Postmortem 26

Dichosos los perseguidos por causa de la justicia, porque el reino de los cielos les pertenece.

Dichosos serán ustedes cuando por mi causa la gente les insulte, les persiga, y levante en contra ustedes toda clase de calumnias.  Alégrense, y llénense de júbilo porque les espera una gran recompensa en el cielo.  Así también persiguieron a los profetas que les precedieron a ustedes.

These are the hardest words of the Beatitudes, but perhaps you would like to see them in English, Gentle Reader:

Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed will you be when for my sake the people insult you, persecute you, and cause all kinds of trouble for you.  Rejoice and be full of gladness because a great reward in heaven is awaiting you.  So also were the prophets who went before you persecuted.

This is the final outcome from being poor in spirit.  It completes the cycle.  The same reward, none less than the kingdom of heaven.

I am currently experiencing persecution by the Anglican archdiocese.  They have sicced their lawyer on me and I have been told to stop publishing unkind words about them in my blog.  I have responded that if they try to sue me, then I will go public, literally, and then we will see what happens when everyone hears about a wealthy Christian denomination suing a low income blogger.

But I am truly done with those people, and I am treating this as a kind of excommunication from the Anglican Church.  It wasn't so much that I was harassing them, and I certainly wasn't making threats, though they will pull anything out of context in order to make themselves appear to be in the right.  and having the financial resources to hire lawyers of course is going to put me at a disadvantage.

But, really, I kept pestering them with this blog series because I was not offered any satisfactory pastoral support.  And instead of responding to my concerns, I was simply ignored and stonewalled.  I was also given the feeble excuse that I was already in contact with two of the church wardens so why should I need support from clergy.  But these two wardens are personal friends of mine, and I have been in contact with them as friends, not as pastors, but no one has done or said anything to clarify any of this for me.

So, what I have concluded is this.  They are insulted and scandalized and offended by the words I have written about the call of Jesus to real discipleship, as I have recently experienced in Colombia and back here now in Canada.  They do not want to be challenged to give up their privilege or their comfort in order to become true people of the Gospel and the charge of harassment and defamation is nothing more than a convenient smokescreen that they want to use to silence me.  But I will not shut up.

This assures me that I am on the right path with this.  It seems now that my troubled history with the Anglican Church has come to an end.  There is nothing here to mourn.   It is time to move forward.

I am also forwarding this blog post to CBC Go Public, for their reference, just in case the archdiocese tries to get particularly ugly with me.

Postmortem 25

First, Gentle Reader, a little update.  It appears that the Anglican archbishop for this diocese does not want me to continue sending her or her colleagues these blogposts.  I have sent my reply, and I will quote here from my email to her grace:

 Then, do something!!!!!! I am disgusted with all of you and you have done nothing to help.  Absolute nothing.  No pastoral support. nothing.  And I will go on sending them.

She wants war, I will give her war.

Not really consistent with today's Beatitude.

Dichosos los que trabajan por la paz, porque serán llamados los hijos de Dios.

or

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Now, in the Spanish, we are not called peace makers, but those who work for peace.  And there is a difference,  A peacemaker is of course going to be perceived as someone who tries to reconcile, to get warring and conflicting sides to come to at the very least a truce, at the very best, a prolonged Kumbaya moment.  

I tend to suck at being a peacemaker.  It isn't that I enjoy conflict.  I actually hate conflict.  But I hate lies and lying even more.  So, I really see my role, partly, as that of speaking, and writing the truth, and of speaking truth unto power.  That is the role of the prophet, and every single person who seeks to trust and faithfully follow Jesus Christ is also going to live the life of a prophet.  It's in the contract.

So then it could be that a significant part or phase in working for peace, will involve fielding conflict and disaccord, and for the simple reason that without truth, there will be no authentic peace, just a tepid, milk and water agreement to agree to disagree so that we can all get on with our lovely illusions.

If I am to work for peace, based on my experiences in Colombia, then I also have to recognize and address social, political, economic and structural inequality.  This is a particular scourge in Colombia, and in many Latin American societies, and it has become an increasing problem here in Utopian Canada.  the Anglican Church is particularly problematic in that it is a hierarchy that has its roots in Medieval England, when the Church was the purview of the King and the aristocracy.  The Anglican Church still carries those vestiges.  It could even be argued that in order for the Anglican Church to become authentically New Testament, authentically Christian, authentically equal, then they would actually have to cease to exist.  I do not see that as a problem, by the way.  

I want peace.  And I want truth.  And I want things to be addressed transparently, with a goal towards authentic reconciliation, where all lives are meaningfully touched, affected and transformed.    

When we have been faced by our poverty of spirit, when we have mourned over our brokenness, when we have truly hungered and thirsted for justice, when we have become humble, compassionate, and pure of heart, then we begin working for peace.  But that can also get messy, because not everyone is going to be equally willing or ready to face their part in the problem, nor be sufficiently introspective as to want to arrive at a place of repentance.  This I believe could be why the Archbishop now is trying to stonewall me.   Rather than addressing and engaging with me the concerns I am raising she just wants to plug her ears and turn away.  Well, how else can I interpret this?

I still have no idea whether or not I am going to continue with the Anglican Church.  If I decide to stay, if it becomes clearly God's will that I stay, then I will likely go on being a pain in the ass to the power hierarchy there until they really begin to listen, to engage, and to prayerfully reach with me a place of repentance and reconciliation.  In the meantime, they are just going to have to cope with some of the unpleasant things that I am going to be telling them.

Postmortem 24

Dichosos los de corazón limpio, porque ellos verán a Dios.

or

in English

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

It's again that divine order of Beatitudes:  Poverty of spirit, then weeping, then a hunger and thirst for justice, followed by humility and then compassion.  Well, yes, those qualities and experiences in that kind of order, create the clean heart, the pure heart, and then we see God.  It's a process.

When I arrived in Colombia, I was exhausted from poor sleep on an overnight flight to Toronto, followed by nine sleepless hours in the Toronto Pearson Airport while waiting for my connecting flight to Bogotá.  I was able to sleep more on the plane.  But when I arrived and Alonso took me back to his apartment, I was feeling pretty tired and vulnerable.  As a guest in a foreign country in the home of a new friend, I was experiencing real poverty of spirit.  And that was how it began.

Arriving in Bogotá three days later in my friend's car for the first time in four years was a real shocker.  I had not before really appreciated the huge economic disparity and inequality in Colombia.  It isn't that I hadn't seen it before, after two one month visits there in 2015 and 2016.  But somehow, it was so in my face this time.  I must this time have been more ready to see it, to experience it, to live the pain of the huge social injustice that is Bogotá.  Feeling thoroughly dependent on someone else for my well-being made me ready to be impacted by the pain of the two fathers begging between cars stopping for a red light with their very young children in their arms.  And this continued for me throughout my three weeks spent in Colombia.

The mourning followed very quickly, this very shared and very communal experience of our own very human wretchedness, along with a hunger and thirst for justice for the poor and marginalized, then a sense of humility because I could only appreciate my smallness and my own lack of ability to do one single thing in order to help, short of giving what little money I could spare and a smile..  And compassion.  Always compassion.  When we know that we are in this together, we are feeling this together, that we are this together, then we no longer walk alone. We never have walked alone. And that is the birthplace of compassion.

So, how does this make me clean, or pure of heart?  If I am pure of heart, I can only imagine that it comes from the trauma of God first tearing my heart open.  of God giving me a new heart, a beating heart of flesh that is ready to be wounded for the very love of our poor, miserable and wounded humanity. And it is through this very wounded, beating and very  human heart that we come into direct contact with the living God, it is with this heart vulnerable with love that we come to see God. hanging nailed to a cross, the blood flowing from his wounds as he exhales his very last breath, a breath of love for all of us. That is purity of heart.  And that becomes our vision of God.

Postmortem 23

Dichosos los compasivos, porque serán tratados con compasión.

In English, please:

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

I prefer the Spanish translation, because they use the word compasivo, which translates directly to the English word compassionate.  Compassion is beautiful.  It says that you are feeling with someone else the pain they are living.  It is almost like empathy, it's even lovelier sibling.  Very different from the word mercy, which suggests noblesse oblige, the lofty upper classes deigning to be kind to the undeserving poor and unfortunate.

I have often struggled with the word mercy, when it is used between persons.  Although at times it is necessary, oh so necessary, I rather prefer the word justice, but even justice has rather a cold, shall we say judicial ring.   I have tried to simplify the concept somewhat.  When it comes to our interactions with one another as humans, it is about justice.  When it touches upon God's interactions with us, as humans, then it is always going to be mercy.

