Living With Trauma 20

It is every bit as difficult as it is necessary that I try to describe this kind of love I have been writing about, Gentle Reader. That love without which, if we do not begin to live it and employ it, we are likely going to be doomed as a species. I will give a personal example, something that I have experienced at the Illuminaires and in other public venues. The Illuminaires, as some of you might know, was a kind of community lights festival that used to be celebrated at East Vancouver's Trout Lake Park the last Saturday night of every July. The festival was developed by a surrealist community arts collective, the Creative Dreams Society, and local people would make their own lanterns in community workshops then light them for the festival, which also included music, dancers, stilt walkers, hand drummers and other fun events. It was a truly surreal and magical night that brought the whole community together. One year when I attended I was leaning against a weeping willow while watching the people walk by, many carrying lanterns, candles or torches in the dark. Suddenly it was as though their souls and their lives opened up before me, each one of them. It isn't exactly like I could discern the details of their lives, rather, I had such a heightened sense of each person, of their life, each as an individual, and they became in one sense all sublimely beautiful during that exultant moment, almost as gods and angels, and in another sense, profoundly vulnerable and most openly human. This has often happened for me since, in other places. Sometimes even on the escalator at the Granville Skytrain station, as in other places, or on a busy sidewalk downtown. Often this heightened perception has been fleeting, almost like a flash of light and colour and suddenly everyone is uniform and dull and ordinary again. But I have seen it once, and sometimes I have seen it again. This is the kind of love I am referring to, which I so rarely experience myself, but now I am seeking this again. If we really love others then we are addressing and responding to the divine and the humanly vulnerable in them. This is what needs to be summoned forth in the way we communicate, in our way of interacting if we are to see real healing occur in our lives and in our communities. How do we attain this love? There is a catch. We have to want it badly enough. Not simply to be loved. That's what having a dog is for. But to actually allow that fire of love and its light to enter into our beings. It is like the words of the Sufi poet Rumi: "It isn't easy to be a candle. To give light, you have to burn." When we consent to the divine love it is going to be costly because it is going to take over and transform our lives. But if more of us don't consent to this experience then our species is going to continue its spiral downward, dragging this beautiful Mother Earth with us. How do we sustain this love? By giving it our full attention. I call this prayer, some call it mindfulness, but whatever you want to call it, as that love which we consent to becomes real to us it commands our attention because now we are a host or a vector for the divine. This places on us a huge responsibility because then we have to do what we can to express and channel this love, which means challenging and denying our lower self. But as this love takes action in our lives then our way of seeing others and ourselves is going to change profoundly. We will come to see how much each person is really a mirror for us. Even though others are still going to annoy and irritate us (and we are also going to annoy and irritate others!)we will at least make an effort to recognize their pain, their beauty and their vulnerability. We will begin to cultivate empathy. And in our daily interactions and contacts and encounters with one another we will increasingly take the risks of love.

