Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes 33

I am recalling this fundamentalist American Presbyterian church , called Grace Vancouver, I attended for two years till 2005. Now, you may be wondering, Gentle Reader, just how someone with my perspectives and kind of theology would end up with people like that. There is a bit of a story. I was feeling isolated and in need of community, and the fundamentalist Christian managing my building at the time was trying to weasel the tenants into joining his church. We were poor, wounded and needy, and oh, such an easy target. He was happier than a piggy in you-know-what. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The bait for me? An art show I was invited to participate in. They seemed to love my art, but who knows what they were really thinking? And it was a lovely wine and cheese affair, just like a secular art opening, and it was real wine. I started attending. The pastor seemed to see everything in tones of black and white, naturally, and often they were exquisite, Escher-esque arabesques of black and white, but nevertheless, it was all black and white. Unlike my paintings, which tend to be very colourful. After a few of his sermons I began to feel like I was tied to a chair with a bag over my head while being beaten by thugs. His church's condemnation of same sex marriage was the last straw for me and I left during the sermon and have never returned nor even thought of returning. A lot of the people there were very right wing, with ties to the Republican US South in Georgia, Tennessee, and I think Alabama. They were not white supremists, and certainly not racists. They were very neo-liberal in their economics and diehard political and social conservatives (my building manager was all aghast when he learned that I had no intention voting for the Conservative Party) and I was quickly branded a socialist, or worse, and only because I was suggesting that maybe if the rich were more inclined to share their largess with the rest of us then we might find some solutions to poverty and homelessness. When I tied this to some significant passages from the Gospels and the Book of Acts, some of them got really mad at me. When the pastor's son tried to get me to out myself as a predatory homosexual and I refused to, they got downright livid. So, here I was, a suspected socialist, or worse, and a purported homosexual, an unrepentant one. But no one heard or had any evidence to pin on me, there was no closet for me to come out of, and whether they liked it or not (and I'm sure that some of them didn't!), all their sons were perfectly safe around me, since none of them had anything to do with my being in their church. Yesterday I had coffee with a dear friend of mine. Like me, he is an anti-poverty activist, but a lot more active than me, and I always thank him for keeping me from getting too comfortable and complacent. This man, like me, is a Christian, and like me, feeling somewhat disenchanted with church. We could say that if Grace Vancouver occupies the extreme Christian right then we would probably be somewhere way over on the left. It's an awkward place to occupy since people tend to love easy categories and sweeping generalizations, but really, Gentle Reader, life, reality and human beings are way more complex and far more nuanced than that. It is very easy for us on the left to say, dismantle the corporate power systems, and let the poor be exalted and the rich be brought low. Well, who wouldn`t want to see that happen? But we already know that it won't. That every time in every revolution where they have tried to make it happen there have been rivers of blood and much of that coming from the most vulnerable and the most innocent, as well as the most skilled and educated being killed, imprisoned or having to flee into exile, because as corrupt and unequal as our political and economic systems are, the interests of the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society are going to be affected. They are dependent on the system for welfare, pensions, disability payments, housing and health care. Even though none of those services are adequate, and even though they do much to keep the poor in their place and reinforce the status quo, to overthrow that same system would create not simply anarchy, but a massive and lethal chaos that would make the most Darwinist cesspit look like a work of mercy. Yes, we need justice and not charity, and we have to keep fighting for justice. This is a work of love, as well as being what I like to call the power of not shutting up, and my friend and I agreed yesterday that love and the power of not shutting up are actually first cousins. But we are also mistaken if we believe that we can accurately predict and forecast how everything is going to turn out, or that we actually know how it should all work out. What we have to settle for is often going to be far less than what we need, deserve, want or feel entitled to. Scraps and little toys from the One Percent to keep the rabble quiet, anyone? Better than nothing I suppose, and there is also the very practical wisdom implied in the saying: "Don't offend those who have the power to hurt you." I say, let's say thank you for the scraps and trinkets and toys. But let's not stay quiet. We will say "More, please." And we are not going to just say it, but we are also going to take it, if we have to. But we still have to learn how to do this nicely, politely, elegantly and beautifully. Dare I say creatively? Artistically? With intelligence? This isn't to say that we won't be offending their lordships. Look what they did to Jesus? But then, Jesus went right ahead and overturned and conquered death. But please, fellow activists, let's conduct ourselves as gentlemen, please. Regardless our gender. If we just scream and yell and break windows, they are not going to hear our words, just our screaming and yelling. We do have some responsibility for how we are heard.

