They Can Make Our Lives Miserable, But They Are Never Going To Break Us 1

I once had a dream, long ago when I was in my early twenties.  I had somehow got through a horrible wasteland full of destruction and horror and found myself safely on the other side.  I wondered what had happened and what I had just gone through.  Then I understood that I was going to have a hard and difficult life and that God was going to take me through it safely and bring me to a better life on the other side.

I am sixty now.  Thirty years and more have passed since that dream.  In a meeting today with one of my supervisors I mentioned that my life, my health, wellbeing, everything seems to be working in a harmony and balance that I have never known before: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional.  When I had that dream I had already been through a traumatic childhood full of abuse and neglect.  I had gone through it, not unscathed, but still able to function.

I was thirty when my Thirteen Year Nightmare began.  It began with some horrible professional betrayals, then neighbours threatening my safety and my life, then everyone around me seemed to be dying, in addition to my own mother.  my record is three deaths in one week.  More betrayals and deaths followed I ended up homeless with full blown PTSD at forty-two.  The nightmare ended a year later.

I had been through awful employers, family members who turned against me, churches where I was treated like a heretic of the Spanish Inquisition, betrayals from those closest to me and death, death and more death.  While coping with unemployment and underemployment and extreme poverty I had to endure a welfare system that was set to break its clients and grind them into dust.

Others have been through worse, much worse than me, and some have come through okay, even stronger, but not without damage.  We are living now in particularly scary times and I think that many of us are going to have to find ways of reconfiguring our lives and learn new ways of coping because the old ways are no longer going to work.  As our governments turn more and more into puppets of banks and corporations they are becoming so distant from the people who elect them that we no longer seem to exist to them. 

They are going to find more and new ways of making our lives miserable.  They might succeed but they don`t have to break us and if we accept that we are the arbiters of our own happiness and wellbeing, then they are never going to break us.  We will end up breaking them!

A Modest Proposal For The Anglican Church Of Canada

Gentle Reader, as you well know, I have been circulating a petition to ask the federal government of my dear true north strong and free, Canada, to make housing a fundamental human right.  It isn't getting a lot of traction and after a whopping thirty-seven signatures it has remained stagnant at that less than lofty cipher for several days now.  I have tried several strategies, but there seems to be still in this country an entrenched mentality of meritocracy.  Even though it has been proven over and over again that housing first is the way to go for combatting street homelessness many of us are still brainwashed by the Depression Era logic that everyone has to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even if they don't have boots, walking shoes or sneakers or flip flops.  Even if we are barefoot, Gentle Reader, we are not excused, but we have to stop crying and consider the man who has no legs.

So, here is the link again to my poor neglected petition, if anyone would like to sign it:


https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Canadian_Prime_Minister_Justin_Trudeau_make_housing_a_Canadian_human_right/


I have been targeting the various churches in O Canada lately, methodically looking for directories and then emailing the links.  I am currently focussed on my old sacred alumnae, the Anglican Church, and still find myself in Nova Scotia, where there appear to be a lot of Anglicans, and a lot of conservatives.  Hence, no signatures on my benighted petition.

Anglicans tend to be, among Christians, a very self-centred lot.  They are very good at making all the right sympathetic noises while ringing their genteel hands but when it comes to the crunch they will likely choose cathedral bells over community kitchens.  In the case of our own cathedral here in Vancouver they actually opted for both.  The bulk of the money of course did not go into the community kitchen, though still a most convenient accessory for optics and good reportage.

As some of you already know, Gentle Reader, I have been on a lengthy furlough from the church, notably the Anglican Church.  I am enjoying my three year sacred holiday from church attendance though I do pay a visit, from time to time, if only to remind myself of why I no longer go.  Last Sunday, for example, I paid a courtesy call to my parish church, my first visit in two and a half years.  I'm actually glad I went, but I had to take care to avoid contact with people there.  Like many Anglican parish churches, this one, if it was given a mental health diagnosis, would have borderline personality disorder.  Everyone tries to act friendly and will cross whatever boundaries to show you that they are friendly and welcoming.  Passing the peace is a downright love-in!  However, if you want to actually find community, make friends, enter a network of meaningful connections...

well...

You might consider joining a meetup group!

I simply stayed on my knees with my face in my hands and everyone left me alone.  I left during the closing hymn, avoiding further contact with well-intentioned hypocrites...

It was a lovely service!

Later, at home, I had a look at their webpage.  I noticed their program for spiritual direction, something I had been thinking of for myself, given how sick I am of being fed Buddha babble by the counsellor I have been seeing.  The program did look attractive, a trained spiritual director who will meet with you once a month for meaningful engagement as he walks with you on your spiritual path.  Then, at the bottom, the price tag. 

That's right, Gentle Reader, forty bucks an hour.  For spiritual direction.  In the church.  Come buy without money, come buy without price, INDEED!!!  A bargain if you're already well-heeled, and there appears to be in the Anglican Church a tacit expectation that you are going to be on a comfortable income, otherwise you are not going to be quite as welcome as others.

So, Gentle Reader, my modest proposal for the Anglican Church.  I have thought long and hard about this ever since I was first inflicted upon by the stewardship program when I first began attending my former parish church.  I had not been there three months and I had been harassed three times or more to start giving money to the church.  Then, as now, I was on a low income pulling only a little more than minimum wage.  And if I tried to explain this to these insensitive parishioners they feigned deafness.  And now spiritual direction is being offered, forty bucks a pop.  The marketing of Christian discipleship.  Christianity as a commodity. 

So, how about emulating the Compass Card strategy that our public transit system has embraced?  That's right.  Charge admission.  Sell special smart cards (nothing should be free) to parishioners and set up fare gates at the doors of the churches with scanners.  They can be works of art: wrought iron, neo-gothic, aboriginal with thunderbird motif, the sky's the limit!  Keep the bums out who won't pay and soon the church coffers will be overflowing and the joy shall flow out from the doors and stain glass windows like oil, honey and wine!

Fidel And Augusto

Oh, there are so many folks in and outside of Latin America who would never dream of uttering those two names in the same sentence, nor in the same conversation: Castro and Pinochet.  Both were controversial leaders, each made lasting impacts on their respective countries, each died in their nineties, each was a dictator, neither one was democratically elected, both had buckets and buckets of human blood dripping from their hands.  Shouldn`t that be enough in common?

Oh, but Fidel was a socialist and Pinochet was a fascist.  Fidel gave the Cuban people free universities and health care and took away their freedom; Augusto gave the Chilean people a robust free market economy and took away their freedom.  Both men killed thousands of their own people while sending hundreds of thousands into global exile.  They didn't much like people who didn't agree with them.

I have listened to some pretty absurd defences for both these dictators.  One Chilean expat had the absolute crass gall to presume to tell me that the summary tortures and executions ordered by Pinochet were necessary to rescue the poor disabled Chilean economy.  Even to the point of killing people who didn't agree with him? I asked.  He replied that the economy had to be saved.  This man was a professed Christian by the way and he didn't appear to be at all troubled about endorsing wholescale murder.  I have clashed with similar fatuous idiots about Fidel and Che.  Many had moved to this country as Chilean exiles.  Under Allende they enjoyed the very freedoms that Castro had robbed his own people of.  In Canada they could still enjoy the same freedoms, blissfully unaware of really how little in common the alleged Marxist governments of the two countries had with each other.  Pinochet, like Castro, killed his enemies and oppressed his people.  But to the Chilean exiles Castro and Allende were ideological twins.  Salvador Allende never would have dreamed of implementing the repressive violence in Chile that Castro employed to keep the Cuban Revolution alive.

They had absolutely no idea.  If they were told about the human rights crimes of Castro and Che they would reply about the human rights crimes of Pinochet and the right wing fascist regimes de jour throughout Latin America during the seventies and eighties and their support from the American government, military and CIA.  They didn't exactly argue or debate the subject.  They simply distracted and smoke screened the crimes of their heroes with the equally egregious crimes of their ideological enemies.  No dialogue.

Canada's own little white Obama, Justin Trudeau, is now in international hot water for praising Fidel as a hero since his death last Friday without mentioning his many crimes.  I would go so far as suggest that Castro was a war criminal and really should have faced justice in the Hague, as should have Pinochet with whom he is now likely roasting marshmallows in hell. 

It doesn't matter whether it is revolutionary violence or reactionary violence, leftwing or rightwing.  It is still violence and once the heroes of the resistance resort to shedding the blood of their enemies they have disgraced their cause and converted themselves and their followers into criminals.  Unfortunately history, and our present time, and sadly, our future, are full of these fallen heroes, fallen not on the sword, neither the bullet or bomb, but on the murder they have inflicted on others, innocent or not, to advance their cause and enshrine their insatiable egos.

As for the death of Fidel Castro, these are my final words: he was ninety. 