And if our acts of justice are not predicated by compassion, then really we are not interested in justice but in some kind of petty or ethically-sanitized vengeance.  But what makes us compassionate?  Well, here we have the order of the Beatitudes.  We begin with poverty of spirit, and what do we get?  no less than heaven.  From there we move on to mourning and weeping, and behold, comfort and consolation.  This is followed by a hunger and thirst for justice.  Notice that the Spanish translation mentions the word justicia, which can mean both righteousness and justice.  And our promise is that we shall be satisfied.  because there is no hunger so pure, so good, so beautiful, and so noble as the hunger for justice, even while we are bewailing that we are persons of unclean lips that live among a people of unclean lips.

The next outcome is humility, a sense of real perspective on our place in the universe, of our low status in the order of things, and that we are all, regardless of wealth or poverty, or social class or marginalization are all at the beginning and at the very end equally naked.  and it is from that awareness of our lowliness and smallness that gives birth to compassion, because we see and accept and love in the other the very fragility and lowliness of being that makes us all so uniquely, so equally and so authentically human.

And this is the very heart of  the Gospel, because it is the very heart of Jesus, and that is why I still weep sometimes when I remember those poorest of the poor whom I was privileged to meet while recently in Colombia who became thorns from the Crown of Jesus piercing into the very depths of my soul.  And this is why I am coming even to love the wealthy Anglican burghers that inhabit my Anglican parish church, not because they are anything special, but because with eyes of love I can see past their pretense and status and come to love the poor, delicate and naked little children that inhabit their souls, maybe not that far beneath their lovely expensive clothes and their ageing white skin.  and to also see and respond to that very human desire that they, that we all have,  have to be accepted and loved unconditionally.

Postmortem 22

Dichosos los humildes, porque recibirán la tierra como herencia.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth

Or, the Alfred E. Newman version:

Blessed are the censors, for they shall inhibit the earth.

That last little take on the Beatitude was my first introduction to the Gospels, I think at the tender age of eleven, or so.  Only later I learned the...er...original text.  It still puts a smile on my face.

Meekness, or humility, is going to be the natural outcome of poverty of spirit, mourning, and the hunger for justice.  I have no idea if that's where I am now.  If you are truly humble then you are going to be the last person who is going to know about it.  Humility, like every other virtue is quite commonly faked and especially in the churches.  They only see you there on Sundays.  They will not be able to follow you around the other six days a week.  And so far, they have not yet come up with a Christian Daily Humility Monitor app for your smart phones (I still don't have one of those toys).

Of course, God is always watching us.  And not always from a distance.  And I don't think that a lot of people are really prepared to live their lives as though God is indeed always watching us, and not always from a distance.  Of course, whether we believe in his existence or not, the way we understand the creator really needs to be revamped.  I, for one, try to live as though I am aware that God is always present, always watching, always listening  But this doesn't really frighten me into behaving well.  I generally do try to behave well, though I still at times have my moments.  For example, when I am writing this blog, Gentle Reader.

But God is always present, a presence of love, care, tenderness, protection and help.  Also one who will not kindly take to his love being spurned or insulted.  But I don't simply pretend that  God is present.  To me, God is always present.  Just as he exists at the very heart of every atom, and every subatomic particle in the universe.

And thinking this way makes e feel very humble, because I am reminded over and over again what a small , almost nonexistent part I have in the universe. 

But I am a man of unclean lips, and I live in a nation of people with unclean lips.  Just like the prophet Isaiah, when he had his vision of God.  I live in a rich country full of social and economic inequality, and I attend a church full of the kind of people for whom the people i encountered en Colombia speak an entirely different language, and I am not simply talking about Spanish.  Because I have been poor and homeless and have lived with stigma, I can speak their language, along with Spanish, and it is the same language of the people who live on our own streets and sidewalks here in Vancouver. 

It is really the language of Jesus, who became so very poor and vulnerable for us, yet remains in every way God.  That is what I saw in the faces and heard in the voices of the poor beggars in Colombia, the Venezuelan family with the little boy.  The two young fathers holding their children in their arms while asking Alonso and I for alms.  The two mothers with their babies in their arms begging in a wealthy neighbourhood in Medellín.   And some of our local beggars whom I have stopped to chat with and give money to, Jamie, Peter and Eugene.  Also the homeless drug addict who was hanging out in the alley outside my building yesterday.  Instead of letting myself get annoyed with hin and his friend, since they were a bit loud, on my way out for a walk, I said hi to him.  I saw in his face what I saw in the faces of the others.  god present, in his glory and dignity, in the disguise of our humble vulnerability  and in our broken human poverty.

Postmortem 21

I have been thinking and meditating on the Vision of Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet of the eighth century BC  who saw God, surrounded by his angles, the six-winged seraphim.  Isaiah, completely overwhelmed by the sense of God's presence, holiness and majesty, cried out "Woe unto me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips!"  Then, one of the angels took a live coal from the altar and touched Isaiah's lips with it, purging him of his sin.  Then, he was sent forth to proclaim the divine message to the people of Israel.

This is what happens in our lives when in our poverty of spirit we are mourning for our own sins and deficiencies and those of the people around us.  Which brings us to the third Beatitude:

Dichosos los que tienen hambre y sed de justicia, porque serán saciados.

in English:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

I think that is the stage I am in right now, concerning the order of the beatitudes.  I have been faced with my poverty of spirit.  I have mourned.  And now I hunger and thirst for righteousness.  I am still aware of my spiritual poverty.  I am still in mourning.  And now, for true justice, for true righteousness to come flowing down and welling up and filling and flooding our earth.  But the real challenge is moving from platitudes to reality.

For the desperately poor begging in Colombia, those whom I encountered, and whom I still remember, of course I desire justice, just as I desire, and long have desired justice for our own homeless here in Vancouver.  And for every vulnerable person who has been hurt and is at risk of being hurt.  It isn't that this is all going to happen.  It is never going to happen.  But we have to still set it in motion, by ourselves being set in motion by the Holy Spirit.

This is all going to be rather different from the virtue signalling and the public breast-beating for which the Anglican Church has become notorious.  If you are queer, if you our First Nations, they will uphold you while making public their crocodile tears over all the historic injustices and wrongs done to our queer and aboriginal brethren.  Yes, crocodile tears, because outside of practising tokenism and selective cultural appropriation, Anglicans in general still remain impervious to the work of the Holy Spirit.  Queers and First Nations people are always going to be othered, and for one simple reason:  outside of culturally appropriating indigenous symbols on liturgical vestments and solemnly proclaiming at the beginning of every Eucharist that we are living on stolen land; and outside of electing token gay persons and transgender persons as clergy and deacons, The Anglican Church of Canada is, always has been and always will be the church of white middle class Anglophones.

For any of this to significantly change, then Anglicans are going to have to begin opening their lives to complete change and transformation.  This means opening themselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, opening their hearts and their lives, opening their homes, and also selling their sumptuous houses and living more simply, and becoming a true community that doesn't exist merely within the church building.  It means each person encountering personally Jesus Christ as their saviour and Lord, and living each day in prayer and sacred reading and acts of giving and generosity to others.  It means opening our lives to one another and to the stranger.  It means not othering people, but embracing all as icons of Christ.  It means giving ourselves entirely to the love of Gold and living in love towards others, the outsiders as well as those who are close to us.  It means a complete revolutionary transformation of our lives.

This is still not happening, and until it begins to really happen, the Anglican Church is going to continue dying until it no longer exists.  Christian discipleship is costly, the costliest thing on earth.  And Anglicans tend to so love their comforts and social privilege that they are less than likely to rise to the occasion.  They really are very selfish people.  That needs to change, and we need to change.  Not in the future, but now.  Not now, but yesterday!

Postmortem 20

Dichosos los que lloren, porque serán consolados.

The second Beatitude.  now, in English

Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

I mentioned that in Bogotá in February, when the second father approached carrying his child in his arms to beg alms from us in the car, that after giving him some money, I turned away and wept.  I was so keenly aware of our poverty of spirit.  Not his, but ours.  Not mine, but ours.  Tears are the natural outcome of poverty of spirit.  Without tears, we do not move forward, because the tears cleanse and help us to heal and in turn to become ourselves healers to others. 

When Jesus says Blessed are those that mourn, he isn't simply referring to those who mourn for themselves alone, who are so gripped by self-pity as to not see the sorrows that others share with them.  This is a shared mourning, a collective weeping.  This is the sorrow of repentance, that leads to repentance, this is the sorrow of our cry of helplessness and need that causes us to cry out to God.

This went on happening throughout my time in Colombia.  When I met the Venezuelan family on the sidewalk in Madrid Cundinamarca.  When I encountered in Medellín in a wealthy neighbourhood begging with their babies in their arms.  It was weeks before I could even talk about those encounters without tearing up.  Even now, just thinking about it gets me emotional. 

