Postmortem 56

 Gentle Reader, I cannot remember the name of the song that was played this morning on the radio, but I did feel prompted to contact the host of the program.  Here is an excerpt from my text: 

 "I can't remember the name of the Bosanova sung by the girl from Ipanema, but I found it evocative in a way I wasn't expecting.  As I listened I thought how this is so the music of the privileged Brazilian middle class, a country that has some of the most egregious social inequality in the Americas.  The music comes across to me as a kind of mildly toxic soporific, as a way of soothing with soma so that one needn't think of the horrors and many tragedies that mark the lives of so many Brazilians, such as would never be admitted into the lovely cocktail lounges where this music is often played.  This makes me think of how we listen to music.  What is it we are hearing, and with what part of us are we listening? ... 

I haven't been to Brazil, but I have spent a lot of time in Colombia, a country with very similar problems and issues to Brazil.  Many middle class Colombians are afraid of the poor and homeless, and believe they are all violent criminals.  I remember my first visit to Bogotá, when a friend and some of his extended family were hosting me and giving me a tour of the city, in a car, of course.  We were in a poor neighbourhood near downtown Bogotá, and they insisted that we keep the windows rolled up because of the street beggars, whom they feared.  I don't know if they really posed that great a threat.  I thought that, rather, they have been so stigmatized by poverty that this middle class fear was just part of what they have to bear with.  I was feeling more troubled and embarrassed by the fear of my friends, than by the poor beggars outside the car. 

When I returned to Colombia in February, I was riding in my friend, Alonso's, car and he was kind enough to not keep the windows up when two different fathers carrying their young children in their arms came to ask us for help..."

Of course I have also written about the Venezuelan refugee family on the sidewalk in Madrid Cundinamarca, near Bogotá, and how much their situation touched and affected me.  And the two mothers carrying their babies in their arms, begging near a restaurant we had just eaten at in a posh neighbourhood of Medellín.

I am actually thinking of doing volunteer work in Medellín.  I have no idea how this would look, or when I'm returning there.  I do feel very strongly that having got a taste of the social inequality and the people this hurts in Colombia, I would like to learn more about the people themselves.  To learn from them.  I really wonder if there would be some kind of work or some redemptive role that a Canadian of a certain age could perform there.  Nor am I really convinced that I would be much help to anyone there.  I really see myself as occupying the seat of the unlearned, and maybe that's the best way to approach this.  

Any ideas, Gentle Reader?

Postmortem 55

I seem to be moving into a new phase of life.  Everyone seems to be moving into a new phase of life.  This pandemic affects everyone, of course.   I'm trying to think of what has changed in my life since covid 19.  Quite a lot.  I work from home, and in some ways it really feels like I am working less, in other ways, like I'm working more, because now it is all the harder to separate work from home, though the phone is always turned off, so that gives me some illusion of privacy.

Until just this past week, it was impossible to meet any friends in a coffee shop because they were all closed except for takeout, but yesterday for the first time since I left Costa Rica in March I could sit in a café with a friend.  Mostly, I visit with people online, Skype or messenger, and I am actually spending a lot more time communicating with friends now than ever before.

I no longer attend church, and we already know about my dramatic exodus from the Anglican Church.   Otherwise, nothing much seems to be happening.  I seem to care more about other people.  I always have cared for other people, but since my visit to Colombia last February this experience of love for others seems to have magnified exponentially. 

Otherwise, nothing seems much different.  We are still the same people except I think we are also experiencing more of just how vulnerable we are.  As if vulnerability were something bad and to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, like having a nail-biting habit, or being a voyeur, or a supporter of the Conservative Party of Canada.

I believe that being vulnerable is good.  In fact, it is essential to our long-term survival and well-being.  You see, darlings, becoming vulnerable means also acquiring humility.  Without humility, we are not going to learn, we are not going to open our lives to new people or new experiences, and thus we do not grow and we really start to lose our human viability.  I have seen this happen to others, and it is sad, sad, so sad.  I have at times seen it happen to me, and I found it terrifying. 

Living in uncertain times has really ripped our lives open.  This is good, because now we can really start to get on with this very serious business of really learning to be human beings.  And hopefully we will find enough joy in this serious business to not want to give it up on becoming truly human. 

Heaven knows where we are going...we´ll know we're there!

Postmortem 54

It is hard not to get super neurotic during a pandemic.  While two women really went out of their way to safe distance themselves from me, on a trail in Stanley Park, no one around and lots of fresh air circulating...well when they made themselves so piss delicate neurasthenic and absolutely terrified of getting sick and dying, I simply quipped as I passed them, "I just held my breath, we're all going to live, so chill!"  I imagine they felt only gravely and mortally insulted that a stranger would speak so frankly to them, and well, too bad, they deserved it, they needed it, and I trust in the long-run that it'll be to their benefit. 

The fact of the matter is, we are perfectly safe outside, and the safe-distancing is only required indoors, or in crowded public spaces.  Likewise those idiots who wear hospital masks everywhere.  I even see people in single-occupancy vehicles, windows rolled up, bravely sporting their medical masks, as though someone had just gone inside their precious Mercedes or BMW and openly sneezed and coughed everywhere.

Um...darlings, those masks are not going to protect you.  They do protect me from your germs, but my germs are still going to flow in behind your protective coverings.  I do wear a bandana on my lower face if I am going into a fairly crowded store, but for the protection of other people, since it's going to do piss-all for keeping me alive.

Then there were the two women who tried to safe distance from me a few minutes later, but they seemed more concerned than frightened, so I remarked to them, "We're outside, we're going to live."  And fortunately they both had a sense of humour and we were all laughing about it and I also admitted to them that I also get neurotic about it. 

On the other hand.  I don't want to put myself at risk either, and occasionally, I do find myself in rather delicate situations.  The other day, I was walking by the Dr. Peter Centre for people living with AIDS and one of the residents, an aboriginal man in a wheelchair, asked if I could help push him up the ramp.  I reluctantly refused, because it would have put me too close to him for safe distancing and I didn't want to put either of us at risk.  He seemed to have comprehension challenges, and I don't think he really got it, so I offered instead to go to the door and summon staff for help.  Fortunately, a friend of his appeared right away and helped him, though also to their mutual risk. 

I do know that under different circumstances, I would have helped him, because I have done this for others in the past.  For this reason, I particularly resent this pandemic for how difficult it makes us to properly care for one another.

All for today, Gentle Reader...

Postmortem 53

I began to reconsider my participation in the Anglican Church over last Christmas, when for the second year in a row, no one did anything to reach out to me.  It was when the acting priest said that if I was feeling super depressed again on Christmas Day then I should go to hospital emergency where they would put me on enough medications to help see me through without harming myself.   Not one single parishioner who was going to be around for Christmas would even consider texting with me on email or even a phone call on Christmas Day.  I was not expecting a dinner invitation, I would have been content with simply a visit in a coffee shop.

And they still don't believe they are selfish. 

That was the first domino.

Just after Christmas I asked a particularly wealthy couple in the church if they would like to do coffee with me sometime before I went on my trip six weeks later.  They came up with excuse after lame excuse, and I came to the conclusion that their expressions of friendship had been little more than a hypocritical sham and I would likely be better off without them.  Sad, rather, because I was hoping to see if we could somehow bridge the gap between us since, as I said, they are wealthy and I was hoping we could come to understand each other better.  Apparently not interested.

That was the second domino

Six weeks later I was on my way to Colombia, where I would be staying with a friend whom I knew only following over a year of visits on Skype for language exchange.  He did not even profess to be a Christian.  He would not even think of accepting any money from me for staying with him for the next three weeks, though I still tried to pay for my share of food.  He could not think of enough to do for me, was always available and always happy to share and explore his country with me.  We became like family to each other, and we still are like family.

Domino number three

From my friend in Colombia I received the kind of treatment that I have always tried to give to others, such as was completely absent in my church full of selfish entitled middle class privilege.  But their lovely West Side homes are their castles, and their idea of Christian community doesn't appear to extend beyond church services and parish meetings.

Then Jesus tore my heart open as I became overwhelmed with love for the suffering poor that I met in Colombia.  I knew that my being a Christian meant living as Christ and his Apostles, my life completely consecrated to his service and through the service of suffering humanity.  I felt vulnerable, alive, more alive than I had felt in many long years.

That was domino number four.

