Spiritual Autobiography 12

In 1985 I moved to an apartment downtown. I had been harbouring a young alcoholic, near my age who would become a close friend for many years. He had befriended in me in the bars downtown and we became spiritually and psychically very close. This was a most difficult friendship in many ways. He left the city, then a couple of weeks later I was getting ready to move. I would be living near Robson and Burrard just in time for Expo 86 to get underway a few months later. I felt called by God to live there as a presence of prayer and spiritual warfare. I must have been crazy. Here I was working till two or three in the afternoon with really destroyed persons in the Downtown Eastside, only to come home then do the bars and cafes downtown to look after other losers. I was a case for burnout if ever one existed. I would also go into the trails in Stanley Park to erect small cairns of twelve stones, as a visible symbol of God's presence. It was rumoured that, along with the homosexual activity down there, that there were also satanic practices occurring at night. I believed this, and did actually come across plenty of circumstantial evidence to support this theory. I was very busy. mass first thing in the morning, followed by breakfast with the clergy, then I would start work a block away since I was working for St. James Social Services. Then, after several hours of assisting and cleaning up after some of the most broken people in the Lower Mainland still living independently, dealing with cockroaches, lice, getting sworn at and occasionally threatened and other fun activities, I would head off to one of the cafes downtown where I was known and present and spend time offering support to local people, or I would head off to Stanley Park and elsewhere in the city where I had built them and tend to the cairns, which were often destroyed. I lived in a spiritually and emotionally rarified and very heightened state. I sometimes wondered if I was at risk for psychosis, but somehow I got through it all, at times sheltering homeless and insecurely housed people in my living room. My alcoholic friend returned for several weeks and was being an absolute pain while I was giving palliative care to a man nearing death from cancer. I got through it all somehow. My friend was getting impossible and we both agreed it was time for him to leave. I was exhausted, but somehow soldiered on. God's presence was very near. Then some punk Satanists moved upstairs, made tonnes of noise, and tried to put a death curse on me when I complained. I will not go into detail on this page but there were some very interesting evidences of things going on. I moved to an apartment on a quiet street in the West End, cut back on a lot of my activity and rested, but still continued in ministry, though no longer living at that perpetual, impossible to sustain without eventually burning out or going crazy, heightened and rarified state. My friend joined me and ended up spending the last two months of my year in that apartment with me. We got along very well and we actually missed each other when it was time to move. I had found, through his agency, an old farm house in Richmond on an overgrown acre of land being offered at an affordable rent. I took it. After six weeks of intense renovations and learning all kinds of new skills, the place was ready for occupancy in mid-December, 1987, and soon would open yet another new chapter in my life and walk with God.

Spiritual Autobiography 11

St. James was more than I expected, and less than I needed. I began attending on the recommendation of a friend who was in the habit of making presumptuous statements about where God was leading other people and I fell right into it. I don't think it was necessarily a mistake for me to attend St. James Anglican Church, since I really felt entirely out of options for church. This was a High Anglican church, more Catholic than the Catholics, with ritual, incense, bells, candles, plainsong, sung mass, and a magnificent pipe organ and professionally trained choir. It was like worshipping in the nineteenth century. The people were generally very conservative and quite out of touch with the squalor of the Downtown-Eastside setting of their magnificent art deco church building. They did have a social services agency to attend to the needs of the miserably poor and vulnerable in the neighbourhood, but most parishioners came from wealthy and upper-middle class neighbourhoods and for whatever reason they chose to worship in the high church splendour that was St. James, attending to the needs of the poorest of the poor was not one of them. I did crave the sacrament, and sensed, following much of my reading of writings of notable Catholic mystics and saints that there was a certain divine virtue in receiving the Blessed Sacrament on a daily basis, especially given the challenging nature of my work in care-giving. I did love the music, as I had come to listen to nothing but classical music at home on the radio for the past three years. They had daily mass, usually beginning at 6:45 am with matins, followed by the eucharist at 7:15, then a light breakfast with the clergy in their adjoining house. I learned to be friends and to enjoy the friendship of people whom I found to be vastly different from me, but still next to imposible to get to know or close to as I had been used to with friends. There was also a tremendous age difference: most were of my parents' generation or even older and the few younger people I met there seemed not at all interested in offering me the time of day, much less a friendly visit in a coffee shop. They were appallingly dreadful snobs, a lot of them. Under pressure from the quaint and already verging on elderly rector, I agreed to getting confirmed, otherwise he was not going to let me receive the sacrament. So, I went to early morning mass every day, following a two and a half mile walk from my basement apartment in East Van, then following breakfast with everyone, I would go see my first clients of the day. In 1983, I added to my agenda ministry to people in the downtown gay bars and survival sex workers, and was consequently out at night. This was confirmed to me when I had a vision in early August of that year following mass in the blessed Sacrament Chapel in the back of St. James. I could see a newborn infant lying on the ground in its mother's blood, its umbilical cord still attached and I heard God saying (not an audible voice but in my mind (I do not, nor ever have in my life heard voices, but I do believe that God speaks to us if we have a will to listen to him.) that the child was born, premature, a sickly and helpless infant that will need much care, tending and protection, but still he was calling me to be as a sacred presence among my gay brothers and sisters, not to partake in the lifestyle but to be among them as their brother, without judging. This was just after I lost my job of three years as a home support worker, so I went full time into this work of minister, while writing the first draft of a novel and attending services daily at St. James. I managed to get by on employment insurance and when times were really bad, miraculously, donations of money in envelopes would appear in the mail in envelopes with my name written on them, always in different handwriting that I didn't recognize and these were eleventh hour rescues. This happened four times in almost as many months. I did work for another eight months as a telephone market research interviewer, followed by another stint of unemployment. It was a very intense year and a half that took up incredible energy as I was often out till the small hours of the morning in places that Christians were not ordinarily seen in, while attempting to be their in the name of Christ's love for people who had been thoroughly rejected by the church. I also made lot of strong and interesting friends along the way. A couple of friends and I would often go in shifts in a local twenty-four hour café where we would spend hours with local sex workers of all genders, as well as many of the local gay, lesbian and trans people in the Davie Street area. It was, in a word, exhausting.

Spiritual Autobiography 10

The darkness began when my mother moved to Vancouver Island to live with her new boyfriend, a shallow, violent and drunken lout with a criminal record. I stayed with my father and his girlfriend in their house in Steveston, My father hated me, we had seen each other perhaps five times in the past three years and he asked me to leave just as I was beginning grade twelve. I stayed with my mother and her fat studly Romeo in Duncan where I finished grade twelve and coped. I have written about this elsewhere on these pages so I will just skim over. I tried to stay close to God in this difficult family situation. I faithfully attended a charismatic church in Victoria nearby and maintained close friendships with other Christians I met in school, in Victoria and also my friends in Vancouver. I hiked and wandered alone in the woods a lot. Academically I was doing better. I moved back to Vancouver, on my own around the first of July or so, just after finishing high school, and stayed with friends, got a job and found my own apartment. I was wandering from the faith, though God was still real to me. This was a difficult and dark time for me and I ended up in Toronto for six months where in late 1975, I re-encountered Jesus and attended a charismatic church. I returned to Vancouver on my birthday, February 29, 1976, now twenty years old. I stayed briefly with my father, but he didn't want me, so I spent a month and a half with my mother while getting my life sorted out. I found employment and stayed with a new friend in a tiny house down the street from St. Margaret's, which was undergoing its own change as they became almost like a conservative and very hierarchical cult. My new friends and I were like the rebel holdouts so there was a lot of tension and ill-will on all sides. I went to live in one of the St. Margaret's communal houses, a big mistake, I was treated like crap, did not fit in, and was considered an anomaly. I did not fit their conservative heteronormative, but it was clear that of all of them, I alone had a really close and authentic walk with God, so they were even more hostile towards me and I was kicked out in December, 1976. After a couple of weeks with my mom I moved back in to the tiny house with my rebel friends, who also got me connected with weekend charismatic retreats with a coalition of Catholics and Protestants. These Live-in Retreats, as we called them, were wonderful, and it was an opportunity for people to really serve and take care of and welcome one another in Christ. the officiating priest, Marty Tarbell was an Eastern Catholic priest of the Order of St. Thomas and his order had as special papal dispensation to administer the sacraments to Catholics , and Protestants alike. The sense of God's love and reconciliation was very thick in those retreats and a real sense of community involving some very diverse persons became a reality. St. Margaret's in the meantime, became even more ornery and there was a huge split in the church. I left and my Live-In community became church for me as we met every week in the home of some of the participants. in the meantime, I was again coasting on an experience of perpetual joy, following a very dark period. I became close friends with a young lesbian who lived in the same house as me and I supported her as she was recovering from a rape. I was mentored at the time by writings about Mother Teresa and some of the writings of Jean Vanier, which was helpful for setting the stage for my next phase in life. It was around that time when I became involved at the Dilaram community, already written about on these pages, and I survived what turned into a very oppressive hierarchy of cruel fundamentalists. When they kicked me out on the street, I was broken and traumatized and only recently after forty years of this have I been set free from that particular shadow. I again was next door neighbours with my young lesbian friend, now a radical women's' activist and I attended a radical Mennonite house church where matters of social justice, feminism and other things were being explored. I lived in a small housekeeping room in an old house. The year after I attended a community church, Dayspring, but was eventually driven out by their extreme homophobia. By this time I was working as a home support worker, caring for the very sick and dying in their homes and in this way Jesus became very real to me. I moved to a basement apartment and there I stayed for the next five years as I entered into a new phase of life, at the tender age of twenty-five. I spent about a year at a Four Square Pentecostal church in East Vancouver, where with another individual, we crafted together a street ministry downtown reaching out to the gay community and survival sex-workers. Then I became an Anglican.

