only thirty percent of my monthly income for housing.
I am going to suffer from survival guilt. I already do. When many people in situations similar to mine were kicked off of social assistance and onto the streets in 2002 I had already become safely and securely housed in my subsidized apartment. Not many have enjoyed my good fortune. I have worked hard over the intervening years to raise people's and our governments' awareness about the plight of the homeless and the housing vulnerable. I expect to continue doing this as well as adding seniors' advocacy to my rant sheet.
In the meantime, I remain grateful, for all the good things that are happening, and have happened in my life. And for the gift of rest, which soothes the owie and helps me readjust my sense of proportion.
While in the coffee shop, the sister of the owner was on duty, a woman near my own age who is very pleasant and friendly. I made progress on my drawing and said hi to a friendly patron. Then I felt tired. I did have just a little bit under my needed quota of seven hours of sleep last night and sometimes I get by well on just over six. But today I must have needed a bit more, and I'm not getting younger. A friend who is also of a certain age advised me recently that I have to accept as a feature of aging the need for more rest.
It was still a mostly enjoyable walk. It was warmer, sunny and the flowers of spring spectacular. I practiced my Spanish throughout on my phone and I seem to be doing rather well. Then, came the first fly in the ointment. A young idiot male decided to take his very large pit bull for an off leash romp through a local park. This is not an off leash zone and I have at times been dangerously harassed in public parks by off leash dogs. I called city hall and was told that someone would be sent over to talk with the young man.
When I arrived at Sixteenth and Granville I just missed the bus. Knowing how late they can be, I cursed my fate, not wanting to have to stand and wait for another half hour for the next bus that ought, but sometimes doesn't arrive in under ten minutes. So, I continued to walk. Seven blocks later, at Broadway, there were still no buses. I continued to walk, an extra mile altogether, as far as the Granville Bridge, where a number four bus was just turning towards me. Had I simply stayed at the first stop, there is no telling how much longer I would have waited, perhaps a half hour or worse.
I noticed a message on my voicemail from the animal control guy, who wanted to know details about the off leash pit bull in the park that the woman from city hall should have given him. Or perhaps he wasn't listening the first time. Or maybe he's scared of pit bulls. Who isn't? I would already be too late to call him back, since I had placed the call a half hour earlier and was already boarding an incredibly crowded bus where I would have to stand. Perhaps the young idiot with the loose dog never got spoken to. Oh, well....
I arrived home with a letter waiting for me, news about my Canada Pension. It turns out that I will be receiving around twelve dollars less every month than what I was originally told. This will not have a catastrophic impact, but, following standing room only on an extremely crowded bus that I had to walk a mile to get on, that was the breaking point and I found myself feeling miserable and feeling very sorry for myself about the absolutely crappy treatment that this country reserves for its senior citizens.
A light quick lunch of Breton crackers and cheese (domestic Gouda, cheap, rather nice) helped replenish my blood sugar and already my mood began to improve. I made a pot of cocoa, relaxed with my sketchbook in my recliner chair while listening to the Mozart Requiem, followed by the Charpentier Te Deum. I drifted off and remained where I was for over an hour. I am heating leftovers for dinner now, and feeling a lot better.
Of course the treatment of seniors, especially those of us who have been working poor all our lives and have contributed to this country in so many ways, is scandalous and certainly violates some very reasonable human rights expectations. A lot of us don't have the good fortune of subsidized housing and have to subsist on tiny pensions while paying market rents. I know that I will be okay. I am resolved to stay where I'm living, which is certainly better than ending up in a low barrier shelter. I also know that when I turn sixty-five, which will occur in exactly ten months, four days, six hours and eight minutes I will also qualify for Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement, topping everything up to a more or less liveable cipher, but liveable only because I will be paying only thirty percent of my monthly income for housing.
I am going to suffer from survival guilt. I already do. When many people in situations similar to mine were kicked off of social assistance and onto the streets in 2002 I had already become safely and securely housed in my subsidized apartment. Not many have enjoyed my good fortune. I have worked hard over the intervening years to raise people's and our governments' awareness about the plight of the homeless and the housing vulnerable. I expect to continue doing this as well as adding seniors' advocacy to my rant sheet.
In the meantime, I remain grateful, for all the good things that are happening, and have happened in my life. And for the gift of rest, which soothes the owie and helps me readjust my sense of proportion.
Tuesday 25 April 2017
Gratitude 44
I am especially grateful that things keep turning out well for me, regardless of how scary it often is when I get started with something. Right now, I seem to have everything that for years remained like components of an elusive dream: stable housing, a steady supply of good and nutritious food to eat, stable employment, money in the bank, friends who love me (or at least seem to like me!), the means to travel and for the most part, inner peace.
I have not become a famous, nor even an established, artist, though I am still an artist. I have not become a famous, nor even an established writer, though I am still a writer. Even though I have left the institutional church (I might return after three years, it`s been one and a half years and it all still feels very up in the air) I am just as strongly and fervently a Christian as ever.
I am grateful that though I am still poor that I have somehow escaped from the poverty trap. I still have very little, materially, but everything that I need. Even though my wages have been frozen at an unethically low cipher, I still have all that I need. I have also recovered, more or less my mental health. I really can`t think of anything else I could possibly want.
I didn`t have the greatest start in life. A childhood of multiple abuse from every member of my family seemed to guarantee that I would go through life a broken and pathetic loser. Then my parents divorced and I was using illegal drugs (just pot) at fourteen. But God intervened through the strategic placing of individuals who mentored me into a rich and amazing life as a Christian.
I did manage to squeak through almost two years of college, and it was the lack of continuing funds that made it necessary for me to quit. Even though I lacked credentials I was able to secure many years of employment in healthcare working in the homes of seniors, chronically and terminally ill adults. This was particularly gratifying work in which I was able to professionally express practical care and love to particularly vulnerable individuals and I felt I could fully express my Christian faith in my work.
I did not live in luxurious surroundings and usually had to settle for substandard and/or shared housing in housekeeping rooms, basement apartments and cheap units in rundown buildings as well as living communally or semi-communally with often interesting people in heritage and character houses. On the whole my experience of shared and semi-shared accommodations has been rich and rewarding with the incredible plethora and often wonderful people I have been privileged to live with. I have also been stuck sharing digs with douchebags and roommates from hell, but the good outweigh the bad by at least three to one.
I was at times incredibly poor, sometimes unemployed, often under-employed and always underpaid. Sometimes the poverty was terrifying and many times I literally had to trust God to dig me out of the various holes I had fallen into. Even when I became homeless, I was surrounded by supportive and caring friends who helped see me through.
I see my difficult life as a kind of apprenticeship. Now that I am older and entering my geezer years I can enjoy a small but decent, quiet and secure apartment where I am never asked to pay more than thirty percent of my income for rent. I work in badly paid employment supporting people living with mental illness, trauma and addictions, but the work is incredibly rewarding, completely Christ-centred, and I always have enough to stuff into my savings account. I travel every year for a month in Latin America where I can improve my Spanish, see old friends and make new friends.
So much has come out well in my life, despite obstacles and limitations. The causes for complaint are always small and minor and as I approach life with an attitude of radical acceptance and gratitude the causes for complaint become even smaller.
Even though I have already been through a health crisis, I cannot think of a time in my life when I have felt this well. At the ripe age of sixty-one.
I don't know what kind of future God will open to me, but it will contain God, the uncontainable and eternal God, and he will make it meaningful because I have gladly and joyfully abandoned myself to him. He gives me a new map every day, only for today. Tomorrow he takes care of... tomorrow, but only when tomorrow becomes today.
I have not become a famous, nor even an established, artist, though I am still an artist. I have not become a famous, nor even an established writer, though I am still a writer. Even though I have left the institutional church (I might return after three years, it`s been one and a half years and it all still feels very up in the air) I am just as strongly and fervently a Christian as ever.
I am grateful that though I am still poor that I have somehow escaped from the poverty trap. I still have very little, materially, but everything that I need. Even though my wages have been frozen at an unethically low cipher, I still have all that I need. I have also recovered, more or less my mental health. I really can`t think of anything else I could possibly want.
I didn`t have the greatest start in life. A childhood of multiple abuse from every member of my family seemed to guarantee that I would go through life a broken and pathetic loser. Then my parents divorced and I was using illegal drugs (just pot) at fourteen. But God intervened through the strategic placing of individuals who mentored me into a rich and amazing life as a Christian.
I did manage to squeak through almost two years of college, and it was the lack of continuing funds that made it necessary for me to quit. Even though I lacked credentials I was able to secure many years of employment in healthcare working in the homes of seniors, chronically and terminally ill adults. This was particularly gratifying work in which I was able to professionally express practical care and love to particularly vulnerable individuals and I felt I could fully express my Christian faith in my work.
I did not live in luxurious surroundings and usually had to settle for substandard and/or shared housing in housekeeping rooms, basement apartments and cheap units in rundown buildings as well as living communally or semi-communally with often interesting people in heritage and character houses. On the whole my experience of shared and semi-shared accommodations has been rich and rewarding with the incredible plethora and often wonderful people I have been privileged to live with. I have also been stuck sharing digs with douchebags and roommates from hell, but the good outweigh the bad by at least three to one.
I was at times incredibly poor, sometimes unemployed, often under-employed and always underpaid. Sometimes the poverty was terrifying and many times I literally had to trust God to dig me out of the various holes I had fallen into. Even when I became homeless, I was surrounded by supportive and caring friends who helped see me through.
I see my difficult life as a kind of apprenticeship. Now that I am older and entering my geezer years I can enjoy a small but decent, quiet and secure apartment where I am never asked to pay more than thirty percent of my income for rent. I work in badly paid employment supporting people living with mental illness, trauma and addictions, but the work is incredibly rewarding, completely Christ-centred, and I always have enough to stuff into my savings account. I travel every year for a month in Latin America where I can improve my Spanish, see old friends and make new friends.