When Jesus tears our hearts open, then we are going to mourn, we are going to weep, and this is becasue we are being confronted again by our poverty of spirit, the very poverty that we all as broken and lonely human beings share in common.  This is what happens when a thorn from his crown pierces us in the heart.  And until we are so pierced, broken and torn open, we are going to be little use to God.

For this very reason, I find it offensive that this warden from my church would have the gall to tell me that I should only befriend persons with whom I share common interests.  This is limiting, and it can also be elitist and snobbish.  I have been similarly wounded by others in the same church, particularly a wealthy couple that kept buying me off with lame excuses when I tried to invite them for a simple coffee shop visit.  Of course they would refuse.  We have nothing in common.  They are wealthy, I am poor.  They occupy one social class, I occupy one considerably lower.  We will of course be civil, friendly, even affectionate in the church, but otherwise we are strangers and strangers we shall remain.  Well, they will try to buy themselves off anyway.  Until they show some repentance I probably will not give them the time of day.

This kind of thinking runs so contrary to the Gospel of Christ that to even think of this makes me angry.  It is because this mentality is so rampant in my parish church, and I suspect, throughout the Anglican Church, that I actually hope that St. Faith's does get closed down for being simply irrelevant to the Gospel and to the community.  And for the same reason I really don't care if the Anglican Church ceases to exist, because they so consistently default on Jesus' Christ's most central and consistent command: that we love one another as he loves us.

This isn't going to stop me from reaching out.  And neither is it going to stop me from shaming your sorry ass out of existence!

Postmortem 19

I am still processing these last couple of months, Gentle Reader.  I have decided today that I will try to use the Beatitudes of Jesus as a kind of structure or scaffolding for making sense of everything.  I am not really interested in further slagging the church, though it is hard to resist such an easy target.  And I still plan to forward this series of posts to the usual Anglican hypocrites.   Oh, but who doesn't just love shooting fish in a barrel?  But here I digress.

I will select one beatitude per post, and try to relate the words to my experience in Colombia, my perception of the church, and where I might need to go with this.

Beginning then, with the first Beatitude.  First in Spanish, because I have the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount memorized in that language, then, of course, I will translate:

Dichosos los pobres en espíritu, porque el reino de los cielos les pertenece.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Poverty of spirit.  What is it?  What does it mean to be poor in spirit?  I have heard well-heeled middle class Christians chirp that you don't have to be poor financially in order to be poor in spirit.  Well, maybe, maybe not.  But it sure helps. 

I am reminded here of a series of conversations I had with a pastor back when I was homeless.  He didn't like me (Christian ministers usually don't like me), and I think he was actually a real poor-basher.  Yes, such Christian love.  His congregation was mostly well-off upper middle class professionals, and he really wanted to make nice with the folks who were paying his salary.  Natch.  So, being poor, and homeless at the time,  made me problematic. 

He was very defensive and cited to me the ex-wife, a woman in his congregation, of a prosperous fashion shoe designer, who suffered from back pain.  So, he facetiously commented, why shouldn't she be as deserving as compassion as someone who is poor and homeless.  He didn't much like it when I said, well, what if she was both, homeless and poor, and suffering from back pain.  As if one source of suffering isn't enough!  But this kind of lame false positioning is something that we often do when we are on the defensive.  We are not interested in the truth, we only want to shore up our own position, no matter how false.  Middle class people are astonishingly good at doing this, but that is the strength of blinding and inborn privilege.

Naturally none of the prosperous burghers in his fancy church would even think of offering me the guest room, or sofa, or basement of their lovely fancy homes.  Just like I would not be able to realistically expect such hospitality from the well-off parishioners at St. Faith's Anglican, even if I have attended there for two years.  Of course they're selfish.  And they get ugly when you call them on it.

And don't even think of quoting to them what Jesus said to those who, on seeing him homeless, took him into their homes.  Jesus is really going to be the last person welcome in the homes of middle class Christians, who really want him to stay in church on Sundays where he belongs and to do absolutely nothing else to complicate their lives for them.

Because most people who call themselves Christians, are Christians in name only.  And they want absolutely nothing to do with the real challenge of the Gospels.  Do I sound judgmental.  Aw.....Now get over it!

Oh dear, I broke my promise about not picking on the church several paragraphs ago.  ¡Por mi culpa, por mi gran culpa! (what Spanish-speaking Catholics say during confession, for my fault, for my own great fault.

Would I take a stranger into my home?  If I had more than one small room in my apartment, yes.  When I lived in a one bedroom apartment, I have taken in strangers off the street.  Even in a large bachelor, if there was something for them to sleep on.  Now it's not possible for lack of space, but if I had a bigger place I would do it again,  And I am one of the poor, in spirit and in bank balance.

So then, what is being poor in spirit, and what does being poor in spirit have to do with my experience in Colombia, and here, now that I am back in Vancouver?  Poverty of spirit is merely our normal, natural human condition, which is to say when we are being honest with ourselves.  When we know and acknowledge that we are small, weak, helpless and vulnerable. 

As I sat in that café in Bogotá in February waiting for Alonso to get out of his meeting that would never end.  And I had only a little money with me, no phone and basically had to trust in the kindness and reliability of someone I was only just getting to know.  Since I was vulnerable, anyway, this also left me really open to others, then suddenly this eighteen year old kid wanted to practice his English with me and so in both English and Spanish we chatted at length about Bogotá, Colombia, Canada, and why my country isn't quite the northern paradise we are purported to be, though we are doing rather better than a lot of other countries.  And it felt like we had become brothers.

Then when Alonso finally showed up after I had not successfully contacted him on the phone that another customer had kindly loaned me, and I was just about to leave to see if I could find his car, and suddenly I felt rescued and so grateful to my friend, and I was poor in spirit.

Then, when on two occasions, while stopping in his car for a red light, two different young fathers holding his small child in his arms approached us, on my side, begging.  We tried to help them.  But suddenly those young fathers and their little children had become me, and by extension they became for me Jesus, and then I became them, and I turned away after so Alonso couldn't see me weep, but he noticed anyway.

And now, home again, and surrounded by the same kind of poverty for we have many homeless people in Vancouver, and not just  necessarily economic but spiritual poverty, and feeling called and challenged to extend the same compassion that I have for the poor and homeless to those whom I really cannot stand, which is to say, smug middle class Anglicans.

But if all I am going to see is our class and superficial differences, then I am not going to have the eyes to see that in many cases their hearts are also broken and breaking.  Do I dare let even those ones become for me the very human face of my Lord Jesus Christ?  While not giving them a pass for their bourgeois arrogance?  Perhaps compassion, instead, that they are in many cases so blinded by their privilege.  But all of them?  How would I know?  but we are all poor, whether we know it or not.  And those of us who are truly poor in spirit are the ones who already know and feel the depth of our poverty.  And our inheritance will be the kingdom of heaven.

Postmortem 18

One thing that came painfully and dramatically clear to me while I was in Colombia was how little our churches really reflect the one they purport to worship.   I am not speaking here about the Roman Catholics in Latin America, rather my experience with the Colombian people, of this incredible presence of Christ in his humanity and vulnerability, and how there is never anything like this in my milquetoast Anglican parish church.

Except, for those who are already frail or sick or vulnerable in my parish church, often through the problems of age.  Those ones I find particularly sweet and approachable, very unlike the robust, affluent and middle class folk who enjoy good health and really like to try to keep Jesus in his place, which is to say, in the church and they only have to see him once a week, rather like visiting a relative who lives in a nursing home. 

This presence of Jesus is in all of us.  But there is something about middle class privilege, of which the Anglican Church is woven throughout, that completely stultifies and extinguishes the life of the Holy Spirit.   For me, Jesus isn't there.  Sometimes in the eucharist, but otherwise...

I think it's only when the love of Jesus really comes into us and breaks through us and breaks us open that we actually begin to change.  I have little indication that there are a lot of parishioners who are interested and willing for this to happen to them.  It means that Jesus would have to be promoted from merely being the Holy One to being their Lord, and that word of patriarchy has been mostly expunged from the Anglican liturgies, and I think because Anglicans for the most part, would rather be the lord of their own lives, and expect Jesus to be there at their bidding, placing on them no demands. 

When I see evidence to the contrary, I will retract this.  So far, I have seen nothing.   Till then my darling little piggies, you are going to have to accept this little cultured, seed or fresh water pearl

Why do I even bother to attend?  Very good question.  I think there is still the sense of obligation to attend and publicly witness to my lord.  Not the Holy One.  The Lord!  Would I have rather stayed in Colombia and continued to interact with and make myself brother to the poor and to the other people who live there?  I think I would love to, if it were possible, and if God opens that door to me, then why not?  My Spanish is fluent and I have a couple of close friends there.