Spiritual Autobiography 9

In June, 1972, age sixteen, I met Big Bird (my nickname for her), or, Colleen, a woman nearly a decade older than me who was visiting the House of Prayer. She was a radical leftist hippy turned Christian from California, though born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was quite a fascinating woman and I became a regular visitor in her communal house, a place she opened with great compassion and love to people from all over the continent and, by extension, from all over the world. She had a sharp tongue and a wicked, sarcastic wit, and we only sharpened each other's wits as we hung out together. I learned from her a lot about organic and vegetarian food, hospitality, kindness. Her many houseguests were fascinating, especially the ex-stripper from New England who took off her blouse and started ironing it one day during dinner in front of a boy from Montreal I had befriended and I. No, she wasn't wearing anything underneath, and yes we were embarrassed, so we took our plates to the back step where we finished our dinner. Big Bird named me the Impetuous Sixteen Year Old, which I suppose I was. One day I went for a walk along a secluded section of the beach nearby where a couple were openly, nakedly and flagrantly having sex. So I handed them a religious tract. She, on her back, had a look at it while her man was doing his business on top of her, then slammed it down on the sand, upon learning that it was something Christian, and swore at me in French. I just laughed and told them what they were doing was not kosher, not in public anyway. I returned to Coleen's house where she had a group of visitors. Oh, the laughter when I told them! Otherwise I spent the summer with my Christian friends, all over the place. We attended church services Sunday mornings and evenings. The Spirit's presence was very strong, and we sang, sang in tongues, prophesied, there were healings. Just a normal summer for a Canadian teenager. My mother meanwhile had undergone an abortion and was also hospitalized for other surgery. There was a woman dying in the next bed and she was comforting and consoling from her own bed the dying lady's next of kin. I began grade eleven in a different school. The kids in the local Christian club and I had nothing in common, and they disliked me intensely, not knowing whether they hated me for being a hippy or for being a fanatical Jesus Freak, maybe both. I had already been profiled in two local newspapers. I continued hitch-hiking, talking to people, I was shamelessly bold and friendly with strangers, some were lovelorn (and often very attractive) gay and bisexual boys with dreadful crushes on me and I felt...ambivalence. The House of Prayer moved into a Shaughnessy mansion and their name changed to Bethel House, Colleen had moved houses to another part of Kitsilano. I was a regular presence in both places. I lived in a state of near-perpetual joy and it was only after my mother sold the house, and we moved into an apartment, and then in June, the bomb fell. It would take me years to pick up the pieces again.

Spiritual Autobiography 8

St. Margaret's was a huge blessing. It was crammed to the rafters with worshippers and the sense of God's spirit and love were often overwhelming. In some ways similar to the Jesus freaks, but more diverse and more grounded in reality and also gentler and more loving people. I was welcomed and quickly made new friends there. in November the House of Prayer opened, started by a missionary family with seven kids that had recently escaped from the Children of God. One of their kids, a boy my age, and a daughter, who was twenty, became particularly good friends to me and that's where I spent my Sundays after church. Things were rather structured like the Jesus' People, but things felt more centred, family oriented and all kinds of people were made welcome. I made many good friends with other regular visitors there and we often went out Sunday afternoons downtown to witness, or to parks or on long drives together. The Children of God were meanwhile devouring themselves alive and we were often welcoming refugees that escaped from that cult. I hung out regularly in two Christian coffee houses: at St. Margaret's and a place in the Downtown Eastside called the Hut, on the premises of the then salvation Army Temple on the corner of Hastings and Gore. I remained active in ministry, though just sixteen, with various people dealing with drugs and alcoholism and general sadness and depression. I had no idea how this would be preparing me for what would eventually turn into my life-work. St. Margaret's was already beginning to tilt towards the right and selfishness when a highly regarded woman tearfully denounced this move in a prophetic message, of God commanding us to welcome the outcasts and the hurting, the lonely and if we failed to do this he would remove from us his blessing. The memory of this prophetic utterance remains with me even now, forty-six years later, as though I heard it only yesterday. But the pastor, an elderly man set in his thinking, invited Christian Zionists and others to speak and worship among us, and we were influenced to believe that there were no Palestinians and that only Jews had the right to live in Israel. It took me a couple of years before I really began to question this thinking. Still, the focus did remain on love, community and openly loving and serving God. There was still a general sense of celebration in the air. At school, other kids were turning to Jesus, more or less and my reputation as an evangelistic terror in the local mall was already making me a local legend and, to some, a byword. I still hitch-hiked everywhere. As well as being an easy way to get around, for witnessing it was like shooting fish in a barrel, also a handy excuse for making new friends and remaining up to date that there was such a thing as life outside of my Christian bubble, though I would never admit this openly. My mother was at least coming around. She could see all these positive changes in my life: I was no longer interested in drugs or alcohol, I was joyful, kind, and showing a lot of responsibility. Unfortunately I was still doing badly in school and I think this was because with all these sudden changes and stresses in my life it was really difficult for me to focus on schoolwork. I know that had I gone to an alternative school I would likely have done a lot better. But my mother was very conservative, and as much as she was getting swept up in the sexual revolution, her thinking was still very backward in other things.

Spiritual Autobiography 7

It happened on a Tuesday, 30 August, 1971. I had completely forgotten they were coming. It was overcast and a bit nippy that day and one could tell that summer was reaching an early conclusion. I hitch-hiked into Vancouver and arrived in the Shepherd's Call at around 10 am. The place felt different. The place was different. I didn't like it. The Spirit had departed and it was all chaos, emptiness and rage. The Children of God had just arrived the night before from California, and already they had taken over the entire operations of the Vancouver Jesus People Army. They were yelling and shouting Biblical slogans, condemning as satanic the "system" and demanding that I leave home immediately, live with them, take on a biblical name, and marry one of the "sisters" (I was fifteen and queer. Not going to happen. Even at my tender age I also had an uncommon gift of common sense!). I stuck around for three days, visiting from Richmond, talking to them, remonstrating with them, imploring them to come to their senses. They had all been taken captive, brainwashed, incapable of thought. They had become slaves to the hateful and one-dimensional thinking of a dangerous cult. Close friends suddenly turned on me as the enemy. I had to get out. On the third day, I was of course, tormented and puzzled, but knew that it was over and already accepting my loss. I talked with a friend, a man in his mid-twenties visiting from the Fraser Valley, who also saw what was going on. We supported each other. So, died the Jesus' People, the cradle of my Christian faith. I felt like an orphan. But God was still present. I knew this and would always know this. That experience of losing my friends, as grievous as it was, strengthened my faith at a very early age, and I knew that from then on I would be walking with God, independent of human means, influence and often even support. I had a genuine relationship with God, and so I would walk with my Lord for the rest of my life. I was recommended St. Margaret's, a charismatic Reformed-Episcopal church near the PNE in East Vancouver. I had met people from there visiting the Shepherd's call. I liked them and the very good things I had heard of their church. The next Sunday evening I visited St. Margaret's for the first time. I liked what I saw, and came to flourish there for a while.

Spiritual Autobiography 6

By June of 1971, my identity as a Jesus Freak was already set. I hung out with the Jesus People in Vancouver, went out witnessing with them in parks and on the streets downtown. I would have dinner with everyone at the Shepherd's call. I remember one particular beautiful day, just as school was finishing for the summer, a Friday, being lifted by kind stranger, and the dinner of enchilada's that had been so beautifully made and were so delicious, my first ever. To this day, I simply love enchiladas. so beautifully We prayed and sang together, and I felt welcome and part of this beautiful community. There was so far no talk about my living there. I was fifteen, and considered too young. I also felt uneasy about the idea for two other reasons, along with the illegality: I sensed that my mother really needed me with her, at least as much as I was still needing to stay with her. I also was already aware of the kind of group-think that occurred with the Jesus people, and I really wasn't about to barter my mind for the comfort of doctrinal and religious consensus. Somehow it didn't feel quite safe. I would hitch-hike back and forth, to my mother's horror, and continued telling the kind drivers about Jesus, and sometimes making some very interesting new friends, other times getting into very narrow scrapes with randy men with a particular taste for pubescent boys. I always escaped. I also began witnessing in the mall in Richmond, much to the scandal and horror of my hyper-cool brother and his hyper-cool friends. I didn't care, and I actually experienced a certain schadenfreud over his embarrassment. And people were interested in talking to me. In fact, telling strangers about the love of Jesus was becoming for me a lovely excuse for connecting with strangers, learning about their lives and, should I say, coming to appreciate them, whether they wanted to convert or not, which rather concerned some of the elders in the Jesus People. But even then, I was in some ways beginning to question. Soon there was word about a group in California, the Children of God, being invited to Vancouver to live with us there and to help us become more effective Christians. Everyone looked forward to this event, we were like children anticipating Christmas. The evangelism was becoming more aggressive. They were becoming increasingly puritanical and dogmatic. I was getting nervous. At that time I was attending summer school two afternoons a week in Richmond, then walking the long rural distance to mom's, the Dutch lady who's place had become for us a second home. I rather preferred her expression of the Christian message, especially her emphasis, and her life, of unconditional love, and I think that she helped provide me with a bulwark that kept me from getting swept into the increasingly dangerous vortex that the |Jesus People were turning into. I was also really enjoying the developing fri9endships with other Christians, near my age and a bit older, at Mom's. This was an alternate community, and my preference was definitely moving in that direction. We could relax together, wonder out in the field to pick and eat blueberries, stuff ourselves with blueberry pie, pray and sing and chat and read together. For young vulnerable Christians, this place was idyllic. To this day, I still feel that I owe that kind, maternal Christian woman an enormous debt. And then, at the Shepherd's Call, the horror was unleashed.