So much has come out well in my life, despite obstacles and limitations. The causes for complaint are always small and minor and as I approach life with an attitude of radical acceptance and gratitude the causes for complaint become even smaller.
Even though I have already been through a health crisis, I cannot think of a time in my life when I have felt this well. At the ripe age of sixty-one.
I don't know what kind of future God will open to me, but it will contain God, the uncontainable and eternal God, and he will make it meaningful because I have gladly and joyfully abandoned myself to him. He gives me a new map every day, only for today. Tomorrow he takes care of... tomorrow, but only when tomorrow becomes today.
Monday 24 April 2017
Gratitude 43
I'm grateful that I do not have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. That isn't my job. This isn't the same as not caring. Rather it is knowing how far to care without harming myself in the process. This is especially important when you work with vulnerable adults. Empathy, and lots of it, is needed to be able to do this job well, but it can't swallow you alive or you are not going to do it well. This goes with living downtown, in a rundown area where there are homeless, beggars and people with addictions (often all the same person) at my doorstep. Likewise the tenants in my building, some who have, and still, suffer dreadfully, mentally, physically or both.
Likewise, I refuse to be defeated by our record homelessness crisis, or the incompetent boneheads we elect who show their incompetence day after day in their fecklessness for dealing with our housing crisis. I will not be cowed by the menace of President Dump in the Whitehouse, nor by that fat little douchebag in North Korea, nor the threat of Marine Le Pen winning the French election. I will not be frightened about climate change.
I am going to continue to care about all these things. Where I am able to do something, I will do it, even if it's just writing something in this blog. I will do it, if it just means performing one act of kindness to a stranger. I will do it, if the only resource available is God, and so I will pray for those people, knowing that God can do more than I can, that he knows them better than I know them, and that it is really my task to be Aaron and God's task to be God.
Yes, we are also part of his work in the way we treat one another. But we also have to know and respect our limits. We can protect our vulnerable beating heart without hardening it. All the sorrow and heartache in the world is not going to prevent me from enjoying a walk, a garden, a flower, a bird, a cat, or a friendly human. Nothing is going to taint for me the pure sweetness of the spring air. And nothing in this world is going to prevent me from laughing, especially at myself.
There is practically nothing we can do to change the world. We can be instruments in our own healing and the healing of others, but we first have to pull our heads out of the fear and panic that results when empathy turns into a devouring monster. We don`t kill it, we don`t drive it away, neither do we lock it in a cage. We learn to live with it, to work with it. We learn to respect and know our limits and we also gain enough love to step bravely beyond our limits to be the people we are called to be.
And when we are able to differentiate between empathy and fear, we will already know we are ready to step out, because we will have already stepped out beyond our limits.
Likewise, I refuse to be defeated by our record homelessness crisis, or the incompetent boneheads we elect who show their incompetence day after day in their fecklessness for dealing with our housing crisis. I will not be cowed by the menace of President Dump in the Whitehouse, nor by that fat little douchebag in North Korea, nor the threat of Marine Le Pen winning the French election. I will not be frightened about climate change.
I am going to continue to care about all these things. Where I am able to do something, I will do it, even if it's just writing something in this blog. I will do it, if it just means performing one act of kindness to a stranger. I will do it, if the only resource available is God, and so I will pray for those people, knowing that God can do more than I can, that he knows them better than I know them, and that it is really my task to be Aaron and God's task to be God.
Yes, we are also part of his work in the way we treat one another. But we also have to know and respect our limits. We can protect our vulnerable beating heart without hardening it. All the sorrow and heartache in the world is not going to prevent me from enjoying a walk, a garden, a flower, a bird, a cat, or a friendly human. Nothing is going to taint for me the pure sweetness of the spring air. And nothing in this world is going to prevent me from laughing, especially at myself.
There is practically nothing we can do to change the world. We can be instruments in our own healing and the healing of others, but we first have to pull our heads out of the fear and panic that results when empathy turns into a devouring monster. We don`t kill it, we don`t drive it away, neither do we lock it in a cage. We learn to live with it, to work with it. We learn to respect and know our limits and we also gain enough love to step bravely beyond our limits to be the people we are called to be.
And when we are able to differentiate between empathy and fear, we will already know we are ready to step out, because we will have already stepped out beyond our limits.
Sunday 23 April 2017
Gratitude 42
I am grateful for our perfect imperfection. I am not in the habit of repeating from previous posts. Here is an excerpt from the novel I wrote, "The Thirteen Crucifixions." It is essentially a candid dialogue between Sheila, a sixty-something woman who owns a diner and one of her regulars, a young punk girl in her early twenties, Melissa:
“The Steel Toe. Have you heard of it?”
“It’s down at the other end of Commercial?”
“Near Hastings. This is my second day. I start at five. I don’t even feel like working now.”
“Well, you have had a terrible upset.”
“How could he do such a thing?”
“There could be any number of reasons. Best let it be.”
“It’s hard.”
“I know.” Sheila refilled Melissa’s cup.
“Just half, please. I’ll be flying out of here if I have any more.”
“Did you get any rest”, Sheila said sitting down with her.
“Some. I mostly just lay there and stared. “Oh Gawd—I don’t want to go into work today.”
“Then maybe you’d like to go home.”
“It’s only my second day. I don’t think it would look very good.”
“You sound like a very responsible person.”
“Well, I am really. Don’t let the green hair fool you. I have done some pretty stupid things but I’ve also tried to own up to them.”
“That’s what makes life interesting.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“How did you meet?”
“Stefan? On the street. We kinda rescued each other.”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Probably. He’s done this before. Problem is he thinks he’s no good. For anyone. He really hates what he is?”
“Then there isn’t much you can really do for him.”
“No. There’s not. I try. I try to assure him that he’s attractive, that he’s a good person. That he’s worthwhile. Only he just doesn’t seem to believe it. And it’s not really my job anyway but I think it is because he’s been real good to me, and he’s just so pathetic and full of need—he needs a mom. But I can’t be his mom. I need mothering.”
“We all do. Even me.”
“But you’re a mother yourself.”
“Even mothers need mothering. And sometimes especially mothers.”
“One day I want to have kids. Not yet. I’m nowhere near being ready yet. I was pregnant last winter. I ended it.”
“Stefan’s?”
. “No, thank God. This couple I was living with in West Van wanted me to be surrogate mother for them. I refused. They were keeping me as their slave, or trying to. I escaped. It was that night downtown that I met Stefan. I had some money, so we got a room together. The next day I went to the Every Woman Clinic. Stefan came with me. Like I just said, he doesn’t know how good he is. But I also wish that it was a choice I didn’t have to make, and I think that’s why I’m so upset lately.”
“I think a lot of women feel the way you do about abortion.
“You’re not pro-life I hope.”
“Pro-choice, actually. But it still isn’t a perfect solution. There are no perfect solutions. To anything. There’s always going to be consequences. There will always be compromises to be made, there will always be a mess to clean up. No matter how hard we try to avoid making one.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I KNOW it.”
“And it always has to be like that.”
“I don’t know if it has to. But that’s the way it is.”
“But you say it doesn’t have to.”
“All right—say it doesn’t.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I don’t know. Keep trying I suppose.”
“But what if we keep messing up?”
“But isn’t that how we learn? Through our mistakes? By messing up?”
“So what you’re saying then is we’re really here to learn. That it doesn’t matter if we fuck-up or not—excuse my language please.”
“I wouldn’t say it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. That’s why we have to try not to.”
“But why does it matter?”
“I suppose it comes back to being responsible. To accepting responsibility.”
“But why bother if we’re going to keep messing up anyway?”
“Because this way we can say that at least we tried?”
“I dunno—that sounds pretty lame, if you ask me.”
“But does it?” Sheila said. “Because this way, by trying, by saying that we tried, it sets a whole different process in motion.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, okay, we try to do good. But we mess up for having tried. At least we’re more likely to see where we’ve messed up, and try to do something to rectify it, whereas, if we just don’t care anyway, we’re not going to recognize much of anything, and things will just keep getting worse before we all drown in the end results of our irresponsible behaviour.”
“But even if we try to make our mistakes better, aren’t we still going to screw up some more?”
“We likely will. I mean, look at Germany after the war. They were a nation destroyed by their own evil. So along came the Americans, the well-intentioned conquerors with their Marshall Plan. So they rebuilt Germany economically, politically. But they were never able to conquer Nazism, which especially since reunification has become an increasing menace. Things are still less than perfect, but what they have now is much better than nothing.”
“So there will never be such a thing as a solution.”
“There will never be such a thing as a perfect solution.”
“So we’re cursed with being imperfect.”
“No. Not cursed. Blessed.”
“Which makes imperfection our perfection.”
“I’ve never thought of it that way”, Sheila said. “You are a very wise young woman.”
“I’d say the same about you.”
“Well, I’d hardly call myself young. As for being wise—”
“Learning being wise?”
“Well, I suppose we’re all getting wisdom. Or we have that opportunity, that choice we can make.”
“So it’s all about the getting of wisdom, this mess-making and bad choices”, Melissa said.
“I suppose it is”, Sheila said, “I suppose that it is.”
Saturday 22 April 2017
Gratitude 41
First, an afterword about yesterday's post. I was chatting briefly with the cashier at my local Shopper's Drug Mart, where every Saturday morning I purchase the weekend Globe and Mail. When I commented that I was going to read it at home with coffee and breakfast she mentioned how much she also enjoys this kind of activity, for when she needs "me" time. She said she really appreciates the break because she has three babies to raise: her two small children and her husband! 'Nuff said.
By the way, having no kids, or spouse of any gender, nor any other dependents, I am very grateful that I have unlimited "me" time. Perhaps a little too unlimited. I am also grateful for my job working with vulnerable adults with mental health challenges, because it helps me focus on other peoples' needs and prevents me from becoming incurably self-centred.