Hope

I think, like many of you, Gentle Reader, that you must by now be very fatigued with all the news about the Dump (aka Donald Trump).  And I am really sick of writing about him.  I do feel inclined to make token mention of the illustrious president-elect, if only to provide context to my blogpost today.  I have also two recent deaths in mind: Leonard Cohen and Fidel Castro.

First, a little bit here about the Dump.  A friend recently emailed me an article, a rather crass piece of attempted hagiography, written as a cv in praise of the Dump, citing his pedigreed upbringing, privileges and popularity.  Apparently, my friend seems to believe that these advantages could make him a good president.  Here are some of the howlers: his weight is underestimated by forty pounds; he is praised for his great and complex natural hairstyle (it's really a toupee and looks rather like a dead cat lying on his head).  I almost lost my breakfast, and other meals of the day, when I came to the part about his love for women and enjoyment of sex.  Oh, yeah, like where he likes to grab the gals when he's forcing his tongue down their throats, and we won't mention here the many women who have come forward about his attempted sexual assaults on them.

So much for that.  Many of us are clinging to hope as the likelihood of a very dark and troubled presidency looms over us.  I for one am going to continue hoping.  They have found that Hillary Clinton won two million more of the popular vote than the dump, and there is even the hope that this could go to court and maybe even overturn the Dump presidency before he is installed.  Meanwhile, here in Canada, we have Prime Minister Junior, that is, Justin Trudeau, Canada's own little white Obama.

Recently I heard of Justin Trudeau and the Dump being compared to Bambi and Godzilla, so small wonder that junior would want to make nice with the monster as quickly as possible. 

Still, give me Trudeau over Harper (and Mulcair) and Obama over Trump.  We have to cling to hope and not allow the forces of darkness to hobble us.  Even if people in positions of power turn out to be dangerous douchebags we still have to live our lives and in many ways we might still have to live our lives as though they don't even exist, which is to say we are going to have to work and live together more as a community and start taking much better care of one another.  By the same token, as long as we still enjoy freedoms of press and expression we will go on holding their feet to the fire.

I am reminded of the broken hope for Cuba that Fidel and Che had offered through the revolution and how it all went sideways as what began as a beautiful uprising of the people into a brutal and violent charnel house, transforming Fidel and Che into butchers worthy of the ravages of Pinochet.  I do not deny that Fidel did much for Cuba, with their wonderful education and public health systems.  It is also clear what he did to his people, those who opposed him and how many thousands of lives were brutally ended and thousands more destroyed because opposition would not be accepted or tolerated.

In conclusion I would like to remember Leonard Cohen who said that there are cracks in everything and that's how the light gets through.  I have hope that regardless of the dark, frightening and scary times that we are going through, that light is going to shine through the cracks, and Gentle Reader, you and I could well play a role in this.

When The Darkness Begins

We are in the final week of November when winter begins on the West Coast.  It won't be official for another four weeks but here winter always begins in the last half of the eleventh month.  Often our first freeze occurs, though this year it seems a bit delayed.  It rains a lot and when the sun shines we really notice and celebrate.   For the first time the temperatures begin to stay at less than ten degrees centigrade (fifty for you lovers of Fahrenheit).  The trees, those that are not evergreen, are almost uniformly denuded and their bare branches are raised to the sky like hands in worship and adoration.  Moss and ferns gleam green from the tree trunks as though to taunt the arriving winter.  We will make it spring all winter long, they seem to be saying.

On these rainy days it always appears to be dark.  The sun remains chronically hidden and our eyes adjust to this dim reality.  Everything is always wet, the pavement, the grass, the benches.  Nowhere can you sit comfortably.  If you walk for a good distance you have to dress for it: good waterproof footwear, a warm coat and a big umbrella, and you must brace yourself for the distance for there will be no place outside where you can rest.

Negotiating a busy sidewalk with an umbrella, especially an obscenely big one like the ones I buy can be an art.  Most people don't have a clue and will often brandish their brollies like children carrying weapons of mass destruction.  It can be downright dangerous as clueless pedestrians and shoppers amble on, each the centre of their own little universe, totally oblivious to the existence of others.  Better to leave it folded and lean on it like a walking stick while walking under as many shelters and canopies as possible or tolerating the odd raindrop.

Then step into a residential neighbourhood or a park where you have all the space you need and you can raise up your umbrella and walk under it with confidence and comfort.  You will not see many folks out in this weather, aside from a few brave joggers and dog walkers.  Close your eyes, and inhale deep and you will feel almost intoxicated by the cold, sweet pure air. The solitude is a gift.  But it never lasts as you are again walking among others and surrounded by the homeless sheltering under doorways and awnings, some begging for spare change.  This is the time to resist the gathering darkness, to find some way of touching others, if only with a smile, or asking them how they are.  Even briefly with strangers on the sidewalk or on the bus.  Sometimes just a kind and friendly word can provide enough light to ward off the gathering darkness.

In this falling rain, this darkness of late November we are all like candles, like little votive candles and we each hold the power of lighting one another to give light against the darkness, to provide hope for the gathering winter, and to never forget to expect the coming spring which will soon, like a sudden and wondrous redemption, be upon us

My Letter To The Project Manager Of The Tate

Hello,
The fact of this condo tower going up in my backyard raises for me a number of questions and issues and I think you will find this interesting.  If you are a compassionate human being, I know you will find this interesting.  As you know, I was in frequent contact last year at this time between you, the site manager and city hall regarding the blinding halogen light in the excavation and its tendency to shine into my apartment.  It was not pleasant and I had to pester, hound and nag before the situation was finally resolved.  I recall also my final message to you at that time: "welcome to the new Vancouver."

We have just had a brief correspondence since yesterday about the brilliant halogen light on the crane.  It isn't always a problem, except for when it is aimed directly at my apartment and even if I don't want to, I have to lower my blinds.  My apartment is a tiny bachelor, not much more than three hundred square feet.  When I can see out the window, even at night, it feels less claustrophobic in here.  I suppose one could say, well, if that's a problem, then why don't I move.  Not so simple.  I live in Vancouver, the land of housing for millionaires only.  I have lucked into some of our very scarce affordable housing.  My job pays only a little more than minimum wage and I am sixty years old.  Moving, for me, is out of the question.

Besides the blinding halogen lights there are other issues I would like to address:

1. This condo tower is going to completely obstruct my view of the sky.  I have lived here in this little BC Housing apartment since 2002 and I have enjoyed having some view of blue sky, cloudy sky, golden and fiery sunset sky, and for three nights every summer some of the fireworks.  As this monster gets higher I am only going to have other buildings to look at.  Of course I would be angry.  Who wouldn't be?  The uber-wealthy development corporations, such as your employers, who build things care not a rat's heiny how their megaprojects impact the lives of people on low incomes and humble circumstances.  The narcissistic hubris and arrogance of the wealthy and powerful is already well known and well documented.  People like me do not register on their radar.  It is like the words from the old prog-rock band King Crimson: "The gardener plants an evergreen whilst trampling on a flower."  If you are one of those fortunate individuals who tends to judge us all as losers and collateral damage then let me tell you a thing or two about myself and some of my neighbours: I may be poor, but I have an IQ that places me in the top two percentile.  And you know what?  There are other tenants here who are also incredibly bright.  Some are university students.  One speaks seven languages fluently.  I speak two: Spanish and English.  I am also an accomplished artist with more than one hundred sales and commissions of my original art works under my belt.  Here are some images of my work if you don't believe me:

Here is a photo of me (almost ten years ago) with one of my paintings


Here are some more samples of my work:

    

I am also a writer and if you would like to see samples of my writing this blog is full of them, including a manuscript for a novel, short stories and poetry. I am also a social activist and am currently circulating a petition for the federal government of Canada to enshrine the right to housing as a fundamental human right.  Here is a link to the petition.  Please sign it and pass it on:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Canadian_Prime_Minister_Justin_Trudeau_make_housing_a_Canadian_human_right/

For that matter, we all have value as human beings.  We do not deserve, just because we lack resources or opportunities or wealth, to have our quality of life damaged by your megaprojects.

2.  This is the worst neighbourhood in Vancouver for increasing density.  The downtown core, West End, Coal Harbour and Yaletown are already dense enough.  Why can't you build your towers in Shaughnessy or in West Point Grey?  Oh, that's right, some of you live there already.  Silly me.

3.  These luxury condo towers do nothing to realistically address the housing crisis in Vancouver.  They cater to a niche market and some of them are likely to be bought for purposes of investment and shadow flipping by foreign millionaires.  I trust that you already have a moral compass and are aware that this is particularly ethically repugnant.