Living With Trauma 19

"Be generous with your love. It's the only treasure that grows as you give it away." I saw those words painted in rainbow colours on the sidewalk by the site of the "People's Park." This was an organized squat to prevent the land at the main entrance to our famous Stanley Park from being developed into high-rises. Various social activists, hippies and wandering lost souls lived there in tents for a few months in 1971. I was fifteen, and visited several times and met and talked to some of the people there. What they lacked in skills and sophistication were more than compensated by their love and passion for seeing this site preserved for posterity. Now it is a park. But, back to those words. I have been writing a lot, Gentle Reader, about love, the importance and absolute necessity of love for healing our lives, our communities and our world. Will we ever get there? I don't know. Would I dare suggest that this is not an achievable dream? Never! As soon as we say those words, that it's never going to happen, we have poisoned our mission and disempowered ourselves. We don't know the future, and often can't even reasonably forecast the future. But to carry out our various missions in life we need a vision. My vision is a world healed by love. I do not dare say this will never happen, whether ever, or in my lifetime, regardless of the laws of probability. This is my vision, and this is the life I have been called into, and this is the work God has given me to do, however damaged and imperfect my efforts. Again, back to those words. "Be generous with your love." This is an oxymoron. If it is love, then it is going to be generous. That is the nature of love. This is not the kind of devotion or affection reserved within families or between spouses, lovers or close friends. That is a shadow, or a reflection of love. It is better than nothing, but it doesn't spread. If it is real love, it is going to spread and reach and touch others. That is, if it is from God. I have sometimes heard from others this lame idea that all they have to do is to love the people who matter to them, but that is really a selfish excuse for remaining in bondage to fear. And please don't give me any claptrap about being an introvert, which is yet another lame excuse for being timid, awkward and selfish. Love is a choice. And because love is such a powerful metaphysic, being the Spirit of the Living God in Action, is going to bestow powerful consequences in the lives of all of us who give love our consent. This is what is really going to change us and our world. When we bravely open ourselves to the love that transcends and brings together all our feeble understanding of what love is and become ourselves channels and vectors of the divine love. It requires only a handful of brave, courageous souls to do this. This doesn't guarantee a friendly response from others. Look what happened to Our Lord Jesus Christ, God's love in human form, when he made real this love? They ignominiously nailed him to the cross. But love would not remain dead because by its very nature love must rise triumphant. So shall it be for those of us, in our troubled and traumatized and traumatic world, when we give our consent to the healing, cleansing and conquering power of love. There will be no stopping us, then.

Living With Trauma 17

One of the biggest obstacles to our egress forward in the need to live with and heal trauma lies within half of the human species. That's right, Gentle Reader. The men. Women already get it, for the most part, being still the de facto or by default caregivers and nurturers. This is changing slowly in faltering tiny baby steps as men, in some countries, anyway, are beginning to play a greater role in the actual raising and nurturing of their children. I have always been a feminist, even before I knew the word. I was raised by a strong woman for a mother who had to struggle to give my father the heave-ho, given his absolute lack of interest in coming to terms with his alcoholism, or in conducting himself in a way that wasn't somehow neglectful and abusive. We were the classic toxic upwardly mobile working class family of the sixties. When my father moved out, he not surprisingly, morphed into the classic deadbeat dad. Having the resources to pay adequate child support, he usually didn't. His star child, my older brother, was already working part time, so wouldn't need any help. I, at thirteen, was quite another story. He did not want to know that I existed. My childhood was punctuated, as well as by beatings and verbal abuse from my mother and brother, by more verbal and also sexual abuse from my father. To him, I was something to be flushed down the toilet, and I knew this. This isn't to say that having no positive male role model has caused me to disown my gender. Seeing how my father's beloved son, my older brother, turned out to be an ambitious, rapacious, and heartless psychopath, alone suggests to me how blessed I have been not being close to or loved by either of those men. Neither did my close relationship with my mother turn me into a de facto female. I have never identified as either female or male, and have long known that I am gender-neutral, or a-gender or androgynous. Too sensitive and nurturing and fond of lovely things to be a man and too strong, pragmatic and combative to be a woman. When I became a teenage Jesus Freak, the whole takeaway was having a close relationship with God, the which has sustained and protected me all my life. The varieties of fundamentalist evangelicalism I was exposed to were something different. I simply was uncomfortable and even downright hostile towards the binary mentality towards gender and the insistence of the Christians I had seen as mentors and role models in fitting all humans with vaginas into one category and the ones with penises into another. At the tender age of twenty-two I left all this and spent a year attending a radical Mennonite house church, where people were asking all the same questions about gender roles and definitions that I was also asking, and they even helped me learn how to formulate and ask the questions, some of which I am asking still. The vast majority of the males of our species do not have this kind of grounding or insight about gender. Most of them are themselves very poorly mentored by their fathers or other men who could role model for them a kind of masculinity that is not toxic or destructive. The very worst properties of testosterone are channelled and unleashed for boys in the form of violent computer games and rap music and online porn, followed by the ambition to make shitloads of money on anyone's back. and their parents are generally so exhausted at the end of an excruciatingly long and thankless workday that they simply don't have the emotional energy available to properly invest in their own children, especially their sons, who simply end up raising themselves in front of their little screens and thus turning themselves into anti-social little scumbags. Fortunately that isn't all that is happening. Thanks to some very progressive attitudes in our education system children, boys among them, are being taught and role modelled to be kind, gentle, fair, inclusive and nurturing. We are also about to see the first generation ever to come of age that for the most part has never been physically assaulted by their own parents, now that physical punishment is now so widely disapproved of. Programs in schools to combat bullying and homo and transphobia are also a clear step in the right direction. I am cautiously optimistic. But we have more, way more work to do if we are going to see the kind of toxic and patriarchal masculinity that has made life frightening, intolerable and dangerous to persons who don't fit the grid, relegated to the Stone Age where it really belongs. If all children, boys as well as girls, are taught from the cradle to be kind, gentle, compassionate and loving, with a view towards being a positive and healing influence in the world, then I think we will see some major steps forward in the healing of our broken and wounded humanity. But right now, the onus is on the males to step forward and get on the learning curve.