I am also grateful for the plenty of having enough. I really can't understand people who are greedy, acquisitive, selfish, and think only of themselves and their own wellbeing. There are too many with this kind of mentality, in this country, and in this province. I believe I can speak with a little bit of authority here. I have always had very little, but even when I was very poor I felt rich. Yes, we were eating wild plants harvested from our back yard and washing our clothes by hand, as well as having to walk the ten miles or so into downtown to do our ministry work, given that we couldn't even afford bus fare. But all our needs were still provided for, one way or another, sometimes miraculously.
When I hear people, such as Andrew Wilkinson, one of the BC Liberal incumbent candidates for our current provincial election, refer to taxation as robbing people of their hard-earned money I get particularly concerned. Of course he says things like that to appeal to his voter base. Fiscally conservative politicians get elected for appealing to the greed and selfishness of their supporters. The BC Liberal Party is a party of the well-off and well-moneyed and these are the people who are generally not in the least interested in sharing their largesse. Greed creates wealth and wealth is fuelled by greed. It is a sad and tragic irony, but with few exceptions, wealth tends to make people even more greedy and less compassionate and more judgmental of those who have not.
By the same token, there appears to be a huge stigma in our country against taxation, as though it is cruel and unusual punishment that we each pay our share to support the common good. Right wing political demagogues make tonnes of hay appealing to this reptilian-brained greed and selfishness in their backers, insisting that no one has the right to deprive them of their hard-earned money, especially to siphon it off to the many programs for taking care of the Great Unwashed.
If we examine this picture with clear minds, we are bound to see that if we have such a large proportion of people on low incomes who live in inadequate or no housing with laundry lists of health, economic and social problems it is because we have become so dependent upon the capitalist system, which creates winners and losers. If for whichever reason you are not going to compete well, if you do not have the stuff to be successful in business or in entrepreneurship, then those who have already made it will simply assume that you are lazy, that you are a loser, and that no matter what your obstacles may be, somehow you are going to deserve the horrible and miserable lot that you end up with. Natural Selection. Social Darwinism 101. To the moneyed and successful we are already dead, which I also believe is a line that the ignominious Kevin O'Leary famously uses, or, ``You are dead to me``.
Yes, it will require some modest tax increases for the upper-incomed and corporations to carry out the various social programs and services needed to improve our collective life: universal affordable daycare, health care services that include universally subsidized pharmaceuticals and dentistry, complete housing services for the homeless and low-incomed, enhanced harm-reduction and treatment options for people with substance dependencies, to name but a few. Where is the money going to come from? From the uber-rich who have way more than they know what to do with or will ever be able to use. Who is going to benefit? All of us. With an enhanced availability of quality housing and universal social services we are also going to enjoy a much healthier social infrastructure, much less money being squandered on emergency services and significant reductions in crime. Also, the new social services and programs will create lasting jobs and careers for well-paid professionals who will be re-investing their earnings into the economy through shopping and patronizing businesses and services, as well as in the form of income taxes. Everyone stands to win. The only thing that is getting in our way is people's greed, selfishness and fear, and we really need to work hard at educating ourselves and one another.
By the way, here is a shout-out to my many readers in France. Thank you for your ongoing support of my blog through your readership and interest. And please, tomorrow, vote with your heads, not with your fears. If Marine Le Pen and her fascists are allowed to win you will be dragging France backward and taking the rest of Europe with you. We do not need a repeat of Italy in the twenties and of Germany during the thirties. Get over your fears and please take a page from our Canadian book about welcoming and integrating immigrant peoples, especially refugees.
By the way, having no kids, or spouse of any gender, nor any other dependents, I am very grateful that I have unlimited "me" time. Perhaps a little too unlimited. I am also grateful for my job working with vulnerable adults with mental health challenges, because it helps me focus on other peoples' needs and prevents me from becoming incurably self-centred.
I am also grateful for the plenty of having enough. I really can't understand people who are greedy, acquisitive, selfish, and think only of themselves and their own wellbeing. There are too many with this kind of mentality, in this country, and in this province. I believe I can speak with a little bit of authority here. I have always had very little, but even when I was very poor I felt rich. Yes, we were eating wild plants harvested from our back yard and washing our clothes by hand, as well as having to walk the ten miles or so into downtown to do our ministry work, given that we couldn't even afford bus fare. But all our needs were still provided for, one way or another, sometimes miraculously.
When I hear people, such as Andrew Wilkinson, one of the BC Liberal incumbent candidates for our current provincial election, refer to taxation as robbing people of their hard-earned money I get particularly concerned. Of course he says things like that to appeal to his voter base. Fiscally conservative politicians get elected for appealing to the greed and selfishness of their supporters. The BC Liberal Party is a party of the well-off and well-moneyed and these are the people who are generally not in the least interested in sharing their largesse. Greed creates wealth and wealth is fuelled by greed. It is a sad and tragic irony, but with few exceptions, wealth tends to make people even more greedy and less compassionate and more judgmental of those who have not.
By the same token, there appears to be a huge stigma in our country against taxation, as though it is cruel and unusual punishment that we each pay our share to support the common good. Right wing political demagogues make tonnes of hay appealing to this reptilian-brained greed and selfishness in their backers, insisting that no one has the right to deprive them of their hard-earned money, especially to siphon it off to the many programs for taking care of the Great Unwashed.
If we examine this picture with clear minds, we are bound to see that if we have such a large proportion of people on low incomes who live in inadequate or no housing with laundry lists of health, economic and social problems it is because we have become so dependent upon the capitalist system, which creates winners and losers. If for whichever reason you are not going to compete well, if you do not have the stuff to be successful in business or in entrepreneurship, then those who have already made it will simply assume that you are lazy, that you are a loser, and that no matter what your obstacles may be, somehow you are going to deserve the horrible and miserable lot that you end up with. Natural Selection. Social Darwinism 101. To the moneyed and successful we are already dead, which I also believe is a line that the ignominious Kevin O'Leary famously uses, or, ``You are dead to me``.
Yes, it will require some modest tax increases for the upper-incomed and corporations to carry out the various social programs and services needed to improve our collective life: universal affordable daycare, health care services that include universally subsidized pharmaceuticals and dentistry, complete housing services for the homeless and low-incomed, enhanced harm-reduction and treatment options for people with substance dependencies, to name but a few. Where is the money going to come from? From the uber-rich who have way more than they know what to do with or will ever be able to use. Who is going to benefit? All of us. With an enhanced availability of quality housing and universal social services we are also going to enjoy a much healthier social infrastructure, much less money being squandered on emergency services and significant reductions in crime. Also, the new social services and programs will create lasting jobs and careers for well-paid professionals who will be re-investing their earnings into the economy through shopping and patronizing businesses and services, as well as in the form of income taxes. Everyone stands to win. The only thing that is getting in our way is people's greed, selfishness and fear, and we really need to work hard at educating ourselves and one another.
By the way, here is a shout-out to my many readers in France. Thank you for your ongoing support of my blog through your readership and interest. And please, tomorrow, vote with your heads, not with your fears. If Marine Le Pen and her fascists are allowed to win you will be dragging France backward and taking the rest of Europe with you. We do not need a repeat of Italy in the twenties and of Germany during the thirties. Get over your fears and please take a page from our Canadian book about welcoming and integrating immigrant peoples, especially refugees.
Friday 21 April 2017
Gratitude 40
Ah, what`s in a number? This is number forty in my Gratitude series. Like forty days and forty nights of the Ark of Noah floating on the waters that flooded the earth. Like the forty years that Moses led the Children of Israel as they wandered through the desert (what should have been an eleven day journey) Jesus' forty day fast in the desert. The number forty suggests, or symbolizes, a period of waiting and preparation, or the ending of one cycle and the start of a new one.
And, are you ready for this one, Gentle Reader. Today, my blog has had 666 hits! Ooh, Lordy! It doesn't get numerically weirder, does it now? And, no, I am not going to dignify this nonsense by looking up the significance of 666! Do the math, yourselves!
I am rather grateful for women. Up to a point. Where would we be without that very significant fifty percent of humanity? Where would a lot of men be, without wives or girlfriends? That's right, Gentle Reader, most of us would be pretty darn lost. Where would a lot of women be, without husbands or boyfriends? I would imagine, happier and less stressed-out?
This isn't to say that all men are useless vegetables without wifey nearby to wipe their stinky bums for them. Some, but not many, are pretty balanced, responsible and very able to take care of themselves. And maybe one or two of them are straight cis males. Gay, queer, and unlabled asexuals such as myself, are generally pretty competent and house-broken. But almost everyone else who pees while standing? Useless as two tits on a bull.
I often see this in public. Men tend to be a lot more selfish than women. Why? I wonder. Perhaps the way we are raised? Boys are still raised to be rugged, and by extension, selfish, individualists. Today, for example, in a café, there was a well-dressed, perfectly groomed and rather good-looking young man seated by the door. A young mother pushing a kid and a stroller while carrying a baby was just starting to open the door to get in. I, an elderly "gentleman" of sixty-one, sprang up to hold the door open for her. That handsome but useless pile of DNA by the door didn't even trouble to notice. Likewise when she was on her way out. I helped her with the door and Mr. handsome and selfish and useless did not budge off of his likely hairy butt. Now just to be careful not to demonize all young males, there was one kind young man who helped me hold the door open the first time. So this is a shout out to the young white guy with fair hair and a blue shirt who helped me hold the door open for the mom with two kids. You, young man, would make an awesome father!
The same thing happened while on the bus today. An elderly couple got on and it wasn't the fit looking thirty-something male who budged off his courtesy seat, but two twenty-ish Asian women.
The same thing happened while on the bus today. An elderly couple got on and it wasn't the fit looking thirty-something male who budged off his courtesy seat, but two twenty-ish Asian women.