In conclusion, please explain to me, why your employers couldn't forget their short-sighted greed just long enough to consider that maybe they could open up their condo buildings even a little bit: convert some into affordable rentals, and for some others provide subsidized units that even the poorest Vancouverites could afford to live in?  Perhaps the developers responsible for the Tate could do something a little more helpful to address our housing crisis?

Just sayin'

To Blog Or Not To Blog

Yeah, I'm going to keep doing this.  I don't otherwise have much of a voice and this way I know that at least someone is reading my nonsense and maybe even taking some of it...seriously?

I suppose this blog is like a safety valve in some ways.  Seriously, before I started writing it just three short years ago I thought my head was going to explode.  So here on these pages, in the interests of public health and safety, the genesis of Content Under Pressure.

I first called it Contents Under Pressure, but I removed the s and this seems to work more consistently with the theme, or should I say, multiple themes, of this blog.  The word content could be taken either one of two ways: content as in what it contains, or content as in feeling tranquil and happy.  This content is under pressure.  It cooks, bakes, boils and broils throughout the day and night, coping with the every day greyness of every day life, the fallout of stupid policy decisions made by venal politicians, the wonder of nature, the beauty of holiness and much, much more.  The pressure shapes, forms and molds and helps create the content which is eventually spat out on these pages for your enjoyment and outrage, Gentle Reader.

By the same token, I like to remain content under pressure.  Not always an easy task given all the crap that life can throw at us.  But a skill worth acquiring, honing, developing and perfecting.  I am, sometimes, content under pressure.  And I am often dying to share with you, Gentle Reader, my secret for doing this.

Not a day passes when I don't have something to write: it could be something I heard or read in the news, or something I saw on the bus or the street, or at work, or an insight or revelation while enjoying one of my interminable walks.  It could be ideas and suggestions of how to get through the day, make it through the night, cope with difficult people and circumstances.  Or I will write about matters of social and environmental justice, of spiritual realities, of the need and the simple drive and hunger to explore that beautiful universe that surrounds us, encompasses and inhabits us. 

I mean to inspire you, inform, teach, scandalize and question you, Gentle Reader.  I mean to draw and invite you to explore and journey with me on this strange pilgrimage that we share.  I want these words to become a kind of key, a lodestone of revelation of the love of God.  I do not have the answers.  I am also struggling and here on this blog I am inviting all my readers from all over the world to share in me this struggle and to refuse to accept complacency or easy answers.  I want us all to become better people through these words, more curious, kinder, more loving, more truthful and more open.

Even though I might appear to have strong opinions, Gentle Reader, I don't really.  For me it is all a work in progress.  On these pages I think out loud.  I will express outrage and indignation, or wonder, or curiosity, or annoyance or simple unabashed joy.  I embrace ambiguity, nuance and paradox, not as enemies nor as frightening realities but as components of the multifarious beautiful mystery that is the universe and our rather tiny and strange part in it. 

And in these pages, Gentle Reader, I would have you do the same.

Shelter Or Housing?

As you already know Gentle Reader, I am currently circulating a petition about homelessness in my country, Canada.  That's right, our own dear little Canada.  One of the richest countries in the world.  and one of the nicest countries in the world. And we have a housing crisis.  We have thousands who sleep on the sidewalk or camp in public parks.  Do you think they're too lazy to get a job?  Maybe no one wants to hire them?  Maybe rents are so high that a low paying job isn't enough to keep them alive.  Maybe they have mental health issues, addictions.  Maybe they lack skills and training.  Maybe they're just so damn tired from life, so isolated, abandoned and unloved, that they can no longer fight for their survival.  They're not able to.  And even if they were, what difference would it make?

So, I am circulating this petition, asking the prime minister (that's right, Justin, Trudeau Junior, or just Junior, youthful fabulously good-looking, looks great with his shirt off (he even has a tattoo!), kind, nice, and just wants everyone to like him.  Well, I am not easily swayed by good-looking politicians who want me to like them.  Better luck if they enact legislation that will protect our most vulnerable citizens.  For example, enshrining the right to housing as a fundamental and inalienable Canadian human right.  Such as I have already highlighted in my petition.  Here it is.  Sign it.  Then pass it on to as many people as you can:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Canadian_Prime_Minister_Justin_Trudeau_make_housing_a_Canadian_human_right/ÉÉ


Splendid, Gentle Reader.  There is a place in heaven for you.

Notice, while reading the petition, that I have said housing, and not shelter.  I had given it some thought before designing the petition, only to realize that the word shelter implies rubber mats on the floor, while housing suggests...homes.  What makes this difference significant is the likelihood that our government will do anything it possibly can to weasel out of a commitment through any available loophole.  Shelters are cheaper than apartments.  Duh!  But that is short-range reasoning.  When you factor in the savings from giving people actual decent housing, housing with dignity, it really is a no-brainer.  When we have access to safe, affordable, and decent housing, housing with dignity, we are able to rebuild our lives.  We have a safe, clean and comfortable place to come home to every day.  We can rest, clean and feed ourselves.  We can unwind from the stress of the day.  We have a place, and time and space where we can heal and recover from the ravages we have incurred, the damage to our mental, physical and spiritual health.  We can begin our re-entry point into the community.  Many of us are eventually able to work again and become self-supporting and self-sustaining, and tax-paying.  Because our lives are no longer being tenuously meted out we are less likely to engage in practices and behaviours harmful to ourselves or others.  We are no longer as likely to require emergency services, interventions or hospitalizations.  The math has been already done and it has been shown that housing, as opposed to shelters, actually saves taxpayer money.

We also need housing rather than shelters for one simple reason: people who have survived street homelessness generally are in tremendous need of all kinds of supports: mental health, addictions/recovery, life skills support, friendship, programs to help them socially integrate to the community, and more.  A few nights spent in a low barrier shelter is not going to provide that.  The trauma of subsisting in a bug and rat infested sro isn't either.

Many Canadians, especially older Canadians, unfortunately are still stranded in a meritocracy mentality, believing that housing, even a modest bachelor unit, is a privilege that has to be worked for and earned.  That might have been applicable many decades ago, when incomes and housing costs were fairly compatible and work and housing were easier to find.  But even then in that golden age that never existed there were people living on the margins, homeless and vulnerable and generally reviled and stigmatized.  We are finally addressing the stigma of mental illness and addictions and it has been found that no one should be denied housing if we really expect them to find some hope of recovery, or at least a significant slowing of their spiral downward.  We now know that housing first is the way to address long term homelessness.  We also are agreed that this isn't simply a matter of charity or kindness.  I'm talking here about justice.

Still More Musings Of A Dinosaur

Today I would like to write about stress.  Not just any old stress but the whole idea of stress and of how stressed out we are all getting by the idea of stress. This isn't to say that we don't have just cause for feeling anxious.  We have climate change on tap, a worsening instability in the global economy, a refugee crisis that keeps growing even after we never thought it could get worse, and a dangerous imbecile who will soon be moving into the Oval Office.

After reading this over I almost feel like going straight to bed and staying there till it's all over....

Outside of climate change and the dangerous imbecile who will soon be moving into the Oval Office I find myself wondering if maybe we are protesting too much.  Hasn't life always been hard?  It seems we didn't always have the easy convenience of email, Google, Facebook or Twitter.  We phoned each other.  From our homes.  When we were outside walking a lot of us had our heads buried in newspapers or books while walking instead of smart phones.  And a lot of us still stepped in dog shit.  There were wars, two particularly big ugly ones in the twentieth century, the two biggest most lethal and destructive conflicts ever known to human history.  Child abuse was not only commonplace, it was rampant.  Parents beat their children with impunity.  There was no protection for queers, no human rights and slavery was not yet a distant memory.  There were no public amenities for people with disabilities and people with mental illness were cruelly stigmatized and excluded.  And almost everyone was a dirty racist.

Nowadays, if you want information about anything you don't have to reach for the dated encyclopedia on your bookshelf.  One click to Google and there it is, for your eyes to see.  All the knowable knowledge of the known universe is at your fingertips. If you're late for an appointment you don't have to madly search for a payphone (remember those?).  You just take out your phone (first pull over and stop your car if you're driving) and call your party and invent lies to explain why you are late to your heart's content, then you can update your Facebook status, and after that check a dating site, maybe look for some relevant information. 

Nowadays, if you're a gay man you can walk hand in hand with your boyfriend in public and hardly anyone will notice, and that guy could even be your husband.  You might even have kids. If you're in a wheelchair you can still get on an ordinary transit bus that will take you to wherever you need to go.  If you are living with a mental illness  you can still enjoy ordinary life, have a job, friends and a family.  If you're a kid you will have a reasonably good expectation of growing up without being harmed or hit by your caregivers.  You will be sharing sidewalk space, public transit, restaurants, coffee shops, stores, schools and the workplace of various colours, creeds and origins and you might even fall in love and marry someone of a different race and no one is going to bat an eye.