Living With Trauma 16

"The more people I meet, the better I like my dog." Remember that bumper sticker? It was very popular around thirty years ago or so. Remember Sartre's little maxim: "Hell is other people?" Wow! If Homo Sapiens is really that bad, then is it any wonder that so many of our species would prefer the love of their own personal Canus Domesticus? That a semi-carnivorous scavenger that will not turn its nose up at eating poo or vomit, sniffs bums, picks up fleas and unless bathed frequently, stinks to high heaven, would be preferred over our lovely human species for love and companionship? Well, even though humans aren't known to eat poo or vomit, we won't go into where some of us will put our noses, with or without consent, and as far as smelling bad goes, try to go without bathing for one week then see how many people will cross over to the other side of the street just to avoid smelling you. Dogs can bite and kill. Humans are very good at killing with whatever means available. We have also become so thoroughly adept at treating one another like garbage, is it any wonder that so many people are turning to their dogs and cats for the kind of unconditional love and friendship that we really ought to be giving and receiving from one another? What's happened to us, anyway, Gentle Reader? I used to judge quite harshly this burgeoning culture of dog-idolatry. Now I can only wince with sadness that this is something we, through our refusal to really love and care for one another, have brought on ourselves. Is it any wonder that here in Yaletown, arguably the most unfriendly neighbourhood in Vancouver, that we have so many people with dogs? In postage stamp size condos in big towers all crowded together, creating conditions not exactly friendly to dogs, but nevertheless their poor needy and lovesick humans will force their furry babies to endure this kind of hyper-urban environment, completely unnatural to them and hostile to the needs of any dog or cat, if only to be sure that they can have their steady supply of unconditional love on tap. These people are so needy and starved for love that it would never occur to them in a million years how cruelly they are emotionally exploiting their dogs. This is a perfect manifestation of collective trauma. This is the collective howl, or should I say whimper, of the chronically unloved. The dogs and cats are really more like hostages, since it is impossible to have an equal relationship with a pet. No matter how much we wrap our minds around the notion that they are our children, members of the family, they really have no say in the matter. They have usually been purchased, though some have been adopted or rescued, and they know where the kibble is coming from. Of course they are going to love their humans unconditionally, since their survival is going to depend on it, and being dumb beasts, they aren't really going to be considering options. They are a captive audience, and yes they do therapeutic marvels in the undeserved love that they pour out on their human masters. I have heard it said that having and loving an animal can often make us better and kinder people. I believe this could be true. However, when you consider the time, care and expense that is required in properly looking after a pet, especially a dog, I don't expect that too many of their humans, after a hard long day at work, are going to have a lot of spare time left over for volunteering at the food bank or the local homeless shelter or community kitchen. Let's face it: a lot of dog owners are so in need of getting the love from their pets that just isn't available from families, spouses or close friends, that they often aren't going to be that interested in paying the love forward to needy humans. Especially men, who compared to women, tend to be despicably selfish. I don't think that there is any coincidence that our steep rise in homelessness has occurred in tandem with this growing trend in idolatrizing pets. Animals are less complex, easier to control and generally much more grateful than human beings. But we are still human beings, and we still owe to one another the kind of love that many of us would prefer to lavish on a four-legged scavenger that shits indiscriminately and pees on everything. This is not to diss dogs, by the way. With the exception of pit bulls and other dangerous breeds I am quite fond of dogs though I relate more naturally to cats. But if many of us are to make our dogs the centre of our lives, then we can only hope and pray that the unconditional love that they show us will eventually bear some fruit as we begin paying it forward to our less fortunate sisters and brothers who are languishing and dying on the sidewalks while begging for alms of spare change or food.