Or maybe God wants me to stick around to go on being a pain in the ass to my beloved Anglican hypocrites.  Even if their shallowness and their smug middle class privilege I find so infuriating, even though they chronically lie to me when I try to call them on their duplicity: for example the parish warden who expects me to believe that there are a lot of other people at St. Faith's who are struggling financially.  Uh-huh.  Two cans of paté from the food bank!  Almost all of you own your own homes, have lots of lovely equity, and generally do not have a clue how people outside of your little bubble of privilege have to live. 

Even when I called this warden out on the lack of support that was offered me when I had to go into quarantine upon returning from my trip, she chirped that she actually did ask me if I needed anything.  Yeah, four days later, when, had I not gone out to do my own grocery shopping (not permitted under quarantine  and otherwise would have gone hungry had I waited for them to come around and help.)

Uh-huh.  Such Christian love.  Such utter hypocritical rot.

And still no pastoral support.  Oh, that's right, I have to pay for it.  User fees for spiritual directors.  Simony!

Postmortem 17

Yesterday I had a less than productive session with a friend on Skype.  You know the kind I mean, when you spend most of the airtime bickering and arguing and being defensive or trying not to be defensive.  One of several things that came out was how differently we understand friendship.

This began when she mentioned that I have a beautiful singing voice (like, big deal!), and how much I could use my talent to benefit the church.  Except...as I mentioned to her, I would far rather just sit in a coffee shop to chat and gossip with people who want to be friends with me than entertain a bunch of church people who otherwise don't care crap about me as a person.  She thought that maybe this would be a marvelous opportunity, my gifts in music and other things, for actually connecting with people with the same kinds of interests and we could become friends.

Except.....

That is not how I do friendship.  To me, all we need to have in common is the fact that we are human beings and the desire to be friends.

She didn't like hearing that, and resounded that in that case, I will have a very difficult time making friends.  After all, how can we be friends, if we do not have common ground?  My reply: sometimes we have to create common ground, and my experience is unfailing that when people of mutual goodwill are ready and willing to create between them common ground, then mountains can be moved.

I have in the past tried to form friendships based on common interests.  It almost never works, and for the simple reason that friendship is a lot more than having common interests.  But I don't think of friendship in terms of what's in it for me.  And I am afraid that people in general, including church people who don't really have a relationship with the Lord they purport to worship, are not interested in extending themselves in true friendship.  But real friendship also requires unconditional love, and who really has time for that?

The people I know as my friends are quite a diverse bunch.  In some cases we have interests in common, for example Spanish and English language exchange.  But with those individuals, even had we met under other auspices, we would still like each other, we would still grow to love each other.  For me, friendship has nothing to do with common interests, common tastes or common anything.  Friendship has everything to do with extending ourselves in love towards one another, with making ourselves open and vulnerable.  It comes from the humility and the desire to learn from one another, to learn and appreciate different perspectives and different ways of living.

Of course, there are limits.  It would be very hard for me to be friends with a white supremist, or a misogynist, or with someone who is severely homophobic.  Or to a church lady so stuck in her middle class privilege that she is simply going to dismiss any perspective that is different from her own.

I did have to end a friendship with an individual who became a white supremacist.  Very difficult and painful.  I had spent seven years remonstrating with him, and he simply became worse, so I finally cut off contact for my own survival and well being.  Sometimes we have to practice social amputation, but only when all other measures are exhausted.

But where we are very different, but each have the will and desire to open our lives and actually learn from one another, those are the kinds of friendships that for me are the strongest, that flourish, because it isn't about me, it is about us.  As Christians, if we really are Christians, if we really intend to become Christians, friendship is always a verb.  It is how we are towards one another.  It is living out the kind of unconditional love that is not confined to our own circles, but is to widen the circle, including among us anyone who will come, because if we are really interested in living the life of Christ, then we have to make ourselves open to one another.  And vulnerable.  Otherwise, we are not going to grow, Otherwise, our lives will remain spiritually sterile and we will simply go through life as crabbed and shrunken little people utterly consumed by our own petty self-interest.  The church, unfortunately, is full of people like that.

Postmortem 16

Well, it's a new day.  The operative word is still love.  It is really a difficult word, not so much for the many wrong-headed connotations but because it is so costly.  When we are living our lives predicated on love, this requires of us a huge opening of our souls.  Love, in it's initial stages with us, anyway is going to be traumatizing.  It has to be.  It cannot and will not be anything but.  At first anyway.  Love must wound before it can heal.

People often naturally separate truth from love.  They really are one and the same.  A loving God is also the God who will not countenance lies.  The living water that proceeded from the temple and poured over and lifted in its current the prophet Ezekiel is also the flaming coal from the altar of heaven that burned and purged the unclean lips and tongue of the prophet Isaiah.

For us to become people of love, we must first allow the work of love to break us open and penetrate us to the very quick like cleansing fire.  In practical terms, this really means abandoning joyfully and renouncing all in our lives that doesn't bear the light and love of Christ.  This is going to mean different things to different people, but this almost always begins as an experience of profound loss, especially for those who have been born into and enjoy lives of privilege. 

For the already wounded, the already traumatized, the work has already begun, and so the same God of love and truth becomes for those of us who have always lived as outcasts a healing and comforting balm.  God knows what each one of us needs, the very moment that we are needing it.

It isn't that he delights in afflicting us. Rather, he wants us to be, not exemplary citizens, nor good and faithful church people, nor good little anythings or good little nothings.  He wants us to be more like him.  And for this work to be underway, it more often than not is going to mean a lifetime of renunciation and repentance, and a lifetime of renewal and growth.  There is no standing still in the Kingdom Of God.

We remember the first of the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God."  And really, Gentle Reader, how can we really enter into our eternal inheritance except through acknowledging and accepting our need and our neediness.  We remember that throughout his life and ministry, Jesus called not the strong, nor the powerful, nor the learned, nor the successful, but people who were poor, imperfect, broken and wounded.  They were the poor in spirit, and thus the first true inheritors of the kingdom of God.

In terms of ourselves, today, while we our being held hostage by this pandemic, I have only these words to say:  "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."  But for us to begin to seek, we must first feel and fully experience our need, our hunger and our great poverty.  There is no other place where we can begin.

Postmortem 15

The key word, and the operative word, is love.  That's all there is to it.  Not just loving the people in Colombia, my host, his family, friends and the people on the street.  Not just loving the people in Costa Rica, not just the people surrounding me in the airports and on the airplanes, and not just the people that surround me here where I live.  But to live in such a state of loving awareness as to find everyone touching my life somehow.

The place where this is most difficult is in the place where I live.  Some of my neighbours are difficult.  There is the mentally ill man across the hall who was sneezing openly from his open door last week, and once was quite scary and threatening towards me when he was going through a particularly bad time.   The woman next door to him is really a friendly and lovely person, but she loves to entertain and I had to snitch on her twice to management about her lack of safe distancing during this pandemic crisis.  Further down the hall there is a Middle Eastern fellow, apparently traumatized, who has also been on occasion aggressive and difficult.  We actually have grown to like each other. 

There is also the woman next door, a very kind and friendly soul, but seems rather unbalanced.  Last night I checked with a friend of hers who says she lives in a shelter, who was knocking on her apartment door for about fifteen minutes.  Since she obviously got in with help from someone, and that we are simply not having visitors because of the pandemic, and it was late in the evening and the noise they were making was rather irritating, I called security, and sent an email to management.

I don't enjoy ratting on my neighbours.  I also do not want to see the corvid 19 virus spread through my building like wildfire.  I also commend my neighbour that she wants to befriend and support someone who is even more vulnerable than she or I, since we have the good fortune of living in affordable housing.  I am challenged and a bit discouraged about how difficult it is to transfer my love from Colombia to Vancouver, though it also appears to be happening, but slowly.  I am also still really fed up with people at my church.  It is partly the lack of love, but this could also be from the frustration of love.

I cannot just go out there and rescue everyone.  I have tried this in the past and the cost was far too great.  I also see my next door neighbour trying to do the same.  Laudable.  But ultimately foolish and wrong-headed.  But I have to do something.  I am trying to start by not judging the people who surround me.  This can be supremely difficult, because those are the most difficult people to safely distance ourselves from, pandemic or no pandemic.  Not everyone coexists easily, and with some who are particularly close, physically that is, one can often do little better than tolerate anc cope.  But I want to do better than this, also factoring in that my neighbours also have me to cope with.

There are also the people begging on the sidewalks.  Some are very close, just outside the front door.  I still hold to my policy of not giving money to panhandlers that operate within a three block radius of where I live.  It can get too problematic, and at times dangerous. But I still try to acknowledge them, say hi, and where possible, share food with some of them, though this doesn't happen often.