I felt, during this trip completely submitted to Christ.  I felt that I was being called on this trip for his purposes.  Now, I know this stronger than ever.   I also stayed mostly away from church.  Not even when I was in Costa Rica for two and a half weeks following Colombia did I even enter a church building.  I was fine  without it.  Christ was present with me and I could love others freely and openly.  The Gospel had come alive in me, without help from the Christian institutions, and I knew that I was being taken in quite a new and different direction.

When I returned, the priest at St. Faith's seemed not at all interested in talking to me as I was seeking pastoral assistance.  I was also ignored by the archbishop.

Dominoes number five and six

In my desperation to be heard and receive pastoral assistance, I was blogging extensively about this, including written meditations on the Beatitudes of Jesus.  I was sending the links to the archbishop, the priest and a few others.  Still no answer.

That was the seventh domino.

Then the archbishop sent me a brief email asking that I stop sending these.  I refused because I would not tolerate being stonewalled.

That was the eighth domino.

A day later, I got an email from their lawyer.

That was the tenth domino.

I threatened to go public, contacted the CBC about this, and the cowards backed off.  Then I left the Anglican Church.

The End.

Or perhaps, the Beginning...

Postmortem 52

I imagine that some of you, Gentle Reader, must be already familiar with the tale of David and Goliath.  If you are, or have been Christian, of course you would know the story.,  If you happen to be a Biblical literal fundamentalist, then you are more than likely to believe that it is historical fact.  I wouldn't know, myself, given that as far as a lot of the Old Testament is concerned, you could call me a biblical agnostic.  But I still think there are pithy lessons and insights to be benefited from by reading these stories that are to be found throughout the Old Testament, the New Testament, and also the Apocrypha.  But we shall stay on topic, shall we, darlings?

David, as you know, was still a teenage boy when he confronted Goliath, the giant from the Philistines (those were not necessarily people who didn't appreciate art and culture by the way, they were the Phoenicians and other peoples who happened to live in what is now Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Syria.  The Philistines and the Israelites did not like each other much.  This by the way was all going on at around three thousand years ago. 

Now David, a scrawny but handsome boy of around sixteen or seventeen or so, was armed only with a few stones and a leather sling for hurling them, while Goliath, likely four or five times the kid's size, was all decked out in armour and fighting swords.  Hardly an even match.  David had been offered armour and proper weapons, but they were too heavy and cumbersome for him, and he wanted to rely on his wits and agility, a decidedly less is more kind of approach.  David killed Goliath with his first stone that he hurled from his leather sling, then he took the giant's sword and cut off his head.

And this illustrates why I have repudiated the Anglican Church.  In order to fit in, to integrate with such a cumbersome religion that is so far from the very Christ that they purport to serve, I would have to accept the very cumbersome and suffocating baggage of said religion.  Like the armour and weapons that David rejected in order to fight in the way that best suited him.  So I now must go free, naked, into the wilderness, armed by my own frail and human vulnerability, by which alone I can truly and legitimately and honourably and effectively serve my Christ, my Lord and my Master, who became for me and for all the rest of you my darlings so naked, frail and vulnerable. 

Remember, Gentle Reader: our strength is made perfect in our weakness.

Postmortem 52

First, a word about my maternal grandfather.  We used to call him Charley.  He was born in 1889 of German immigrants from the Crimea in rural Saskatchewan, on a farm near Regina.  He was a very interesting man.  I remember him as being mischievous, playful, with a robust sense of humour and a razor sharp wit.  He was a wheat farmer, but under different circumstances and with different parents he might have done very well academically and professionally.  I remember him as being open minded and very curious and interested in the world.  I am a lot like my grandfather.

My grandfather used to enjoy teaching us card games, since on the prairie during the winter the short cold days and long cold nights were often passed, once the chores were done, playing cards.  This was before TV, and for a while, before radio.   He taught me how to play a particular version of rummy, called Michigan Rummy.  His idea was that you could pick up just one of the discarded cards, or you could pick up all of them.  It was fun, picking up. sometimes as many as twenty random cards that no one else wanted, and having to find and figure out whatever way I could play them.  This move would make you or it would break you.  You would find so many different runs and three of a kinds as to win hands down, or you would be saddled with so many unwanted singles and pairs as to have to count yourself out well after the others were already finished playing..

This soon became my way of life, from the age of eight.  Grabbing as much as I could, hang the consequences and to see what I could do with it.  My interests, and tastes in everything became almost alarmingly eclectic.  I didn't care.  For me, diversity became its own reward.  Or like the line from Leonard Cohen's song, Suzanne: "and she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers." 

This isn't quite the same thing as slumming, though I would suppose there are parallels, but the idea is to accept all resources and all things without judgment, which is to say, not without discernment.  There is beauty in everything.  There will be found hidden jewels and treasures in the unlikeliest places, if we are patient and if we have humility, because those will be the very jewels and treasures with the highest and most eternal value.  For example, isn't it rather ironic that the most expensive coffee is sourced from coffee beans picked out of the dung and shit of elephants and civet cats?

I have encountered incredible kindness and brilliance in some of the most unexpected places, from people unwanted and rejected by society, but whose lives still shone out in the surrounding darkness.  I remember when my mother died, and some of the greatest kindness, support and compassion that I received came from the very street punks and male and female survival sex workers, themselves unwanted and still barely young adults, that ostensibly were there for me to minister to them the love of Christ.  But Jesus filled and inhabited those same people whose lives were themselves a complete shipwreck and disaster,and I still feel the warm embrace of their friendship.  One of many reasons why I will never return to the Anglican Church.

I am not worried about when things get messy.  Life is messy. The very beauty of the universe is in its messiness, and has nothing at all  to do with a sterile Newtonian or Euclidean order, and everything to do with the random chaos that is its own organic order, birthed into existence by a God of love that will never be known, defined or tamed.  The same God who calls and claims us to dare to risk wandering into the mire and mess that is life, where the beauty and joy of the very universe is held in its very germ and nucleus.  All those random cards, and such random adventure, and such random, messy, imperfect and beautiful life, Gentle Reader!

Postmortem 51

I have been reviewing some of my travel journal from Colombia three months ago and I can best conclude that what I have been through since then has been a kind of reconversion.  I suppose it could be said that this has been my liberation from the church, in this case, Anglican.  I have gone over and over the issues, and I think it's time to give it a bit of a rest.

However...

I did have a conversation today with a friend who is very much in the Anglican Church and it is interesting how the simplest matters can betray class differences of privilege that really still do divide us.  I was asked if I was in solitary confinement and I could only choose three foods that I could eat, what would I choose.  I wasn't sure how to answer, so I deferred. My friend assumed that one would choose their favourite foods, things they would never get tired of.  I replied that I would be more interested in nutrition and health, so I would like my choices to be as healthy as possible  When I was asked if I wouldn't get tired of eating the same thing every day, I replied that if that was the only food I had to survive on then I could easily grow to enjoy it no matter how long I would have to eat it.  I would find it all absolutely delicious

It quickly became apparent that my friend has never had to really do without, and for that reason has always had a range of choices unknown to me when it comes to eating, even if this person really does believe that they have had to do without at times.  I have never had much in the way of choice, since being on a lower income has always limited my choice of food.  I have never gone hungry, and have always been well-nourished, but living on a low income has long taught me to give priority to economy, nutrition and utility when it comes to eating.  This has also turned me into a creative and better than average cook, because I have had to learn to make the best possible meals out of very little.    I have seldom been spoiled for choice when opening the fridge, but have always tried to make the best use out of my narrow range of food selections.  So, when I think of food, I don't think of the pleasure of eating, I think of nutrition. Pleasure always comes after, but come it does.

It is impossible to explain to someone who has never done without, who has never walked in your shoes, just how different our life perspectives and experiences are going to be, and I have learned to stop wasting my breath or energy at trying to educate the unteachable.  They are simply not going to get it.  And since the Anglican Church is almost exclusively made up of people who are blinded by and to their inborn privilege, I have opted to simply walk away and continue serving Christ in the poverty he has made so beautiful.

By the way, these are the three foods I would choose:  whole wheat bread, broccoli and a good aged cheese, either white cheddar or Asiago.  These are foods I eat every day, and because they are so good, nourishing, wholesome and simple, I never have and likely never will grow tired of eating them.

Postmortem 50

I am reflecting this morning on my exit from the Anglican Church, and really, all that makes me wonder, is that it has taken me so long to make such a critical decision for my life.  It was like clinging to a slowly disintegrating life raft, instead of learning to tread water unassisted.   Well, now I am swimming, going with the current, and, to cop a pun, it is going swimmingly. 