Living With Trauma 15

I have been frequently mentioning love in this series as being our only real way forward when it comes to healing and living with trauma. I will explain shortly. Today, I stopped by the Quaker Meeting House and during the silence a woman spoke up about her struggle with achieving complete silence since, for her, silence and stillness are the way to the Divine. She said that she often finds herself restless and distracted and inwardly struggling against the kind of stillness that would bring her close to God as she perceives him. I appreciate this individual's candour and honesty. I also found myself thinking at the time, as I am thinking now, that there was something missing in her statement. One word. Love. If we love God then we are going to be naturally drawn to him and the silence in his presence will turn into an already given. There will still be a struggle of course, because good things are not cheaply won. There is also something in our fallen human natures that resists God, and by extension, resists love, that wants nothing to do with him, or love. This also has to be reckoned with, through contrition, repentance and inward regeneration. It also struck me how important that love be consistently interpreted in our everyday dealings with one another. Simply put, where there is no love there is not God and all our efforts at calming and stilling ourselves in his presence are simply going to be wasted time and effort, unless there is that essence of love enlivening and guiding and controlling us. I think that love needs to be appropriately employed and expressed in all our levels of human interaction. It is an already-given that we are going to love our families and those to whom we are romantically connected, if we happen to be so connected with someone else. There is also a level of love or liking for our friends, and a liking and respect for coworkers and clients. But this needs to be taken even further. We don't have to feel intimately or passionately connected to every single person we see on the street or on the bus or in the store in order to love them in the way I am proposing. That would be impossible, far too intense and confusing to sustain, and probably at times rather creepy. What I'm going to suggest instead is envisioning each person we encounter as being like a small hand-held, or even a full-length mirror through which we can view ourselves. I am not advocating narcissism or self-love here, but to see each person in our daily journey as a teacher, as a vector of the divine. We are going to see different sides of ourselves in others throughout the day, and we are not always going to like what we see. We are, for the most part, going to remain obtuse and oblivious to this reality of others being mirrors for us. But this is how we impact one another. This will also challenge us to accept the reality of interconnectedness. We are all part of this and we are all part of one another. Most of us either don't know this, or don't want to know it, because we really at the core of our beings resist love every bit as much as we need and yearn for love. By the same token, others are going to see themselves reflected in us. For the most part they are not going to know this, neither are they going to want to know it, and this tends to impact tremendously on the way we interact. I wonder if this fear of self-recognition in the other keeps so many of us glued to our hand-held devices when we are out in public. Not only are we pleasantly distracted: we don't have to see our ugly selves being reflected back to us. And when it does happen not many of us are going to take the time nor have sufficient introspection and self-reflection in order to recognize the resemblance. Instead we will grumble silently, or aloud, that that person is a jerk, or worse, and how dare they, and what a shame that people like this are allowed to be out in public. When what we're really saying or thinking is, I really do hate myself, I cannot stand those horrible traits that I carry everywhere like a dark ugly shadow, and I am not going to even think any deeper about this because I don't want to know where it is all going to lead. Here is another idea. We are all flawed, yes, but there is going to be beauty there. Don't ignore the flaws, but look for the beauty. If you want to see the beauty in yourself then look for it in the other, even while you really want to smack them upside the head. If that person's words and behaviour are so overwhelmingly offensive or obnoxious then simply make it into a beautiful fiction, because the beauty is there. You might have to distance yourself in order to regain a sense of proportion and this is one of many very good reasons for knowing when to be alone. But not to remain alone, because there is always going to be that missing part of you that can only be found in loving and caring for the other. This is an inescapable truth of being human. It has nothing to do with being codependent, but everything to do with recognizing that none of us really is alone in the world, no matter how badly we might fear it to be otherwise, or want it to be.