Concerning people in my church, they are so blinded by their privilege that it is impossible to communicate with some of them, including one who has become a good friend.  She just doesn't get it.  But I have other friends in church as well, and shouldn't I love them as well as the street people of Colombia?

Well, yes.  But love is difficult.  Who ever said that it was going to be easy?  So much for dumb questions, Gentle Reader.

Postmortem 14

I met Christ in Colombia. I generally do not meet him in church.  I really don't care if I never set foot in church again, though I probably will in the future when the pandemic is over and houses of public worship are open again.  i don't know why I keep going back since clearly there is nothing in the services for me, except that occasionally I do have a sense of Christ being present, and there are people there I want to go on seeing.  But it isn't so much the social aspect that keeps me returning, but the desire to publicly witness for Christ in the presence of other Christians.  Otherwise, I could usually do without. 

 I said to a friend last night on Skype (he is a friend from church, actually) that it is well and good having this kind of benchmark experience as occurred to me in Colombia, but then there is the business of moving on and integrating the experience into the next stage of life.  And I really haven't got a clue what any of this is going to mean should I return to church, because there I am not expecting to meet Christ but a bunch of older mostly white middle class folk who seem to treat it more like a social club than a place for outreach.

What is the difference between my circunstancias as they were in Colombia and the circunstancias of worshiping at church?  Well, first of all, you will note that I wrote both times the Spanish word for circumstances. so that could give you a clue.  And, no, that wasn't deliberate.  I was thinking in Spanish.  While in Colombia, I was living primarily in Spanish, which is not my mother tongue, though I do enjoy a high level of fluency in the language of Cervantes.  So this already brought me out of my own personal normal.  I was staying in the home of a friend I had made over Skype for the previous year and a half since meeting each other on Language Exchange.  For both of us, we were making ourselves quite vulnerable, my new friend by offering me space to stay with him in his home, and me, by spending my time in the home of my new friend, in a foreign country while speaking and living in another language.

Going to church usually does not make people vulnerable.  They are too used to being there, and generally the church is like a sacred curtain that covers a multitude of private and personal agendas.    This is what makes people in church decidedly different from the poor and downtrodden that I met on the streets of Madrid Cundinamarca, Bogotá and Medellín.   When you have nothing, or almost nothing, you are going to be very vulnerable, and very much at the mercy of others.  This is where Christ really becomes present, because he became so very vulnerable for us and now he stands and suffers with the lonely, the unwanted and the poor.  So I met him, our Crucified Lord, in the fathers and mothers begging while carrying their children in their arms, the Venezuelan refugee family begging on the street, and so many others.  In church, people are generally well housed, well dressed, and their lives usually are very comfortable and affluent.  Not all, but almost everyone there is pretty well-off.  They have no real need of Jesus, except for their Sunday morning fix at the weekly eucharist.  And when they go home?  Who only knows how they live during the other seven days of the week, but my guess is that not very many of them really live in a way that would mark them as disciples of the Risen Saviour.  Anglicans don't go in for that kind of fanaticism, you know.

It isn't so much what we believe, but why and how we believe it.  It isn't really so much what we believe, but the way we live.  If Christ is going to live through us then we first have to be willing to surrender and die.  To become very poor, vulnerable, to sell and give up our lovely homes, possessions and investments, give to the poor and follow Jesus and trust him to take care of us and our needs as we generously give to others.  What could be more simple as a formula for living the Christian life?  So far, I have come across very few in church who are willing to do this, who are willing to give up their comfort, privilege and entitlement, if but for the gospel.  And it is going to be much to their loss, for they will never know the true riches of Christ, the real joy and peace that comes with being simple servants, nor will the world ever really benefit from their witness and presence because their selfish greed, lame excuses, and self-satisfaction have left them perpetually spiritually barren.  And this is why the Anglican Church of Canada is dying.

Postmortem 13

This is really a postmortem about my time in Colombia and in Costa Rica, as opposed to this pandemic which, unfortunately is still unfolding, Gentle Reader.  I think that what has really made a difference in my life since returning to Vancouver is the way my life was torn open when I was in Colombia.  I had an interesting phone chat and meeting with a supervisor, who has also become a friend, about this.  He suggested, wisely I think, that by putting myself in a new and unfamiliar place I was making myself vulnerable to change and opening to becoming more flexible and adjusting to the new and the unknown.  Or something like that.

I am remembering what one presenter on the Ideas program (radio for the mind) on CBC said recently, about the importance of vulnerability.  That vulnerability is not weakness, but strength.  We don't really begin to grow or change until we make ourselves vulnerable.  For several weeks following my time in Colombia I was quite fixated on the events and the persons there who helped me become vulnerable.  The emotions were very powerful.  But now I am in a different place and in a different time.  I am home again, re-established in my home and community, and no longer at the mercy of events or of well-meaning friends and hosts.  And I am in a very different era, as are all of us, coping with this pandemic.

I still feel half my chronological age, though I am quite certain that I still don't look a year less than my 64 years.  When we are younger we are usually more flexible and more adaptable to change.  It is the authentic fountain of youth!  Now, what is this going to mean for the coming days, weeks, months?  My future still feels much like a crapshoot.  I am still disgusted with my church, and if I do return once the restrictions are lifted, I shall be attending only out of the very barest sense of charity and civility, plus the desire to see certain individuals I have become fond of, but certainly not the priest, who I have come to view as a complete write-off, she has proven to be indifferent and untrustworthy, refuses to meet with me when I was going through some issues about the church that I was hoping I could talk with her about, but has shown no interest in letting me debrief with her, and has so clearly defaulted on her pastoral obligations, and I likely will not be receiving from her the sacraments, nor will I be available to exchange the peace with her, unless she makes some sincere effort towards reconciliation with me, so that could also complicate things somewhat.

Fortunately, she is temporary, and eventually we will have a full time rector.

While on that subject, it does concern me that my church even exists, given how evidently useless this place appears to be as a witness and presence of Christ among us.  Yes, people there are very nice and very friendly, but for most of them, their Christianity does not appear to extend beyond the precincts of the building itself.  There are some who are not like that, and I do have the privilege of their friendship, as they have the privilege of mine.  But one of them even admitted that she does not appear to have what would be a personal relationship with God, and this appears to be the case with a lot of people in the parish.  In other words, they are typical Anglicans.  No devotional prayer life or scripture readings throughout the week, on their own, and so completely dependent on the church service and the priest for their spiritual nourishment.  Which, of course, keeps Anglican clergy employed and remunerated.

Pathetic.

I have also noted that clergy appear to occupy two distinct camps about this.  Some actually want parishioners to cultivate a personal relationship with Christ, no matter how distastefully evangelical that might sound to some ears.  Others would prefer to maintain their own hegemony of power and influence, by insisting that it is all going to come from the actual eucharist itself, and that anything individual with God is to be frowned upon, since they want us to be in a perpetual state of need and codempendancy towards their ministries, services and sermons, so that we will want to keep coming back for more.  And this will also keep their paycheques coming.

Full disclosure here: I have a relationship with God.  I read the scriptures and pray privately every single day.  I feel nourished and sustained by this and the presence of the Holy Spirit for me is a constant reality  I do not need church, neither do I really get a lot out of going.  When I was in Colombia with my friend (not a professed Christian) who hosted me, and meeting people who were really needy and downtrodden on the streets of Madrid Cundinamarca, Bogotá and Medellín, Christ felt infinitely closer and more present to me than he ever has in a church service full of mostly white middle class Anglicans whose Christianity seldom extends much further.

I will probably still go back, if on a limited basis.  I don't want people to feel abandoned, you know, and I would like to continue to nurture some friendships there.  But Anglicanas really have to radicaly change in regards to their own relationship to God if we don't want to die out altogether.  And even if we do disappear, who would even bother to notice, or care?

Repentance must begin in the House of God!

Postmortem 12

We are not out of the woods.  Nowhere near out of the woods.  There is already talk of second wave and third wave infections and spreads of the coronavirus.  Maybe, maybe not.  While I appreciate the importance of preparing for the worst, I draw the line at fear-mongering.  It was the leader of the Official Opposition, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer whom I heard mention this on the radio this morning.  But conservatives are notorious for fear and fear-mongering, being so very reptilian-brained, so Gentle Reader, do please consider the source. 

 It certainly has us all pretty knackered.  And chronically on edge.  Coming back to Canada, early, in order to live in this cesspit of angst and nervousness that the news media and government have helped change us into, was not something to look forward to, and not fearing the virus (I'm still not afraid of the big bad virus), I was simply full of resentment for having to cope with everyone else's fear and neurasthenic anxiety about getting sick and dying and the end of their lovely little world as they have always known it.  I think I'm a little more compassionate now, having made it my priority to be kind and to care for those around me, instead of judging or resenting them. 