From time to time, Gentle Reader, I am not above publicly shaming the already-deserving, so I will do my best to out both those selfish males. The one in the café was seated in Breka Café on the corner of Davie and Hornby Street on a stool at the counter by the window just to the left of the front door. He is tall, in his mid or late twenties with short dark hair and a short neatly-trimmed beard. There was a young woman, blonde, with him. The date today, by the way, is Friday, 21 April. On the bus, it was a man somewhere in his thirties, on the tall side, with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was hogging the courtesy seat on the right side of the bus and had a roller wheel suitcase. It was a number four UBC bus, westbound on W. Fourth Avenue today, at around 2:30. That's right, guys, never piss off a blogger (so sue me!)
It is going to take a lot of work, effort, patience and time to educate young males, about women, about being kind, compassionate and generous, about learning how to take care of themselves, about how to form and thrive in healthy relationships. About how to be good, caring and responsible citizens, friends, lovers, partners, husbands, sons and fathers. About how to recover or protect themselves from the same kind of toxic masculinity that plunged us into two world wars the previous century and still threatens us in the twenty-first century with global annihilation. It's likely too late for the two unfortunate wankers I have just outed but this badly needs to be done, here and elsewhere in the world, if we want to really survive as a species, at least into the twenty-second century.
It is going to take a lot of work, effort, patience and time to educate young males, about women, about being kind, compassionate and generous, about learning how to take care of themselves, about how to form and thrive in healthy relationships. About how to be good, caring and responsible citizens, friends, lovers, partners, husbands, sons and fathers. About how to recover or protect themselves from the same kind of toxic masculinity that plunged us into two world wars the previous century and still threatens us in the twenty-first century with global annihilation. It's likely too late for the two unfortunate wankers I have just outed but this badly needs to be done, here and elsewhere in the world, if we want to really survive as a species, at least into the twenty-second century.
Thursday 20 April 2017
Gratitude 39
I am so grateful for my recliner chair. I have had it now for over a year, since October 2015. I didn't intend to get a recliner, just a second, alternative comfy chair, at a relatively affordable price, especially for the comfort of visitors. So, I spent a few months looking around. Second hand was not an option. There have been so many nightmares with bedbugs hitch hiking in second hand soft furniture that this is a risk I simply refuse to take. And, yes, Gentle Reader, my apartment has already had those repulsive little vampires, already documented on these pages and happily dead and gone since July last year. Never again!
I spent over two hundred bucks on this chair. I got it at London Drugs. It isn't too impressive looking. It's kind of a cold dark gray colour, like office furniture. The multi-hued afghan my late friend, Doreen, made for me many years ago covers it beautifully. When it was delivered, by a rather impatient delivery guy, it arrived in a box and I basically had to assemble it myself, Ikea style. It wasn't difficult. While I was unpacking it I wondered about getting a footstool, and why I hadn't just looked for a recliner, instead. I put the chair together, sat on it for its maiden voyage, leaned back and...Surprise!
I have spent much of the later half of this afternoon leaning back in my dear recliner, sometimes napping, sometimes reading the local community papers, listening to CBC, sipping hot chocolate made from scratch, and munching on Gruyere cheese and Breton crackers. I was feeling a bit tired and fragile when I arrived home. I don't know why. Sometimes my clients supervisors, and idiots in public places, can really get to me. I did have a horrible bus driver on the way home, but I think I might have felt a bit better had I said thank you as I disboarded, as I usually do, but this was such a lousy, inconsiderate and grumpy driver that I really didn't want to cast pearls before swine. Even if I am casting pearls before swine when I say thank you to ungrateful swine, perhaps I am the swine who really benefits from that simple act of kindness, even if it is wasted, at least I can feel better. Dontcha think, Gentle Reader?
I still think that gratitude is undervalued, and even should be shown to the undeserving, perhaps as a subtle but kind way of communicating. I am also grateful for the beautiful day today, and if you are wondering why I am indoors on such a lovely spring day, do keep in mind that before, in between and following my professional assignments today I have walked, outside, in some lovely neighbourhoods, at least eight miles. And for this I always give thanks.
I spent over two hundred bucks on this chair. I got it at London Drugs. It isn't too impressive looking. It's kind of a cold dark gray colour, like office furniture. The multi-hued afghan my late friend, Doreen, made for me many years ago covers it beautifully. When it was delivered, by a rather impatient delivery guy, it arrived in a box and I basically had to assemble it myself, Ikea style. It wasn't difficult. While I was unpacking it I wondered about getting a footstool, and why I hadn't just looked for a recliner, instead. I put the chair together, sat on it for its maiden voyage, leaned back and...Surprise!
I have spent much of the later half of this afternoon leaning back in my dear recliner, sometimes napping, sometimes reading the local community papers, listening to CBC, sipping hot chocolate made from scratch, and munching on Gruyere cheese and Breton crackers. I was feeling a bit tired and fragile when I arrived home. I don't know why. Sometimes my clients supervisors, and idiots in public places, can really get to me. I did have a horrible bus driver on the way home, but I think I might have felt a bit better had I said thank you as I disboarded, as I usually do, but this was such a lousy, inconsiderate and grumpy driver that I really didn't want to cast pearls before swine. Even if I am casting pearls before swine when I say thank you to ungrateful swine, perhaps I am the swine who really benefits from that simple act of kindness, even if it is wasted, at least I can feel better. Dontcha think, Gentle Reader?
I still think that gratitude is undervalued, and even should be shown to the undeserving, perhaps as a subtle but kind way of communicating. I am also grateful for the beautiful day today, and if you are wondering why I am indoors on such a lovely spring day, do keep in mind that before, in between and following my professional assignments today I have walked, outside, in some lovely neighbourhoods, at least eight miles. And for this I always give thanks.
Wednesday 19 April 2017
Gratitude 38
I am grateful for the spaces in between. I have mentioned before that I am an avid walker and that I try to log at least five miles every day, usually accomplishing more than seven. I do this every day without fail. If I have a lot of work to do on any given day I simply integrate time to walk. It is my primary means of exercise and fitness. I need to walk like this every day in order to feel completely well, to be fully human.
I have many different strategies. I find that what works best is for me to leave a bit early every day and walk at least partway to my first work assignment. This is often but not always possible. Today, following a previous night of inferior quality sleep I just needed to stay close to my bed a bit later than usual, giving me just two hours to get everything done and ready at a comfortable pace while preparing for my day.
I did manage to walk a half mile to the Canada Line station. When I got close to my destination, I noticed that I could walk for another twenty minutes, or one mile, and make it to my client on time. There was a large beautiful park on the way, so that's how I traced my route. Despite the obese man in sunglasses and neon orange sneakers verbally abusing his little dog on a leash, swearing quite loudly and shamelessly at the poor little animal, it was still an enjoyable walk. I was still ten minutes early so I walked still a bit more. I had logged one and a half miles. My client and I managed another half mile walking in the mall, or ten minutes. That's two miles.
I had a noon meeting with a supervisor to hurry to. I arrived in the area twenty minutes early, so I walked around a bit, one more hour, or three miles. The meeting with my supervisor, which often runs more like hanging out in a coffee shop between two old friends, lasted over an hour. We talked some about how I am planning my retirement years: I will likely keep working, just not fulltime, while spending more time at other things that I enjoy. I walked to my next appointment, detouring a bit and fit in another hour or three miles. Six miles of walking. Despite the rain at times, and the unseasonably cool weather, the fragrances and flowers and green leaves of spring have been holding me spellbound. This wonder of new life that smacks us upside the head and full in the face every year, and yet so unappreciated. I fill my lungs with the sweet perfume of damp warming soil, tree resin, flowers and unfurling leaves as I count each raindrop that falls on my unprotected head and wander along quiet residential streets as though in a drunken bacchanalian frenzy.
My client never showed up. I enjoyed a can of V-8 as I waited for him in the cafeteria of the community centre while working on my current drawing. A half hour later I wandered along more greening neighbourhoods of the unfurling spring, and taking care to say hi to strangers along the way, covering another two miles before stopping to buy Breton crackers, bananas and red wine vinegar. On the Canada Line I had the courage to tell the frail elderly lady standing in front of me that I would see that someone gave her their seat and a young woman seated just below me promptly sprang up and gave her the seat. I arrived downtown and walked mostly uphill another half mile.
Factoring out possible exaggerations I must have walked at least eight miles today. At home, I enjoyed homemade cocoa, classical music and finished my paperwork, then resumed work on my current drawing. Here is the bird I am interpreting, a purple-breasted sunbird from Rwanda
To imagine that any one of those beautiful, delicate little jewels of a bird, could have been drinking nectar from a hibiscus, while nearby thousands of innocents were being slaughtered in 1994. This bird is so beautiful, that it hurts.
I have many different strategies. I find that what works best is for me to leave a bit early every day and walk at least partway to my first work assignment. This is often but not always possible. Today, following a previous night of inferior quality sleep I just needed to stay close to my bed a bit later than usual, giving me just two hours to get everything done and ready at a comfortable pace while preparing for my day.
I did manage to walk a half mile to the Canada Line station. When I got close to my destination, I noticed that I could walk for another twenty minutes, or one mile, and make it to my client on time. There was a large beautiful park on the way, so that's how I traced my route. Despite the obese man in sunglasses and neon orange sneakers verbally abusing his little dog on a leash, swearing quite loudly and shamelessly at the poor little animal, it was still an enjoyable walk. I was still ten minutes early so I walked still a bit more. I had logged one and a half miles. My client and I managed another half mile walking in the mall, or ten minutes. That's two miles.
I had a noon meeting with a supervisor to hurry to. I arrived in the area twenty minutes early, so I walked around a bit, one more hour, or three miles. The meeting with my supervisor, which often runs more like hanging out in a coffee shop between two old friends, lasted over an hour. We talked some about how I am planning my retirement years: I will likely keep working, just not fulltime, while spending more time at other things that I enjoy. I walked to my next appointment, detouring a bit and fit in another hour or three miles. Six miles of walking. Despite the rain at times, and the unseasonably cool weather, the fragrances and flowers and green leaves of spring have been holding me spellbound. This wonder of new life that smacks us upside the head and full in the face every year, and yet so unappreciated. I fill my lungs with the sweet perfume of damp warming soil, tree resin, flowers and unfurling leaves as I count each raindrop that falls on my unprotected head and wander along quiet residential streets as though in a drunken bacchanalian frenzy.