Spiritual Autobiography 5

It might be helpful to offer a bit of a historical overview to that tumultuous era in my life. We were just in 1971. The elder Trudeau, a notorious playboy, was prime minister, recently married to a girl nearly thirty years his junior and whom the next Christmas Day would be giving birth to their first child, our current sitting prime minister, or Junior, as I still like to call him. At least they didn't name him Jesus. The previous October, 1970, was when the same daddy Trudeau invoked the War measures Act in order to combat homegrown terrorism, thanks to the violent episodes of kidnapping and murder thanks to the radical Quebec separatist movement headed by the FLQ, or Front Liberation de Quebec, or Quebec Liberation Front. I was sympathetic to the cause but already I was a nascent pacifist and found myself wanting to draw the line at murder and violence. Still, like many Canadians, I saw as heavy-handed and an unnecessary assault on our democracy this invocation of the War Measures Act and the suspension of rights and freedoms that we all do, or at least should, enjoy under the law in this country. Did I already mention that was still only fourteen at the time? With my conversion I would soon be meeting a lot of people from Quebec and was fascinated by the diverse opinions and positions that many of them held, though, as newly-minted Christians, they were also opposed to the violence. The Cold War was on though somewhat softened by Détente, and inroads were being made to befriend Chairman Mao of the People's Republic of China, a horrifically oppressive and murderous regime controlling what could be called the world's largest prison camp. Nixon was occupying the White House and still two years from being impeached. His name was already a byword. The war in Vietnam was in full swing and I was meeting a lot of draft resisters who had fled to my country for refuge, now encountering Jesus. They were very good and able educators to me. We were fresh out of the Summer of Love, that had gone rancid and stale, and many of the Jesus Freaks were leftover hippies seeking some real meaning in life. They were also some of my best teachers. In the meantime I struggled and did poorly in school, while taking time to hangout with the Jesus People on weekends, whether in the Shepherd's Call coffee house or on the streets telling people about he love of Jesus. I had turned into an incorrigible, and very surprising for a fifteen year old abuse survivor from the suburbs, very eloquent and effective evangelist. I often got around hitch-hiking and got into some very interesting conversations with very interesting strangers. I was also learning even more from them than they were from me as I was coming to discover and appreciate that there were many ways of living and living effectively and that God has room in his universe-sized heart for all of us. Surrounded by born-again socially conservative Christians who were also very fundamentalist in their approach to the Christian faith, I was already becoming a little bit problematic, as |I sought to keep an open mind and a listening ear to the very people we sought to convert, often wondering if we would be better serving some of them by letting them work out their own path in life. That said, I was already gaining a reputation for being particularly receptive and respectful in my approach. Not bad for a fifteen year old kid, eh?

Spiritual Autobiography 4

On the first weekend of February, 1971, still fourteen, on a Saturday night, I believe, I was baptised in the Holy Spirit. I was sitting on the floor in a prayer circle in the basement of Shepherd's Call, and there was a very powerful sense of God's spirit in the room: manifested by joy, awe, love and peace. One or two people had just received the baptism through the laying on of hands, then someone asked me if I wanted it. At first I said no, but knowing that this was indeed my next step, I relented and they laid hands on me and prayed. I felt something trying to enter me, or come out of me, or both and it felt intense so I struggled with it at first. Then I relaxed, and then, oh the joy and peace and blessing that flowed, and I began speaking in an unknown tongue. This facility quickly developed and in the coming days it was clear that this was an actual prayer language. I also felt stronger, more at peace, stable, which runs very contrary to popular opinion about Pentecostalism and the charismatic experience, but this is actually a very healing and grounding experience for those who experience it. It is also deeply empowering, as I was quickly to experience. my mother was of course horrified, and when I spoke in tongues to demonstrate it must have sounded like an authentic language because she forbade me to ever do that around her again and she did look genuinely frightened. In some ways I thought it was all a lark, and it was hard to take this all so seriously, but it was true that I was now on a very true and different path and that my life would never be the same. During the week of my birthday in late February there were Jesus' People revival meetings being held in my community. I attended and several peers from my school went forward to be "saved." I helped facilitate, notably with two girls I knew at school who accepted Christ as their saviour while we were kneeling in the late snow with another member of the Jesus People. We all became very fast friends. On the initiative of people in the Jesus' People we found space in a local United church for Tuesday evening meetings and Bible studies which quickly moved over to the home of a kind Dutch woman who lived on a small blueberry farm. We knew her as Mom. She took in foster children and seemed to have an inexhaustible capacity for love. I had previously met her in February, while hitch- hiking. She gave me a tract and we had rather a stimulating chat about Jesus. The Ides of March, two weeks after my fifteenth birthday, I was baptised in the chilly waters of English Bay. None of these things made me into a particularly docile lad, by the way. I was still living with a lot of family stress, due to the bitter divorce that my parents were negotiating, s well as having to avoid getting beaten up or verbally abused by my older brother. I was doing terribly in school The problems at home and the dramatic changes in my life made it difficult for me to focus and concentrate on my schoolwork. I also had trouble sleeping and often came to school tired. A particularly objectionable teacher sent me out in the hall for yawning too loud in class one morning (I felt so tired), and when I slammed the door in protest, she sent me to the office. There was a miscommunication with the principal and I failed to show up for a scheduled detention. The next day he tried to give me the strap. I wouldn't let him, and I walked out of the office and out of the school and hitch-hiked into Vancouver where I spent the day with my friends in the Jesus' People. my mother managed to bail me out, and I was let back in the school. One of the "elders" (he wasn't even twenty!) in the Jesus' People thought I should have taken my medicine and I almost laughed in his face. A year later, corporal punishment was banned in BC schools.

Spiritual Autobiography 3

I struggled to live the Christian life. There were other kids at school curious about what was happening to me. I hardly could figure it out myself. There were obstacles, of course, and I did get caught in one very unhealthy situation with an individual who lived not far from us, but that lasted just a couple of weeks. I continued visiting the Jesus People downtown, openly defying my mother. My father, of course, was not around, and we never saw each other, and really he didn't seem to care. My brother was scandalized and could scarcely be civil. I would visit them in their coffee house, the Shepherd's Call, in a long-ago demolished building on W. Broadway between Fir and Pine streets. I would also visit people in coffee shops downtown, some of the Jesus People when they were out "witnessing", as they liked to call it. I felt very privileged and blessed that these kind and very loving people would accept me into their number. they were like a compensatory, benevolent older sibling and I think they helped heal a lot of the damage that my brother had inflicted on me. I felt deeply honoured how much some of them would also confide in me about their lives, their pasts. their struggles, their dreams. I was still a child and these were all young adults. I felt unconditionally accepted, even loved. I also became much more aware of cultural and racial diversity, following a childhood dominated by two racist white parents. A lot of the Jesus People were French Canadians, and their friendship taught me much. The pastor of the Fountain Chapel was a middle aged African-Canadian woman named Sister Ann Walker. I remember chatting with her on a comfy old sofa in the basement of the church. I found her kind, warm and compassionate. She also talked to me about the gift of tongues, since she was Pentecostal, and she thought the experience would be helpful to my faith. I didn't know this at the time, but Sister Walker was also one of the few survivors of Hogan's Alley, the largely black community that was levelled to build the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts in that area, and this also helps me understand why many in the congregation were black. I also came to know different First Nations people: a girl my age who was visiting a friend in a hostel where I was also visiting some new friends, as well as a woman in the Jesus' People, Rosalie, from the Northwest Territories. She was an incredible singer, and used to perform Christian folksongs along with other gifted singers at the Shepherd's Call coffee house. I was being interwoven, a soft gray cotton thread, into this rich and highly coloured tapestry of diverse people of faith and Christian love. Coming from an abusive home, an unwanted child, this was like dying and going to heaven. It couldn't last, and of course it didn't, but this was just the beginning of a life full of challenge and blessing and constant learning, as my life began to really open to the love of God, or should I say, to the love who is God.