It isn't like that all over the world and we want it to be.  We want to import our lovely liberalism to every far corner of the earth, ISIS and North Korea be damned.  We don't care if our way of life isn't universally welcome.  Look what it's done for us, how unhappily happy we are, how overstimulated and bored we are, and how we have to work our lives to the bone in order to pay for all our high-tech toys, pricey gadgets and sweatshop sourced fashions.

I am not saying we don't live in scary times.  We have always lived in scary times, no epoch any more or less scary than its predecessor or successor.  What has changed is that we are now more afraid than ever.  Over-informed, overeducated and overstimulated and we are not yet ready to stop dancing, not even when our shoes wear out and our feet begin to bleed we will continue to dance to the frenzied beat of the drum that resonates and frightens us unto the ends of the earth and the deepest recess of our poor undeveloped souls.

Our Own Happiness

Once again, today, Gentle Reader, I have mentioned to a client that, barring a situation that is dangerous or unsafe, we are each responsible for our own happiness.  I really need to think this one through a little bit before I open my mouth about it again.  In the meantime, I'm putting this little essay on pause long enough to do the day's paperwork...

The paperwork's done.  I came home to noise from the hard to house tenants in the building next door so I have closed the window and put in earplugs to block the noise pollution from someone's stereo.  I would be miserable right now without the earplugs. Yes, I am responsible for my happiness but it is also important to have the tools available.

It is difficult at times to imagine being responsible for your own happiness.  We are such a shallow, consumerist, dependent kind of society.  Happiness is what other things or other people make us.  The idea of contentment and joy coming from within the individual is still widely viewed as cute and New-Agey, or quasi-spiritual.  Or maybe it says something about how sick most of us really are, of how incomplete we are with our obsessive need to depend on others for our wellbeing.

This isn't to say that our wellbeing isn't easily impacted by others.  We are a social animal and of course we are always going to be impacted by one another, just as we also do the impacting.  We are often not aware of the effect we have on others and so we play the victim.

The noise from the building next door is no longer a problem and I have taken out the earplugs.  I am reminded of my first apartment, an attic apartment on top of a tall ancient house at Twenty-Eighth and Main in Vancouver (still standing).  When I became unemployed I would spend some of the cool November and December afternoons curled up with a book to read.  Then it would come flying through my window like a volley of invisible rocks, the raucous enraged beast voice of a very angry and rather stupid looking woman at the bottle depot across the way, screaming and swearing and chewing out her alleged husband.  She could roar worse than a howler monkey.  They were both sad, unattractive looking people, round, pudgy, oppressed and rather poor looking.  He would manfully endure her abuse and I would wonder if I should one day go out there and ask her what she was screaming about.  I was just eighteen at the time.

Now that dinner is heating on the stove I am going to have a look at the daily papers...

I just checked dinner, which is heating slowly: a black bean chili I made yesterday with leftover broccoli.  I am also enjoying a banana.  I can't say that I'm especially happy right now though we could call me content.  It would be nice to get more signatures (now thirty-one) on my anti-homelessness petition.  Here is the link again, should any of you be inclined to sign it: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Canadian_Prime_Minister_Justin_Trudeau_make_housing_a_Canadian_human_right/

Creating our own happiness is really very easy.  It begins, I think, with trusting our own resourcefulness.  I have no one to come home to at the end of the day, since I live alone.  This means that I will have a quiet time, that I can feel emotionally safe and not have to perform for anyone.  I have no one to make me miserable and I have no one to make miserable.  I am not lonely.  I also have friends.  I have lots to read, interesting things to hear on the radio and see on YouTube.  I can also paint and draw.  I might email a friend or make arrangements to meet someone new for coffee in order to practice Spanish (for me) and English (for them)

My work day was pleasant and productive: two positive encounters in coffee shops with clients and a cancellation this morning, which I spent enjoying a long walk in the beautiful morning to a favourite coffee shop where I drew for over an hour.

Even if things don't always go as we want to them (and really, Gentle Reader, how often do they?), even if we have limitations and the hell of other people to cope with, I think for the most part that we have very little to complain about.  There are always going to be obstacles.  I know that there are growing concerns here where I live about housing and food security.  Life is getting increasingly expensive and many of us are feeling the pinch.  We are living in an insecure world with a megalomaniacal fascist waiting to be inaugurated to the Oval Office south of the border in a couple of months, climate change, and populist despots being elected to lead a growing number of countries.

We can still create and appreciate beauty and we can still reach out in friendship and kindness to those around us.  We can still be happy, and in the joy that we discover in the deep wellsprings of the spirit we can also spread joy to those around us.

My First Petition

I have been on the mail list for Avaaz for a few years now, and I have signed a lot of petitions.  Now, for the first time, I am circulating one of my own, about homelessness.  It is with a particular goal in mind.  Here in Canada, global beacon for human rights and fairness and compassion, there is no enshrined legislation that guarantees housing as a fundamental human right.  In a country this wealthy, so fair, just, and ah-shucks, so downright boy scout and girl guide NICE, this is why homelessness is still a problem.  Because our government can get away with it. This is why that weasel, Paul Martin, in 1994, was able to so easily scrap our national housing strategy in the name of neoliberal economics, opening the way to epidemic homelessness in this country, which every year gets worse and worse.  Because, we who are vulnerable to homelessness, have no legal protection.

Today I have enjoyed a pot of homemade cocoa made from scratch in the comfort of my little affordable apartment, followed by a pot of black bean chili that I made, also from scratch.  To think that such simple and homespun pleasures are coming to resemble more and more a privilege, so scarce and difficult has basic affordable housing become.  I was once homeless myself, and I so appreciate what I have now: a roof over my head.  And a bed to sleep in.  And good landlords.  And (mostly) good neighbours.  I also suffer from survival guilt.

Having a place to live in is becoming increasingly precious in this most obscenely expensive city where I live and more and more middle class residents are feeling the heat.  They are becoming vulnerable to homelessness, just like us poor folk.  It was inevitable and it didn't have to be.

In nine days I have amassed a whopping thirty signatures on my petition.  I am sending you the link, Gentle Reader, because I expect you to sign it and to send it off to ten other people who will sign it, and also to ask them to each forward my petition to ten more people, and so on.

Here is the link: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Canadian_Prime_Minister_Justin_Trudeau_make_housing_a_Canadian_human_right/

More Reflections Of A Dinosaur

The fellow being interviewed on the radio yesterday about harm reduction also had some rather dumb things to say about prostitution (here, Gentle Reader, we shall eschew the stupid politically correct moniker, the "Sex Trade."  It does nothing to destigmatize prostitution and everything to legitimize it.  There is nothing legitimate about selling or renting one's body.)

There is nothing legitimate about prostitution and neither is it inevitable unless there is a vicious pimp holding a gun to your head.  Otherwise, please spare that claptrap that the girls have no other option.  Last I heard, prostitution is not addictive and therefore does not require a harm reduction approach.  Whatever happened to the word "no"?

Oh yes, it can be said that in survival prostitution anyway that is sometimes the most effective way that a woman with kids can pay the rent and put food on the table.  Or is it?  Is legit work really that hard to get?  Even without a lot of skills or education?  What about extra supports for finding employment and training for better job prospects?

Not everyone who is on social assistance is going to turn to prostitution to survive.  Some women would not even consider hocking their privates for food and rent.  Unless she has a personal history of childhood sex abuse, especially from a family member, and among hookers, survivors of incest are legion.  This isn't to say that all hookers (not sex workers, Gentle Reader.  I already said I have no interest in legitimizing this little career choice, oldest profession my ass!)

Just the other day, while walking by my former parish church, I noticed a monument recently erected in front of it to honour the street hookers who used to work in that neighbourhood until in 1984 or so when they were driven out of the West End of Vancouver.  During that time I was involved in street ministry.  I knew some of those hookers, female, male and trans.  Some became dear friends.  I took great care to not judge them, neither could I agree to the self-righteousness of the local residents who were intent on driving them out of the neighbourhood. 

To this day I still will not judge the hookers.  Neither will I judge the local residents for wanting to get rid of them.  It was a bad situation for everyone.  All these prostitutes. a lot of them teenagers, survivors of abuse and abandonment, trying to find their way across this horrible life they had been handed, while being shown not a smidgeon of compassion by those who felt inconvenienced by their presence.  All those poor local residents, their nights rendered sleepless by constant noise and their neighbourhood made filthy and unsafe because of the local ho's and their johns.

More than thirty years later, I still refuse to take sides.  The harm reduction approach is morally and ethically bankrupt.  It allows for sex to be legitimized as a market transaction, a credible trade or career choice.  Um, excuse me, you guys, but what if your daughters decided they wanted to be ho's? Hi Mom, hi Dad, I want to be a ho when I grow up.  I'd be good at it, eh?  Hey, I already had lots of practice with the high school football team.  How about providing training courses in our community colleges, workshops in resume development: Well experienced and fully certified sex trade worker with excellent customer services skills and full knowledge of all the most popular toys on the market, fully equipped with complete bondage complement.  References available on request.