For people who are alone in life, without family, and of a certain age, the church can make you or it will break you.  Never both.   I was hoping that in the Anglican Church I could find a sense of ersatz family or at least a community of friends.  I was trying to find something that didn't exist.  And I also tried to create a reality that refused to take form or substance.  I could do nothing to control the process.  I was for the most part, surrounded by selfish individuals whose religion is little more than a soporific or a consecrated smokescreen for them to hide their true selves behind.    They were not interested in Christian discipleship, which is to say, they did not want to be set free from their smokescreen, nor from the lies and the sanctimonious platitudes that they often seem to mistake for real worship and adoration of the divine thus cheating themselves of the blessing of growing into the kind of relationship with God that would help them to truly grow and flourish.

For them, God was little more than an elderly family member in a nursing home, or at least that seems to be their attitude.  Simply attending services every Sunday, perhaps even twice a week, because that is where they find God, or perhaps an emotional equivalent of a spiritual encounter.  Then they could go home to their everyday lives, spending the remaining five or six days of the week without having their lives interfered with or complicated by the Jesus of the Gospels.   I never realized how toxic this could be.

I think that the Anglican Church did, for a while anyway, provide me with significant ballast and stability, since there is something solid about regular attendance, the Eucharist, the liturgy, the lexicons, as well as encountering the same friendly faces week after week.  But then I came to need something deeper, and real relationships with others who seemed on the same journey as me, and usually I have come out with nothing.   Very few seemed interested in friendship away from the context of the church building and services, and even fewer in developing a relationship with God not dependent upon attending church services.

All I know is there is no turning back.  The future remains unknown.  But I know that the same God that led me out of the Anglican Church, will go on leading, carrying and protecting me.  That is all I need to concern myself with right now.  That, and the business of the moment, and treating others with love , kindness and respect, because, Gentle Reader, no matter where we go, and often especially within the church, we are going to find ourselves surrounded by people with broken hearts just as our own hearts are also broken, and for this we must all resolve to be gentle and kind to one another.

Postmortem 49

Ain´t nothin' new under the sun today, Gentle Reader.  Read some more of my novel.



https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/07/thirteen-crucifixions-14.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/07/thirteen-crucifixions-15.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/07/thirteen-crucifixions-16.html

Postmortem 48

Nobody gets out of here alive.  It's in the contract.  We all live under the same death sentence.  Our crime?  Existing.  Simply by existing, darlings.  We do reserve the option of making this planet better or worse for coming generations.  We haven't done too well with that one.  Now we are living under this pandemic.    We will, of course, get through it.  We always do.  But not unscathed.  And our heinies are going to be considerably sorer once we are done with all this.   People are going to die, maybe not a lot, this is not the Black Death Revisited, but enough to make a lot of us pretty darn worried.   I could be part of the collateral damage.  Or maybe you, Gentle Reader.  But we are also quite a bit more squeamish and anxious, and basically softer and way more coddled than our ancestors, so this pandemic really has us scared like chickens.

I think it's natural to fear death.  After all, we are all wired to live, to want to live, and to embrace and enjoy being alive.  But there is something of an absolute screaming terror of death that seems to have overtaken us, really showing us to be a generation of unprecedented cowards.  I fear death, or, better said, I have a natural fear of death.  But I am not terrified of it.  I have been around a lot of death and dying in my time, especially through my rich and lengthy pastoral and palliative care experience and background, particularly during the AIDS pandemic of the eighties and nineties.

Still, the anxiety is at times inescapable.  I was out today for a very long walk, and at time had to put my bandana around my face because there were a lot of people to pass, and either it wasn't possible for safe passing, or others were just not concerned about it.  I only began to get over it when I remembered my sense of humour and began to play with it, such as stepping aside for someone to pass, smiling and wishing them safe passage, and suchlike.  They almost always smile and often have some humorous riposte to toss my way.

all that said, I am back home, alive and well, and here are some more links to my novel for your reading pleasure, darlings....


https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-11.html
https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-12.html
https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-14.html

Postmortem 47

A word about face masks, Gentle Reader: Don't argue, just wear them and shut-up already.  No they shouldn't be mandatory, for the simple reason that common sense shouldn't be mandatory, but all the same, we do want to get through this pandemic now, don't we?  And the second wave of infections is a-comin'. and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

The science is also in that masks only help the people around the person wearing it.  It does not protect you from anything.  So, if you are driving lone in your car, and I see you wearing a mask, and you have no passengers and your windows are all closed, don't be surprised to see me laughing in your face.   And for those or you who think that wearing a mask grants you automatic immunity, then better think again, or, should that be enough for you to stop safe distancing, then don't be surprised to find yourself waking up one day soon in ICU hooked up to a respirator.  Feeling safe is not the same as being safe.

I was wearing my bright red bandana around the lower part of my face today, selectively of course.  While walking in Stanley Park, away form people, I happily went bare face, but as soon as someone came toward me on the tranquil, and safe distancing was not possible, or they were simply too dumb and self-absorbed to even bother, I would simply don the mask, and maybe assure them that it was for their protection, not mine, since the wearer of the mask is not really protected from the virus, while protecting those around them, should she be a carrier.   When I returned from my walk in the forest I put the ask back on, especially while shopping for food.

This is something I don't really enjoy doing, but to me it is part of being socially responsible.  But I simply don't agree with the governments of other countries where they tend to not respect their own citizens as adults, and order them to stay indoors and to wear masks in public.  It really shows a lack of respect, I think, and that is going to impact negatively on the people who vote them into power, in the long-run, anyway.  When I mentioned this to one of my friends in Colombia, he suggested that the government has to be heavy-handed, otherwise getting Colombians to cooperate would be akin to herding cats.  As much as I love Colombians, I suspect that he might have a point, Gentle Reader.

Now, read some more of my novel, dearies

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-5.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-6.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/words-to-live-by-7.html



https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-8.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-9.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-10.html

Postmortem 46

Everything's tickety-boo right now, Gentle Reader, so nothing to write.  Read my novel, Thirteen Crucifixions.  NOW!!!

 First four chapters for those who haven't yet:

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-thirteen-crucifixions.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-2.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-3.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-4.html  and for those who have already read them, then here is some more to bore you with, Duckies!

And here are chapters 5, 6 and 7


https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-5.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-6.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/words-to-live-by-7.html

Postmortem 45

On the CBC this morning, that great promoter of the Canadian middle class, I was hearing one more tear-jerker for the privileged: those poor middle class high school students who are likely going to miss their grad celebrations and all because of that big mean and nasty covid 19 pandemic.  They are going to be traumatized for life.  They are never going to get over it.  Aw, I feel so sorry for you poor disenfranchised children of privilege.  Now please let me play a tune for you on the world's tiniest violin!

Oh, but this is to allow them to have closure on their twelve years of education, and to say goodbye to all their dear little friends, and it is just so heartbreaking that they can't wrap everything up with their little ceremony, where they can all dress up like movie stars attending the Oscars, and get piss, snot-hanging drunk and then go pee on the cedar hedge the way I saw four young grade twelve boys dressed in tuxedos, watering the cedar trees with their skanky penises sticking out of their posh trousers just outside the super posh Bayshore Inn Hotel, one June evening eighteen years ago.

Yes, what a waste of four good tuxedos.  Probably rented.

I never attended grad celebrations when I finished high school.  It simply was not going to happen for me, and for many good reasons.  I think that first and foremost, I simply did not relate to the idea.  School was something for me to get through and nothing more.  I usually had few or no friends in high school, and being a Jesus freak, as well as being an outlier in other ways, simply kept me at a safe distance from everyone.  Neither was I enamoured with the idea of dressing up, or of the celebrations, it was all too hetero-sexist and redolent of every single bourgeois value that to this day I still revile.  There was no way that I would be able to participate in that kind of farce.  I was also in a different high school, again, thanks to my turbulent family life.

However, such traditions as high school grads are a kind of middle class rite of passage to help prepare the young students to grow up to be passive little consumer- conformists unable to think for themselves or to have a single original thought in their heads, or at least without the courage to live out their truth.

I do not feel that I was traumatized, damaged or in anyway deprived for my lack of the traditional rites of passage during my rather unconventional youth.  Rather, I became all the stronger in my isolation while working at my utmost to still approach others in a spirit of loving-kindness and grace.