Spiritual Autobiography 2

Events unfolded with numbing rapidity following my conversion to the Christian faith. My mother learned about it two days later and she was quite wroth and forbade me to have anything to do with those long-haired fanatics. I told her I couldn't promise compliance and I continued with them. My next foray was to visit them New Years Eve at a watchnight service they were holding in a modest old church in the Strathcona area. I had never been there before, but tried to find my way from Richmond. I got lost, walked over the Cambie Bridge instead of the Georgia Viaduct. It was dark and I wasn't sure where I was going. Did I also mention that I was still just fourteen? Somehow I found my way to the House of David, the name of the old wood frame communal house where I received Christ just two nights ago. No one was home. I sat on a chair on the verandah, waiting for the next thing to happen. I didn't have to wait long. A French-Canadian, named Michel, came to pick up some extra food for the dinner following the service and he invited me to come along in the van with him. Everything seemed kind of preordained, and for me, it was like I had entered into some bizarre adventure story where I was the protagonist. It was like living in a state of magic realism, I suppose. So I found my way to the Fountain Chapel, in a sanctuary full of Jesus freaks, singing, praying, rejoicing, speaking in tongues, embracing one another. I had never seen anything so bizarre yet so welcoming. The sermon was delivered by an earnest Pentecostal preacher wearing a blue suit. then we were all on our knees, praying as midnight struck and we transitioned to 1971. It was very emotional. Many, including me, were weeping. It felt could. I was feeling cleansed. At 1 am or so Richard Hitchcock and one of his friends, Lorne, drove me home to Richmond, a distance of ten miles or so. Lorne, who drove the tuck, was from Richmond, and knew my brother and his peers. I already knew that Mom was away for the night, working at a catering affair for her boyfriend and would be spending the night with him. My brother, on the cusp of eighteen, came in the house with one of his friends. We all chatted for a while. His reception of my new friends was derisory and they were a little too earnest to win a couple of new converts. Knowing how much my brother hated me, and still feeling the trauma from his most recent beating five days ago, I didn't really expect better from him. My friends left, my brother seemed a little nonplussed and mentioned that there was this beautiful fragrance in the house since my friends left, like perfume. I knew then, as I am still certain, that my brother was experiencing a physical manifestation of God's presence, and I myself did not smell the perfume. I also knew he would shrug it off, and carry on with his selfish and dissolute way of life. The following day, New Year's Day, I went to English bay in the west End, to attend a baptism. I wasn't baptised myself, because I feared the cold water, and also felt a need to prepare for a few weeks. I knew this was a momentous decision. In the afternoon Rick and Lorne drove me home. They came inside the house where they faced my mother's wrath. curiously, she rather liked Richard. Again, she forbade me to have anything to do with those fanatics and I said, "Try and make me." A little bit of history here about my relationship with my mother. I had become so sick of her beatings and her control that I was finally rising against her. She had not reckoned that her beaten down little weakling could show such force of will or strength of character. Say what you will about the obligation of children to obey their parents. But when the parents become abusive that becomes the deal-breaker and their kids owe them nothing. For me, my spiritual, psychological and moral survival would partly consist in rising against and defying that violent angry woman. I was finally taking back what was mine. She didn't like it and now she knew she would have to live with it.

Spiritual Autobiography 1

Hello Gentle Reader I have decided to give the rants about collective trauma a bit of a rest, not because I have run out of things to say, but to give emphasis to my personal testimony as a Christian. In this and following posts I will be writing my personal history with the Christian faith. I think, or at least hope, that this will give some of you a little more perspective about some of the things that I write about. Here goes: It all started in 1970, when I was fourteen. I had spent the summer between grades eight and nine, smoking pot in the park with older peers, drinking beer and wine and going on long solitary wanderings in the downtown, west End and Stanley Park areas of Vancouver. I was on a journey of some kind, but I had no idea where I was going. I was meeting people everywhere, and listening carefully because I knew that each one held some kind of secret that I was needing to unlock for myself. This experience of being on a journey continued through the fall and into the winter. I was reading an underground journal, the original Georgia Strait when it was still a controversial underground newspaper. I read all kinds of subversive articles about the importance of environmental protection, women's and abortion rights, free love, gay rights, and political and social revolution. On December 29 I met my first-ever Jesus Freak. An English hippy named Richard Hitchcock. He looked just like Jesus and spoke in a Cockney accent. I connected with this man (he was twenty-one) and on my suggestion we went to a basement coffee shop nearby on the corner of W. Hastings and Richards. For about two hours he opened up to me about his Christian experience, of how Jesus had changed his life, of how much happier he was serving God than going out to party, get drunk and get laid. I might have dismissed him as a religious weirdo but there was something authentic about this man. He invited me to join him and some of his companions in their house for dinner. I accepted the invitation. We all met together at the bus terminal, which has long since been a parking lot near the current central library building. We all piled into a van and they drove me I knew not where. They were happy, pleasant, friendly and singing Christian songs. I was quite intrigued by the novelty. These were all people who were more or less fresh off the street: hippies, street people, former drug users, from all parts of Canada, the US and even from other places, I suspected. They were all young, in their twenties, though at fourteen, to me they seemed all very old and mature. I felt so strangely at home with those people. I felt absolutely no sense of threat or impending danger. I felt as if I could trust these men, or at least trust whatever cause or reason had brought us together. Their house was in the Fairview Slopes, demolished in the seventies and eighties like most of the old houses in that area for townhouses and condos. The supper was simple but hearty and delicious. The people I ate with were very friendly, kind and hospitable. I saw there a guy I knew from the park in Richmond, someone I`d smoked pot with, I think. He was now one of them, just eighteen I think. Then it began to happen. at first I wondered if they had put something in the food. I felt high, like I`d just smoked some of the best weed ever, but only better. I told my hosts what I was feeling. They replied that I was simply feeling and responding to God's love and presence. And you know something, Gentle Reader? I believed them then, just as I believe them now. One of them asked me if I would like to accept Jesus as my saviour. Though I already just had, I consented. we were upstairs in one of the attic bedrooms at the time, four of us I think. They gathered 'round me, gently laid their hands on my head and shoulders and asked Jesus to forgive and cleanse me of all my sins and to come into my heart. I accepted, silently on the spot. taking the bus home that cold and rainy winter night I knew without doubt that something had changed, that something truly authentic had happened to me, and that this would be changing the course of my life. I watched the rain streaming down the bus window, illumined by streetlights and passing cars and it all seemed so lovely and so magical. I went home to the split-level house in Richmond that I shared with my mother and brother, absolutely unaware of just what kind of changes lay before me....

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 27

I read something in this weekend's Globe and Mail that I find alarming, but not surprising. And this is not news to me as I have been aware of this for some time. The article is about the poor doors. These are segregated entrances in buildings for people of mixed incomes. They are built by developers who have agreed with the government to reserve a small percentage of the units in their new buildings for people on low incomes. But don't start singing Kumbaya, Gentle Reader. These buildings have separate entrances. That's right. Poor doors. The well off burghers who get the luxury condos or apartments also have their own spiffy entrance, all polished marble and brass and original artworks. The poor tenants get something very bare bones and ugly. So, the wealthy tenants needn't worry about having their delicate upper bourgeois eyes offended by the appearance of poverty. This is 2018 in Canada, for God's sake! no one would ever dream of doing this to people from visible racial minorities, and thank heavens we've turned that corner. So now, it's the poor, the final refuge target for bigots. Yes, I know there is still racism, there is still racial profiling by police, and black parents have to give their teenage sons "the Talk", and this happens over and over. But we know and accept that this is horrendous and the outcry whenever these egregious racist offences occur is loud, deafening and very heartening. And now, even people with mental health diagnoses are stepping into the limelight for losing stigma and discriminatory treatment. The poor are still an open target. I have written elsewhere on these pages about the crappy treatment that we get from immigrants who judge us ruthlessly and cruelly because they have done a lot better in this country than some people who were born here. and I still don't think that the slur "Bum" has reached the category of the N-word (nigger) as the new F-Bomb. Here's a bit of irony for you. The last time I heard the B-Bomb, was from a low-income tenant who lives in my building. He didn't like the homeless people begging in front of the Seven-Eleven across the street. He called them bums. This guy, by the way, is black. There is a sense of social stigma that comes with poverty. I know that is one of the reasons my family shuns me. They were all upwardly mobile. I reject materialism and live modesty. The fallout? I didn't even learn of the death of my father till three years after the fact, and this I learned from an aunt of mine (now probably deceased) who only phoned me to find out why I changed my name (it was to distance myself from my abusive relatives, of course!), and only when I asked if she knew what had happened to my father did she tell me that he died three years ago. She must have felt very guilty about this, and she never called me again. That was six years ago. by the way, she got my phone number from my step-cousin, Lanice, who died from cancer in 2014. She, not a blood relative, was the only person in the family who befriended me, and she was also a conduit of news. Now that she is gone, I know absolutely nothing. Lanice and I were out of touch for a number of years, by the way, ten I think, following a nasty falling-out. During that time her stepfather, my uncle, and his daughter, my cousin both died. I only found out a few years later. my treatment from my family should not be surprising to you, Gentle Reader. There is still a huge force of animus against the poor especially in this aftermath of global capitalism. Only now, rather on the late side, are some of us finally starting to wake up about this. There is more social change coming, and it could be something very ugly, or maybe something beautiful. I don't know what to expect, but this growing gulf between haves and have-nots is, to say the least, troubling, and we are really going to have to rise up and fight for economic equality. Working hard no longer cuts it, and it often means that we simply remain stranded, as I and many others have, in low paying work for the rest of our lives. Of course we can do better, but we've always been rather ethically bankrupt and this is yet another condition of our Collective Trauma.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 26

One of my biggest betes noires is joggers. I hate them. They should be driven off the earth. They get in the way. They should stay off the sidewalks and jog either on the bike path, or better, in the traffic. Every time I see one approaching me on the sidewalk I tense up and cringe. I want to hit them, or trip them, or at least swear at them. Why do I hate joggers? Because they are such selfish, mouth-breathing narcissists. I wouldn't mind them at all if they'd simply stay off the sidewalk or the walking paths so that pedestrians can have a little peace and quiet, but no. They have to dominate everything, with their huffing and puffing and hyperventilating like the most faked porn star orgasms you could ever imagine. They're even worse when they are approaching from behind, almost running you down, without saying so much as an excuse me. And what's even worse is how tolerated they are. How much slack is given those wankers. I have come to avoid favourite forests for walking, such as Pacific Spirit Park, because of those selfish idiots. I can't even enjoy an early morning walk on the seawall, because their speed, velocity and heavy breathing totally disrupt my tranquility. Joggers live on a different, very self-centred wave-length. They don't care about or notice other people. They're just out for themselves, trying to get fit of course, and this is why all those other idiots indulge them. They represent the new secular religion of health and wellness. That's right, Gentle Reader. In Bob Dylan's famous words, "You gotta serve somebody." Since now we are all atheists, or spiritual but not religious, we still have to contend with that void in the human soul. We also have to reckon with our fear of death and extinction, because if we don't believe in God or an afterlife, then it's lights out. There is absolutely nothing to look forward, nor any judgment to dread. Make up that bucket list and get in shape and stay in shape and jog and do yoga and go to the gym and annoy the crap out of everyone with your self-righteous and very self-centred spiel because we are not going to live forever, we do not want to face extinction, so we are going to stay alive and in shape and healthy and we are going to beat old mortality and live on this planet forever. And that is the driving force of this new religion of health and wellness. it is based on fear. It is based on panic. Atheism is a rather new phenomena in our human development. Before the 1960's, I think almost everyone believed in God, or at least a little bit, whether they attended church or not. Now faith is considered a quaint holdout for the uneducated, which in itself is ironic when you consider how many people of faith, at least in the Anglican tradition hold masters degrees and PhD's. But I still hold that for the most part, a lot of people don't believe because it is just too costly, and it means subjugating the real self. In this age of narcissism, self is considered god, and that would be blasphemy. Back to joggers. You have every right to run wherever the hell you want. Try running in traffic, and if you're too dumb to take out your earphones and get hit by a car, then we'll just call it natural selection, since we are of course all atheists now, and then we'll move on.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 25