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Okay, Ducks, I'm going to cut to the chase today. Even though I am fervently and (to some, embarrassingly) Christian, I always try to soft-pedal my faith on these pages, in order to reach a wider audience, and for the very fact that even if the Spirit of the Living God fills, sustains and infuses everything but our own stubborn wills (and even there he has lots of wiggle room, Gentle Reader!), there is still way more to life than religion, even if it happens to be my own precious Christian faith. But from time to time, in order to really make and drive home a point, I have to get so frank, blunt and honest about the Christian faith, that, well, any atheists here could either leave the room for a while, or take an extra PRN. That is a medical abbreviation, by the way, for the Latin words, pro re nata, or in English, as needed, which is to indicate any medication that is taken as needed. And I have to admit that not just atheists while reading some of my nonsense on these pages would likely need an extra PRN while trying to digest my often convoluted reasoning. But in the end, it's all going to make sense, right, Gentle Reader? So, give yourselves a minute or two to reach for your bubble pack, pour a glass of water, and don't forget to swallow. I am going to talk a bit more today about scapegoating, why we do this, why we need to do this, why it is harmful, and how Jesus became for us the Ultimate Scapegoat when he offered his life up for us on the Cross (no, I won't take it personally that you've already clicked onto Facebook and Amazon by now, and likely won't be wanting to read the rest of this.) I was a teenaged Jesus Freak when I first learned about the scapegoat. The ancient priests and elders of Israel would ritually lay their hands on an innocent little goat, thus transferring onto the poor animal their many sins, then send it wandering into the wilderness. I always felt sorry for the goat and wondered what became of it, and how this cosmically-dimensioned abuse must have impacted it. I confess to liking goats, by the way. In a residential neighbourhood in Kitsilano, where I went walking a lot when I was twenty-one (back in the days when the printing press was invented) there was a goat tied to a stake in a front yard. He was so gentle and affectionate, and I would always stop to kneel down to pet and cuddle him. He was like an affectionate cat or dog. But here I digress. We have long had this incredible need to infect others with our stigma and self-hatred, in the hope of absolving ourselves and moving on in life unencumbered. This has always happened in our interactions with one another. It happens every day in the way well-off middle class folk react to people who are poor, street homeless and mentally ill. I remember my blind friend over thirty years ago, when I asked her why so many people seem to have trouble with her being blind bluntly replying, "Because they couldn't cope!" In our weakness, poverty, brokenness and, dare I use this antiquated word, sinfulness, God took on our broken humanity as Jesus and lived with us as one of us as a sacrifice for our brokenness. He became the Ultimate Scapegoat for us, for you and me Gentle Reader. He took on our humiliation, despair and fear, and suffered the wounds of our selfishness, arrogance and greed, from the kiss of betrayal from Judas Iscariot in the Garden of Gethsemane, to the thugs who beat and whipped him, to the Crown of Thorns shoved onto his head, to the nails driven into his hands and feet, to his friends deserting him in his hour of greatest agony, to the spear that was thrust in his side. Christians tend to believe that this was all being done to God, and that God permitted this because only God can carry our human darkness and evil in such a way as to make it redemptive because God is Love. This is why I have called the Gospels the written record of Love In Action. Had those priests and elders of Ancient Israel had love in their hearts then they would not have put their sins on a poor innocent goat, but would have cherished him as the beloved creature of God that he was, and through that act of love they would have made atonement for their own sins and the sins of the people. But they still hadn't received that revelation that God Is Love. Jesus is that revelation, and so as we accept this reality of the Divine Love taking action in our lives and in the way we live so will our lives also become redemptive poems, anthems of the Love that cannot be defeated. Whether or not you can bring yourself to believe this or not, Gentle Reader, is not at issue, but I am glad to have been able to share this with you and regardless of what we believe or how, to challenge us together to live lives that are full of love, joy and gratitude, and this will not only fill our hearts with peace but will empower us as peacemakers in a world that seems always at war with itself. And this alone will bring healing to the ancient trauma that afflicts and hobbles us all.

