But.Never.Mind.All.That

2020-08-24T03:18:00.003-04:00

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. --- I Corinthians

2020-08-19T09:55:00.006-04:00

When the rains come

The rains that have come in the last few days have been sky water downpours feeding the thirst of a pitiable earth. It has taken much nurturing to coax the gardens here in the hills into fruition but the taste of handmade summer vegetables is sweet with the memory of its labour and love. Some of us have returned to work in the city and fight the morning traffic. Most are working from home funnelling a certain freedom of small simple choices into their days—when to have a coffee or a tea or sit in the sun on the deck or watch the far river as they work. Many are found with children and the struggle and sometimes joy that entails. Most are worried. Sometimes that is a huge worry and sometimes just a nagging in the background. A certain numbness has set in, as happens when in trauma. For the world when we look at it can traumatize the strongest of us. This too, however, will pass. In time.

Someone said being Canadian is like living in an apartment above a meth lab. The Americans have gone dangerously insane to put it mildly. We Canadians have our scandals and political brouhaha but they pale in comparison. Watching American anything puts a person into a state of constant cognitive dissonance because we are told one thing and see another. And it doesn’t much matter which side of the political divide you may find yourself on, it’s all deliberately confusing. It is the first casualty of war as they say. The truth is hardly discernible as long as we’re living in 1984. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength—as long as we’re living in Animal Farm where all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. To live in this time and place is to be witness to a cultural revolution of epic proportions. We could perhaps have seen it coming but we weren’t much paying attention. And since we weren’t paying much attention it all seems rather overwhelming right now. Intense even. At least in the United States.

It is the brave human being that wades into the propaganda there. This is because cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable place to sit for any length of time and the social pressure to conform hasn’t been this relentless since the McCarthy era. It was once the greatest crime in the United States to be accused of communism. Now, a form of socialism is not just trendy but demanded. It is demanded by our universities, our institutions, our businesses, our governments. The rights of the individual now relegated to much maligned privilege. The freedom of the individual now subjected to group identity. A person’s unique life now only the subject to its place inside the collective struggle for power.

It reminds me uncomfortably of Nietzsche’s “will to power” which is another one of those cognitive dissonance things. How can a movement that purports to be a remedy for the downtrodden and discriminated against seem to be so harsh to another thereby creating yet a different class of downtrodden and discriminated against? How can a socialist movement that calls for equality for all humans be authoritarian? But it is. Ask any of those subjected to what is called the “cancel culture.” Conform or else. Do the oppressed only learn to oppress? Whatever happened to dialogue? Whatever happened to negotiations? Whatever happened to compassion and forgiveness? Whatever happened to freedom of speech? What happened to objective reality?

It is that last question that is the thinking person’s nightmare. That’s why most of us, when at all possible, choose not to think. As Canadians, to a certain degree, we have that luxury. As an American however this luxury rarely exists. Americans, long the bastion of the concept of “freedom” have no freedom. Certainly they seem to have no freedom of the press. Their mainstream press, in desperation have turned into tools of propaganda all relentlessly pursuing the outcome of an upcoming election. The divide stronger than ever and growing stronger. It does not matter which side you might choose to support, it will all lead to civil war likely. History teaches us that tearing down history (by eliminating statues e.g.), burning books (by censoring the internet) and oppressing freedom of speech (you are a racist if you disagree) are cardinal signs of a socialist revolution well underway. All of this preceded by the loss of reason where literally 2 plus 2 no longer equals 4 and reason has given way to socially constructed reality. Science, ironically in the middle of a pandemic, is a symbol of white privilege; Logic condemned as patriarchy. All a certain recipe for chaos and revolution. The revolution does not however seem to be unfolding as it has been hoped by those who want change. That’s the way revolutions happen. Eventually the groundswell becomes its own force.

I had decided to watch the Portland protest one late night. The federal building under attack was surrounded by a tall wire fence barricade about 15 to 20 feet away and seemed virtually impassable. Inside the building the federal troops were ensconced and were seen rarely outside the building if at all. In the no-mans land between the fence and the building the protestors were throwing all sorts of junk for fires, fireworks and generalized mayhem. Outside the fence an angry mob chanted. Into this, Portland’s mayor arrived. That’s when the sad reality hit… The man in the midst of the screaming crowd was bewildered. He had come to support his people in revolution but instead was surrounded by hatred and catcalls and at one point felt seriously threatened. He retreated and later called the protest a riot and brought in the police. That to me was the pivotal moment: reality is not constructed at all. It has guns.

The next day, not one main stream media outlet reported what I witnessed on live feed the night before. The rioters were labelled peaceful demonstrators. The blame was laid at the hands of the feds for having been there protecting the federal building and the mayor was unavailable for comment. Meanwhile, in Seattle, the mayor asked the police to stand down until the “protestors” came to her house. She then called the police.