Interesting. What does that word suggest. What images, sensations and impressions does the word interesting conjure up for us? I have friends who say they find me interesting. Why, I do not know. I don't think of myself as being a very interesting person. This isn't false modesty. I am simply the one who lives with me the most, who puts up with me the most and who knows me a little bit better than anyone else, except perhaps, for god. I don't find myself interesting. Not boring, either. Just that usual very human mix of hubris and self-loathing and happiness and misery and boredom and intrigue and selfishness and altruism. I could go on but I want to keep this interesting. It was a bit of a surprise when I first found that others could find me interesting. I think, having dedicated so much of my life and heart and soul and everything else into God's service, being interesting really took the back seat (or maybe it just got stuffed into the trunk) to other concerns. If I was serving God, then humility would always be a key word in my life. So, how could I possibly live humbly and still be interesting. But living humbly can appear very interesting to others. Look at Mother Teresa. Or Jean Vanier. Or Henri Nouwen. All people who became famous for having poured out their lives in the service of God in the poor and most vulnerable. and I suppose that people find this interesting. I suppose it could be fairly stated that we all want to be engaged somehow, and that in order to become engaged we have to first find something or someone interesting. But really, doesn't this have anything to do with choice and perception? And with what we are particularly needing at the time? When I was in fulltime ministry with the Community of the Transfiguration back in the late eighties and early nineties, we didn't have time to be interesting. we were too busy serving, or trying to serve, when we weren't fighting and bickering among ourselves about how to do it right. I should also add that during that time in my life I was still connected to my family, and they did not find me interesting. Indeed, my whole identity with my family seemed to hinge on my sense of inferiority in the sibling hierarchy. I was not neither loved nor liked by anyone except perhaps for my mother. To the others, I was an inconvenient nonentity. They certainly did not find me interesting, and like many survivors of childhood abuse, I certainly didn't think in terms of being interesting. I thought in terms of survival. So, bearing that in mind, I was also in the middle of God's service. That could be interesting to some, I suppose, but when you are living a life of sacred self-abasement, being interesting is not going to bring you any closer to God and is very likely to alienate us for the inherent narcissism and egoism involved in being, or in making ourselves or in wanting or perceiving ourselves to be...interesting. this dynamic changed after my mother's death. I went to Europe, and spent a lot of time in London. There I was hanging out in the café section of a fashion co-op in the tony Kensington district. I would sit in this converted rail car in the back, breakfasting on my baguette stuffed with brie and savouring my cappuccino while poring over the Times of London or the Observer, then to apply myself to journal and letter-writing, all the while taking in this fascinating panoply of people young, and no longer quite young working and shopping and schmoozing around me. Then lightning struck. This incredibly intriguing woman who sold bondage and fetish garments and lingerie, who had done street mime on the streets of Paris for ten years, told me that she found me interesting. I was dumbstruck. Me? Little old ordinary Canadian me, straight from the colonies, me? Interesting? Honey, surely you must be drunk. Or smoking something that's illegal, or should be. The owner of the café soon befriended me. An American in his sixties, I think a retired drag queen. Hilarious, witty and incisive and he found me interesting. WTF! As did others. All this time, we had been projecting back and forth and back again. Now, to this day, I really don't believe that I or the others are really that interesting, outside of other persons or other species. Perhaps it is the simple fact that we are human that makes us interesting, and we often don't know this. It could be that we are still such empty voids, ourselves, that we try to find in others the beauty that already exists within, and this is also part of our shattered legacy as the very human victims of our Collective Trauma. For me, I am no longer interested in interesting people. They are every bit as lost and dazed and confused as I am and at the end of the day their shit stinks just as bad as yours or mine Gentle Reader. Instead of interesting, give me people who are kind, honest, sincere, generous and open-minded. Now folks like that, I would find very interesting indeed.

Collective trauma: The Fallout 24

This is one of the most egregious manifestations of our Collective Trauma as humans: income inequality. The poor we have always had with us, and always will. And also the obscenely wealthy. I am thinking today of George Macdonald, the Scottish theologian and adult and children's fantasy writer of the nineteenth century and his novel "Lilith". the story is about a young heir to his father's estate who finds his way to another realm through a mirror in his attic. This is like an allegory of Purgatory and he discovers the place where all dead souls go to sleep and is befriended by the people who care for the dead. He ends up wandering through this realm where he discovers a community of small children, whom he calls the Lovers. They live on sweet small fruits that they harvest from bushes. There is also a grove of trees that grow large bitter apples. If a child eats one of those apples he becomes big and stupid and fat, and very selfish and mean. He becomes part of the community of the other Bags, who pride themselves on becoming fat and wealthy. It is later revealed that the children have all been rescued from the cruel and evil she-demon, Lilith, from the city of Bulika, where being poor is considered a crime and the poor are driven out or exterminated. This does provide us with an interesting metaphor of how the poor are generally treated even in enlightened and progressive Canada. I've actually had the dubious pleasure of knowing people rather like the Bags or the citizens of Bulika. One particularly nasty young woman stands out in my mind. She was the twenty-two year old daughter of a wealthy woman in the church I was then attending who invited some of us to her lovely West Side home for Christmas dinner. This lady was a lovely person who did tons of volunteer work and charity donations to the poor and homeless, so it is a mystery to me how she could wind up with such a tragic offspring, and you know what they say, the fruit doesn't rot far from the tree, or something like that. The daughter herself, looked like my image of one of the Bags. She was obese with a very blank, rather stupid expression but for her squinty and conniving eyes. When she heard that I was then working in a homeless shelter she began weighing into her bitter invective against the poor and homeless, that they were all lazy parasites who didn't deserve anything and all the other lies and horrible stereotypes that we are already too familiar with. I never saw this poor excuse for a human again, except once on South Granville. I'm sure that was her towering above the traffic in her black SUV, stuffing her pie-hole with chips. I haven't seen her since, and I hope I never do. This inequality is the bitter fruit of a human species so preoccupied in its own advancement and individual power and pleasures, that it is a cruel task to try to get any sense of community with us. Add to this the other side of our nature: our incurable need for one another, to belong and to participate and you have some real conflict and neurosis brewing. We want to be successful and powerful individuals in complete control of our lives and destinies. We cannot live without one another. No matter how hard we try to split from the collective, our instinctive and primal longings to belong and to be part of a greater whole will always win out in the end. The human ego is rather a vile and nasty piece of work, though, isn't it, Gentle Reader? And now we have a coalition of antipoverty groups mobbing Prime Minister Junior to get off his pretty heiny and start doing something about entrenching the rights of people for housing in this country. We want housing to be declared a human right in Canada, just as it is a human right in many other developed nations, and just as this is an internationally UN ratified human right. Junior has refused, so far, to consider ratifying housing as a constitutional human right in this country. His excuse? He is afraid of the lawsuits coming from those who should have been housed and weren't. Prime Minister Chicken Shit. Like all pretty boys, Justin Trudeau is a coward. This is the fallout of our greedy and viciously competitive society. This is the end-result, not of a dog-eat-dog world, but buying into that perception that it is a dog-eat-dog world. This is a projection of trauma. Our species has survived a very rough beginning and the trauma of surviving and thriving against all odds is encoded into our genes, but this has also turned what could have potentially been one of the most noble and beautiful creations of God into one of the most vile and rapacious. We are also by far the most intelligent species. Pretty scary, eh?