My client never showed up. I enjoyed a can of V-8 as I waited for him in the cafeteria of the community centre while working on my current drawing. A half hour later I wandered along more greening neighbourhoods of the unfurling spring, and taking care to say hi to strangers along the way, covering another two miles before stopping to buy Breton crackers, bananas and red wine vinegar. On the Canada Line I had the courage to tell the frail elderly lady standing in front of me that I would see that someone gave her their seat and a young woman seated just below me promptly sprang up and gave her the seat. I arrived downtown and walked mostly uphill another half mile.
Factoring out possible exaggerations I must have walked at least eight miles today. At home, I enjoyed homemade cocoa, classical music and finished my paperwork, then resumed work on my current drawing. Here is the bird I am interpreting, a purple-breasted sunbird from Rwanda
To imagine that any one of those beautiful, delicate little jewels of a bird, could have been drinking nectar from a hibiscus, while nearby thousands of innocents were being slaughtered in 1994. This bird is so beautiful, that it hurts.
Tuesday 18 April 2017
Gratitude 37
How about all those small things that happen every day, which could go wrong but usually don't.? I just noticed that I didn't have to restart my computer when I came home and it has occurred to me to offer up a small prayer of thanksgiving for this. For that matter, I woke up way too early this morning and had to nap for almost two hours after breakfast. I am thankful that I haven't felt too tired today and have been able to do well at work with my clients. Moreover, I do not feel exhausted upon returning home today. For this I am thankful. I can do paperwork, write my blog, do dinner, and generally enjoy my daily denouement this evening before packing it in for the night. I am also grateful for my snack of cheese and crackers (both delicious, Breton with extra old cheddar, white of course) before starting dinner. Wow, the things we take for granted!
My health is another cause for thanksgiving. I am sixty-one without diabetes or high blood pressure, nor heart disease, and if I have arthritis it is very mild. My health concerns are still minor, despite my thyroid and pituitary issues, but the medication keeps everything in check.
Every morning I wake up in the same bed without fear of losing my home or having to seek elsewhere to live. I never have to choose, any more, between eating and paying my rent on time. I no longer live in fear of losing my job. Even though I have no family I have friends and the ability to be alone. I have an enviable home library in two languages (English and Spanish) and I still haven't read most of my books. I have easy access to news, current and socially relevant programming and entertainment, thanks to Google and YouTube, as well as the CBC on my radio. I love making art and have an embarrassment of riches for materials to work with.
Nature is easily accessible where I live and I am able to walk daily, enjoyably and for long distances, maintaining a healthy weight and level of fitness. Even when I feel empty, anxious and at a loss for what to do with myself, I always seem to find some means or avenue of escape.
I always seem to have access to good, delicious and nutritious food to cook and eat. I love cooking and making bread and sometimes cookies. There is really nothing more that I could possibly want in life. I recognize the importance of reaching out to others. Indeed, my life would be empty and meaningless if I didn't make some effort to care for others, to express gratitude for their friendship, for their role in my life and for the privilege of having a role in theirs.
Even though I am entering into what they call in Spanish, la tercera edad, or the third and final stage of life, I don't feel like it's time to end things, but that I am going to somehow go on learning, experiencing and experimenting. I look forward to new lessons, new experiences, new places to travel to, new people to meet, know, befriend and enjoy, and new lessons in humility.
I am thankful for the many gifts in my life as I am for the many bumps and grinds along the way that hopefully keep me from getting too proud. I am thankful that these humiliations, major and minor, can also teach me the value of humour and of laughter, especially at myself.
My health is another cause for thanksgiving. I am sixty-one without diabetes or high blood pressure, nor heart disease, and if I have arthritis it is very mild. My health concerns are still minor, despite my thyroid and pituitary issues, but the medication keeps everything in check.
Every morning I wake up in the same bed without fear of losing my home or having to seek elsewhere to live. I never have to choose, any more, between eating and paying my rent on time. I no longer live in fear of losing my job. Even though I have no family I have friends and the ability to be alone. I have an enviable home library in two languages (English and Spanish) and I still haven't read most of my books. I have easy access to news, current and socially relevant programming and entertainment, thanks to Google and YouTube, as well as the CBC on my radio. I love making art and have an embarrassment of riches for materials to work with.
Nature is easily accessible where I live and I am able to walk daily, enjoyably and for long distances, maintaining a healthy weight and level of fitness. Even when I feel empty, anxious and at a loss for what to do with myself, I always seem to find some means or avenue of escape.
I always seem to have access to good, delicious and nutritious food to cook and eat. I love cooking and making bread and sometimes cookies. There is really nothing more that I could possibly want in life. I recognize the importance of reaching out to others. Indeed, my life would be empty and meaningless if I didn't make some effort to care for others, to express gratitude for their friendship, for their role in my life and for the privilege of having a role in theirs.
Even though I am entering into what they call in Spanish, la tercera edad, or the third and final stage of life, I don't feel like it's time to end things, but that I am going to somehow go on learning, experiencing and experimenting. I look forward to new lessons, new experiences, new places to travel to, new people to meet, know, befriend and enjoy, and new lessons in humility.
I am thankful for the many gifts in my life as I am for the many bumps and grinds along the way that hopefully keep me from getting too proud. I am thankful that these humiliations, major and minor, can also teach me the value of humour and of laughter, especially at myself.
Monday 17 April 2017
Gratitude 36
I am grateful for four day long weekends. I do not get paid for Good Friday or Easter Monday, unfortunately, being a contract worker, neither am I allowed to work those days, so it's pretty unfair, eh? On the other hand, on my low wage I am still able to travel every year with just a little careful budgeting, so this is something else to be grateful for.
This is Easter Monday and I am listening to the usual bullshit propaganda on the radio news whenever an electoral campaign is underway. Right now the incumbent premier is crowing about how her socially irresponsible government creates jobs! jobs! jobs! She does not say how much these new workers are making or if they can make ends meet while paying inflated housing costs. That woman is deplorable and I hope she gets her ass kicked all the way past Jupiter come election day.
I have been spending the day alone. It felt a bit awkward at first, given that I still have a bit of an emotional hangover from yesterday. I also had to figure out what exactly I was going to do. It is still awkward for me to have an entire unscripted day to fill. This used to be the norm for me. In recent years, my work and my social engagements have made it so necessary for me to carefully orchestrate and discipline my life. When a day of nothing and no one suddenly presents itself, I am at first going to feel a bit lost.
I think of this as a practice run for retirement. There will come a time when days like this are going to be the norm and not the exception. I have no family and my social life tends to be a bit on the thin side. Every morning, for a while anyway, I am going to have to address and confront my inner void, my soul-emptiness.
It isn't as hard as it seems. I decided on a plan, following breakfast and the last half hour of a film in Spanish on YouTube. I would take the bus to Shaughnessy, then walk three miles to my favourite Saturday café, although today has been Monday, at least since it began, just following Sunday. The walk was enjoyable, and invigorating. It has been a little bit warmer today, not as warm as yesterday but I could still walk around comfortably without my winter coat. The trees are wearing more green, the flowers are visually intoxicating and the fragrances are indeed the classic fragrances of spring.
The café was closed today and I had to use the bathroom, so I took the bus home. I decided to treat my apartment like the café. I threw together a light lunch and got to work on the drawing that I finished today, while listening to CBC. An hour and a half later I walked over the bridge and said hi to a few strangers, then arrived at Granville Island where I bought fair trade cocoa at the Ten Thousand Villages store which is operated by the Mennonite Central Committee. I walked back over the bridge, enjoying the moment, the movement, the fresh cool air, the unfolding scenery of trees buildings, ocean, sky and mountains. I stopped at the local Shoppers for milk and eggs where the older Filipina woman on duty told me about all the food she ate during Easter.
Back at home I made cocoa while listening to music, then got back to work, this time on a new drawing, sent an email to a friend about meeting for coffee soon, then later fell into a luxurious nap while leaning back in my recliner chair. Now dinner is almost made, I've taken out the recycling and once again I have burnt the Brussels sprouts.
It seems that a day spent close to home with a couple of long walks has been just what I've been needing. I'm usually out for the whole day. I must have been needing to slow down, become more centred in myself (not at all the same as being self-centred, by the way!) through being more centred in my living space. I have finished dinner, I no longer feel lost. I have made peace with my inner void and my soul is no longer empty. It probably never was.
This is Easter Monday and I am listening to the usual bullshit propaganda on the radio news whenever an electoral campaign is underway. Right now the incumbent premier is crowing about how her socially irresponsible government creates jobs! jobs! jobs! She does not say how much these new workers are making or if they can make ends meet while paying inflated housing costs. That woman is deplorable and I hope she gets her ass kicked all the way past Jupiter come election day.
I have been spending the day alone. It felt a bit awkward at first, given that I still have a bit of an emotional hangover from yesterday. I also had to figure out what exactly I was going to do. It is still awkward for me to have an entire unscripted day to fill. This used to be the norm for me. In recent years, my work and my social engagements have made it so necessary for me to carefully orchestrate and discipline my life. When a day of nothing and no one suddenly presents itself, I am at first going to feel a bit lost.
I think of this as a practice run for retirement. There will come a time when days like this are going to be the norm and not the exception. I have no family and my social life tends to be a bit on the thin side. Every morning, for a while anyway, I am going to have to address and confront my inner void, my soul-emptiness.
It isn't as hard as it seems. I decided on a plan, following breakfast and the last half hour of a film in Spanish on YouTube. I would take the bus to Shaughnessy, then walk three miles to my favourite Saturday café, although today has been Monday, at least since it began, just following Sunday. The walk was enjoyable, and invigorating. It has been a little bit warmer today, not as warm as yesterday but I could still walk around comfortably without my winter coat. The trees are wearing more green, the flowers are visually intoxicating and the fragrances are indeed the classic fragrances of spring.