Is this where we really want to be headed with this?  Sex as a market commodity?  Like everything else in this environment of unrestrained capitalism.  I have always held sex to be something sacred.  While I don't tow the Catholic line that it is for reproduction only, that is certainly the number one reason why people have sex if not it's prima facie.  It is a special bond between two people who have devoted their lives to each other, and yes, I am strongly in favour of both marriage and monogamy.  Why do we wish, through our politically correct idiocy, to consent to degrading something so sacred as a mere item for sale, rent and barter?

This isn't to say that hookers don't need nor merit special protection and support.  And when addictions are part of the picture, as they often are, this really complicates matters. 

For the record, I do not believe that prostitution should be illegal.  It ought to be decriminalized, for the protection of the women, men and transpersons who are stranded in this disgraceful trap.  Neither should their johns get off the hook.  To this day, I strongly endorse the Scandinavian model: don't charge the hookers, charge their clients, probably the only legislation from our previous Tory government that I ever agreed with.  While we are on the subject, I am sure that there is a lot more that could be done to educate men and boys to treat women with respect and their own sexuality with care and responsibility.  They wouldn't be in business without the market demand and something has to be done to get men to change their attitudes.

But we still need to walk with these women, men and transpersons, not approving, but certainly not judging or condemning.  Yes, let's try to make conditions as safe as possible for them, but let's also provide a way out, with drug rehab, counselling, mentoring, training, education, decent employment, and refusing to shame them.  It is unfortunate that the harm reduction aficionados can seldom accept or appreciate nuance or paradox, which this kind of situation is full of.  We can still support the persons without endorsing their career choice. It is called discernment.  And old-fashioned common sense. 

Yours from Jurassic Park.

Reflections Of A Dinosaur

When I arrived home from work this afternoon I heard on the radio an interview with a semi-recovered addict.  He called a dinosaur anyone who didn't swallow his Koolaid about harm reduction.  Well, sonny, this dinosaur ain't extinct yet and he has a thing or two to tell you.

First of all, there appears to be a certain harm reduction dogma that has become au courant.  It is almost like a kind of religious fundamentalism.  Every addict is okay, does not need treatment and should be given all the public support and be supplied with publicly funded heroin or whatever to stay happy and content in their addiction, lest they get very unhappy and decide to break into a home, shoplift or mug an old lady to supply their habit.

Okay, that's a bit of a gross generalization.  The fact of the matter is that harm reduction does save lives.  It does precious little to help people recover from their addictions and this has to be factored in.  But safe injection sites are cheaper than drug rehab.  Duh!  Which makes harm reduction a cynical smokescreen for saving precious government tax dollars.  Meanwhile, the addicts have to get their stuff somewhere.  So they buy from dealers who get their stuff from gangs and cartels and they usually get the money by robbing, stealing, mugging little old ladies and people in wheelchairs, home break-ins...Sounds more like harm production, if you ask me.

Don't get me wrong, Gentle Reader, I am in favour of harm reduction.  I am not in favour of illegally obtained drugs that simply hurt more innocent people while we are expected to feel sorry for the poor little addict who never got enough hugs.  Okay, probably they didn't get enough hugs.  Neither did they develop a moral compass, and our current programs of harm reduction, rather than touching this little hot potato, would rather just feel sorry for them, continue to patronize them, coddle them, give them everything they want, and not treat them like adults.

There has to be a better way.  Here's an idea.  Legal heroin, yes.  Legal cocaine, yes.  But grown and cultivated and produced legally, obtained legally, and legally distributed to those who are severely addicted, but with one particular condition.  Accepting the free smack obligates the user to accepting a lengthy, gradual and gentle process towards free treatment and rehabilitation.  And with counselling, including religious and ethical counselling to encourage the development of an ethical and moral compass.  This of course is never going to happen.  Why?  It costs too much money.  And it treats addicts like responsible adults with the built-in expectation that they are eventually going to grow into adult behaviour.

There is of course another problem with my little solution.  So many people with addictions have other problems: fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, mental illness, trauma from child abuse and abandonment, brain injury, and none of these things are going to be addressed with a punitive approach.

We cannot go on infantilizing addicts, but neither will punishment work, being as inhumane as it is counterproductive.  Harm reduction is still in an early developmental stage and we are going to be tilting between extremes while trying to balance them.

In the meantime we still have to find ways of walking with those who are suffering from addiction in a way that is nonjudgmental, while still offering a reasonable and respectful expectation that they will eventually grow into fully responsible adults.  Okay, maybe not an expectation, but the hope and faith that they can do this.  And if they never get this far?  We don't abandon them, and we also learn from them because they are our sisters and brothers and have important things to teach us.

Yeah, Whatever

Nothing to write about today, Gentle Reader.  Do something that'll make someone smile...in a good way.  Don't let the news get you down.  The politicos have less power than they want us to believe.  They cannot and do not own us.  We just need to be resourceful, more creative and we really need to hang together more.  I really hope that I can live to see the day when the way we treat one another and support one another can make our governments permanently obsolete.  They have become so beholden to their shareholders and investors (not us) that we had might as well call it a divorce.  We still have to live and get on with life.  We still need to hold the bastards accountable, but at the end, we really just have each other.  It doesn't have to be lonely and we don't have to choose isolation.  Together we are strong, and together we will flourish.  But not without struggle.

Get outside more in the fresh air, to walk.  Look for trees, water.  Try to notice the birds.  Try to spend more time together.  Work less if you can, if not, then try to make each minute count and hopefully you will find something meaningful in the dull and wretched moments at work.  There will also be rewarding times.  Try to see each person near you as a friend you haven't met or as a long lost relation.  We are all connected and interconnected.

Eat simply, but well, focus on nutrition and enjoyment.  Share your food if you can and if you don't have enough to eat don't be shy to ask and if you have more than enough, rejoice in generosity.

We may be facing hard, dark and dangerous times.  Ours is the choice if we choose not to light the candle in our hands.

We are all interconnected, and as part of nature, part of our Mother Earth, we are all one great living organism.

The Vicious Circle Of Legislated Poverty

Last night I listened to the radio broadcast on CBC of the public presentation on food banks and poverty and poverty reduction in Vancouver.  One of the provincial government ministers, Peter Fassbender was a guest panelist and my schadenfreud was having a field day hearing him put all four of his feet in his mouth, over and over again, as pithy questions were given him about the government's chronic delinquency in realistically addressing poverty and income inequality in this province.  He bleated out one lame excuse after another and it very quickly became clear and evident that neither Mr. Fassbender, nor his ethically challenged BC Liberals care, have ever cared, nor ever will care so much as a little turd of cat shit for the poor and vulnerable in this province.

When one panelist cited that having to resort to lining up at a food bank when you are working full time and supporting a family might be a humiliating experience he retorted that food banks and community soup kitchens and meal programs are an excellent way of getting the community involved and motivating people to care for one another.  Not only did his government have the heartless gall to create misery for so many people on low incomes but he even twisted his logic just a little to make it look like an act of sublime altruism that he and his government could take credit for.  This is worse than sleazy!  How do people like that get voted in?  Oh, that's right, just like Donald Trump, President Dump of the USA, was elected to public office by millions of Americans every bit as sleazy as him.  That is the problem with democracy.  Horrible venal people voting for horrible venal leaders.  Duh!

Then came Fassbender's equally puerile justification for making people on disability income pay fifty-two dollars a month for their bus pass, which used to cost only forty-five dollars A YEAR and that with rising food costs, a number of people on disability have to forgo taking public transit in order to pay for food.  Fassbender's spin?  They have been given a seventy-seven dollar a month increase or nine hundred eighty-three dollars and forty-two cents a month (of course, that gets scaled back to forty cents given that pennies are now obsolete!) and now everyone has the choice of what they can do with that extra money.   No one, of course, mentioned the obvious: try living anywhere in BC (especially in Vancouver) on less than a thousand a month and see how well fed and well housed you're going to be after a year.

Here are two of my favourite sticking points which Peter Bend It Fast parroted shamelessly and rather proudly:

1.  The vicious circle about climbing out of the poverty trap.  He thinks that just anyone struggling to make ends meet on low-wage employment is going to be able to quit their crappy low-paying job and go into vocational training fulltime and still be able to eat, pay rent and pay the bills when student loans rarely cover everything, not to mention the extra stress if the only option is to keep working while taking training in the evenings.  Because the government does nothing to help out with tuition or living costs, this is not going to be a realistic option for some and many are still going to remain stranded where they are.