 It's hard to say which would be worse right now, plague or war.  Our prime minister Junior seems to be getting off on the war metaphors and analogies.  Gets his testosterone going, I suppose, and likely makes him feel like a historically important leader guiding this country through a historically difficult time.   I imagine he would rather emulate Sir Winston Churchill than  William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was more or less a disaster as a wartime prime minister.  Well, maybe not a disaster, but still quite a weirdo.  Even the Queen Mother (yes, THAT Queen Mother) didn't quite enjoy being in the same room with him.   I think she referred to him as a loathsome little toad.

  If it's going to be plague or war, I'll take plague.  At least people aren't going to be killing each other,   Or not yet, anyway.  Even if some of us are dying.  Which could be exactly why a lot of people would prefer war.  Killing the enemy. Gets the testosterone going. I imagine that war is sexier than plague.  You know, like in London during the Blitz, all those English lasses offering up their maidenhood to studly young  Canadian soldiers, and all in the service of Mother England.  And suchlike.   It could always be worse, but this is going to take quite a while to recover from. 

I'm doing okay and have very little, maybe nothing to complain about.   The safe distancing is annoying, of course, but it has to be done.  I do miss going to coffee shops, and being able to see my friends in person.  On the other hand, I am spending way less money, still have an income, that is still more or less what I was receiving pre-plague, and for doing considerably less work.   And I can still go out on decently long walks for fresh air, exercise, and to revel in the glories and delights of this burgeoning spring season.  While being very careful to not walk too close to anyone, of course.

Dave and I both cheated a little bit on Sunday so we could do a safely distanced long walk together, and so I could repay him the money he shoved out to help get my sorry ass back from Costa Rica.  Otherwise it's mostly Skype.  There are five, maybe six people I visit regularly on video chat.  Juan in Colombia and I talk almost every day.  Alonso and I two or three times a week.  Barry, one of my friends from church, and I try for at least once a week, and so does Gillian Skype with me, another friend from church, every week.  Esteban, my friend in Costa Rica, and I are also on Skype a bit more than once a week.  And it looks like I might be in contact with another person who lives in Ecuador.  Not bad really, and I am having a lot more face time with people during the quarantines and social distancing than during so called normal times.  And my Spanish can remain fluent, improve and flourish, because I am speaking the language every single day, even though I am now back in Canada.

Postmortem 11

We are going to be okay.  A little dazed and humbled perhaps, but that often happens when our collective ass is getting collectively kicked.  I have heard the corona virus called cruel and callous.  Fair enough.  But it is a virus.  It is not a human being, neither is it a demon, though I am sure that that could also be arguable. .Viruses have no moral compass.  They are not ethical beings.  They are going to opportunistically fasten to the cells of whomever they can feed on.  They do not care about the economy, they do not care about our wellbeing, they care about nothing.  They're simply microscopic entities whose single motive is to replicate themselves in whomever or whatever they can pick as their host.  I have known people like that, Gentle Reader!  I'm sure you have, too.

Okay, so the corona virus is a heartless psychopathic jerk.  And we have to negotiate this.  And we are.  We are treating this sociopathic jerk just the way we would treat any toxic asshole.  By safe distancing.  Not always easy, but oh so necessary!  I have known my share of people whom could easily be thought of as human incarnations of the corona virus, or ebola, or SARS, or pick any one.  This isn't to say that that was all there was to them, since they were also human beings, but human beings lacking anything resembling a moral compass.   And if we don't have a moral compass, if indeed we have nothing at all resembling a conscience, if you become the only person in the universe that seems to matter, at all, and indeed if all other persons and beings of the universe exist for one reason, and one reason only, then I think it can be safely suggested that you have abdicated from your humanity.  You have become little more than a human incarnation of a virus.  You have become someone with whom no one can really dialogue or negotiate.  Best to leave such asses to graze in their pasture, to leave them completely alone.   Like the corona virus.  Safe distancing.

But we also have to keep on remembering that even while we are safe distancing from one another, that we are also all human beings.  Even the sociopathic jerks that live among us.  We are not shunning each other, though sometimes it can seem this way, and for those who already fear others, or who think they are better, this kind of situation could well provide them with a convenient cover for being uppity stuck up little snobs.  Or they're just super anxious and super afraid of... everything.  Any crisis will bring out the very best and the very worst in human nature.  And sometimes, as annoying and irritating as we can all get and be towards one another, we still have to face everything with patience, tact, kindness and good humour.  There are times when we have to grit our teeth through it.  And there will be times when we are tempted to just lose it and be anything but kind, and not even just basically civil.

For the second day in a row, for example, I was being screened in the lobby of the BC Cancer Agency building, where I pick up my pituitary medication at their pharmacy.  There was a communications balls up between this pharmacy, the doctors in the health clinic where I am a patient, and the pharmacy where I get my other medication.  Yesterday, I showed up to see if I could get a refill on my medication.  The doctor who redid my prescription was not familiar with certain details, and tried to have it all done in the other pharmacy, which was also a big mistake.  I would be out of pocket $500 dollars for a month's supply of this medication, which is why I was enrolled at the BC Cancer Agency.  There they have a subsidy program where I can get this medication for free.  The purpose of Cabergoline, the name of the med, by the way, is to help shrink the benign tumour that formed on my pituitary gland as a result of an excess of prolactin in my system.  That's right, the nursing hormone.  I am biologically a male, and I have flowing in my body the same hormone that secretes breast milk.  It's never actually happened with me, by the way, but still this is rather unusual, dontcha think, Gentle Rader?

Anyway, I left a message on their voicemail last week, assuming that my good doctor had already taken care of everything. (I was told that my previous physician had done all the paperwork, but then went on a leave of absence, and somehow everything got lost, which apparently is not unusual).  I went to get my thyroid medication at the usual pharmacy, and was surprised to learn that they had my other medication ready too, but I didn't have 500 bucks to pay for it, so I cancelled the order,  At the BC Cancer Agency,they still hadn't heard anything.  That was just after getting through an unpleasant interrogation downstairs where they screen all visitors to be sure that they are not going to infect anyone with the corona virus.  Fair enough, but the little woman doing the screening was behaving like a Grand Inquisitor (this seems to be an annoying and chronic feature of some short people.  Napoleon, anybody?)

When I returned today to actually pick up my medication, I was anticipating yet another interrogation, and rather sarcastically, when I arrived, I said to a different, and decidedly more pleasant woman, "Let the interrogation begin!"  Of course I was joking, sort of, but I don't think she deserved it, so this is also my written apology.

If we can't even bring ourselves to be civil, if our patience has become so exhausted, at least let's find a way to get us all to laugh!

Postmortem 10

Life has never been easy.  This I know very well.  I know this even better than a lot of people, because I have not had an easy life.  Interesting, yes.  Rich, though not monetarily, yes.  Beautiful.  Often, and in many ways beautiful.  Painful, yes, and I have already written enough about that.  There is really nothing unprecedented about what is going on right now.  We have had pandemics before, but minus the sense of entitlement.

Hey you guys, it's only a pandemic!  We will get through this.  We always have and we always will.  The problem is that so many of has have gone so soft and spoiled after a couple of generations of self-indulgence and self-entitlement that it was going to be either a war or a pandemic that would whip us into shape.   Just for the record, I am not particularly in favour of either, wars or pandemics, and really the less of them the better.  But if that's what it's going to take to teach us humility and make us a little bit kinder to one another then I'm not exactly going to baulk.  No, I don't like it that vulnerable elderly people are the most likely to contract and die from the virus.  Neither am I going to suggest here that those deaths could be a necessary evil, kind of like collateral damage.  Wars and plagues are horrible, and the less of them the better.  But should they strike, maybe we could at least see what kind of good we might derive out of the horror and chaos.

I mentioned to a friend the other day, who is a mother and grandmother, that being a woman, she will know far better than me, that generally there is no such thing as pain-free childbirth.  And, yes, I am all in favour of epidurals,  I don't like pain, and to me it is absolutely a great idea to make our lives as painless as possible. But there is no guarantee that it's going to stay that way.  It never does.  Anyone looking back on their lives, especially when we're a certain age, will acknowledge and celebrate how the most painful and difficult periods in our lives have also been the most rewarding, the most thrilling, the most enjoyable. 

We will get through this pandemic, and I hope they come up with a vaccine much sooner than later.  But let's also be open to the many lessons that we are going to be learning from this, and the many changes we are going to have to accept, if only to help make us better people. 