The café was closed today and I had to use the bathroom, so I took the bus home. I decided to treat my apartment like the café. I threw together a light lunch and got to work on the drawing that I finished today, while listening to CBC. An hour and a half later I walked over the bridge and said hi to a few strangers, then arrived at Granville Island where I bought fair trade cocoa at the Ten Thousand Villages store which is operated by the Mennonite Central Committee. I walked back over the bridge, enjoying the moment, the movement, the fresh cool air, the unfolding scenery of trees buildings, ocean, sky and mountains. I stopped at the local Shoppers for milk and eggs where the older Filipina woman on duty told me about all the food she ate during Easter.
Back at home I made cocoa while listening to music, then got back to work, this time on a new drawing, sent an email to a friend about meeting for coffee soon, then later fell into a luxurious nap while leaning back in my recliner chair. Now dinner is almost made, I've taken out the recycling and once again I have burnt the Brussels sprouts.
It seems that a day spent close to home with a couple of long walks has been just what I've been needing. I'm usually out for the whole day. I must have been needing to slow down, become more centred in myself (not at all the same as being self-centred, by the way!) through being more centred in my living space. I have finished dinner, I no longer feel lost. I have made peace with my inner void and my soul is no longer empty. It probably never was.
Sunday 16 April 2017
Gratitude 35
I am grateful for Easter. I am grateful for Jesus. I am grateful that he did not stay dead in the tomb but rose to new life imparting to us the promise of new hope and new life. I am grateful that this year, despite my lack of church attendance, that this beautiful truth is more real for me than it's ever been.
I am also grateful that I no longer feel obligated nor under pressure to convince or explain to atheists and other nonbelievers about this beautiful truth. It is a waste of breath, time and energy. In fact, I will only speak openly about my faith to others if it is really clear that it will be a positive and constructive conversation. Otherwise, much better to keep my enlightenment to myself and just hope and pray that in the way I behave towards others there will already be plenty of information to persuade others about the Gospel. On one of my better days, maybe.
I think that refusing to swallow the bait is even more important than talking about it. This doesn't mean that others still won't be offended. I remember one visit years ago, back in 2002, I think when I was having tea with my step-cousin, now sadly departed from us. She had a friend over. When I was asked about where I would be going the next few days I replied vaguely about wanting to go wherever God appeared to be wanting to lead me. Her friend tried to get a religious discussion going. I sensed his lack of good will and refused to nibble. I politely replied that my faith is something very personal and I usually prefer not to talk about it. An uncomfortable silence followed and a few months later my step-cousin very rudely ended our friendship, accusing me of being a religious bigot, even though I'd said nothing. We since reconciled, happily, and when she left this world, we parted as friends.
It is especially difficult explaining the many crimes of the church to someone who is already prejudiced against the Christian faith. Today I mentioned that I had been watching a video about how the Catholic church was influential in kicking the Moors out of Spain, without realizing beforehand that I would be getting a less than charitable reply of how intolerant Christians are. Without pursuing the argument I simply replied that I am a Christian and you already know that I'm not like that. This helped end the discussion but not without a certain sense of discomfort that lingered like smoke in the kitchen after toast has been burned.
I am not interested in educating those who have already made up their mind. If they are so uncharitable as to think of me as deluded for believing that God, in his love, came to the earth for us as Jesus, died for us and rose from the dead, then I suppose that is their right.
My right, and certainly my obligation as a professing Christian is to respect that they choose not to believe and to live my life in such a way that everything I do and say is infused with the light and love of Christ. If anyone chooses to believe through my influence then it is going to be from the way that I live my life. Words, on their own, don't really cut it.
Now, let's see what I do to blow it.
I am also grateful that I no longer feel obligated nor under pressure to convince or explain to atheists and other nonbelievers about this beautiful truth. It is a waste of breath, time and energy. In fact, I will only speak openly about my faith to others if it is really clear that it will be a positive and constructive conversation. Otherwise, much better to keep my enlightenment to myself and just hope and pray that in the way I behave towards others there will already be plenty of information to persuade others about the Gospel. On one of my better days, maybe.
I think that refusing to swallow the bait is even more important than talking about it. This doesn't mean that others still won't be offended. I remember one visit years ago, back in 2002, I think when I was having tea with my step-cousin, now sadly departed from us. She had a friend over. When I was asked about where I would be going the next few days I replied vaguely about wanting to go wherever God appeared to be wanting to lead me. Her friend tried to get a religious discussion going. I sensed his lack of good will and refused to nibble. I politely replied that my faith is something very personal and I usually prefer not to talk about it. An uncomfortable silence followed and a few months later my step-cousin very rudely ended our friendship, accusing me of being a religious bigot, even though I'd said nothing. We since reconciled, happily, and when she left this world, we parted as friends.
It is especially difficult explaining the many crimes of the church to someone who is already prejudiced against the Christian faith. Today I mentioned that I had been watching a video about how the Catholic church was influential in kicking the Moors out of Spain, without realizing beforehand that I would be getting a less than charitable reply of how intolerant Christians are. Without pursuing the argument I simply replied that I am a Christian and you already know that I'm not like that. This helped end the discussion but not without a certain sense of discomfort that lingered like smoke in the kitchen after toast has been burned.
I am not interested in educating those who have already made up their mind. If they are so uncharitable as to think of me as deluded for believing that God, in his love, came to the earth for us as Jesus, died for us and rose from the dead, then I suppose that is their right.
My right, and certainly my obligation as a professing Christian is to respect that they choose not to believe and to live my life in such a way that everything I do and say is infused with the light and love of Christ. If anyone chooses to believe through my influence then it is going to be from the way that I live my life. Words, on their own, don't really cut it.
Now, let's see what I do to blow it.
Saturday 15 April 2017
Gratitude 34
I am also grateful for our human diversity, which must be something huge. I was thinking of this again yesterday while hearing on the radio the points of view from people to whom I wouldn't ordinarily give the time of day. That's right, on the program the host had interviewed a select group of Canadian luminaries, mostly journalists and politicians, and some of them were not just conservatives, but pretty right wing conservatives (nothing really pretty about them, actually!)
When I turned on the radio there was this journalist, Barbara Kay, who writes a column for the Canada Post. Now I have never in my life read or heard of Barbara Kay, given that I never read the Canada Post (the Globe and Mail being a much better publication, in my humble opinion!), so the first thing I wondered while hearing her spout off was, who the hell is that bitch? (I know, such Christian love!) She was saying that people will only stretch so far when challenged to change about anything and then they'll resist. I think she was referring to things like immigration and same sex marriage and her absolute distaste at the progressive left for daring to impose their social engineering on her. Her interviewer, a confirmed lefty like myself, was showing her admirable patience and restraint.
I would have suggested to the dear lady (if she is indeed that) that maybe the person who really refuses to change is herself, and that she is simply projecting her rigidity and stubbornness onto John and Jane Q. Public, when really Mr. and Mrs. Public just might be a little more flexible and more open-minded than she is. But we all tend to do this, don't we Gentle Reader? For example, the brainless extreme leftists on Coop Radio who praise the Cuban Revolution without any modifiers and adore with reckless abandon the great Fidel and the great Che as though they were two members of the Holy Trinity, without even once considering all the blood both those men had dripping from their hands, how their wrong-headed and badly informed misinterpretations of Marx (Karl, not Groucho) turned Cuba into a giant prison camp, and I especially take exception with their use of the word "the people", as if only those who agree with their bastardizations of socialism qualify as human beings and everyone else can go drown or get eaten by sharks while escaping to America.
See, here I am, a confirmed lefty, openly and snarkily disagreeing with other confirmed lefties. But I still disagree with Barbara Kay.
What I do try to appreciate is that she, like others with whom I disagree, are also human beings, each with an inner life and personal biography that don't necessarily touch upon their political beliefs. For example, I am informed that she has a son, who is the editor of a left leaning periodical. The apple sometimes does fall very far from the tree. She might have grandchildren, but this I do not know. Could someone with such rigid and odious opinions actually love her grandchildren, be a doting granny who bakes cookies and plays with her little darlings? Well, why not? Maybe she does volunteer work at the local food bank? I hardly expect that torturing small animals would be among her hobbies, despite her odious political beliefs.
What I mean to say here is that very often, our character, our personality, and the way we live, aren't necessarily going to mesh with our belief systems, be they political, religious or philosophical. We humans are not merely egregious hypocrites. We are incredibly complex psycho-social neurotics who live the most compartmentalized existences discordant with every manner of cognitive dissonance and all sorts of moral, ethical and behavioural inconsistancies.
In my province, British Columbia, we are in the first week of our provincial election campaign. I have argued in the past, always with futility and mutual ill will, with those who support right wing, conservative political parties and now I want to stop doing this. I have thought at times of politely approaching home owners who have political lawn signs on display endorsing such candidates, but only to get a sense of why they support them and what kind of people they really are. I don't think I am going to do this.
It really is very easy to be black and white about other people's political beliefs: leftwing progressive is good; rightwing regressive is bad. Well, maybe so. But the people who espouse these beliefs are human beings, infinitely complex and in the eyes of God infinitely precious. I really don't believe that when we face God during the Last Judgment that he is going to welcome those who were faithful social democrats, like me, into the New Jerusalem and toss the neo-liberals and conservatives into the depths of hell. I believe that each one of us is going to be held in his gaze of infinite love and truth, and our response or our reaction to that holy gaze will be our first, next, and perhaps our final step into eternity.
Love transcends politics.
By the same token, I do not want to omit one very salient fact here: The left supports the poor and vulnerable and these are the people whom God loves preferentially. So, rather than fantasize about right wing conservatives who might really be good and kindhearted people despite their offensive politics, perhaps it behooves those of us who call ourselves progressive to live a little more consistently, and to harmonize what we believe with the way we live. To make our lives, our values, beliefs, our aspirations and hopes, our innermost desires and thoughts, and our outward actions into one beautiful and seamless garment.