2.  The majority of minimum wage earners are not young people living with their parents.  That has already been proven to be an absolute crock, not to mention that there are hundreds of thousands more people in British Columbia subsisting on low wages, perhaps a little higher than minimum and well below the national average wage of twenty-five dollars an hour.  Keeping the minimum wage low, also lowers the bar for other low wage earners, keeping even more people in poverty.  And the excuse that small businesses can't survive if they pay their workers a living wage?  Those kinds of businesses have no business being in business if they are not prepared to pay their workers fairly.  If they can't make it, good riddance!

The rest of us have been asleep at the wheel.  Now is the time for broadscale resistance to this government and their morally bankrupt policies.  I find it salutary that when almost everyone appeared to be getting kicked off of welfare and onto the street in 2002 the employees of the various social services implementing these policies did absolute squat to counter them.  Yes, there were some squeaks of protests...but...did anyone speak to the media?  NO...did anyone conscientiously refuse to carry out these evil policies?...NO...did their unions go on strike to protest what was being done to their most vulnerable clients?  Don't make me laugh.

We have to start caring.  Not simply wringing our hands and making sympathetic noises.  We need action.  Broadscale civil disobedience to bring the BC Liberal government and their detructive policies of callous greed right to their knees!

The Left And The Wrong

It is rather a binary way of doing ethics and politics, Gentle Reader.  If you believe strongly in social and economic equality and respect human rights and social diversity; if you uphold marriage equality, freedom of choice and a secular agora then you are left wing.  A lefty, so to speak.  It means you are anti-religion, anti-family, anti-capitalism, anti-military.  You are at best a socialist, at worst, an old school Maoist.

If you are right wing, then you believe in small government, you're pro-life, anti-gay, pro-capitalist, and strongly religious.  You are also less than likely to care about people living in poverty and you are going to tell them it's their fault for not working hard.

People who strongly identify themselves as left or right often seem to hate each other without mercy.  They don't appear to consider each other as human.  The vitriol that gets flung between them can be quite unnerving though I will admit one thing here.  People who strongly identify with the right are more likely to vilify and demonize their alleged opponents on the left, who generally respond with mockery and sarcasm and a certain self-righteousness that even I, a lefty and proud of it, find embarrassing at times.

Before I go on writing let me "make one thing perfectly clear" (in the words of that very infamously famous rightwing president of the USA, Richard Nixon).  I reject this binary.  To me it isn't left or right that matters, but that we are all essentially human.  I have found that almost all my other friends on the left wholeheartedly agree with me on this.  I have seldom encountered similar courtesy among those right-wingers I have known.

So, here we already have a disadvantage.  If we recognize the innate humanity and value in each person and dedicate our lives to honouring and upholding this, to many on the right, this places us squarely on the left.  If our preference is to engage others who disagree with us or who would pose a threat to us in meaningful and respectful dialogue that can foster reconciliation and healing then we are weak bleeding heart liberals.  We are lefties.  If we prefer to engage in peace and in peaceful ways of addressing conflict, this makes us lefties.  If we are moved to compassion by the rampages of unrestrained capitalism as it mows down human lives and leaves those unable to compete in poverty and misery, and we try to constructively address this, our friends on the right simply diss us as lefties and refuse to listen.  If we prefer to speak to and of others respectfully and refuse to endorse cruel and hateful slurs we are called politically correct.  We are lefties.

The major obstacle to fostering meaningful dialogue consists in two things: the right's problem with fear, and the left's tendency towards self-righteousness.  What gets forgotten is that we are all human beings.  Some of us are very scared, often lack education or, if we are educated, it is generally in business and economics but not in the humanities, and we tend to ignore the humanity in others because of our fear.  We endorse brutal, militaristic and punitive measures in order to remain competitive and strong, and this undermines and disgraces our sense of humanity.

If the left is more enlightened than the right, and I for one strongly believe this, then it is also our responsibility to recognize the cognitive deficits of our friends on the right, not to fear or parody (people on the right tend to have very thin skins.  So do a lot of folks on the left, by the way).  More important, I think, to refuse and resist the temptation to demonize and to look for what we all share in common and do what we can to build on this. 

What is going to make this difficult will be reaching past the irrational fear and paranoia of people on the right.  Studies have shown that the amygdala in the brains of conservative thinkers tends to be exceptionally big and strong.  This is also known as the reptilian brain which tends to govern the basic need instincts of comfort and survival.  When one is thinking with the reptilian brain it becomes virtually impossible to approach them with logic or reason.  I cite here as an example all the Trump supporters in the US who elected the Dump into power.

It's going to take a lot of patience, time, a little compromise and a lot of love.

By the way, some lefties, such as this one, are Christians, very faithful, devoted Christians.  I think what tends to keep Christians like me on the left and away from the right is that we tend to recognize God in terms of love, mercy, forgiveness and justice over vindictive punishment and biblical literalism.

In other words, Gentle Reader, whether left or right or none of the above, it's going to have to be all about love.

Dream Land

I'm writing this, Gentle Reader, in the hope that anyone reading this will also have some insight and would like to comment.  I have unusual dreams.  I am not going to bore you terribly with details as I know how, yawn, entertaining listening to other people's verbal novelizations of their dreams can be.  To give a little heads up, my doctor recently offered me medication to suppress the dreams as she, wrongly, assumed they were disturbing me.  In a way, they do disturb me.  And I don't want them to stop.

Here is what happens when I dream.  I find myself in a different place with people I have never met before.  Some of them I meet again in later dreams. Things are often very similar to the way they are in daily life, just more intense and often with a strong sense of art and a creative bohemian ambience.  I also never feel as though I am in a dream, but that I am awake and spending time with people I do not know in my waking life.  At times I meet the same people in other dreams, but usually they are all strangers to me, or I have known them from previous dreams but can't remember when exactly.

I just looked at an article on the Psychology Today website and it suggests that the majority of strangers that appear in a dream are male and that they are usually threatening or aggressive but this almost never happens in my dreams.  The gender balance is fairly even and mixed and I very rarely experience threat or aggression, though it did happen recently with a middle aged Asian woman in a dream who jumped me from behind and others in the dream pulled her off me.

The people in my dreams are generally friendly or at least innocuous and we are always talking about things related to the mind, art, people and things I often can't remember.  Last night there was a couple, man and woman, sharing my bed (not in that way, so don't get your hopes up!).  They were lying on the other end of my bed and, honestly, it wasn't like a dream.  They were, in my experience, actually there with me.  I was trying to teach them Spanish, and they seemed interested for a while, but then got a bit overwhelmed and left.  Shortly before I was seated on a couch in a woman's artist studio and watched as she was working on a painting of trees and then she gave me ideas of how I might paint peacocks.  She was older with rather wild, curly grey hair.  Again, I was actually there, or so it seemed.

A few weeks ago I was talking with several people in a dream, among them a young man.  He asked me if I remembered any wars and I mentioned a few, including the World Wars.  Then he appeared a bit offended and said that I had forgotten Serbia.  Then I remembered the war in Yugoslavia and realized he had died there in 1993.  I apologized to him, I think we embraced, and he agreed to be my friend.

I could go on.  What I have come to believe is that in my dreams I meet people who have already died and that somehow we have befriended one another and this is all I can say right now.  It is rather unorthodox but no other explanation appears to work.  I have friends in the Unseen and we meet at night when I'm dreaming.

The Forgotten Faith

This morning, it happened again.  On a radio program they were talking about the open discussion of death and dying and the way our society, very geared towards individualism and social isolation tends to be death denying, and people are generally squeamish or downright scared of the subject.  The fellow being interviewed went on to mention as examples those societies with religious roots: Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Islamic.  Because they are socially cohesive and community oriented there is a relative openness about embracing the reality of death.  Then I noticed something missing.  The word Christian was not mentioned.

When spirituality and faith are being discussed in the public forum it appears that the Christian faith has become the elephant in the room, the ugly sister, the poor mentally ill cousin.  Someone we don`t like to talk about nor even mention.  An embarrassment.

There are many reasons and excuses for this.  The most popular being that Christians of all stripes and denominations have done so much to disgrace their faith that no one is going to take them seriously.  I accept that there is some truth to this.  The scandals of sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic church, the religious conservative right in the US and almost every other odious absurdity in between has done much to discredit Christianity.  I suppose there is no need to mention the burnings of witches, heretics and anyone else the Pope didn`t like during the Middle Ages in Europe and in Latin America until the eighteenth century.  Yes, Christianity is probably the most discredited faith in the world.

Except...

When you explore the faith with an open mind and an open heart, something very different can occur.  And there is also the possibility of meeting Christians who don`t validate the negative stereotypes of intolerance, hypocrisy and pure flakiness.  Which is to say, the kind of Christians never mentioned in the media: people who care for the sick and infirm, who support and shelter the homeless, who feed the hungry, help impoverished communities help empower themselves and develop, provide disaster relief, work for social justice, visit and befriend prisoners and sex workers, care for the dying, comfort the bereaved...