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To those of you new to reading this blog, let me make one thing perfectly clear: trauma does not refer specifically to post traumatic stress disorder. Nor does it single out any particular population of persons as suffering from a mental illness because of trauma. Trauma, as I use the word, refers primarily to the baseline of our human experience, ontological, cosmological, collective and individual. This presupposes that everyone who is a human being is somehow essentially damaged and wounded, that this is a historical condition and its roots are in the deepest prehistory of our species' existence. This also presupposes that what we call mental illness, especially where the experience of PTSD and trauma are concerned, is a social construct. It is a toxic and disempowering definition that stigmatizes those who have already suffered tremendously and inordinately. When an entire culture or nation undergoes inordinate stress, violence and tragedy: European Jewry until and during the Second World War, for example, African Americans, or the Palestinian people languishing in refugee camps, or the people of Darfur, or the people of Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, the Rohingya of Myanmar, or pick any one and fill in the blank...We are going to have some very open and naked manifestations of this trauma that is our normative experience. It is that same experience of primal trauma that stays battened down and repressed in the middle class and bourgeois experience of life and almost extinguished among the obscenely wealthy and royalty. But it never leaves. This experience of trauma is us. Whether or not the scab is torn off it is the same bloody, suppurating wound. People whose lives have been scarred by the trauma of a mental health diagnosis simply make visible what normal society would like to keep covered, and pretend to have no existence. We are better than they, or so the well-off and comfortable lie to themselves and each other, while shilling useless programs and activities to the damaged and detritus of society that will keep them busy, maybe even make them a little bit productive, but not even with the courage to come back can they ever expect to be welcomed as "one of us." Their crime? Reminding us so openly through their suffering and open affliction of everything the rest of us want to keep covered, forget about and never be reminded of. I believe there is another word associated with this kind of scapegoating. That word is...SHAME.

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The legal right to doctor-assisted suicide has been dusted off and carted out again for public viewing these days, by some of our major news outlets, the CBC and the Globe and Mail. The CBC is broadcasting a weeklong series on the matter for their Vancouver-based morning program, the Early Edition. Sandra Martin, the death columnist at the Globe and Mail wrote a multipage panegyric about it. Both media outlets are fawning in their praise and unashamedly biased in favour of assisted suicide, giving scant or no attention to any other perspective, position, angle, experience or opinion. Of course the official and editorial position on this controversial subject is going to be favourable. Our chattering classes do want to show the rest of the world how progressive they are. It's all part of the progressive-liberal package: you are going to be pro-choice, pro-diversity, at least two of your best friends are going to be representatives of the LGBTQ contingent, if you are white (and probably you are) you re also going to have at least two or three friends and perhaps even a romantic partner of a different colour, you are going to be either atheist, or spiritual but not religious, you are going to favour Buddhist and yoga practices, dislike Christians and Christianity, be pro-environment, pro-harm-reduction and pro-legalization of all drugs and other psychoactive substances, and you are going to be a feminist, with strong socially progressive values in favour of universal support for the poor and economic redistribution and economic and social equality. This is a package. And there is a general consensus that this is a seamless garment, without nuance, all painted in broad strokes of black and white. I, for example, share most of those values. I draw the line at the anti-Christian talk. I am also against doctor assisted suicide. It is interesting that two of our major media sources are so dedicated about this, and I sometimes wonder why they are doing this with such unqualified zeal. Whose agenda are they fulfilling? Why is doctor assisted suicide so important to our government? I have posited elsewhere on these pages the idea that legal medical suicide dovetails very nicely with the so-called grey tsunami of a huge wave of ageing seniors who are going to drown the hapless taxpayers in their health care needs and expenses. And really, it is all about money. The One Percent, and especially the most gruesomely wealthy .01 percent, are now richer than ever, and guess who is making them so obscenely wealthy, Gentle Reader? That's right, it's us. With our low and stagnant wages and pay, our reduced government subsidized social and health services, by allowing those swine to impoverish us, we are making them wealthy. Their influence over our media outlets is huge, and the Globe and Mail is owned by the Thomson Group which is headed by a Canadian multi-billionaire. They want us to die, if that will reduce costs, and help them stay rich. Chilling, eh? I have written elsewhere about how particularly vulnerable poor single adults are to the abuse of doctor assisted suicide. Any poor geezer who is left having to choose between an old age of hunger and inadequate housing and a quick easy out, is going to be even a little tempted to opt for kicking the proverbial bucket, thus saving the health care system crap-loads of money and keeping the One Percent fat and wealthy. I also find it interesting that Sandra Martin mentions in her article that it is aging Boomers who are spearheading legitimized suicide. They want choice in everything and they do not want to suffer the ministrations of paid strangers when they are at their most vulnerable. This unprecedentedly entitled, spoiled generation of whining arrogant shits would rather flip the bird at God instead of humbly accepting that their demise is going to be as far from their control and choosing as were their conception and the date and time of their birth. And the One Per Cent is trying to capitalize on this narcissistic arrogance, pull strings from behind the scenes so that we'll think we're getting what we want, and thus assuring that they get what they want. By the way, for those of you who know me, I am not a Boomer. I was born during Generation Jones. We are the sub-generation that followed the Boomers in 1055 or so till 1964. Our Boomer elder siblings had already picked all the lovely plums and other low-hanging fruit, leaving us with the pits and skins. The Boomers gave the world Woodstock. We gave you guys punk rock. Got it?

Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 29

I just saw one of the first movies filmed in colour. "The Garden of Allah" was released in 1936, featuring then cinema heavyweights, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer. I saw a version dubbed in Spanish, for the language practice. Dietrich plays a wealthy European Roman Catholic who wants to rekindle her faith and the mother superior from her old convent school sends her to the Algerian desert where she encounters a runaway Trappist monk (played by Boyer). They fall in love, get married, and eventually her new husband is betrayed as a deserter of his monastery and of his Catholic faith. She declares the marriage over and with great pain for both of them, sends him back to the monastery. Sad that the story ends here. I would have been curious to learn what happened to him upon his return. Was he accepted back to the fold? Was he given hard penances? Treated with contempt and suspicion by the other monks? Perhaps envy as well? Did the Dietrich character wind up taking him back? Or did she go into a convent, marry someone else, or ripen into a lusty old cougar stalking palm courts and cocktail lounges for willing young swains? There are of course the broad strokes of black and white that these kind of pious dilemmas are often painted in. The Boyer character wanted to taste the sinful life of pleasure, adventure and romantic love. But away from the monastery, having broken his vows, he is in a state of psychic, emotional and existential torment. He could return to the monastery to reunite with his God in silence and absolute austerity, or he could continue his life of matrimonial bliss, hating himself every step of the way. This is problematic. This idea that one has to conform to a particular religion and within a very narrow context in order to ratify their spiritual vocation is to me a rather sad deformation of Christ's call to discipleship. I have long had the kind of spiritual disposition that in some ways might have made monastery life very tempting to me, or at least the priesthood. A couple of problems here: first of all, I am not, never have been, and likely never will be Catholic. I do not judge those who want to be faithful members to the Old Dinosaur, but Holy Mother Church is not for me. They have way too much blood on their hands from the salad days of the Inquisition, and I could give a few more reasons, but this will have to wait for future, and past, blogposts. I would also like to mention that in cloistered religious communities, one is going to find all the evil and sin that is waiting for them in the big wide evil world outside the monastery walls. Each one of us is going to find all that evil and sin festering inside our own dark little souls, Gentle Reader. Yes, it can be a challenge, leading a quiet and contemplative life of prayer in a world that is completely antithetical to inner peace and practiced goodness, but for this wannabe Christian there is no other way of doing it. Different strokes, eh? The quiet place has to begin within and it is from that place of refuge and blessing that I am able to offer something beautiful of God to those around me, while receiving the same beauty from others. If they can only get off their bloody smart phones long enough to make a little eye contact! Not easy, but worth it. And, in case you still haven't noticed: God is everywhere!