When I turned on the radio there was this journalist, Barbara Kay, who writes a column for the Canada Post. Now I have never in my life read or heard of Barbara Kay, given that I never read the Canada Post (the Globe and Mail being a much better publication, in my humble opinion!), so the first thing I wondered while hearing her spout off was, who the hell is that bitch? (I know, such Christian love!) She was saying that people will only stretch so far when challenged to change about anything and then they'll resist. I think she was referring to things like immigration and same sex marriage and her absolute distaste at the progressive left for daring to impose their social engineering on her. Her interviewer, a confirmed lefty like myself, was showing her admirable patience and restraint.
I would have suggested to the dear lady (if she is indeed that) that maybe the person who really refuses to change is herself, and that she is simply projecting her rigidity and stubbornness onto John and Jane Q. Public, when really Mr. and Mrs. Public just might be a little more flexible and more open-minded than she is. But we all tend to do this, don't we Gentle Reader? For example, the brainless extreme leftists on Coop Radio who praise the Cuban Revolution without any modifiers and adore with reckless abandon the great Fidel and the great Che as though they were two members of the Holy Trinity, without even once considering all the blood both those men had dripping from their hands, how their wrong-headed and badly informed misinterpretations of Marx (Karl, not Groucho) turned Cuba into a giant prison camp, and I especially take exception with their use of the word "the people", as if only those who agree with their bastardizations of socialism qualify as human beings and everyone else can go drown or get eaten by sharks while escaping to America.
See, here I am, a confirmed lefty, openly and snarkily disagreeing with other confirmed lefties. But I still disagree with Barbara Kay.
What I do try to appreciate is that she, like others with whom I disagree, are also human beings, each with an inner life and personal biography that don't necessarily touch upon their political beliefs. For example, I am informed that she has a son, who is the editor of a left leaning periodical. The apple sometimes does fall very far from the tree. She might have grandchildren, but this I do not know. Could someone with such rigid and odious opinions actually love her grandchildren, be a doting granny who bakes cookies and plays with her little darlings? Well, why not? Maybe she does volunteer work at the local food bank? I hardly expect that torturing small animals would be among her hobbies, despite her odious political beliefs.
What I mean to say here is that very often, our character, our personality, and the way we live, aren't necessarily going to mesh with our belief systems, be they political, religious or philosophical. We humans are not merely egregious hypocrites. We are incredibly complex psycho-social neurotics who live the most compartmentalized existences discordant with every manner of cognitive dissonance and all sorts of moral, ethical and behavioural inconsistancies.
In my province, British Columbia, we are in the first week of our provincial election campaign. I have argued in the past, always with futility and mutual ill will, with those who support right wing, conservative political parties and now I want to stop doing this. I have thought at times of politely approaching home owners who have political lawn signs on display endorsing such candidates, but only to get a sense of why they support them and what kind of people they really are. I don't think I am going to do this.
It really is very easy to be black and white about other people's political beliefs: leftwing progressive is good; rightwing regressive is bad. Well, maybe so. But the people who espouse these beliefs are human beings, infinitely complex and in the eyes of God infinitely precious. I really don't believe that when we face God during the Last Judgment that he is going to welcome those who were faithful social democrats, like me, into the New Jerusalem and toss the neo-liberals and conservatives into the depths of hell. I believe that each one of us is going to be held in his gaze of infinite love and truth, and our response or our reaction to that holy gaze will be our first, next, and perhaps our final step into eternity.
Love transcends politics.
By the same token, I do not want to omit one very salient fact here: The left supports the poor and vulnerable and these are the people whom God loves preferentially. So, rather than fantasize about right wing conservatives who might really be good and kindhearted people despite their offensive politics, perhaps it behooves those of us who call ourselves progressive to live a little more consistently, and to harmonize what we believe with the way we live. To make our lives, our values, beliefs, our aspirations and hopes, our innermost desires and thoughts, and our outward actions into one beautiful and seamless garment.
Friday 14 April 2017
Gratitude 33
I am grateful for Good Friday, which is today. This is a day that has little or no resonance to most people, at least here in Vancouver. It is a day off, a day to go shopping, to go out for coffee, lunch, for a walk in the park, to stay home and watch TV or go online, or to stay online while texting to their little heart's content as cars and other pedestrians try not to send them to their eternal reward.
I will quote here from an email I sent my friend who is on the cusp of ordination to the Anglican priesthood:
I will quote here from an email I sent my friend who is on the cusp of ordination to the Anglican priesthood:
I just want to wish you a very Blessed and Meaningful Good Friday and that on this day that you really sense the love of God, the love which sent him to the Cross, enfold you and fill you.
Even though I no longer attend church services (till further notice, anyway) this day always resonates with me and there is something of the sorrow that fills the boundless heart of God in his love for this broken world that always touches and impacts me.
It really is in our weakness that God manifests his strength, eh? The vulnerability of suffering that brings forth the beauty and power of his love.
Every year, something happens to me or around me on Good Friday that really reinforces to me the reality of the Cross. Today, the blessing of Good Friday came in the form of two men seated near us in the café. They were both wearing suits and ties, but otherwise....
One of them did most of the swearing, or should I say, talking. His voice wasn't particularly loud, but he sounded very emphatic. Moreover, every one of his sentences contained at least one F bomb, usually three or four. I have never heard the word "fuck" used with such frequency, passion and reckless abandonment. It was every bit as fascinating as annoying and offensive. We did what we could to cope, and really tried to brush it off, laugh it off, et cetera. This went on for at least an hour. As we were getting ready to leave we noticed the look of absolute exhaustion and disgust on the face of the young man who was sitting right next to them. When we left the café we suddenly realized how impacted we were by this very angry and apparently ignorant person. It was exhausting.
We walked through the West End and into the forest of Stanley Park where the gentle sounds, fragrances and silences of nature helped soothe and heal our wounded nerves. We agreed not to blame that individual for his behaviour, given that we really know nothing of his life circumstances: perhaps mental health, addictions? Maybe he has been through his own crap load of trauma. He is another person for whom Christ suffered and died, whose evident human brokenness so touched the heart of God as to send him to the cross for us as Jesus Christ.
This was an opportunity for my friend and I to participate in Our Lord's passion and suffering for us. Difficult, yes. But still a blessing.
Thursday 13 April 2017
Gratitude 32
It`s too easy to judge others, you know, especially when we already know absolute squat about them. This afternoon I noticed a couple of street homeless looking guys seated on park benches for a toke with their big plastic bags full of empties and my first reaction was, what a couple of losers. Then there were a half dozen tech yuppies, all nattily dressed young men in their early thirties with neatly trimmed beards coming up the sidewalk each carrying a paper coffee cup. So, those squeaky clean little success stories were all set to add to the landfill and do their share to help further wreck the environment, but the two guys recycling waste? I was all set to call them a couple of losers. Uh-huh.
And really, how would I rate? An old man living in social housing working a low wage job with people suffering from mental health issues and barely recovered from some of my own? Well, I don`t use paper cups. I always have my coffee seated in the cafe, in a ceramic mug. It helps save the environment while allowing me the slow motion pleasure of a leisurely cup of joe in a peaceful café with my sketchbook.
I have several things to be thankful for here:
1. That I was given that quick reality check about not judging people by their appearance.
2. That I work in meaningful, socially redemptive employment.
3. That I don't waste paper or plastic containers.
4. That I understand what quality of life means.
Yesterday I commented on the hoards of dumbasses out on the streets downtown. In public masses the collective IQ tends to lower to the double digits or less. But I often wonder about what these people are really like. I found myself fighting against the anxiety and stress of the crowd and refused to give in to the bad feelings. I made every effort, as difficult as it was, to try to see persons, individuals in the crowd and to gain some sense of each one as a person with worth and value for their simple and wonderful humanity.
I find that increasingly I have the feeling with strangers that I already know them. I don't know where this comes from, and I certainly can't clairvoyantly read their minds or their lives. I simply understand that these are all individuals with lives, problems, triumphs, beautiful qualities and destructive traits. I try to understand that each person not only has a story, but is a story, a walking novel and I feel honoured to be able to catch a glimpse of perhaps but one page, or even a single sentence or phrase.
And really, how would I rate? An old man living in social housing working a low wage job with people suffering from mental health issues and barely recovered from some of my own? Well, I don`t use paper cups. I always have my coffee seated in the cafe, in a ceramic mug. It helps save the environment while allowing me the slow motion pleasure of a leisurely cup of joe in a peaceful café with my sketchbook.
I have several things to be thankful for here:
1. That I was given that quick reality check about not judging people by their appearance.
2. That I work in meaningful, socially redemptive employment.
3. That I don't waste paper or plastic containers.
4. That I understand what quality of life means.
Yesterday I commented on the hoards of dumbasses out on the streets downtown. In public masses the collective IQ tends to lower to the double digits or less. But I often wonder about what these people are really like. I found myself fighting against the anxiety and stress of the crowd and refused to give in to the bad feelings. I made every effort, as difficult as it was, to try to see persons, individuals in the crowd and to gain some sense of each one as a person with worth and value for their simple and wonderful humanity.
I find that increasingly I have the feeling with strangers that I already know them. I don't know where this comes from, and I certainly can't clairvoyantly read their minds or their lives. I simply understand that these are all individuals with lives, problems, triumphs, beautiful qualities and destructive traits. I try to understand that each person not only has a story, but is a story, a walking novel and I feel honoured to be able to catch a glimpse of perhaps but one page, or even a single sentence or phrase.