Even though we live in a post-Christian era, the eponymous faith has done its share to define our civilization, our culture and our values and this still resonates in our understanding of liberal democracy, respect for human rights and multiculturalism, pluralism and inclusiveness.  That`s right, Gentle Reader, all Christian virtues.

But, to condense and summarize within a few lines the four Gospels of the New Testament, this is what we believe as Christians: God became one of us, in the form of a helpless baby born to poor humble parents in a remote corner of the Roman Empire where he grew up in the Jewish faith.  He shared all of our weakness, frailties and imperfections except for one small and significant detail: he lived without sin.  As a young adult he came into the fullness of his ministry, preaching the good news of God`s love for everyone, especially the poor and vulnerable and he went about healing illness and restoring broken lives.  The religious authorities hated him because of envy and they handed him over to the Romans who executed him as a common criminal.  He descended to the realm of the dead where he liberated the imprisoned souls and three days later rose from the dead.  He gathered together his frightened followers, encouraged them, empowered them, then ascended to heaven.  Ten days later he anointed them with the Holy Spirit, empowering them further to spread the good news of his love and redeeming power throughout the world, to all people, even though they were ruthlessly and mercilessly persecuted to the death.

Those who are Christians have accepted Jesus as God made human and have received into their lives the power and restoring love of his Holy Spirit.  This does not make us perfect and often our imperfections and frailties get in the way of this beautiful truth.  By the same token, as we further surrender our lives and our desires to God we come into a process of healing, growth and maturation and our lives increasingly reflect the love of the God that so few people seem to believe in.  There are a lot of Christians like this.  The media tends to ignore us because we tend to be rather inconvenient to the popular narrative and the stereotypes of the intolerant, right wing pedophiles who hate freedom of choice and marriage equality and deny the reality of global warming from climate change.  But we aren`t all like this and far be it from us to inconvenience the popular misconceptions of what Christians really are.

In the meantime, there are other religious faiths.  Are we better than Muslims, for being Christians?  Better than Jews?  Buddhists?  Pagans?  But that is not the right question.  I did not choose to become a Christian because all the other faiths are inferior.  I don't know if they're inferior or not, and frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.  I am a Christian because that is how God has called me.  I respect other faiths.  Beyond that I have nothing to say about them, because my reality, my experience, is uniquely Christian, and this is the faith that I am resolved to honour with the desire to respectfully coexist with others.

It would be nice if the media began to understand this, stop believing all the bad press without considering the other side to the story, and stopped vilifying us, if only by default and silence.  I think that we as Christians also have a role to play in disabusing the media of some of the inaccurate nonsense they have swallowed about us.  But only if we are prepared to be true disciples, and also if we are prepared to steel ourselves against the unpleasant and chronic misunderstanding that we are still going to be faced with because not everyone is going to like or approve of what we are, nor of whom we represent.

That Dawkins Guy!

Here I am writing again about why I am not an atheist.  It's kind of a default topic since I'm
sick of whinging about president-elect Dump.  Basic Serenity Prayer 101: Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Funny, thinking of the Serenity Prayer, which I first encountered at the tender age of fifteen or so.  I had a friend, named Sandra, twenty-eight years old (not that kind of friendship, so please get your head out of the gutter).  She was a really cool lady, and not at all embarrassed to have a fifteen year old kid for a pal and she was one of my many mentors during my rather strange and tumultuous adolescence.  I found her so refreshingly sane.  She had two little signs up at her cash till where she worked at a budget department store (I sometimes visited her at work).  One was the Serenity Prayer, already mentioned.  The other said: When I get out of here today I am going to have a nervous breakdown.  I worked hard for it, I earned it, and no one is going to deprive me of it!  She had a really cool, ironic kind of humour.

Sandra and I were both Christians.  We were involved in the same church, where we met, and in our different ways we both had dedicated our lives to Christ.  It was really phenomenal, I thought, and still think, how God in his love would draw so many different people together in his love in friendship and community.  And so was the undergirding theme, the very glue of our relationships.  Love.  Holy, accepting, healing and nurturing love.  Unconditional love.  It did exist, if only for a while.  And we flourished.

By the same token I simply cannot relate to a fundamentalist atheist such as Richard Dawkins.  With his hyper-scientific mind of evidence overdrive, I can`t help but get the impression that he has no time or appreciation for the fine, invisible details that undergird our human existence.  Such as love.  Such as a sense and appreciation of art, music and beauty.  Such as the innate spirituality that makes us so uniquely human.  His cacophonous and strident assertions that everything has to be empirically and evidence based leaves me cold, bored and uninterested.  And this is not because I don`t believe in science.  I do.  But I don`t believe only in science.  If there are any questions, here, Gentle Reader, about my intelligence, by the way, my IQ has been measured and I occupy the top two percentile. 

Science is inherently and purely rational.  Humans are not.  We are partly rational.  We are many other things: we are primal, spiritual, creative, romantic.  The scientific grid is in itself not sufficient to fit the whole matrix of human experience.  There are many features of our experience as humans that can never be measured by a scientific scale based only on research, experiment and measurable evidence.

Neither is the theory of evolution in itself conclusive as the exclusive explanation for the existence of life.  I believe in evolution, by the way, but I often doubt that scientists have the complete story or the evidence to be able to accurately read or measure the progress of development of life on earth.  Neither do I accept the binary of evolution versus creationism.  I do believe that there is a divine influence and plan inherent in what is known and unknown of the scientific process.  Sadly, many scientists are rather arrogant and proud of their intelligence and it would seem that only a few have enough humility to accept and admit that they do not have the answers, they will never have all the answers, and that at its very best, the whole scientific process is going to be one everlasting journey into the unknown and towards an ever growing state of unceasing wonder and bafflement.

In other words, Gentle Reader, please don`t expect me to know how we all got here.  I wasn`t there when it happened.  Neither were you.

I think where that Dawkins guy really slips off the rail is in his arrogant conceit when he makes some ridiculous sweeping generalizations about spiritual and religious experience.  As if he would know.  First of all, we are not afraid of hell nor of extinction.  We come into faith through many and very individual journeys that lead us to an experience, perhaps one could say, revelation, of the divine.  This cannot be measured or explained.  It involves a completely distinct organ of the human being from the rational process.  To explain it accurately to someone who hasn't undergone this experience would be quite like trying to describe the colour green to someone who is blind.

Secondly, we do not solicit an invisible, nonexistent God to answer our prayers and make our decisions for us, except perhaps in the very early and immature stages of faith.  Rather we grow into a deepening awareness of the divine presence inhabiting the entire universe, the earth, ourselves and in one another.  We nurture this awareness and we seek a closer communion with God, not out of fear and not out of mental laziness, but because of a spiritual hunger fueled by love and the desire to love and the urge to become better and more complete human beings.

Neither do we ask nor accept easy answers about such trying questions as why is there so much misery and evil in the world if truly there exists a loving God.  Rather, we accept that we live in a broken world, corrupted by sin, of our own doing as human beings.  We acknowledge that this is our mess, not God`s.  He has given us free will, and because of human sin and rebellion we have often abused this gift of free will, polluting our world and now we are going to have to live with some of the most grievous results of our rejection of God`s love: climate change from global warming and all the horrible fallout that could happen to us and our planet.

In other words, Gentle Reader, God created us to be adults.  As adults we cannot fairly expect him to go on wiping our ass for us but it is for us to accept responsibility for our actions and do everything we can to clean up and heal the mess we have made of our humanity and this earth.

So then, the whole process of prayer, of spirituality, lies not in venting our selfish and childish desires by nagging God to do this and that for us or to give us that or this; but to make us more like him, to fill our hearts with love, to transform us into channels of his peace and empower us to become agents of warning and healing and restoration to this broken world in which we live.

Dawkins has it all wrong, but there is no point in confusing him with facts.  His mind is already made up.

What Is Being Remembered?

Once again, Gentle Reader, we are under assault with the selective memory process also known as Remembrance Day.  The shrinking number of surviving war veterans, now almost all in their nineties, limp, stagger and totter or are pushed in wheelchairs outside for their annual vigil at the cenotaph, surrounded by their supporters, all under the auspices of gratitude for the sacrifices they made for our country's freedom.

I do not deny that they made sacrifices.  Huge sacrifices.  The survivors, now in the death zone, carry lifelong trauma for what happened to them.  To imagine sending almost an entire generation of young men and adolescent boys to get shot down and blown to bits in a foreign war.  The death, the destruction of souls, and the many ruined and broken survivors staggering back home for the victory celebrations.  Not all were disabled for life.  Many went on to be productive citizens, raised families and lived to see their children and great grandchildren.  I don't think any of them have ever completely recovered from the shadow of war. 