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Anyone who wants to try to live in a way that is good, generous, contemplative and compassionate towards others is also going to have to reckon with spending their lives living as a stranger in a strange land. There is almost nothing in our contemporary, extroverted and selfish ethos that can facilitate inner peace, calmness, self-knowledge and the entire art of caring for others, the earth and the universe. They are absolute incompatibles. Even our braindead Mayor Moonbeam, whenever he and his selected dorks on City Council try to create public or enhance natural space, it is always with the idea of making it attractive to bikes, sports activities, bikes, children's playgrounds, bikes, public gatherings and grey market activities, bikes, places for dogs to play and roam off leash, bikes, places for joggers to run and be a nuisance to pedestrians, and bikes. I have watched with sadness as the quiet spaces in our city shrink and disappear, making quiet solitary walking and contemplation outdoors very difficult to access. You have to either be prepared to join a yoga studio or Buddhist meditation circle, or smoke your brains out on soon to be legalized pot. Even the Arbutus Greenway, which used to be a train track part of the Interurban rail line, has been uglified into a never-ending landing strip, suitable mostly for...bikes. But they generously share the space with people who walk. But to actually get away from other people and their noise and distraction, to not need to rely on iPods or other personal listening devices, to have quiet time unimpeded by narcissistic joggers who do not know how to share sidewalk space, ditto for dog owners and cyclists, to have uninterrupted quiet time, alone, outdoors to give your inner self time to really settle, unwind and listen for the voice of God's silence through the wind in the trees and the songs of birds? Believe it or not, this used to be much easier. I can still get some of this in our local forests, and in the quiet posh neighbourhoods of my city, though a lot of the above-mentioned idiots whose lives appear to be all noise and useless vanity, are even in the trails at times vying for space, totally oblivious to the quiet walkers and watchers around them, who only see and hear those idiots just a little bit too well. But these places still work, I am obligated to make room and space for those who don't, cannot, and seem too threatened by it in order to share my silence, and in some ways this also teaches me to be kinder, more considerate and more compassionate, except for the occasions when I really have to let them know that there is something good about sharing a sidewalk or pathway, and maybe they could relearn the words, "Excuse me" when they seem nearly poised to trample me from behind. This business of making myself vulnerable in silence to God in quiet solitude, also by extension makes me vulnerable to the strident noise and racket around me of the noisy majority who are too preoccupied with themselves and their immediate needs and wants to have time, or even dare to, enter into the silence. But in order to cope, I have taken on these human nuisances and distractions as a challenge to care and to love more, unconditionally, and with compassion. To greet warmly some of the strangers in passing, as though they are every bit the lost friends that they really might be. As long as I can get back into the silence again, to prepare me, to strengthen and rest me, and make me ready for the next distraction.

Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes 27

Here are some of my mother's immortal words to me: "It's all about survival. Don't let anyone shit on you." Um...Thanks Mom. She didn't mince words, that's for sure. Well, I suppose she was right, given her own perspective and experience of life: A farmer's daughter of German-Russian immigrants who was born in the first year of the Great Depression, grew up on a wheat farm in Saskatchewan, then there was the Second World War, then three years after it ended she moved to Vancouver where a couple of years later she met, became pregnant by, then married my dad, an auto mechanic with a primary school education (I think he did make it to grade nine). They worked hard, struggled, saved, my brother was born just four months later, then in another three years I came along. They bought a house on an acre in Richmond. Dad was a drinker, cheated, we upgraded to a three bedroom split-level house in a nice subdivision, they fought, divorced, Mom got mixed up in what they call the wrong crowd, found her a fat studly Romeo with an impressively long criminal record, who almost killed her a year later, and then, just a few short years after, and I had already been living on my own since eighteen, Mom in her wisdom, gave me those words of wisdom: "It's all about survival, kiddo. Don't let anyone shit on you." Yes. I have always heeded her advice. She is my mother. I am also aware of how incomplete her perspective is. She is my mother. Those are words that almost everyone seems to live by. No wonder we are living in such a bleak, unpromising dystopia. I mean, the First World politicians in Ottawa and the equally First World eggheads from the CBC and Globe and Mail, can tweet and twitter and titter to their little bourgeois hearts' content about what an equal, prosperous, inclusive and land of plenty and milk and honey is our True North Strong And Free, O Canada, and they are still not getting the point. This country is a Darwinist cesspit. Then why don't you move, you might want to sneer. My reply? This is still one of the better cesspits. We have decent sewage treatment in this country! Don't let anyone fool you otherwise. Hence, Mom's immortal words. And you know something, Gentle Reader? I still refuse to swallow this. I know how difficult it is to try to live by higher standards than the going rate, but I am a Christian. I have declared and dedicated my life to God. I am on public display as an open Christian I have to live up to my words or eat and choke on them, and I am obligated to show in my own life and values and manner of communication that there is really more to life than this desperate and vicious struggle of compete, survive and natural selection. I know this from the eyes of the many strangers I say hi to on my walks every day. I know this from the random acts of kindness I often see coming from complete strangers. I know this from the beauty that surrounds me and fills me every day. I know this, because it is true and worth knowing and worth living out into its full and living incarnation.