Wednesday 12 April 2017
Gratitude 31
Gentle Reader, this could be one of the worst times for me to write on the theme of Gratitude. I have just arrived home from work, stopping to pick up a heavy bag of groceries that I have been schlepping uphill while negotiating the usual crowds of self-absorbed dumbasses. Which could make this the best time to write about gratitude. I have to make the effort to think of blessings to be grateful for:
1. I woke up breathing this morning.
2. I had interesting dreams.
3. I slept well and feel well-rested.
4. My clients and coworkers and I worked really well together today.
5. It stopped raining and the sun came out for a while this afternoon.
6. I had a lovely three and a half hour break which included more than an hour with my sketchbook inside one of my favourite cafes, A nice little chat with the owner's sister who works there Wednesdays, and plenty of time for a four mile walk to my next client.
7. The world has not stopped turning.
8. I've also had the same awesome huge umbrella for over a year now. I still haven't lost it.
Another thing I feel grateful for:
This comes from a small segment of the Ideas program I listened to last night on the CBC. A physicist was being interviewed. He indicated that extensive research shows that had conditions not been absolutely perfect within nanoseconds, etcetera, the Big Bang would never have occurred, nor would life have ever developed on the earth. The interlocutor, Paul Kennedy, asked the physicist if he believed in intelligent design. With absolutely no alternative explanation to offer he pooh-poohed the notion, being a good scientist and therefore a likely atheist. And Paul Kennedy, being a CBC intellectual and also a likely atheist, of course did nothing to challenge him.
It isn't the job of science to explain why. This is where I sharply disagree with this physicist. Science cannot, nor ought to explain why things happen because that is not the function of science, but of philosophers, ethicists, priests and metaphysicists. Science can only explain how, never why.
Does this mean that I believe that God made everything?. Well, duh! Of course I do. Do I know how? No, and I don't need to. That is the job of science. And besides, I wasn't there.
I am incredibly grateful, Gentle Reader, that God did all this, that he made this wonderful universe and gave us a part to play in it. You don't have to believe, of course, but you are very welcome to allow me to, just as I allow some of you not to believe.
But really, it's all about love, eh? And creativity. And laughter. And silence.
Shhhhh....
1. I woke up breathing this morning.
2. I had interesting dreams.
3. I slept well and feel well-rested.
4. My clients and coworkers and I worked really well together today.
5. It stopped raining and the sun came out for a while this afternoon.
6. I had a lovely three and a half hour break which included more than an hour with my sketchbook inside one of my favourite cafes, A nice little chat with the owner's sister who works there Wednesdays, and plenty of time for a four mile walk to my next client.
7. The world has not stopped turning.
8. I've also had the same awesome huge umbrella for over a year now. I still haven't lost it.
Another thing I feel grateful for:
This comes from a small segment of the Ideas program I listened to last night on the CBC. A physicist was being interviewed. He indicated that extensive research shows that had conditions not been absolutely perfect within nanoseconds, etcetera, the Big Bang would never have occurred, nor would life have ever developed on the earth. The interlocutor, Paul Kennedy, asked the physicist if he believed in intelligent design. With absolutely no alternative explanation to offer he pooh-poohed the notion, being a good scientist and therefore a likely atheist. And Paul Kennedy, being a CBC intellectual and also a likely atheist, of course did nothing to challenge him.
It isn't the job of science to explain why. This is where I sharply disagree with this physicist. Science cannot, nor ought to explain why things happen because that is not the function of science, but of philosophers, ethicists, priests and metaphysicists. Science can only explain how, never why.
Does this mean that I believe that God made everything?. Well, duh! Of course I do. Do I know how? No, and I don't need to. That is the job of science. And besides, I wasn't there.
I am incredibly grateful, Gentle Reader, that God did all this, that he made this wonderful universe and gave us a part to play in it. You don't have to believe, of course, but you are very welcome to allow me to, just as I allow some of you not to believe.
But really, it's all about love, eh? And creativity. And laughter. And silence.
Shhhhh....
Tuesday 11 April 2017
Gratitude 30
I am grateful for good coffee. Before you continue reading, please click this link for the soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIxIBwmFPMM
and be sure to ignore the dumb ad.
I am enjoying a cup of Cuban fair trade and organic, recently reprised by my favourite coffee provider, Bean Around the World, Shannon Station, W. 57th and E. Boulevard, Vancouver. (You're welcome, John!)
Fair Trade is very important to me. I can't always support it, because I live on a low income, but with my shopping preferences in coffee and cocoa I am happy to do my little bit to contribute to a better and more just quality of life for those who harvest and manufacture the products that we take for granted here in the North. And, contrary to popular myth, fair trade does not have to compromise on flavour and quality. This coffee is delicious, full bodied, smoky, dark, sensuous. You are listening to Celia Cruz, by the way, a Cuban American singer who died in 2003 at the age of 77. I think La vida es un carnaval was her last major hit, but I am no expert. I first heard it in the year 2000 on a Spanish language radio program as I was beginning to really learn Spanish. To call this song infectious would be an understatement. Here are the lyrics in Spanish and in (my own) English translation:
Everyone who thinks that life is unfair,
Should know that this is not true,
that life is full of beauty and has to be lived
Everyone who thinks they're alone and unwanted
Should know that this is not true,
No one is alone in life, there is always someone there
No need to cry
Life is a carnival
We can sing away the pain
No need to cry, life is a carnival
It's more beautiful to live it singing
It's meant for laughter
Joy and enjoyment
If we think that life is cruel, we don't have to be alone
God is still with us
Read more: Celia Cruz - La Vida Es Un Carnaval Lyrics | MetroLyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIxIBwmFPMM
and be sure to ignore the dumb ad.
I am enjoying a cup of Cuban fair trade and organic, recently reprised by my favourite coffee provider, Bean Around the World, Shannon Station, W. 57th and E. Boulevard, Vancouver. (You're welcome, John!)
Fair Trade is very important to me. I can't always support it, because I live on a low income, but with my shopping preferences in coffee and cocoa I am happy to do my little bit to contribute to a better and more just quality of life for those who harvest and manufacture the products that we take for granted here in the North. And, contrary to popular myth, fair trade does not have to compromise on flavour and quality. This coffee is delicious, full bodied, smoky, dark, sensuous. You are listening to Celia Cruz, by the way, a Cuban American singer who died in 2003 at the age of 77. I think La vida es un carnaval was her last major hit, but I am no expert. I first heard it in the year 2000 on a Spanish language radio program as I was beginning to really learn Spanish. To call this song infectious would be an understatement. Here are the lyrics in Spanish and in (my own) English translation:
Todo aquel
Que piense que la vida es desigual
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que la vida es una hermosura
Hay que vivirla
Que piense que la vida es desigual
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que la vida es una hermosura
Hay que vivirla
Todo aquel
Que piense que está solo y que está mal
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que en la vida no hay nadie solo
Siempre hay alguien
Que piense que está solo y que está mal
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que en la vida no hay nadie solo
Siempre hay alguien
Ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es una carnaval
Y las penas se van cantando
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es una carnaval
Y las penas se van cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Y las penas se van cantado
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Y las penas se van cantado
Todo aquel
Que piense que la vida siempre es cruel
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que tan solo hay momentos malos
Y todo pasa
Que piense que la vida siempre es cruel
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que tan solo hay momentos malos
Y todo pasa
Todo aquel
Que piense que esto nunca va cambiar
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que al mal tiempo, buena cara
Y todo cambia
Que piense que esto nunca va cambiar
Tiene que saber que no es así
Que al mal tiempo, buena cara
Y todo cambia
Ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es una carnaval
Y las penas se van cantando
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es una carnaval
Y las penas se van cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Y las penas se van cantado
Que la vida es un carnaval
Que es más bello vivir cantando
Oh oh oh ay, no hay que llorar (No hay que llorar)
Que la vida es un carnaval
Y las penas se van cantado
(Carnaval) es para reír
(No hay que llorar) para gozar
(Carnaval) para disfrutar
(Hay que vivir cantando)
(Carnaval) la vida es un carnaval
(No hay que llorar) todos podemos cantar
(Carnaval) ay señores
(Hay que vivir cantando)
(Carnaval) todo aquel que piense
(No hay que llorar) que la vida es cruel
(Carnaval) nunca estará solo
(Hay que vivir cantando) Dios está con él
(No hay que llorar) para gozar
(Carnaval) para disfrutar
(Hay que vivir cantando)
(Carnaval) la vida es un carnaval
(No hay que llorar) todos podemos cantar
(Carnaval) ay señores
(Hay que vivir cantando)
(Carnaval) todo aquel que piense
(No hay que llorar) que la vida es cruel
(Carnaval) nunca estará solo
(Hay que vivir cantando) Dios está con él
Para aquellos que se quejan tanto (bua)
Para aquellos que solo critican (bua)
Para aquellos que usan las armas (bua)
Para aquellos que nos contaminen (bua)
Para aquellos que hacen la guerra (bua)
Para aquellos que viven pecando (bua)
Para aquellos que nos maltratan (bua)
Para aquellos que nos contagian (bua)
Para aquellos que solo critican (bua)
Para aquellos que usan las armas (bua)
Para aquellos que nos contaminen (bua)
Para aquellos que hacen la guerra (bua)
Para aquellos que viven pecando (bua)
Para aquellos que nos maltratan (bua)
Para aquellos que nos contagian (bua)
Everyone who thinks that life is unfair,
Should know that this is not true,
that life is full of beauty and has to be lived
Everyone who thinks they're alone and unwanted
Should know that this is not true,
No one is alone in life, there is always someone there
No need to cry
Life is a carnival
We can sing away the pain
No need to cry, life is a carnival
It's more beautiful to live it singing
It's meant for laughter
Joy and enjoyment
If we think that life is cruel, we don't have to be alone
God is still with us
For the complainers: Bah!
For the critics: Bah!
For those who fire weapons: Bah!
For those who corrupt us: Bah!
For those who wage war: Bah!
For those who live selfishly: Bah!
For those who mistreat us: Bah!
For those who infect us with their bad attitudes: Bah!
Read more: Celia Cruz - La Vida Es Un Carnaval Lyrics | MetroLyrics
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