Living With Trauma 14

Remember, Gentle Reader, that when I mention trauma I am referring to the stuff that surrounds us. Trauma is the very essence of our lives, solitary and collective, and is very much the heart and soul of our culture, our civilization. Everything about our humanity is informed by trauma, with coping, resisting, ameliorating, making sense of, and, the rare time we are doing it right, even transforming and redeeming. I find the way we talk about the weather very signatory of collective trauma. For example, when it's raining, almost no one mentions that the ground is being watered, the reservoirs are being filled and the air is being cleansed and sweetened. No, if it's rain then it's miserable, or it's gross. But really, it's only rain. No, we don't enjoy getting wet, especially when the rain is cold, and if you live this far north, the rain is usually going to be cold. So then, we judge and categorize the weather according to our immediate response and by our own personal expectations of what the weather ought to be. We hate not being in control, and the weather is one of those many facets of life that remain (thank God) way beyond our human control. The way we talk about the weather, when it isn't the way we like it, suggests that we cannot tolerate not feeling in control of everything, and that really we are underneath it all pretty miserable and gross. At least, that is how most of us usually feel, when we're not successfully drugging and soothing ourselves as we escape into our various addictions. Even this weekend, early in November, everyone seems to be talking about the unseasonably cold weather as though this is going to be the kind of weather we are going to have all winter. That because last year we had something resembling a typical Canadian winter with three months of snow, albeit still considerably warmer than national averages, then we are going to have another winter this year every bit as cold, severe and probably worse. This to me is a symptom of trauma. Now, let's look at some facts and possibilities. Last year at this time it was unseasonably warm, with temperatures in the double digits. Then winter hit with an unusual savage ferocity and didn't go away till we were well into March, when it's usually been two months already of early spring. We also might consider that very rarely, if ever, here on the West Coast, do we have two cold winters in a row. Having lived here most of my sixty-one years, and enjoying rather a long memory, I can write this with some authority. The Farmer's Almanac, which is almost never wrong, is forecasting a milder and drier than average winter for this year. On the other hand, the weather gurus are warning that there is a sixty percent chance that our winter is going to be colder than average. So then, this is to say that there is still a forty percent chance of a decent winter this year and that we might also factor in the findings of the Farmer's Almanac. We might also consider that a cold nd early beginning to November doesn't guarantee anything. We might end up with a warm and wet green Christmas and daffodils blooming in January and no more snow, or it could get cold again and stay white and frozen till March. We have no real way of knowing, but may I offer one humble little suggestion, Gentle Reader? Get over the dread. It is a symptom of trauma and, I have already mentioned that we are all to some degree traumatized. Look forward, if you can to a lovely mild winter. Or look forward to cold crisp days and the white pure beauty of snow. Take whatever precautions you must but please don't let our ancestral and congenital depression and anxiety forbid you from enjoying whatever kind of winter is going to be on offer. We might not be able to control it, but it is our choice and our prerogative to enjoy it. If we are still going to get miserable about the cold wet weather, then let's maybe be miserable on behalf of our many homeless and inadequately housed who are really going to suffer from the winter weather, but let's also see what we can do, each within our capacity, to try to help ease their suffering. The key to healing will be in our love for one another.