Which also gave rise to my novel that you are all going to read, right Gentle Reader?

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-2.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-3.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/thirteen-crucifixions-4.html

Postmortem 44

Good morning, Gentle Reader.  It is a lovely morning this day in May, Victoria Day, when we are expected to celebrated our British heritage and the Queen, but it's more like, big deal, it's a day off.   Yesterday, for the first time, I wore a face covering outside, partly to get used to it, but also because the sidewalks do get crowded at times and some people remain imbeciles in denial about this pandemic.  It was okay, and now I know rather how some Muslim women must feel.  It's not a hospital mask but a bright red bandana.  I look like a bank robber.  But I am only going to wear it selectively.  Face coverings protect those around us.  They do not protect the wearer.  If you are carrying the virus, or any kind of virus, then you won't infect those around you.  If you want personal protection from carriers, better to physically distance, or just stay home.   

Anyway, I am promoting my novel right now, so instead of writing you a lot of fresh material, here are the links to the first three chapters of Thirteen Crucifixions.

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-thirteen-crucifixions.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-thirteen-crucifixions.html

https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-thirteen-crucifixions.html

Postmortem 43

i am thinking this morning, Gentle Reader of the novel I wrote, Thirteen Crucifixions, but have not bothered to gt published because, well, why bother?  I have no connections, nor the stamina to go on flogging my manuscript and to have to endure five hundred plus rejections until I get maybe one solitary nibble from an obscure publishing house sure to go bankrupt within days of accepting my proposal.   However, I have serialized the entire thing on this blog, and if you really want to read it, then it begins in June, 2014.  I will even give you the link here, if you are serious about reading it.

http://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-thirteen-crucifixions.html

I am thinking lately about one of the key characters, a woman named Sheila Watson.  When I was writing the novel, i was in my forties and she was in her sixties, but in many ways, she has become my older self in female form.  In other words, I was forecasting through this character, the kind of person I would mature into now at 64.  Here is a little it about her from chapter 45.  By the way, Gentle Reader, my friend, Alonso in Colombia and I are reading the whole thing together on Skype as part of his English practice.  He seems to be really enjoying it.  Maybe you will too.  anyway, just to make sure it's getting read, I will be serially reposting the novel on this and subsequent blog posts.  I don't want advice of how to publicize it, by the way, so please keep your well-intentioned advice to yourself.  Except if you know a publisher who is probably going to like it, then tell me please:

                                                                  2001

            Sheila sat alone in the darkened café gorging on a clubhouse sandwich and potato salad.  She no longer felt safe, anywhere.  It wasn’t just her recent encounters with Bill, nor the sudden change in living arrangements in her house, which now included Michael and Glen.  It was that young bald headed gutter punk appearing as though out of the ether in her own back yard.  He could only have done it by going in through the house.  But the house was always securely locked at night.  Maybe she ought to get an alarm system, but Sheila hated these concessions to modernity.  She didn’t want to live in fear.  She saw HIM again.  He only seemed to appear whenever some kind of major change was about to happen.  She had last seen him just before Frank openly admitted to having AIDS.  Then, last week, he appeared again.  Always in the back yard.  Always under the apple tree.  Ever since Frank had made that white bench, where she would sit, dozing in the sun.  Whoever this was, he was always young, a boy of fifteen or so.  Neither tall nor short.  Slender.  Wearing always a white shirt and blue jeans.  A beautiful dark-haired boy with wide luminous green eyes and what Sheila could only describe as a quiet radiance encircling him.  Usually he was silent.  This time alone did he speak.  This time alone did he approach her, put his hand on her hand.  “Prepare”, was all that he said, when Sheila awoke, trembling.  The house surely must be haunted.  How else could she account for this?  

            She knew she must hurry up and paint the apple tree again.  Soon, while the blossoms still held.  She had been doing this for more than ten years.  Spring, summer, and winter.  Painting the apple tree three times annually: in spring when it blossomed, at the end of summer, when the golden fruit weighed down the old branches, and in the winter when the tree stood stark and desolate against the dark green cedar hedge.  Ten years, thirty paintings.  She had never bothered to review her work.  One day she must take them all out and look at them and see what kind of progress, if any, she had made in her painting.  Madge’s daughter, an accomplished artist herself, had lately been after Sheila to start showing her paintings.  She balked about this.  Sheila was sure that her work wasn’t good enough to be shown.  She painted only for herself, and for herself alone.  To which Madge’s daughter, Cynthia, retorted bollucks.  Sheila was more than good enough, and no artist ever painted for herself alone.

            Yesterday she saw something very odd under the apple tree.  Tobias, her white cat, lay dozing in the shade.  Sheila was picking red tulips for the living-room.  Less than a foot from Tobias a bird stood in the grass, directly in front of him.  A finch.  A house finch, actually, with a bright red head.  She knew these birds well, which sang so beautifully in the spring.  The white cat opened his eyes, beheld the bird, who betrayed no fear.  He closed his eyes again for more sleep.  She stood there, watching, not knowing whether to intervene and rescue the house finch.  Tobias made no move toward it, behaving as though he cared not a damn about him one way or the other.  This was a cat who seemed never at a loss for something to kill.  Tobias got up and like a white blue eyed panther stretched and yawned, and trotted over to Sheila meowing.  The bird flew up into the apple tree and Sheila nearly ran inside the house screaming.

            She felt tired, and badly needed to get home.  She was putting it off.  What was it that she was needing to face?  Her legs, her knees still ached.  Her feet were tired.  She was not getting younger, and though her doctor had assured Sheila that she did not have arthritis, she still did not want to take her chances.  She was rapidly becoming an old woman, and she knew it.  People didn’t recognize her so easily now, especially since she’d cut and stopped colouring her hair.  Which suited her fine, given how often she saw former clients of hers almost everywhere she went.  They didn’t appear to know her.  According to Madge it was equally true that people were not likely to easily recognize either one of them outside of their professional capacity.  Throughout the eight years they had spent operating that drop-in centre they had become to many of the local marginalized professional friends and surrogate mothers.  Until the funding was cut due to the governments’ renewed zeal to ‘reduce the deficit” by cutting back on social services spending, giving persons on welfare, street people and the psychologically disadvantaged one less haven to feel safe in.  During this time Sheila had come to realize that very few of their regulars, if any, really seemed to know or want to know whom it was they were dealing with.  They seemed only to see or respond to the mask that she wore on the job of “Nurturer”, or “Advisor” or “Wise Old Woman”.  There must be some truth to this, for she and Madge both could often walk around in the neighbourhood when off duty, touching elbows with persons who had just told them their life stories, had wept openly in their presence, without being known or recognized.

            This didn’t occur so much at the West Wind.  She was probably more relaxed here.  Not expected to perform.  The café was really an extension of Sheila and her kitchen table.  Sheila had always worked hard, ever since her youngest, Jason, was able to fend for himself.  Before that she was in university, part-time, finishing her degree in social work.  Before that, a house-wife and stay at home mom.  She had always worked, always been needed, always felt necessary.  She had never worked out of economic necessity alone.  She had always had more than she needed, always having extra to share and to give.  She had never conceived of a life that she could regard as livable that didn’t somehow involve giving and sharing.  Contrary to the claims of the psychiatrist she had seen following Frank’s death Sheila could not accept that she gave out of a neurotic compulsion.  To prove this, she opted to live for herself alone, during which time she, pursuing her own happiness, became involved with Leon, that young cocaine addict who cost her thousands of dollars and more.  Even while trying to be selfish she ended up giving.  In the worst way.  She got rid of him in Europe.  Two days after sharing a hotel room in London she slipped away.  Leon, who was English, young, and criminally manipulative, was a failed rock singer who hoped that Sheila, temporarily rich with her widow’s inheritance, would bankroll his attempt at a comeback.  In the meantime, he scammed from her hundreds upon hundreds of dollars—most of which went up his nose.  A whiny, temperamental cry-baby.  Almost as young as Michael.  What had she been thinking?  Had she been thinking at all?  She found another hotel, in Notting Hill, near Holland Park, before which they had been staying in Hampstead, and left him a note stating that if he tried to find her she would immediately call the police.  Now, more than six years later, she still hadn’t seen or heard of him.  She had never known anyone so pathetic.

            Sheila was no longer interested in seeking her own happiness.  Perhaps she found it in giving.  In the mornings she would wake, naturally, at five, often earlier.  She would sit up in bed and meditate, passing through such chambers of deep repose that she couldn’t even describe to herself, much less to anyone else.  This had been happening since shortly after she divorced Bill.  She no longer sought her own happiness.  She no longer needed to.