I generally turn off the radio on Remembrance Day.  It is the pompous and maudlin myth making that impacts me.  It is all about what they did for their country, what they suffered for their country, how they died for their country.  When I hear these things I find myself focussing more on the things that are left unsaid.

I am not going to go into the just cause of fighting the Nazis.  Something needed to be done about them and they will go down in histroy, along with Stalin's goons and Mao's henchmen, with generous camios from Pol Pot and the architects of the Rwandan genocide, as the most murderous brutes in human history.

However...

Very little seems to be said about why our old soldiers were traumatized.  Was it just living as human targets for bombs and mortar fire for six years?  Was it seeing too many of their friends and comrades being killed before their eyes?  Was it seeing the thousands and thousands of innocent civilians wounded and murdered?

And speaking of innocent civilians, what about the ones who were not the victims of Hitler, what about the children of Germans, Italians and Japanese?  What about the firebombings of Hannover and Tokyo?  The nuclear bombs that fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?  How many of our veterans have been impaired by trauma because of guilt for the brutalities that they also inflicted? 

I shall give you a moment, Gentle Reader, to recompose yourselves, and no, it isn't sporting to scream the word "treason" while reading this post.

Our soldiers went to war during an era when everyone thought in black and white.  There was no room for peaceful negotiation because no one believed in it.  I am not talking about appeasement but of real dialogue and authentic diplomacy.  I do not know if Hitler could have been stopped.  I do believe that he could have been prevented.

What I find unacceptable is that under any circumstances at all that any of us would still find war an acceptable alternative.  I have no answers and no solutions, and quite frankly I do not have enough knowledge or information about the War to offer any.  But I also suspect that no one really has all the information and that there have been so many distortions of our way of recording and writing history that we are not likely to ever know.

What is being remembered?

There is no way to peace...peace is the way.

Jesus, I Am Coping, Coping...

What more can I say, Gentle Reader?  Two days ago the Dump was elected president of the US.  We are all upset, depressed, sad, angry and we feel so damn powerless.  We feel betrayed.  Right now I am listening to the radio and they are talking about his ridiculous claim that climate change does not exist.  He will be dismantling everything to do with environmental protections and putting the world in accelerated danger.  No wonder we're upset.  The only explanation for such an ignorant idiot in the most powerful leadership position in the world is all the ignorant idiot Americans who voted for him.  Too caught up in rage, resentment, envy and self-pity to think rationally.

This is a sad but inevitable consequence of not making university education universally available.  Without state subsidized post secondary education that emphasizes studying the humanities millions of people, because of poverty, are left in ignorance.  Their worldview remains stunted, narrow and truncated and these same unfortunate dumbasses are allowed to vote!  And they end up voting, alright- for cynical, venal and obscenely wealthy populists who manipulate, lie to and bamboozle them into believing that they are speaking for them and the uneducated, too blinded by rage and hate for their sense of disenfranchisement, are not capable of reflective or rational thought.  They vote with their spleen.

I am finally feeling better, following twenty-four very difficult hours of coping with this bitter reality.  I have decided how I am going to cope.  I will begin by forgiving the Dump and his backers.  They know not what they do.  Then I will proceed with getting on with my life, with attempting to live in an exemplary manner that honours my faith and glorifies the Christ that I serve.  I will live in the moment and enjoy the moment and live a life of thanksgiving and joy and I will continue to try to treat others with kindness and love.

I might not often succeed, but it's an excellent buffer against getting upset over things that I cannot control.

President Dump (aka President Elect Donald Trump)

SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Countdown

Gentle Reader, I hope this will be the last time I will ever feel compelled to mention any US election on these pages.  I have long considered politics to be a less than high calling.  For a long time I refused to even vote since to me the only one worthy of my vote would never stoop so low as to run for public office.  While waiting for the outcome of this most historic, most hysterical and most hysterically and historically ugly election in any long memory I shall be moving back and forth to my keyboard to provide an update.  So far it seems clear that the Dump`s only version of a fair election is one that he wins.  He has already threatened one lawsuit today, in Nevada I believe, for alleged voter fraud.  I only wish that large, bloated whiny spoilt rich over aged brat would once and for all shut his repulsive trap and give all our ears a rest.

The first results can often be very discouraging.  The Dump is enjoying a twenty-four percent lead to Hillary`s three percent.  Of course the results have all come in from Dumb-Ass America, which is to say the traditional Republican heartland of the US South, so there is no surprise here.  I have to say that this is the only US election I have ever paid close attention to.  We in Canada are the mouse living next door to an elephant so of course we are going to have to notice.  We have no choice.  Still, this is alarming.  Never has the US presented a more overwhelmingly frightening presidential candidate as the Dump.  If he wins the international ramifications are going to be huge: from trade, to war, to irreversible global environmental degradation to all-out nuclear war.  It is frightening and sad that so many people of voting age in the world`s most powerful country have allowed their reptilian brain such full control over their judgment.  And anyone with experience working with others can tell you how difficult and often impossible to argue rationally with anyone whose thinking is dominated by fear, anger, hate and rage.

I am concerned about the threats of many well-educated Americans to move here to Canada should the Dump be elected.  It isn`t that I wouldn`t welcome them.  I  have three dear friends in the US: two in LA and one in New York.  I for one would love to welcome them here should they choose Vancouver.  I am only concerned that the resulting brain drain in the US could make things historically even worse for that country as the basket full of deplorables is only allowed to grow and increase.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  And there are a lot of empty spaces in those poor unused minds just waiting to be filled.

I have shut off the radio.  I cannot gut the sound of the Dump`s voice.  A grating, whining, angry, hateful, scowling yell that cannot be rationally addressed.  Better to know when to protect ourselves, Gentle Reader.  At the very worst, if he does win the election there isn`t a lot he can do here in Canada, outside of invoking trade policies to make us miserable.  Unless he proves to be a little more than we reckoned possible to be like a certain Austrian born despot with a weird moustache and bad hair, and a similar patent for yelling irrationally and screaming public hate, quite a few years ago in a country in central Europe...

I just checked Google Elections.  The Dump is still leading but Hillary is catching up.  I refuse to turn on the radio because I don`t want to be in a state of perma-anguish and whenever they play the Dump`s voice I get very upset.  I never imagined there would be ever a worse contender for the Oval Office than Dubya.  In the meantime, I have just enjoyed an early supper of homemade pea soup with homemade bread while watching an episode of All In The Family, which I am still binge-watching these days and is an excellent therapeutic entertainment considering everything else right now...

Well...It looks like the Dump is already getting set to use Hillary as toilet paper.  Still, it ain`t over yet.  On the other hand, it would appear that Melania Dump has already picked out the curtains to go with the new upholstery in the Oval Office.  Ha! And to think this unlikely first lady also posed in the nude.  (leave those search engines alone, boys!)  I would imagine that now this aging faked-up bimbo collects air miles with her plastic surgeon...

I have just turned off the radio after listening for the last half hour to election updates.  Depressing.  Time for another episode of All In The Family.  God bless YouTube...

I`m done.  I`m not waiting up for the results.  I`m tired, bored, frustrated and saddened by what is going on.  It still looks like Hillary could make a turn around.  Even if she doesn't, even if the Dump does settle his vile presence in the Oval Office we can still hope for the best.  He might soften some of the ugly rhetoric he's spent the past year and a half offending, frightening and insulting our intelligence with.  We don't know what's going to happen.  Even if it is happening in the US of A it is not my country and whatever the outcome we are going to go on living our lives the best way we can and we are going to go on caring for one another and taking even better care of one another.  This is Canada, the country where we apologize when someone steps on our foot.

My heart goes out to my dear American friends who are going to be impacted by the outcome of this historically bizarre election and I will continue to reach out to them in support and love...

Good night, Gentle Reader...

"Wake Me Up When It's All Over"

While reading this, please play this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y_KJAg8bHI

1.Then listen to music you really enjoy. 

2. Watch your favourite videos and movies. 

3. Go out for a walk. 

4. Make a pot of cocoa from scratch. 

5. Drink something nice, but not too much. 

6. Make your favourite meal for supper. 

7. Email or phone a friend. 

8.Tell someone you love them. 

9. Pet a dog or a cat. 

10. Read something funny, meaningful, inspiring. 

11. Draw or paint something. 

12. Sing. 

13. Do exercise. 

14. Clean your home. 

15. Bake.

16. Give money to a beggar or to the food bank.

17. Forgive someone who has hurt or offended you.

18. Take a nap.

19. Pray.  If you don`t believe then think kind thoughts and direct them towards someone who is hurting.

20. Do something kind for the environment.

21. Get some sleep.

22. Laugh.

23.  If you are an American, vote tomorrow for Hillary.