Living With Trauma 13

I think that most of us believe in kindness, and that really, a lot of us want to be kind. We often aren`t, with all the usual excuses in place: too tired, too grumpy, not enough time, too busy, too lazy, too selfish, don`t trust that person, won`t be appreciated, will be taken advantage of, doesn`t deserve the kindness, etc. etc. etc. I find it interesting how often these days I have brief but fascinating exchanges with strangers while on public transit. Just a couple of days ago I was chatting with a lady of a certain age who told me about how she fell and injured her back (she walks with a cane) on the Canada Line Skytrain when a healthy and selfish young dumbass male refused to give up the courtesy seat his useless ass was monopolizing because he felt "tired". That was when the poor woman took her fall. I only wish I could have been there at the time to publicly shame that idiot into getting off his damn seat on pain of getting it severely kicked by my twitching foot. I have previously indicated on these pages that I am not above publicly humiliating people of his class, and I often have. On the other hand, there is this really sweet old lady on the buses who gives out little hug coupons to other riders. Even though I was a bit reluctant to accept one from her today because of the distance between our seats, another passenger ran interference and made sure I got one anyway. Wow, talk about bringing people together. She had also got other people talking and I was eavesdropping on a chat between two individuals about how the people in Europe are so cold and unfriendly as to make Vancouverites appear downright friendly. Alas, I can only agree! Then I mentioned to the fellow next to me how much nicer Latin Americans are, unless you happen to be in Bogota which is a byword to even other Colombians for its snooty inhabitants. I really do think that our hearts are in the right place, but there is something to be desired about our priorities. Yesterday I wrote about my encounter with a homeless disabled man, verging on elderly for whom I opened the door of the café (with help from a young passerby, so I refuse to take all the credit for kindness) and on his request bought him something to eat. I did not feel particularly nice, good or virtuous, simply that someone in need asked me for help that he needed and I was able to provide. Had I not consented I would have been sinning against both of us. Even then, I had to wrestle with my reluctance and try to swallow my sense of being imposed on. And then being credited for being kind? No. I was doing the right thing, for a change, and that's all I was doing. This is not false modesty, this is the truth. When I got home I had an email from my travel agent informing me that I had won a fifty dollar and something credit on my medical travel insurance, and that I should come in to get the extra money put on my debit card. It felt rather like a reward for being kind, but on second thought, I think it was God's way of telling me that I should never worry about the consequences of being generous. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and any time he wants he can always sell a cow to provide for his children. In other words, his resources are infinite and we need only to absorb and know this as we become instruments of his generous love towards one another. I thought that my travel agent might find this interesting, given the timing of receiving this little bonus, about four times what I paid for the homeless gentleman's dinner. She, a lovely twenty-something young lady, poured on the praise and I simply told her what I already wrote here: it has nothing to do with being exceptionally kind, that this is simply part of being a human being. If others call upon us in need, we must respond, and that's all there is to it. I'm not sure how she is taking this, but I would imagine that it wasn't the response she was bargaining for! I am also well aware that there is no guarantee that I will be kind like this in the future, because human nature can be very capricious. I'm hoping that I won't cave to those demons, but it's wait and see and I can only trust that God will help me to do and be my very best, no matter what. I think what really needs to be done is that we have to reclaim kindness and empathy as essential pillars to our human nature. Selfishness, and the love of power have got to be subordinated to the real values and the genuine ethic of compassion if we are to survive in the future as a viable species. The competitiveness of Adam Smith and Darwin's survival of the fittest are past their shelf life. We are all interconnected. It's time for us to learn this, to believe it, absorb it and to live it. The question is how?