            Tomorrow she would begin painting the apple tree.

Postmortem 42

I am free now.  Free in a way I never would have previous imagined, but had always longed for.  This hasn't developed as an easy freedom.  It seemed to really begin with the death of my mother, when I began to get liberated from my family.  But being set free from one's family is always going to be a Pyrrhic victory.  We need our families, and they are going to need us, no matter how much we also complicate and encumber each other's lives.   The support and connectedness is such that family bonds have always been lauded and upheld as sacrosanct, and above being questioned.   Even when families turn toxic.  Even when they turn dangerous, deadly and even lethal to their most vulnerable member.  And leaving a toxic family is never going to be an amputation that can easily be born or lived with.  This is because too much of your own self is going to perish with this kind of primal severing.  Unless you are prepared to be somehow reborn and remade.  And even then it is not going to be easy. 

My life is no longer encumbered with relatives.   No one has to spend Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners pretending to like each other just because we happen to come from the same gene pool (not chlorinated, unfortunately).  I will never have to endure the silent, and not so silent judgment of a sibling or of parents or uncles who have always held me in contempt.  Christmas, and often Thanksgiving, might still be unspeakably lonely seasons for me, but I still have to find a way to get over this, because no one is going to call me again to summon me to their table.  And friends, even the closest of friends, usually do not make a valid substitute for lost family.    My mother's death was followed by rejection and desertion by my father and brother, and all my cousins, aunts and uncles.   The trauma was hard to live down.  Even though I can celebrate being free now from people with whom I have nothing in common with outside of blood, I will also still always have to live with their rejection of me.  But now I am free.

I am free now from church.  The Anglican Church, anyway.  They have failed me in every way, and I am better without them.  Will I continue without church?  I don't know.  I rather like this time of not being connected anywhere.  I still have friends from the church, but I am in no hurry to integrate again.  I have actually a nice diversity of friends, and I am also confident that I will be meeting new people as friends in the future.  Is that the same as family?  No.  As community?  Not really.  Will I be moving toward a lonely and desolate old age?  Could be, but not inevitable.  In the supermarket today I did run into an old acquaintance from one of the Anglican parish churches that I suffered in.  She was friendly and mentioned how well I am looking.  I couldn't help it.  She had been a particularly problematic person for me while in that church.  I simply retorted that if I am looking well, it is because I am no longer an Anglican.  Perhaps rather a cruel thing to say but she has caused me a lot of grief, so she had it coming.

I am soon free from my work.  In nine months, I retire, and will likely be retaining one contract, but otherwise...I could even quit right now the other two sites where I am working, since I do not really like being there, and one supervisor I have always found a bit problematic.  It's wait and see.  We are in a pandemic and this makes everything kind of weird right now.  I am feeling semi-free, but it is still better to wait for now.

I am in contact with many good friends, some old, some new.  I want to go on nurturing and cherishing these friendships.  I also want to go on celebrating this new sense of freedom.  I still wish I could find some people to pray with, whom we could mutually support and empower in the Spirit.  We will have to see, Gentle Reader.  In the meantime, there is the present moment to receive, embrace and celebrate for the divine gift that God has ordained that each present moment should be.  Later...Who only knows?

Postmortem 41

My own version of the Grimm Fairy Tale, "The Fisherman and His Wife":

There once lived a fisherman with his wife in a humble little hut by the sea.  Every morning the fisherman would spread his net out on the water, and then would bring the catch home to his wife who would take the fish to sell in the market that afternoon.  Even though they had enough to eat, it was for them a hard and difficult life.  The hut they shared was tiny, and the wife often complained bitterly about the lack of indoor plumbing, and the outdoor toilet.  Plus, they could never quite get away from each other when they were both home.  Even if they did care somewhat for each other, this was not exactly a love match.  They had no children.

One fine June morning, the fisherman spread out his net as always, and waited by the water, and soon, something unusually large got caught, and as he dragged it to the shore, out sprang a beautiful golden dolphin.  "Please, please don't harm me" said the dolphin to the fisherman.  "I am actually a prince, but I was enchanted by a wicked sorceress because I would not be her lover.  If you set me free, then I will grant you whatever wish you desire.  In fact, as a reward for your kindness, each time you come to the seashore here, I will meet you and grant anything you desire.  Only, please, set me free."

The fisherman, not overly accustomed to having conversations with talking dolphins, didn't know what to say to the Dolphin Prince, So, he merely nodded, cut him free, then went home to his wife.  When he came home empty-handed she flew into a rage.  "Now, what am I going to sell this afternoon?  How are we going to eat!  You absolute imbecile!  Talking dolphin!  Are you off your meds again?  And meanwhile I have to live with the likes of you in this miserable little dump.   We don't even have an indoor toilet.  Have I told you lately how sick and tired I am going outside in midwinter just to take a pee.  Easy for you, you're a man, but I have to actually sit down bare ass on that cold seat.  If this fantasy dolphin of yours is real, then you get your sorry ass down there tomorrow morning and you ask him for something more decent to live in.  A cottage!  A lovely little country cottage.  With indoor toilet.  Now get moving, I have spoken!"

The following morning, the fisherman returned to the seashore, where the Dolphin Prince was waiting for him.  The fisherman told him about his conversation with his wife.  The Dolphin Prince replied, "Go home, you will be sleeping tonight in your cottage."  When the fisherman returned home, it was as the Dolphin Prince had said.  His home that he shared with his wife had been magically transformed into a little country cottage, painted blue and white with a thatched roof, and diamond leaded windows.  It wasn't huge, but just right for them both and their needs.  There was a garden surrounding full of roses and lilies, and fruit trees everywhere, as well as a grapevine twirling around the front porch.  As he went inside he heard the sound of a toilet flushing, and then his smiling wife came out of their new bathroom.

For six months, they were content and happy.  Or should I say, the wife was content and happy, and the fisherman, no longer besieged by her scolding nagging, was himself content and happy.  Then, one morning, when they woke up, his wife said "I think we could do better than this.  How about a two bedroom bungalow, with a fully equipped kitchen and granite counter-tops."   When the fisherman arrived at the seashore, there was the Dolphin Prince, waiting for him.  He told him about his wife's request.  "Granted", said the Dolphin Prince, and the fisherman returned home to a two-bedroom bungalow, on a crescent street in a subdivision in a suburb. 

Four months went by, and then his wife wanted a monster home.  They were rising a bit on the social scale, and she really wanted to look good to her new circle of friends.  The fisherman went to the seashore, and the Dolphin Prince granted his wish, and he returned home to a monster home with eight bedrooms and sixteen foot ceilings.  The blessing lasted just less than two months, and then his wife wanted a sprawling mansion in Shaughnessy Heights, the most prestigious neighbourhood in the land.  The Dolphin Prince granted their, or should I say, his wife's wish.

Six weeks later, his wife wanted to live in Buckingham Palace.  But we can't live in Buckingham palace, he said, that is the home of the Queen.   "Then you tell your goddamn Dolphin friend that he can make me queen, as well", she said.  But the Queen isn't Catholic.  She's Church of England.  She is in fact the head of the Church of England.  "Then we'll change our religion.  What's the big deal?  Now get your sorry ass down to that seashore."

The Dolphin Prince granted their wish, and inside of three weeks, the fisherman's wife, or should I say, the Queen of England, was already bored with all the wealth, splendour and pomp and circumstance.  She decided that she wanted to be Empress.  Her poor husband remonstrated with her that the British Empire was a thing of the past and that now we are a commonwealth of independent nations.  "Big deal", she said.  "Tell your Dolphin that I want to be Empress."

She lasted exactly six days as Empress, and she was bored to extinction.  Now, she wanted to be pope, and ignored every single argument of her husband's.  It didn't matter that they were no longer Catholic, they could convert back, and it didn't matter that she was a woman, they could arrange gender reassignment for her if they had to.

Two days later, the fisherman's wife, now Pope, summoned her husband to the throne and declared that she wanted to be God.  "Go to your Dolphin and tell him to make me God", she thundered.  The next morning, trembling with fear, dread and anxiety, the fisherman trudged slowly to the seashore, and there was a beautiful young man standing just over the water, robed in splendour and light.  He knew right away it was the Dolphin Prince, having assumed his true and living form.  He opened his mouth and said to the fisherman, "Go home to your miserable hut by the sea."