Postmortem 9

Many of us progressive folk are now harbouring the desire, or at least a dream, that this current pandemic is going to make us all nicer, gentler, kinder and more humble people.  Kumbaya, anyone?  I believe it was Gandhi (yes, THAT Gandhi) who said, when asked what he thought of Western Civilization, that it sounded like a very good idea! 

It is rather interesting, methinks, Gentle Rader, just how selective our thinking is when it comes to talking about civilization.  For example, the Aztec and Maya are still considered to be the most civilized of the native peoples of the Americas, because they had writing, and gold, and fancy buildings and an amazingly complex set of social structures and infrastructures.  And did I also happen to mention their incredibly advanced mathematics and sciences, especially astronomy?  And let's not forget their incredible works of art. Oh, by the way, they also practiced human sacrifice.  An awful lot of it.  And they didn't have the wheel.  Or toilet paper.

Very unlike many of the First Nations of North America, who did not have advanced writing systems and in other ways were considered quite primitive.  Oh, and a lot of them had also incredibly advanced social justice systems that emphasized restorative justice over retribution and punishment.  So, who was really more civilized?

This for me often brings to mind some of the classic human rights arguments between communist dictatorships and so called liberal democracies.  Cuba, for example, does not enshrine as human rights freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press or freedom of dissent, as are commonly enjoyed in other countries.  But those arguing in favour of the Cuban system of government will quite legitimately emphasize the free medical, including dental, care that is universally available, not to mention free post secondary education, and that housing is recognized and provided in that country as a universal human right.

When I went to Bogotá for the first time in four years, I noticed the tall gleaming office and condo towers and what a monument that whole city seems to be to the selfish and uber capitalist philosophy of Ayn Rand, while also musing how this could be enshrined as a thoroughly modern and progressive city, even while the poorest of the poor were being trampled underfoot by the very wealthy. 

During this pandemic of the Covid 19 virus, we Canadians are justifiably horrified by the thirty-one deaths in a Quebec nursing home, where many of the surviving residents were abandoned by their caregivers and left to marinate for days in their own excrement and urine.  Now, there is even more sympathy being expressed towards our homeless populations, given their heightened vulnerability to contracting the virus, and some people might even be motivated by real compassion, and not simply fear of being infected by them.  Maybe one day, we will even see all of them getting housed.  In decent accommodations.

Yes, our forty years of neoliberalism and deregulation have finally come back to bite us in the ass, and soon it's going to hurt even more.  We may even one day, perhaps in my lifetime, come to actually believe that the real markings of a civilized society have very little to do with its technological progress and prowess, and almost everything to do with how their most vulnerable populations are being treated.  Kumbaya, anyone?

Postmortem 8

We are getting some tentative good news here in my beloved province.  The rates of infection for Covid 19 are flattening, but we are not out of the woods yet, so we still have to wait and see.  I'm enjoying the quiet, but not the anxiety.  We're all being affected, liking it or not.  Even if I am enjoying my bit of schadenfreude during this pandemic, now that everyone else is finally getting a dose of what those of us who live on the margins have always had to live with, I also feel a lot of compassion.  Dry-eyed compassion, but compassion nonetheless.

When your butt has never been really kicked by life, and then suddenly it is getting pummeled, that is not an easy place to be in.  You have not been tested yet, you are going to be weak and unprepared.  Being used to getting your own way, you are suddenly being confronted with real life, and one of the tenets of real life is simply this: you are not in control.   Of anything.  You never will be in control and  you are never going to be in control.  So now your lovely middle class bourgeois illusions are being stripped away, like flimsy gauzy curtains from your lovely boutique hotel room window, and now you see that you are not facing the sea or the mountains, but the parking lot and the dumpster in the back with a junkie shooting up behind it, but still in plain view.

It is really difficult, for the pampered and cosseted, for the chronically privileged, when they have to face the hard, cold and cruel fact, that they also are going to die, and not necessarily on their terms.  I think this is why clinically assisted suicide has become so popular in this country.  It is particularly embraced by those who want to remain stranded in the illusion of having complete control over their lives, and their deaths.  And it is so hard having to let go of this particular lie.  Now with this virus being let loose in our midst, we are all vulnerable, and suddenly everyone forgets how low the mortality rate is because they are being swallowed alive by fear.

For example, today, a friend and I tried to do a safe-distancing walk together.  We managed to stay sort of apart, and we are trusting that we didn't put each other at risk.  Of course, some people were swerving around us, others, not so much.  I always tried to hold my breath when passing someone closely, and sometimes would try to reassure them that I was holding my breath, so we're all good.  then, as we were leaving the luxury neighbourhood of Shaughnessy Heights, there was one couple approaching us.  I assured them that I was going to hold my breath.  The man seemed okay with it, but then the woman snarkily muttered "You're supposed to distance yourself" and I replied, "I held my breath, so chill."  My friend was probably a bit embarrassed by my assertiveness, but I trust that he has gotten over it, if that was a problem for him, and I really can only give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Really, I am still reminded that regardless of how I react to someone else's negative reaction, they are themselves afraid.  Maybe this is for them an important rite of passage, but any rite of passage is going to be scary even at the best of times.  Other times, maybe the best thing to tell them is to suck it up and get over it, I mean given what privileged and indulged little rich kids so many of us tend to be.  It is hard to say, and I will do what I can to be kind, but if someone's conduct appears to merit a more assertive response...I am making no promises.  But kindness, first.  And compassion.  Please!

Postmortem 7

I am sick of pandemic porn so I have just shut off the radio, and it is going to stay shut off until...until...until the next time I turn it on.I generally do not read news online, since the internet is just crawling with fake news and all things Gwyneth Paltrow, and I really couldn't be bothered, Gentle Reader.  It isn't that I don't care.  Of course I care, but now even our most trusted news sources are beginning o sound alarmist with the old retrospectascope, which is fancy schmancy for twenty-twenty hindsight.

We're all gonna DIE!!!!!!!!  Well, of course we are.  It's written in the contract. No one gets out of this life alive.  Are we all going to die from coronavirus?  Hell now.  Are two percent or less of those who get infected going to die from it.  Yeah, probably.  And some will be so sick as to require intensive hospital care and there is legitimate worry out there that not a lot of our health care systems will cope well under the strain.  And as for our economy, well, we can say bye-bye to that little capitalist fairy tail, and likely for a long time to come.

Why am I not worried about any of this?  Why am I not afraid of the virus, of getting sick, of dying?  Why do I go through the day smiling and quietly enjoying seeing people on the sidewalks and the streets (while walking two or three metres around them,natch, or holding my breath till we're at least six feet apart, that is)?  Do I not care?  Of course I care.  Here I am surrounded by an entire generation of soft and spoiled and spoiled rich kids that have never been tested.  I don't mean never been tested for the virus, but they have never really been tested by life.  They have had it too good.

Does this make me different from them?  Yes.  I am a trauma survivor.  I do not, or no longer have PTSD, and possibly never really had it, since that is such a difficult diagnosis to make.  But when you really have a look at my CV, and then take a look at me now, and really see how well I am doing for all the nasty and scary shit that I have survived, perhaps that might give some of you a clue as to why I am walking, sometimes dancing, through this pandemic somewhat dry-eyed.

Having survived a childhood full of all levels of abuse, and lots of schoolyard bullying and social shunning, having experienced first hand the sometimes violent persecution by ignorant fools who dislike Christians, back when I was a teenage Jesus freak; having got through coming out as a gay youth while still not coming to terms with my asexuality, since I had allowed the boy I was in love with to pressure me and emotionally blackmail me into putting out for him; having had to endure the violent persecution and social shunning against queer people that was still so typical during the seventies and eighties; having survived the AIDS pandemic of the eighties and nineties, which had a one hundred per cent mortality rate, while giving pastoral and palliative care to gay men and drug users who were perishing outside of the sanction of society;  having survived the rejection and shunning of all of my surviving family; having myself survived chronic poverty from low wage employment, followed by a stint of homelessness, then three and a half years subsisting on welfare....

Well, Gentle Reader, you get the picture, I'm sure.  I have already been through it all, and it rather delights my hard, cold and cruel little heart that finally the rest of you are now getting a taste of what I and others have been having to live with all our lives, that now you too are finally having your taste of the absolute ruthless uncertainty of life.  I wish I had more sympathy for the rest of you, but really, I do not.  I do want to get through this with you, and I have made up my mind to do this with kindness and care and respect, because, yes, we are all in this together.  Rather a pity that none of you were ever around for me to whisper the same comforting words into my ears when I was going through my time of suffering, but I can forgive that, I suppose.