Collective Truama: The Fallout 23

We are, physically, a very weak animal for our size, one of the weakest. Our vision and hearing are below that of many other mammals, our sense of smell even worse. We are physically not very strong. We cannot run very fast and our endurance isn't what it could be if we want to survive in the wild. Our teeth are weak and best suited for fruits and tender vegetables, only for meat that is cooked (the discovery of fire was the great game-changer of our hominid ancestors!) Physically, we are adapted only to living in warm or subtropical, or warm-temperate climates, which is to say that our species should never have strayed north of southern Spain, Italy or Greece, or on the North American Continent, north of Florida or California, nor south of Uruguay. We cannot endure any kind of winter that involves frost unless we are adequately clothed, and to be a mammal in the strictest sense should not require acquired clothing outside of whatever coat of fur or blubber that nature has already bestowed on us. Which is to say that most of the North American and the Eurasian continents would never have known human habitation, were it not for our very superior human intelligence that gave us fire, weapons and the ability to make clothing for ourselves. And we cannot live in anything colder without artificial heating, usually from wood or fossil fuels. Also our young, they are born helpless and are only able to walk upright after their first year, and for another twenty years, more or less, remain dependent upon their parents. The female of the human species gets a particularly raw deal. Since are big brains necessitate big heads to fit them in, childbirth is particularly painful. The prolonged dependence and vulnerability of the human infant makes it even more difficult for their mothers who have traditionally had the primary care of their offspring's wellbeing and survival. Adding insult to injury the human female has her menstrual cycles to have to contend with, increasing her vulnerability. And men have seldom been much help here, or anywhere else, either. We are, in a word, pathetic. But for one thing: our enormous, overdeveloped brains. We are also vastly the most intelligent species, at least that's what our own very human conceit would have us believe. This intelligence has given us a considerable edge over other species, enabling us to carve out not only a niche that is uniquely human, but to claim and exploit the entire planet as our own, at cost of other species, and at cost of our own very existence as we continue to despoil Mother Earth. So, we have superior intelligence and overweening hubris, along with physical weakness and fragility. This makes us rather an interesting and irritating paradox. And what an insult this must be to other species, that such a frail piece of work as humans should get the edge on the biosphere. I sometimes try to think of adults as what they might have been like as babies: tiny, vulnerable, helpless, sweet, not able to do much outside of cry, poop and eat. How sad it often is the way we develop into adults: selfish, conceited, violent, ambitious and arrogant little liars, some of us. Others, perhaps kinder, more compassionate. Some gifted intellectually, spiritually and artistically. Some with extreme physical prowess for athletics and combat. But in each one, regardless of how far we've gone in our adult ways, there always remains that shadow of the cradle, that helpless little baby who can only cry when she needs something, and quietly coo when all his needs have been met. What is it going to take to make us less destructive, less selfish and less violent? What is going to transform us into beings that love one another, care for the planet and respect other life forms? We are so far away from what we need to become if we want to save ourselves from the coming destruction. And we don't need to be.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 22

It is only natural that we are going to try to escape, run away, distract ourselves with little absurdities. We don't want to face the tragic reality that stares us down our noses every day. We re too weak, too frail. too shallow. We are very delicate, we humans. And so full of hubris. We are also very destructive. Look what we've been doing to this planet. And yet we keep on multiplying, since sex is such an effective soporific for keeping us drugged and we use birth control only when it really suits our needs, not those of the planet. Here, in Canada, we have a negative birthrate, which means that without constant immigration, our population will go on shrinking, so we import hordes of immigrants from countries bursting at the seems, and many of them, for example the Philippines, are strongly Catholic nations, or there is some other conservative ethos going on that inhibits birth control, so they just keep having kids and we get the surplus. It's win-win, I suppose, but the global population keeps on growing. And it is rather cynical to suppose that the poorer countries exist primarily as breeding centres to keep the rich countries like Canada provided with good cheap labour to keep fattening our economy god. But that's really what our politicos want for us. I don't think they really are that interested in multiculturalism, though I for one agree that diversity is good for our country. They just want to keep the economy growing and then they try to pretty things up by selling us on the beauty of diversity. And most of us swallow it, because, of course, diversity is beautiful. But it's still no less a cynical ploy. And this also robs developing countries of brain power to help them keep moving forward, and this is where I start to see red. Why should the loss of bright, educated, strong and healthy Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans and Peruvians have to be their own countries loss in order to be our gain, when we are already an incredibly wealthy and developed nation? Why can't more be done to help people stay in their own countries and use their gifts and their strength and intelligence to build their own societies. But of course they all feel hamstrung by the corruption and backwardness of their own societies, and they really want to feel freer, live and breathe freer and move ahead in life, which is going to be much more likely in a country like Canada than in India or in Bangladesh. So Canada benefits and the other places continue to languish. And we still keep multiplying, putting all kinds of stress on the planet and strain on our own infrastructures because we really should have blown the whistle on our rabbit-instinct shortly after we hit one billion, but this is not going to happen. Our instinct to reproduce and pass on our genetic material is so encoded in our genes that this is one big fat inevitable and I don't think that we are going to get through this one until it is too late, until we have passed the point of no return and our burgeoning numbers create the biggest environmental collapse in this planet's history and then....well, anything could happen. I think our species is going to survive, but in greatly reduced numbers, and the fallout is going to be so severe that our descendants just may end up forgetting much of the millennia of culture, learning and civilization that we have developed since the caves were being painted in Spain and in France and we have to start over again in various degraded states of abject savagery (oh shut up, Politically Correct Thought Police! Context, okay? Nothing wrong with the word savagery, it's all about context!) So maybe a few thousand years of reverting to a new Old Stone Age would be just the thing to get Mother Earth back in shape, before our distant descendants gather enough knowledge again to make an even bigger mess of things some ten or twenty thousand years in the future? Who only knows. But in the meantime, we are going to keep on distracting ourselves, keep playing with our yoyos or playing with ourselves (stop it, or you'll go blind!). It isn't that most of us don't care, or that we don't want to care. I think we're afraid of caring, because to care is something very costly. We will be obliged to actually do something about it, to get out of our comfort zone and actually do something to effect change, any kind of change, and this is going to be the most costly thing that we will have ever done. It is sad, downright depressing to think that our species may be hurtling towards oblivion, and all because most of us are just too selfish and too afraid to care. We don't want to give up our transient comforts. We will only carry risk as far as the casino, an extreme sport, or getting the next travel destination off our bucket list. Nothing else matters. And if this kind of thinking doesn't begin to really change, and soon, then not only are we doomed, but we are going to deserve to be doomed.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 21

The cooler weather has been upon us these last three or four days, and what a relief from the stifling heat. It is supposed to warm up again this week, I hear, and so goes our summer roller coaster of heat. This is what we have to get used to now, and still we have it better than in most places. Here where I live, it almost never gets above thirty degrees and we complain bitterly anyway, such is life for the soft, spoilt and privileged. Yes, privileged. Even someone like me, living in social housing in a crappy neighbourhood downtown, I am privileged. Even if I don't feel privileged. I can still live in this fabulously expensive city with a modicum of dignity and still enjoy relatively quiet days and nights, given that my unit faces the back. I can still walk on the seawall or on one of the bridges and enjoy the cool ocean breezes. I can still wander over to Stanley Park, or take a thirty minute bus ride to the forest of Pacific Spirit Park and get lost among the towering trees while dodging testosterone addled (male and female) joggers, cyclists and other narcissists. I can still enjoy long, meandering walks through expansive leafy and tony neighbourhoods that I will never be able to live in. There is so much to enjoy and appreciate here, despite the heat at times, despite the frequent rain, and despite the imbeciles who get elected to public office only to use their largess as a platform for selling us up the river to the rapacious property developer, real estate and foreign house flipper scum that have infested our city like rats, cockroaches and bedbugs. This is not Eden. It is neither perfect nor ideal. And you know what, Gentle Reader? Neither are we. Yes, we are paying the piper and we will soon be paying the whole goddam philharmonic orchestra in full for our sins against the climate and our violations against Mother Earth, and maybe it is not too late, but we are going to have to look at the likelihood that we are going to be suffering over the next few generations, and we are going to be suffering big time and now we have to start getting used to the idea, because if we are going to pull through this mammoth disaster of our own making then we are going to have to pull together as never before, and it just ain't happenin'. In the meantime there is the every day. The day by day. How we treat others. How we conduct ourselves. Gratitude. Enjoying and savouring the moment, for these moments are soon going to end. But we don't have to end with them. Today, Gentle Reader, when you see a stranger, be kind. courteous, respectful treatment of others, regardless of who they are, may be just the key to getting us out of this mess. We can do nothing about President Dump, nor about Duterte the Dirty, nor Putin nor those nasty autocrats in Saudi Arabia, nor can we stop them from ravaging other countries or slaughtering the innocent. But here at hone, we have to do what we can. It might not be enough. Or maybe our acts of kindness and mercy will be carried on a wind that circumnavigates the globe. We can only try, can't we? This also is going to involve a bit of sacrifice. That's right. We have to start being more generous. I was thinking the other day while I was waiting in line to pay for a belt at the local Wiener's (I mean, Winners) and all the security devices that had been attached to the belt so that no one would just put it on and walk out the store without paying for it. I can understand that they want to discourage theft so they can keep their prices low. But how about eliminating all the potential causes of theft? That's right. Paying all workers a living wage, and a liveable guaranteed income for people on low incomes. If we all had enough to live on, and we didn't have to carefully select only the cheapest stores to shop in because of our modest budgets, then perhaps there wold be less theft, fewer robberies, fewer break-ins. But we're all considered guilty till proven innocent, it seems and so we must live in a dystopia of mutual suspicion. This has to change or our planet is going to continue hurtling towards it's worst possible conclusion.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 20