Postmortem 40

Something came out in a conversation yesterday with one of my Canadian friends.  We were talking about a city on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where my friend Juan is living.  I was training my Canadian friend to pronounce correctly "Barranquilla", the city where my friend Juan lives.  He actually got it right.  It is pronounced "Ba-rdrahn-KEE-yah, or ba-rdrahn- KEE-zhah. (you roll the letter r which gives it a slight d sound)

Now, I was telling my Canadian friend about my last trip to Colombia, in February, when I was waiting in line for customs and immigration.  Standing behind me were two young Canadians, and one was talking about his upcoming visit to Barranquilla, which he pronounced very incorrectly, the way it looks to an English speaker, which sounds like baron killa.  I mentioned to my Canadian friend that I wondered if I could help, so my Canadian friend naturally assumed that I would not have put my foot in it and correct the poor bugger.  Well, I did, and he did seem a bit surprised when I mentioned this to him.  So, gently and nicely, of course,  I explained to the young Canadian in the El Dorado Airport in Bogotá,  that I would like to save him the embarrassment, as well as the inconvenience, given that, pronouncing Barranquilla incorrectly could create potential problems for him, because no one in Colombia would understand what he was  talking about.  He also seemed to genuinely appreciate my input.

My Canadian friend is, in this manner anyway, a very typical Canadian.  We like to mind our own business, and some of us even think that it is the absolute height of rudeness to speak out of turn, especially to random strangers.  I have never been like that.  I think my own background as a teenage teenage Jesus freak really conditioned me that I have to reach out to others, no matter what, and not only to help rescue other people's immortal souls from eternal hellfire, but simply out of kindness and friendliness.  Now, Canadians do tend to be kind and friendly.  But many of us really suck at reaching out to strangers.  For the most part, we are timid.  We are afraid of the consequences of risk taking.  Regardless of what else I might think of our obnoxious neighbours to the south, one trait that I do admire in Americans (and in Colombians as well) is the willingness and courage to cross those barriers (they are barriers, not boundaries) and actually reach out to others, hang the consequences.

During my lengthy penance in the Anglican Church, I was also immersed in conservative Canadian timidity, because the Anglican Church of Canada is very much a bastion of middle class Canadian privilege, and they tend to function as a sacred institution that in every other way is completely secular in its mentality, its values, and its way of operating.  This is what makes passing the peace such a big deal during Anglican Eucharists.   It would seem that this is the only socially sanctioned opportunity for otherwise repressed and inhibited Anglicans to actually reach out to complete strangers.  Of course, there is also the coffee hour following, but not everyone is going to be friendly there.

I always have and always will live my life in a way that I will be transgressing boundaries.  This has nothing to do with disrespect by the way. Simply it is seeking the most appropriate way of reaching to others across the divide that often prevents people from coming together.  I am not always kindly received, but experience has shown me that more people than not appreciate me making with them this kind of effort.  The only thing that troubles me is that, far too often, I feel like I'm the only person who will do this.  Any of you oh so very Canadian cowards ready yet to crawl out from under your rock?

Postmortem 39

I still have no vision, no map for plotting out my future steps.  I am assuming that I will return to Colombia and to Costa Rica next year, as I am interested in further nurturing the relationships that I am already enjoying with new friends in those countries.  We are also in regular contact by video chat, which helps us establish a healthy familiarity.  I can't say that I feel alone.

Even though I have left the church, I have not left people in the church, only the institution.  I will likely attend church services in the future, but so much is still going to remain unknown.  It is very much one step at a time right now.  Small steps.  Present steps.  The future right now is not our concern, but simply getting through each day the best we can.

I think that especially at this time, relationships are so important.   Keeping in touch with friends, reminding them that they are loved.  My Colombian friends are especially vulnerable right now because they are under a ridiculously strict lock-down in that country, and so they are more isolated than I am.   So, I am in contact with them both every day.  Other friends, I touch base with every week, or in some cases oftener.  We all need to hang together right now.  It isn't just me, it is about us.

Kindness is very important right now, because we are all weathering the same crisis, we're all being affected by the same stress.  I haven't been able to hug anyone since I left my friends in Colombia and Cost Rica.  But each time we're online to chat, we conclude by exchanging hugs.  It is better than nothing, and I think there is real joy in this for us.

I am not worried about myself.  I don't think I will get the virus, and if I do, I will weather it, and if I don't, then I can go home early to meet Jesus face to face.  In the meantime, I have to keep short accounts with God and with others.  To be ready to forgive and reconcile, and to keep moving forward in love.

Postmortem 38

When I was a teenage Jesus Freak, I was surrounded by people wanting to recover their childlike innocence.  There was a general consensus about lifestyle and purity of life.  Drugs and excessive alcohol consumption were discouraged and even condemned, as were premarital and extramarital sex.

It isn't that we were puritans.  Rather we had come into something so intensely real in our experience of God that we all wanted to joyously abandon everything and anything of our old lives that would get in the way of the beauty of that encounter.  We wanted to be completely His.   Politically correct and inclusive language did not matter to us, not because we were against it, but that was before that time, and really, the immediate presence of Christ in our lives trumped everything, making such nitpicking details pretty unimportant.  That the Anglican Church ties themselves in knots over this triviality of inclusive and politically correct terminology is only natural because those people do not know Jesus.  They know about Jesus.  They do not have a relationship with him.  God is always at a distance from them, where he can't complicate or interfere with their lives.

There was among us a general consensus about lifestyle and purity of life.  We didn't care whether our sexuality was a gift or not.  We were being called into a singular life, into holiness of life, and this certainly means leaving behind sleeping around.  We were generally not in favour of homosexuality, because for us it simply implied sexual promiscuity.  Now that there is some foundation to same sex marriage and now that it is better understood that same sex attraction is an inherent and therefore completely legitimate condition, this of course changes things considerably, but our call from God was not to get married to someone of whatever gender but to serve God wholly and humbly with consecrated lives.   But many did end up marrying.   So it was celibacy outside of marriage, and within marriage complete monogamy, be it opposite sex or same sex.  Drugs and excessive alcohol consumption were discouraged and even condemned.  We wanted no psychoactive substances getting in the way of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  God was calling us to purity, love and complete joy, for this was actually a joy-filled life we had entered into.

We were taking a strict New Testament biblical stance and position on how we were going to live.  We believed that we were part of a major world movement that was like the early church of the first century reinvented and reborn.   We had been visited by the same rushing mighty wind that brought flames dancing on the heads of the first disciples at Pentecost.

This was a phenomenon that sadly was subsumed and mutated into the dreadful evangelical Christian Right that has become a byword to many North American and European liberals.  As I became conscious of how something so beautiful had been transformed into such vile ugliness, I left and eventually became an Anglican.    It never was a real fit.  I didn't care much about ritual, but in a high Anglican church I could at least have lots of time for silent prayer and contemplation, which I was greatly needing then.  But after prayer meetings and simply hanging out with people who were, like me, young, informal, spontaneous and affectionate, I found Anglicans to be cold, distant and emotionally constipated.  I never came into a real experience of community with those people who didn't do community, and for whom, the very idea of extending themselves to others was heresy.

It was religion.  But it wasn't life.  I only held on for the sense of ballast and stability which at that time I was also greatly needing.  Nothing more.  And there was a lot of beauty in the liturgy, but that never could become a substitute for simply walking with God.

I have come full circle now.  I have no interest in returning to that kind of religious slavery and bondage that is the Anglican Church of Canada.  Neither have I any idea as to where I am going from here.  I don't know any people whom I can walk with, which is going to make this, for a while anyway, rather a lonely way.  I am waiting to see where God leads me from here.

Postmortem 37

I understand and better accept now the process I have been going  through since February.  This is to draw me closer to God, which has also taken me out of the church.  Not a lot of irony there, given how far from God the churches generally are.   The Christian tradition I was nurtured in, if it can be called tradition, was something quite radical.  In many cases it could be called para-church, or even underground Christianity.

There was a lot of Pentecostal and Charismatic influence, with the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit being prominent in the collective experience of the Christians I was fellowshipping with.  It was an already given that our earliest journey into the Christian life would begin with conversion, where we actually gave our lives to Jesus Christ in a spirit of repentance and often personal brokenness.  This was of course the original and very beautiful experience that was flipped into the crass caricature of born-again Christianity.  This was the open portal that brought us into a relationship with God, a sense of being clean and pure and innocent again.  Often with tears, always with joy.