In the meantime, as part of becoming a better person, I have opted to forgive all of you for the crap I have endured from the likes of you when I was poor, at risk of illness, homeless, despised and rejected and marginalized, and sometimes not even sure where I would be sleeping that night or where my next meal was coming from.  I know how scary that is.  I have survived, and my butt is a lot harder than it used to be.  And instead of getting all frightened and miserable about things we cannot control and outcomes we cannot predict, I have opted instead to go on reaching out to others in tenderness, love and care.  And I am still going to smile and keep smiling, because my heart is dancing with joy for the sheer gratitude I have to God for seeing me through and for all his many gifts and blessings. And we're going to get through this.  Every last one of us.  Even if I come across as a callous and scolding hardass, it is really because I do love every last one of you.   Hold on  Keep holding on!

Postmortem 6

Yes, how do we become better people?  Well, first of all, let's define just what we mean  by the word better.  This has nothing to do with being competitive.  Nothing to do with becoming an Olympic athlete, nor a rapacious young capitalist.  We are not talking here about having stronger and more athletic bodies, nor about being sexier, better looking people, nor being more effective sharks in the marketplace.  None of those kinds of adjustments make us better as people, none of those measures make us kinder or more compassionate human beings.

To become better people, we simply have to love more.  Not ourselves, not our families, not our friends, but everyone.  We have to reach out and beyond our usual borders and boundaries to touch one another's lives, if we really intend to become better people.  Otherwise, nothing is going to change, ever, economic and social inequality will remain the entrenched reality, people will have to suffer and live in needless isolation, and all because no one is willing to reach beyond their precious and exalted selves.

Love is a verb.  It is also an intrinsic part of our natures.  This is what it means when it is said that humans are made in the image of God.  I means we are made with the capacity for unconditional love.  We have to tap into this capacity, channel it, nurture it, grow it, and continue to express care and kindness to one another, regardless of who we are, what we are, where we are.  We have to keep working at it, otherwise it goes stagnant and we stop growing.

I think it really comes with making an effort to be present to others, to cultivate a kind and tender awareness of the people who are surrounding us.  This is why I make an effort to say hi to strangers in passing.  It forces us to connect, if just for a second and we are also reminded that we are not alone. Giving money to beggars and panhandlers,  I think of that as more of an individual choice, because one never knows with money, but I try to give, and the results are often mixed and uneven, but I am still okay with this because it is the reaching out that matters.

We really have to cultivate and nurture empathy and compassion, with the willingness and motivation to act out our kind emotions in ways that can really help others.  None of this earnest hand wringing and making polite lies about not being able to do anything.  If we love enough, if we will with the divine will that resides in all of us, to love and to live out our love, then we will find the courage and we will find the resources to really help and reach out to one another.  This could be in small ways, it could be in big ways, but we all have to start somewhere.  Today is Good Friday.  We remember what Jesus became and did for us, and we seek to imitate and channel the same love that brought him to the cross for us.

Postmortem 5

So, Gentle Reader, how DO we become better people?  That is the question I was asking while in Colombia, and I am asking this question again.  I need to become a better person.  We all need to become better people.  No exceptions!  I was asking this question to my friend, Alonso, while we were driving in his car in Bogotá, just after the second father carrying his little child had approached our car to beg for money.  The context of the conversation was that I was musing that in order to satisfactorily address the inequalities and injustices in our social systems, we first have to become better people, all of us.  but the million dollar question is simply, how?  What do we do?  How do we do it?

Does this mean binge-watching Ted Talks?  Perhaps binge-reading my blog (oh, I WISH!)?  Do you first have to get religion?  Well, I can't say that I actually got religion, but Jesus did get me, and he still hasn't let me go.  In fact, much of what I know and believe about being a better person and working at caring for others has its roots and source in my relationship with God.  Does this mean that everyone has to become a born-again Christian in order to be good, or to be a better person.  And really, Gentle Reader, how the hell would I know!  Even if I strive to be a better person, my success is, to sound optimistic, rather mixed, and this isn't because Jesus isn't doing his job by me, but rather, I don't always pull my part that well or successfully.   I have nothing further to say here, and absolutely squat to offer about people of other faiths or atheists, or people who wear tin foil hats.  Not out of politeness, but because I really do not know.

I can only start with where I am, with who I am.  So, here is what I am trying to do,in order to be a better person.  First of all, I acknowledge that I cannot do this alone.  I need God, and I need a supportive community that will hold me accountable.  I do have some pretty good friends, even if my church is a bit of a basketcase, so I could still  be off to a good start.

There are two events this morning that just might help us answer the question, Gentle Reader.  I was just out on a quest for toilet paper, a scarce commodity these days with a lot of selfish and anxious people buying it up in warehouse size batches and hoarding it.  By the way, have I mentioned lately that people who are selfish are more than likely to be fearful and vice versa?  Don't ask me which comes first, I think it's chicken and egg.  But fear and selfishness seem to come out of the same dark, bottomless and stinking pit of the shadowside of our humanity.

This morning on the CBC I heard someone underline the importance of vulnerability, that being vulnerable is not weakness, but strength, and that in order to do anything courageous then we are also making ourselves vulnerable and by extension, emotionally naked.  Such was my experience while in Colombia and God was tearing my heart open.  I will offer here a sampling of an email I wrote last night to my friend who hosted me there,

Here it is in Spanish.  I will also provide translation, with a couple of names removed to protect people's privacy and also to keep my friend from getting mad at me:

 El amor es incondicional, cual es para decir, no hay ningunas expectativas.  Tu eres la persona que fue hierramento de Dios de abrir mi corazón, por eso el amor muy fuerte que brota de mi alma,  para ti, y para todo: tus amigos, tu hermano, la familia venezolana pidiendo limosnas en Madrid, las dos mamás con sus bebes mendigando en Poblado, la dama en el metro de cable, el zapatero, los dos papás con sus crías en sus brazos pidiendo socorros en Bogotá, la gente de mi propia ciudad, y otra vez a usted, mi hermano.  El amor verdadero no nos esclaviza, sino nos libre,  no se confina a una sola persona, sino se despliega, como agua, como fuego hasta todos los habitantes de la tierra. 

Love is unconditional, which is to say, there are no expectations.  You are the person whom God used to open my heart, and this explains the very strong love that flourishes in my heart, for you, and for your brother, your friends, for the Venezuelan family begging in Madrid Cundinamarca, the two mothers with their babies begging in Poblado (a wealthy neighbourhood in Medellín), the lady in the cable car, the shoe shineer, the two fathers with their two young children in their arms begging in Bogotá, the people in my own city, and again, you, my brother.  True love does not enslave us, instead it liberates us.  It isn't confined to one single person, but it spreads, like water, like fire, spreading to all the inhabitants of the earth.

As well as the importance of becoming vulnerable, today, this morning, there were the small daily steps I had to take in my quest for some toilet paper.  On the way, there were people to navigate around.  Where possible, I would smile or say hi to people, and always try to make room for them to feel safe and comfortable.  In the stores, I was polite,and cheerful and humourous with store help.  And grateful.  Yes, these small steps might seem insignificant, but they are not.  And they can be the hardest work we are going to end up doing during the course of a day in order to be not just civil, but kind and loving towards others.  And this is what makes us ready for the bigger tasks that are going to be looming before us.  And this is how we are also going to help change the world, being courageous, being vulnerable and being kind, one step at a time..

Postmortem 4

I am suddenly noticing, Gentle Reader, how alike are the words postmortem and postmodern.  I will leave that one for your darling little imaginations to process, my ducks.

So, Prime Minister Junior doesn't think that we should be going outside at all, no matter how seductive the beckonings of this burgeoning season of spring.  He doesn't want anyone to get sick.  Worse, he doesn't want any asymptomatic vectors of the dreaded virus to be marauding outdoors to infect the general populace.  Um, does anyone really know that the mortality rate for this covid 19 is less than 2 percent?  AIDS, pre-retrovirals, was a death sentence.  If you were diagnosed, there was a 100 percent chance that you would be pushing up daisies before your nephew could finish his graduate degree.

I'm going outside.  With so many people cowering inside their bunkers there is a lot of room on these streets and in parks to happily maintain the physical distancing.  In fact, you might be the only one out there...except...

It turns out I'm not the only one.  There are more people out walking these days.  In Stanley Park.  In Shaughnessy Heights.  They still aren't crowded, but we're all engaged in that nervous neurotic folk dance also called social or physical distancing.  No one wants to get sick.  No one wants to infect others.  A lot of us could be asymptomatic vectors of the virus.  Everyone is frightened.  Me, not exactly, but one can only be immune for so long to collective dread before becoming themselves infected.  By fear.

There are two things I have to go out for today: I want to buy decaffeinated coffee and a mouse for my laptop.  They are not things that I need right away, but it's a beautiful day, and I want to go out.  I will go out anyway,.  It's a beautiful day, and I will not be afraid.