I really lose patience with academic eggheads, especially philosophers, professional or amateur or just not able to stop playing with themselves all the time (stop it or you`ll go blind!) Rising in the dawn hours this morning I switched on the CBC Radio at 4 an this morning and the program was from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and it was about whether there exists such a thing as objective truth. Of course, the large-headed idiot who has never been able to get his face out of a book, or so it seems, and actually live life as a normal human being, made that classic stupid and fatuous claim that there is no such thing as truth. And this is where I really tend to lose patience. It isn't whether or not I believe in objective truth. I likely do, but I simply don't think about it. What inflames me is when these fat-headed intellectuals insist that truth doesn't exist. Why does this bother me so much? Besides the absolute hubris and arrogance that comes with the kind of intellectual atheism that is only an excuse for not having to surrender our lives to the power that made us and sustains all existence? It is the way they make these dumb claims that there is no such thing as truth and they make that into...truth. They are basically heisted by their own philosophical petard. For those bobble heads there is no truth, and that is the truth. So they're really lying to themselves, like other atheists. We can only think in terms of a or b, it seems, not because the universe is limited but because we are. we are a limited being. I believe that the truth is not only out there. But that the truth simply is. Everything that is speaks of truth, in all its intricacies and complications and complexities and contradictions. It isn't that truth doesn't exist, but what is wanting is our ability to fathom the very universe that we are a very tiny part of. But to appreciate this requires humility, which is usually in short supply, especially among academic eggheads. For me, the truth, if or as it exists, is very simple. We are here, whether or not there is a higher purpose to human existence, we do have the capacity to think that there just might be such a higher purpose to our existence and this should really give us pause. Either we are masters at self-deception (and I think there is substantial evidence to back up this idea), or we are merely acting out our hidden potential. We are either biological forms of material existence that will replicate our genes then die off and dissolve into the biosphere or we are beings of a higher potential. Just that we are able to imagine ourselves such tells me that we probably are designed for better than a simple animal, non reflective, non purposeful existence. Which also makes it absolutely ludicrous when philosophers speak from one corner of their mouth that there is no truth, then from the other corner of their mouth declare that it is morally wrong to kill Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Muslims or anyone else that the right happens to hate. It is wrong to hate and it is wrong to kill, at least the vulnerable and innocent. And there is no such thing as truth? Yeah, sure. Truth, if it exists, is so hard for us to grasp because our own capacities as humans are so limited. We are more than just mind. We are spirit and soul as well, though that of course is just as hotly disputed by those wankers (please, stop, or you will go blind!) But we also have this growing body of evidence, or perhaps para-evidence, of near death experiences, of altered states of consciousness, of religious and spiritual epiphanies and dare I say it) the occurrence of the paranormal and the miraculous that no scientific textbook is ever going to explain away, and there fore chooses to ignore and dismiss as specious nonsense in absence of peer-reviewed scientifically sound evidence. But there is only so much that science is able to prove and even on their theories scientists turn by fault into persons of faith, because they have to believe in something. This appears to be hardwired into our human psyche, whether we like it or not. We have to believe in something, not just by intellectual assent, but by passionately adhering and trusting in the very essence and virtue of what we believe. And this is how I believe in God, and this is how I believe that God is Love, and now please, my near academic eggheads, stop doing that or you will indeed go blind!

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 19

We have been going through heatwave after heatwave this summer. It never seems to let up except for a few short blessed days of relative cool and then the furnace gets stoked again. Our summers never used to be this hot. And it does help to remember that the climate here on the loopy West Coast has always been mild. Until recently. It isn't that we are suddenly facing climate Armageddon and we're about to burn into a dead black cinder hurtling through the cosmos. It never is anything so dramatic. Not with a bang, but a whimper. Our part of the world is still very livable and it is not uncommon for average temperatures of thirty or higher to happen in the summertime (and in the tropics, year round) all over the earth. But here, in privileged Vancouver and outlying regions, you say? And I say, why not? We have gotten off scot-free all these years and now it is our turn to suffer and endure hot sleepless nights drenching our beds with sweat, and only for the sheer effort of trying to lie still long enough for a decent, hot night's sleep. Of course we are to blame for this. Our governments, anyway, and the energy industries of petroleum and coal and other environment bombs. Our prime minister really blew it when he pushed for the twinning of the badly deteriorated Kinder Morgan Pipeline, and that so many Canadians are on board with his hare-brained decision is nothing but at least troubling. And now it looks like the price tag to the taxpayers, since the public buyout was approved, could more than double to over ten billion dollars. That's a lot of low cost housing for the homeless and working poor and public health care gone up in carbon spewing smoke! How did it get this way? Well, we have always been at odds with the environment, ever since our ancestors decided to live in hostile climates. We are not a temperate, nor arctic species, Gentle Reader. We have no protective coats or layers of fur or blubber that'll keep us warm in winter. Northern Eurasia, North America and southern Patagonia, all became chilly default options because we could not compete for resources with other groups of hominids in the warmer, more hospitable regions. No one was willing to share the bounty they were already enjoying. Visiting bands were seen as a hostile threat and were either forced out or killed and (sometimes) eaten by the local NIMBYs. Or the invaders would simply kill off the locals and eat them and take over the joint. But no one wanted to share. They didn't know the words to Kumbaya. No one could even hum the first couple of bars. So our ancestors packed their selfish rapacious asses north, where the only competitors, in Europe anyway, were the Neanderthals, and no one knows really what happened to them, though most of us, except Africans, all carry in our genes a little bit of Neanderthal DNA. So we basically took control of regions not suited for humans and we wanted to stay warm. We already knew about fire, so we would burn whatever we could to stay warm. No one knew anything about carbon emissions in those days. And their descendants continued living in inhospitable climates, continued burning things, continued multiplying, and then one day Mother Earth woke up choking. And we continued to multiply. Like Big Macs. Millions. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions. Then in the nineteenth century we topped one billion. Here's the facts from Uncle Google: "It is estimated that the population of the world reached one billion for the first time in 1804. It would be another 123 years before it reached two billion in 1927, but it took only 33 years to rise by another billion people, reaching three billion in 1960. Thereafter, the global population reached four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, six billion in 1999 and, by some estimates, seven billion in October 2011 with other estimates being in March 2012. It is projected to reach eight billion by 2024–2030. According to current projections, the world's population is likely to reach around nine billion by 2035–2050." With our greed and shortsighted fear leading the way, our governments are still promoting the fuels of death, and really we don't have a lot of time left. In the foreseeable future, major parts of this planet could be uninhabitable to human life, thanks to warming temperatures and climate change, and where are those billions going to live? You guessed right, Gentle Reader. And how welcome are they going to be made to feel again in their new countries? You guessed right, again, Gentle Reader And how many of us are really going to change our hearts, stop building walls, stop fearing outsiders and stop hating, before it is too late? You guessed right again, Gentle Reader. Now go eat your chocolate donut. You don't have to share it.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 18

Good morning, Gentle Reader, and Happy Friday. I am just sipping my morning cup of Costa Rica's finest and trying not to complain too bitterly about the heatwave this summer, though I have to admit that I am one of that silent majority that hates summer. At least when it gets much over 27 (80 for you Fahrenheiters). I do nothing but sweat and it is embarrassing, plus there is no air conditioning in my building since we live on the fabled West Coast and the summer temperatures here never rise above 22, so it's always like outdoor room temperature with air conditioning from our lovely ocean breezes. Well, let me tell you a thing or two. It does get hot here. Sometimes brutally hot, since global warming. Pardon me, Gentle Reader, but my allergies are kicking in on this fine heating-up August morning and I had to take a sneezing break (16 in a row. My record, I think, is 30!), though we never get up into the mid-30's, not yet anyway, and I do suspect that it'll take at least that long or longer before the evangelical Christian organization that runs my building will bother to even think about air-conditioning. They might be waiting for the first ten seniors to die in their apartments from the heat, but there is something very slow and backward about the thinking of evangelicals, in general, and having been one in the past, I just might happen to know a thing or two about this. For example, the slowness to accept the scientific evidence for climate change. But we live on the West Coast! And the fact that our summers are getting increasingly hotter, and this is documented peer-reviewed science. But we live on the West Coast! And the fact that there is still stigma against poor people, which could be interpreted as, we don't deserve air-conditioning because we are too lazy to work for it, though they are too kind and loving to actually tell us this to our faces. Beggars can't be choosers, you know, and besides, if we haven't worked for it we haven't earned it, and since evangelicals tend to worship St. Paul instead of Jesus, they are going to heed the words of the former (he who doesn't work, neither should he eat), rather than the words of the latter (Blessed are the poor... or maybe he means the working poor!). Anyway, it's hot out, these apartments are stuffy and poorly ventilated and they can't even provide us with electric fans (we have to work for them. Silly me) It can also be onerous opening our windows in this bloody heat because of the screeches of the damned that come from the construction sites nearby, and sometimes from the musical tastes of the mouth-breathers who live in the next building. I know, we could always go outside, but this is an unsafe part of downtown where we are living and besides, sometimes it is even worse having to put up with the noise and selfish chaos of the madding crowd, don't you think? I know of other buildings run by secular organizations that have air-conditioning at least in the common areas, and they give electric fans to their tenants. But those are all godless atheists. What do they know, and no matter if they happen to be nicer to their tenants that still isn't going to get them into Heaven! By grace are you saved, through faith in the words of Paul the Apostle. Jesus is just too embarrassing! Especially with all that awful love and compassion stuff! I am also thinking this morning about the removing of the statue of Sir John A Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister and architect of Confederation from the steps of the city hall in Victoria. Why, you might ask? He said and did mean things to our aboriginal peoples, and indigenous people say that they are not comfortable seeing his visage. Anywhere. Except maybe on a ten dollar bill? So, in this era of truth and reconciliation, we have decided that instead of everyone who is not first nations moving back to England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Holland, Italy, China, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Iran, the Czech Republic, Poland, Greece, Egypt, Uganda, South Africa, and many, many more, then we are going to have to find much better ways of coexisting. A lot of native people find reminders of the colonialist genocidal presence upsetting and offensive. If I was Jewish, I would be traumatized by any reminder of Hitler. Even though I am not Jewish, and half German, I still find the guy upsetting. But he didn't found the German nation, and JA Macdonald, for all his offensive and arguably criminal acts, was a founding person of the Canadian nation, so how do we do this? I don't know. I am not indigenous, so I do not have their experience of trauma, but I can learn empathy. Removing statues and monuments? Don't know. I am not comfortable with the idea of erasing and rewriting history to suit the norms of the era. I also think that we have to make space for discomfort and bad feelings, if only to help stimulate conversation and dialogue and to keep us conscious of some of the very bitter errors of our history and of our forebears. But how to do it in a way that is going to please everybody? Good luck. We are in a new era and there is no going back and somehow we are all failing at this important need and obligation we all have to adjust and adapt to these changing times while fully accommodating one another and while also not sealing shut our memory of our own past crimes and offences. This is yet more of the bitter fallout, Gentle Reader, of our Collective Human Trauma.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 17