I cannot think of anything more beautiful than coming into a sense of closeness and right relation with God.  But something so full of love and peace and joy would only naturally be a sitting duck for those in the church who would cynically manipulate the Christian experience, as well as the secular media just licking their chops to report as cynically and degradingly as possible on something so lovely.   People experiencing genuine spiritual rebirth, since the mid seventies or so, came to be villainized and stereotyped as stupid fundamentalists, uneducated evangelicals, naive, and easily brain-washed and manipulated.  They became rounded into the same camp or category occupied by  right-wing politicians, homophobes, misogynists, pro-lifers,  and even at times white supremacists.

There is unfortunately a lot of truth behind this stereotyping, and Christians have often unfortunately been unwittingly complicit in their own disparagement  And progressive Christians in mainstream churches have been very quick at distancing themselves from their, shall we call them, awkward country cousins.   But people tend to be intellectually lazy and very ready to dump others into broad and sweeping categories.  Or, it isn't only the fundamentalist born-again Christians that are often guilty of black and white thinking.  But this also became a sure and deadly move towards demonizing personal spiritual experience of the presence of God, since in order to experience God and the beauty of spiritual rebirth one would be assumed to have taken leave of their senses, or at least of their rational mind.  And we all want to seem intelligent, progressive, reasonable and well-educated, don't we, Gentle Reader?

When I was a teenage Jesus freak, I remember being around a huge diversity of people, some well-educated and with doctoral degrees, others very working class, some semi-literate.  What brought us together was a common experience of a God who loves us and through our powerful experiences of his presence in our lives that we could become vectors and channels of the divine love to one another and to others.   This was something so beautiful that it seemed only destined to be undermined and destroyed by bitter and envious cynicism.

Of course, those times of intense spiritual renewal are always going to be episodic and temporary.  Nobody can live forever in those sublime heights of ecstasy, nor are we meant to.  But there remains a kind of banked underground fire that still smoulders in some of our hearts, and this very fire is but waiting to reveal itself again, and just as in the previous times, the love, power and holiness of God will be again manifested in our lives.  Until then, it is pray, wait, hope and be faithful with what we already have.

Postmortem 36

I heard someone on the radio say this morning that this year it seems that spring has not really happened, .  Not because it's been unseasonably cold, it's actually been lovely.  But for not having anyone to share it with, or talk to about it, due to the safe distancing during this pandemic.   I find this rather curious.  For me, this is like the first of all springs, it has been so lovely.  I have no one to share it with.  But that doesn't matter to me.  The beauty of this spring has reassured me that nature and life go on, despite this pandemic, and despite our many, and sometimes disproportionate anxieties and fears.  I have gone through much of my life not really that connected or feeling that connected to others.  My own family in various stages turned against me and ostracized me, and now I am completely alone in the world.  But I still feel connected to others. Rather than extinguish my capacity for love, this has only increased and strengthened my resolve to live as a person who loves, cares for and celebrates others, nature and this earth we all live on.     I have been betrayed over and over again by false friends, but now I see myself as a friend to whomever will count me worthy of their friendship, and now I have some very dear and close friends in my life.

I am not sorry for myself.  I have benefited greatly from these challenges.  They have made me stronger, more independent and more creative and resourceful.   I have become resilient.  Unlike many people, I have not lived with any sense of entitlement or privilege.  Even though I am not a person of colour, through much of my youth I was often harassed by police, for being poor, of course.  I have never lived feeling in control of my life.  I have always been poor, and at times, very isolated.  Now that we are in this pandemic and have to isolate and distance ourselves from one another, I feel that I have an advantage over others.  This is nothing strange to my experience.  And even if it kind of sucks at times not being able to visit friends in a coffee shop, video chat is way better than nothing.  Plus, I can still be in weekly, sometimes daily contact with friends in Colombia and Costa Rica and as a bonus I get to speak Spanish almost every day.

Yesterday morning, I ran into an old friend who was having her morning cigarette on her apartment balcony.  We stopped to chat for a while and she remarked how I appear to be thriving during this crisis.  We both share the expectation that this pandemic is going to be, in her words, a portal, to open up our lives and change us in some important and meaningful ways.  My friend, by the way, is a famous Vancouverite  who for many years has advocated and supported people who are homeless.  Yes, Judy Graves, whom I salute in this blog post.

I don't think that a lot of people have been emotionally or mentally prepared for any of this.  They have never really been tested, so there is little wonder that fifty percent of Canadians are reporting now that they are suffering in their mental health.  For me, aside from the fear and anxiety that has polluted our air even worse than car exhaust, this has been a boon.  Yes, I do enjoy a little bit of schadenfreude, knowing now that a lot of the same people who have previously rejected and marginalized me, can now get a taste of what it's like to be me and the many other people they have treated like garbage.

Speaking of schadenfreude, I also get to righteously gloat at the long line ups of pathetic undeclared alcoholics waiting to get into their local essential service (aka liquor store), to obtain enough beer, wine or something stronger to keep them comfortably numb for awhile.  Of course they are weak, fragile, and in many cases addicts, or alcoholics.  I guess I should feel sorry for them.  But I don't.  To me they are pathetic, and among the finest examples of people who would rather run away and hide under a rock than bravely face the storm.  I think what makes me so willing to mock and make fun of them is that they to me are symbolic of the very people, ordinary middle class folk, who have long treated me like garbage.  But I am stronger than they are.  Some of them now know it, and are less than likely to forgive me, not for being weaker, but for being stronger than they are.   For people with status and privilege, long accustomed to having less fortunate folk under their boot-heel, this can be the most egregious of insults, knowing that your supposed inferior has the advantage over you.  That is the very stuff and substance of revolutions.

But really, despite my hard and cold heart towards some people, I still have to give heed to the call on my life to love others and to be compassionate.  Perhaps my compassion is going to be rather dry-eyed at times, but they are still my brothers, they are still my sisters.  Perhaps entitled reptiles, but underneath, they are human, they are fragile, and would benefit more from a hug than a kick in the teeth.  Perhaps what they really need is both a hug and a kick in the ass.  I still haven't quite figured out in which order, Gentle Reader.

Postmortem 35

I am returning to my original question that I asked my friend when in Colombia near the early days of my trip: How do we become better people?   Again, just as a recall of the context that gave birth to my question.  We had just seen and tried to help two different fathers, each who approached our car at stoplights, each carrying their young child in their arms, asking for money.  At that time I had already been feeling overwhelmed by the social inequality in Colombia, the huge economic division between persons, particularly in Bogotá, where we were waiting in traffic for said stoplights to change.  When addressing the social and economic inequality in both Colombia and our own Utopian Canada, I was musing out loud that, for things to really change significantly, then we all have to become better people, which also gave rise to that million dollar question, how do we become better people?

What have I done, since returning, to become a better person?  What makes a person better, or what makes a better person?  What are the field markings, or characteristics that will identify us in the wild?  These are such difficult questions to answer, because so much that happens in our lives, happens in community.  It doesn't mean we will be living together, nor that we will necessarily be seeing each other every day.  Community is a very loose, sometimes useless catch-all.  But we are more than one, we are definitely more than just me. Or just you.

I have actually left my church.  I have left my denomination, so, so much for community.  I am still in contact with two friends from my church.  And I do want to take care to not forsake other people from my parish church, which could imply some future connection or contact with people there.  I have no idea, so far, how that's going to look.  I am done with the Anglican denomination.  The archbishop, when she sicced her dogs on me, made this a necessary amputation.  I have no regrets.  Neither am I about to consider their arch-enemy, the Anglican Network of Canada, as they are borderline fundamentalists, and they owe their existence to their homophobia, from back in the day when they split from the archdiocese in 2002 because they didn't, and still don't, approve of same sex marriage.

Does this make me a better person?  Well, I had to make a decision, for my own spiritual and mental health, which also means that I had to bail out of an abusive and potentially dangerous church situation.

I have also become more assertive with two of my more right wing supervisors at work, especially around pay and expectations of job performance.  I have stated clearly to both of them that I am not about to offer a lot of extra labour with new clients until something is done to correct our atrociously low pay, which remains just nickels above minimum wage, even after an embarrassingly modest raise.  I have made it clear that I am so angry and frustrated following sixteen years of working for an employer that remains blind and deaf to our needs and human dignity that I am going to be increasingly vocal and assertive until my retirement in less than ten months. 