It's all going too fast, Gentle Reader. Even a simple but unasked for computer tutorial yesterday from my supervisor sent me into a panic. We are expected in this mad dance of death to perform and perform and perform better, more efficiently and to save our employers tons of money because saving money, cutting costs, the bottom line, and profits seem to be all that matter. Oh yes, they do say they want services delivered in a timely and appropriate manner, but only if it looks good on their balance sheet. Which explains their excuse for keeping peer support workers, like me at an inadequate low wage of just a little more than one dollar above the minimum. It's like this everywhere. We freeze up, we panic, we go comatose, or drug and drink or eat ourselves to oblivion or go out and harm ourselves or others, because no one can really cope with this kind of frenzied pressure. Or we turn into shopaholics, which our corporate bosses love, since it fattens the economy god, but we end up throwing ourselves into debt, and all because we cannot cope anymore. Not in the long run. I retire in something like 934 days, or just over two and a half years. I can't wait. For a while I entertained the nonsense of continuing to work part time after I turn sixty-five, but I think that's just part of the corporate propaganda that persuades us that we cannot have a life without a paycheque for doing work that keeps us busy, makes us feel useful and keeps us distracted from ourselves, our lives and our own empty souls. We are so conditioned to go through life as dark little voids with no interior substance or ballast that we simply consume and occupy ourselves from one distraction to another. Work becomes our absolute refuge from ourselves, our selves whom we don't know, whom we fear, hate and are always trying to flee from. I understand that a lot of people, men especially, when they retire, their lives implode. All their sense of value and usefulness has centred around their dear little day job, no matter how trivial or useless the work or business, and it's often for one very important reason. They have devoted so much of their time, energy, their very lives to their thankless occupations that, outside of the workplace, they are nothing. They have no friends, no meaningful connections, no meaningful ways of occupying themselves, no lives, and all because they were brainwashed into accepting their profession, trade, occupation as the be all and end all of their sad little existence. And surprise, surprise, guess where all their friends are? At work, of course. Well, let me tell you something, Gentle Reader. I hate my job. And I have friends, good solid relationships with people outside of the work place and in spite of the soul-sucking centrifugal stress of my occupation I have maintained and nurtured my friendships and am still building my social network. And I have interests, occupations, vocations and passions that are not confined to the workplace. When I retire, I still might work up to ten hours a week, to supplement my pension, of course, and to keep interacting with clients, because the one, single thing that rewards me about my profession is seeing disadvantaged and disempowered persons do well with their lives, and lead better more fulfilling and more gratifying lives. I can also do this outside of my job, because I am one for staying in touch with people and cultivating healthy relationships, and I could easily continue doing this in any number of volunteer capacities. But my job is not going to determine the rest of my life. I have already put in my time, and now the soft winds of freedom are already blowing my way.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 16

After some of the wretched misery that I write on these pages, Gentle Reader, increasingly I am wanting to put on my Pollyanna hat and go totally Disney on y 'all. Anyone know the words to "When You Wish Upon A Star", or, how about "It's A Small World After All". Yes, south of the border we have what could arguably be the worst US president in history, the Dump squatting in the Oval office, and there is Putin in Russia, Duterte the Dirty in the Philippines, and those monsters in Syria, Turkey, Hungary, and the beast goes on. We still have it pretty good here in Canada, despite Prime Minister Junior's betrayal of the environment and those who care for it by bailing Kinder-Morgan out to the tune of 4.5 billions of our dollars. On the other hand, he is a nice guy, despite the silver spoon and the cradle and upbringing of absolute privilege. And he did march in Vancouver's Pride Parade on Sunday. Yes, he kept his shirt on. Can you imagine the spectacle if all the world's leaders would take off their shirts from time to time for populist sexy photo-ops? Maybe not Donald Trump? Oh, I forgot, some of my Gentle Reader might be trying to choke down their breakfast right now. As annoying as I find him sometimes, I am still glad that we have Trudeau Junior instead of that dreadful helmet head who came before him, Stephen Harper, and this has nothing to do with the former's fabulous hair and everything to do with no longer having to live in a mean-spirited Conservative quasi-police state that will jump at any chance to dismantle human rights and programs for the poor. I have to admit though, that I also gagged on my granola every time I would hear someone from Mexico or elsewhere go on and on about how good-looking our PM is. As though that has anything to do with someone's ability to govern. People are such bottom-feeders. So, Gentle Reader, it looks as if parts of the earth will eventually be uninhabitable if something isn't done soon to halt climate change. And our billions keep on multiplying like Big Macs. This doesn't bode very well. Perhaps if we would scale back on our expectations of what the Good Life ought to be, live within our means, and use energy more prudently and make a bigger effort to actually live together and coexist in harmony, then maybe we will have a fighting chance, but there is still a lot of opposition to this idea of personal sacrifice for the greater good, and no one in the rising economies of China, India, Brazil or Mexico seem willing to do this. I can't think even of a lot of Canadians who would willingly use their phones and computers less, give up their cars, and try to leave a much smaller carbon footprint. I think it's possible but our hearts are really going to have to change, big time, before this happens. And we also know that by that time it could well be too late. In the meantime, I will try to do the small things I am able to do, by writing this blog and by practicing kindness and living in a spirit of gratitude and humility as I walk my path on this beautiful earth. Any takers? Kumbaya, anybody?

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 15

During this time of post-Pride, I am remembering an old friend, an ex-friend rather, who used to live here and some years ago returned with his family to Tennessee. He was actually a very pleasant, kind and generous friend. A devoted father and husband. A gentle and sensitive soul. A Christian pastor attending the same church as I 2003-2005. And this came out in our last ever conversation: he not only didn't accept gay marriage. He wanted to see homosexuality recriminalized, and all gay people rounded up and held indefinitely in concentration camps. I hardly batted an eye when he told me this, in a very low voice and with embarrassment flickering across his face, but I told him that there was no way I could endorse something like that. This was also both our final conversation, and the ultimate brick in the wall that to this day stands between me and the homophobic bigots that represent a kind of Christianity that has proven over and over again to be an absolute disgrace to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Shortly after, the pastor of the church, just following the ratifying of same-sex marriage in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 2005, spoke firmly against it during his sermon. I do not know how his sermon concluded. I walked out halfway, and I have never bothered to return. I came by this church innocently enough. I was so alienated by the Anglican Church after Bishop Michael Ingham's bumbling way of including same-sex blessings back in 2002 and the way it divided the church, that for a while I wanted nothing to do with the issue. Around that time I moved into my current apartment, a subsidized unit run by the Mennonite Central Committee. Unfortunately, their housing division in Vancouver was staffed by homophobic bigots, and I was lured into their church by a promise of exhibit space for my art and very kind and caring Christian people to befriend me. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, I suppose, because there was a concerted effort to convert or at least get into their church as many tenants in my building as they could fit in the car every Sunday morning. I did understand from the beginning that their position on homosexuality was going to be conservative. But I did not expect some of the Nazi-inspired bigotry that I was confronted with. The name of this denomination, by the way, is the Presbyterian Church in America, and I have since learned that they are notoriously rightwing and that many of them are firm believers in President Dump, the Great Deplorable squatting in the Oval Office. It is hard not to demonize these people. They are using the Gospel of Christ to cloak their own evil bigotry. But they don't come across as evil. They are like Adolph Eichmann, the architect of Hitler's Final Solution, and they treated Jews and homosexuals and anyone else who didn't fit their vision of humanity as fuel for the ovens in Auschwitz and other places. These people didn't come across as evil either: they were all family men, good citizens, loyal to their friends, and kind and decent people who also happened to hate Jews, gays and anyone else who wasn't like them. Or, in Hannah Arendt's famous definition: the Banality of Evil. I do not know what has become of the people I knew from that church. One of the pastor's son lives in my building and we see each other from time to time, but we are not on speaking terms, given that he seems to hold the same opinions as those other bigots, or he did at one time, but there is little indication that he has changed. I do not know how the current staff nd management of my building think about the issues and I will not discuss it with any of them as I am afraid of what I might find out. Moving out of here is not an option, by the way. This is Vancouver and there are no other affordable options for me for housing and I have no desire to end up on the street. I am thinking of my last ever email exchange with the pastor whose sermon I walked out on. When he again tried to convince me that homosexuals are inherently flawed beings and that same sex matrimony somehow denigrates his idea of marriage I asked him a simple and innocent question. I asked him to try to put himself in our shoes, to get an idea of what it is like to go through life discriminated against, bullied, persecuted, marginalized and even beaten up and killed simply for being attracted to someone of the same gender. I asked him to try to imagine what it must be like to have to hide and conceal and lie about every single gesture and evidence that could betray you as gay. I asked him to imagine what it might be like, for him, a heterosexual man, to be villainized and hated for all the innocent manifestations of his heterosexuality: his wife and his four daughters. I suppose that that was just a little too much for the poor little pastor, who cut me out of his life once and for all. Over the next four or five years or so we did encounter each other on the bus. He refused to acknowledge me outside of a grudging hello. Such Christian love. I am glad to say that I am completely done with this kind of people and happy to move on.