Does this make me a better person?  I have just stood up for myself, to Big Church and to Big Boss.  But how does this help others?  I want to help and care for others, and not just stay focussed on myself.  But I have been, increasingly focussing on the needs and well-being of others, especially since this damn pandemic, trying to stay connected, to be encouraging, uplifting, supportive.  And it seems that this renewed assertiveness is coming as a fruit of this experiment at love in action, rather than vice versa.

Is there room for improvement?  There will always be room for improvement.  Am I going to obsess over becoming perfect?  No, because that is the self-hater in action.  Perfectionism is the slightly less ugly sibling of self-hatred.  What it means is that we are going to continue to grow, and to grow, one must remain open and vulnerable, which also brings us back to the Beatitudes, the Blessed's of Jesus, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for justice, the humble, the compassionate, the pure of heart, those who work for peace, the persecuted....That is where we must begin, and that is where we must end, Gentle Reader....

Postmortem 34

Yesterday, a friend asked me if I have an opinion about Covid 19.  Yes, he did ask me if I have an opinion.  He asked me that. If I have an opinion.  Oh, but that is so funny, Gentle Reader!  How else could I write any of this dreck, if I didn't have an opinion!  So, here is basically how I replied, after we stopped laughing, that is.

The Covid 19 virus was not invented in a petri dish in China.  It is a natural, random occurrence.  Like any illness or virus.  Disease happens.  It has always happened.  And sometimes, some of us will get sick and die.  We are all going to die, you know, darlings.  Live with it.  It is in the contract.

Do I think we are overreacting to the virus?  Now here is where I could get in a lot of trouble, so I am going to try to parse my words as carefully as possible.  This is a serious pandemic.  The mortality rate is low, being one to two percent, but this bug is highly contagious, and especially deadly to elderly people and those with other underlying conditions.

Is this so deadly as to justify shutting down entire economies and countries?  Well, for me that is hard to say.  We see what has happened in places where they didn't act soon enough, or where the people just weren't taking care.  I am thinking of Italy and Spain, especially.  I don't know why things are going so bad in The US or in England.  We seem to be doing better in my province, British Columbia, but people here are generally being very compliant.  

This is not grave, but it is serious.  People are frightened and anxious, understandably.  Many have lost their job and livelihood.   Vulnerable populations: seniors in care facilities and the homeless and unsafely-housed are particularly vulnerable.  People seem to still care more about seniors than the homeless, and that is the curse of meritocracy.  It is assumed that the seniors are worthy of kindness, compassion and respect because we all helped build this country, etc., etc.  And that is largely true. The homeless and poor are still assumed to be less worthy because for some reason it is their own fault, or they have addictions, they don't want to work.  All of this is garbage, of course, but people are still very selective when it comes to compassion.  

I understand that our governments want to flatten the curve of new infections and deaths and keep our health care system from collapsing.  Understandable and laudable.  I understand that safe distancing is the most effective way to prevent the spread, and this makes it very difficult to keep a lot of places and events open where people are going to crowd together.  So restaurants, cafes, bars, hair salons and any shops or services not deemed essential have had to close down, throwing a lot of people out of work.  Liquor stores, by the way, have to stay open.  They have been designated essential services, and now more alcohol than ever is being purchased and consumed and is it any wonder that there is such an uptick in domestic violence and spousal abuse.  

I draw the line at wearing masks.  They have been shown to be ineffective for protection, and only work if you are carrying the virus and this way you are less likely to be a transmitter.  But people are really afraid, and when we are afraid we also get very selfish, and vice versa (chicken and egg, you know!)  I completely agree with our public health officials that wearing the masks is overkill.  I find it especially troubling that some stores will not let customers in who are not wearing masks.  I will not shop in those places.

I am especially on board about the need to safely distance, giving one another a minimum of two metres distance.   Some people still don't seem to get it.   Yesterday in a bakery I had to ask one woman for my two metres please, and she just looked frightened and offended and didn't move.  For me inconvenient, because I was just about to pay for my purchase, so I couldn't move aside from the stupid woman.  She was wearing a mask, but I suspect that she wasn't wearing it to protect anyone but her precious and exalted self.

I also suspect that we have already been living in a culture of fear and heightened anxiety, at least since the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York back in 2001.  I just wonder how much this communal fear is hitting critical mass now, with this pandemic being a convenient vector.  Not because it isn't serious.  It is very serious.  But because it is being blown out of proportion by such dangerous hyperbolic words and language as deadly, lethal, grave, existential threat to human existence.  Regardless of gender, I think a lot of us could stand to man up a little.  We are not all going to die.  Well, eventually, yes, of course we are, and that is, as I said earlier, written in the contract.

When I was on my way home from Costa Rica March 20, I knew I was entering a climate of fear and anxiety.  I was not afraid of the virus, nor of getting sick or dying.  I was afraid of being infected by the fear.  I prayed, and God, instead of promising to protect me, simply and very gently directed me to protect myself, by loving and caring for others.  By maintaining and nurturing friendships, by opening my heart and life to others.  by being kind and friendly to strangers, even stupid women who will not safely distance from me.  And by keeping a joyful and positive attitude, which is actually easier than it looks.  But having a joyful and positive attitude is often the fruit of loving others, rather than vice versa.  Try it sometime.

Postmortem 33

I just sent the archbishop one very brief email.  Here it is, Gentle Reader:

This is my final communication.  When you sicced your goons on me that was the ultimate betrayal.  Like being hit by an abusive spouse.  I have now left the Anglican Church, and I do not want your blessing for the future.  I can forgive you, but I will never forgive your act of betrayal,.  Goodbye.

This is what God told me last night:

"You are in a new place with me.  Now, leave the past behind.  carry with you only the blessings.  Those who have harmed you, you must leave them with me.  As you have said, I will judge between you.  Now come and move forward into the sunlight of my love for a new day is dawning for you.

I'm done.  I have no idea how the future is going to look.  So much is at play right now with this pandemic, and everyone's lives are being changed, not just me.

I think that now I have a better understanding of what I was being prepared for while in Colombia.  I will provide you here with a selection from my blog post, Colombia 7, from February, very much an example of the state of magic realism I was living in at the time.  I believe now that God was taking me through this experience in order to prepare me for leaving the Anglican Church.  The funeral that was taking place in the church represents the state of death that is in the church, and that I am being called to leave death for life.  In the plaza there were the two pigeons making love.  Again a very powerful symbol of life and fecundity, that this would be happening for me not inside but outside of the church.  And the man playing the recorder was like a symbol of Jesus, showing me the real life and the real creative action and beauty I am being called to, away from the church, as a creative result of the pigeons mating, so to speak.  And that when he hugged me, it was a blessing for me to carry on in my next steps into life.

I eventually found my way to the central plaza.  The church was open so I went in.  There was a ceremony taking place near the front with people gathered round something with the priest.  As I drew closer I saw that it was a funeral gathering, so I left out of respect, and went to sit on a bench in the plaza.

 (right now, Gentle Reader we will pause for an annoyance break  as one of the many annoying mobile commercial messages drives its way down the road and out of earshot. 
This is a frequent public annoyance that appears to be quite tolerated in Latin American countries)

It's gone now and things are quiet again, or as quiet as they get around here, we are in Colombia, you know.

So, as I was saying, I was seated on a bench just across from the church, and there was another fellow on a bench with a friend, and he was playing a recorder.  He played very well and was dancing around in the square while playing. just as the funeral procession was making its way towards the door of the church.  Just then, two of the pigeons in the square were copulating.  It was a very surreal kind of setting, the funeral procession exiting the church to load the coffin in the hearse waiting outside.  A man playing the recorder while giddily dancing around, and two pigeons mating.  Another (presumably male) pigeon tried his luck, but she had already had her fill and wasn't about to put out again.  The coffin, containing the earthly remains of some random beloved dead Colombian, was loaded like cargo into the hearse which drove away so quickly that no one would have known it had ever been parked there.  The flautist with the recorder paused as a few random strangers applauded his performance and we ended up having a conversation.  His name is Alejandro.  He insisted that I pause so he could play me a couple more of his compositions, one of which is titled "El Policía es la Mierda", or, The Police Are Shit."  But the music was far lovelier than it's sardonic title and one series of notes seemed to be saying "No te preocupes, no te preocupes, no te preocupes..." which means, do not worry, do not worry, do not worry...  He was a very warm, charismatic and kind sort of man, and gave me a big hug before I left, to return to my home in Colombia.