I write this piece in sadness. A lamentation for what could have been a better world. You do not build a better world when founded on hatred. You just build a different world. One that is not necessarily better than the one that went before. If you want to tear it all down then be certain of what it is you want when you rebuild it. That small piece of the puzzle seems to be missing. Change is sometimes good. It is opportunity. But to whom do we give that opportunity? To those that are filled with hate and anger? To those that seek to control? To those that take any kind of pleasure in the suffering of others, particularly those you disagree with? And what architect do you ask to rebuild a world when 2 plus 2 does not equal 4? There is a place for reason. There will be the ones who seek to profit who know this full well.

As with the gardens that we grew and nurtured, the harvest is arriving. Do we harvest hate or do we harvest compassion?

If ever there was a time to embrace the concept of being in the world but not of it, this would be it. This too shall pass. Eventually. One day at a time. Kindness one to another. That is all.

"Liberalism is a pluralistic conflict resolution system. Its central feature is the understanding that people have the freedom to hold a wide range of beliefs and values, to express them without fear of punishment and to apply them to their own lives, provided that doing so doesn’t impinge on anybody else trying to do the same. The ideal liberal society, therefore, contains people with many religious, political, philosophical and ethical positions and an expectation that they will tolerate each other, respect each others’ freedoms, bring ideas together, work co-operatively as needed and perhaps even be friends!” H. Pluckrose

2020-07-26T07:12:00.000-04:00

Choices

Here in the Gatineau Hills, we temper our days to the weather—the simmering heat, the torrential rains, the rare temperate days. We do this because we live here in greenery that reminds us always of our small part inside a natural world. It is much harder to find this in the city. On weekends now, huge crowds of people venture our way from the city’s cement grey streets in search of rivers and lakes and trees. They feel like an invasion and our little municipalities scramble to find rules and regulations and parking lots while residents, although somewhat used to this in the past, are shocked at the numbers of visitors now. Human beings in times of trouble seek the familiar, the fun, the meaningful. Those of us who get to live it everyday sometimes forget or are lucky never to have known what it is like to hear sirens instead of songbirds in the morning. It is a revelation and a rebellion to touch a tree and not a traffic pole.

How long now have we been in this strange new world? We lose track of time. Has it been four months or five? Does it matter? Mostly we want to know when it will all end. And there are no promises there. And so, for us, so used to predictability and freedom and positive thinking and achievable goals and controlling every little thing, all of this wears on us. We are not used to this. We can be angry, frustrated, anxious, worried, bored, cranky and sometimes deeply peevish. We’ve all been there. It’s just important not to stay there. Which is much easier said than done. It is about finding the stillness inside the noise. And there is and will be a lot of noise. Nobody said it would be easy. Cultural revolutions rarely are.

And that is where we are.

And when you’re in a revolution, reason hardly matters. In fact, it is reason that can be your enemy. Reason and revolution are hardly compatible. Inside revolutions, the truth is never known until all is said and done. In a world where every argument has a counter argument, every fact has an alternate fact, every known an unknown, and everybody has an opinion, reason will drive you mad. Some would say this is deliberate. Perhaps. It does not matter. This is when you hold on to being “in” the world but not “of” it. Our role is not to take sides but to be still inside the noise until the noise is done. Our role is to find kindness one to another even when we want to rage and argue and judge and shame. At the end of the day it is all most of us can do. One day at a time. One kindness given. One forgiveness sought. One gentle word. One small act of love. We do what needs to be done. We take care of our families, ourselves, our community. We put our faith in love and not hate. It is the wise that understand that choice. It is the brave that understand that sometimes you have to fight for love. And the wisest of all understand that love unites and does not divide.

It is fortunate for us that love and the fight for it is very quiet. It is so quiet you’d hardly notice it was there. It does not tell you what to think, what to own, what to believe, what to argue, what group to join, what political party to vote for, what gun to buy, what everyone should do, what to believe. It does, however, tell us what action to take. In the smallest of things sometimes. The choice for love, for kindness is always there—in every issue. In every small act.

It’s the masks.

If ever there was galvanized in one issue all the choices we face in an unpredictable world, it would be the masks. We want to rely on reason alone and that is where reason fails. It is also where faith in institutions fails. Do you believe in the WHO, Health Canada, scientists, experts, your neighbour? The virus is a hoax, the virus is real, the masks work, the masks don’t work, the statistics are made up to be worse than they are, the statistics are worse than we are given, it’s a conspiracy by the elite, it’s an experiment for artificial facial recognition, it’s a communist plot, a way for aliens to live freely among us without recognition, a means to make us all scared so we have to get a vaccine so the rich get richer or the evil empire can put in a microchip or because they want us to be controlled and in our homes so that when the asteroid hits, a way to recognize who is selfish and who isn’t…. Reason fails. Reason divides here. We want to rely on common sense and that is where we realize that sense these days is not common at all. Everyone will have a well-researched reason pro or con. It can easily be said however there is one commonality: nobody wants to wear them.

And here in Quebec it is now mandated. We have to wear them. Well that great divisive thing was settled wasn’t it? And yes, in a democracy when people can’t agree to be tolerant of other’s choices, that’s how it goes. It was a way to err on the side of caution when people are getting sick and dying. And now we have to live with it—all those who wanted masks are vindicated and all those who didn’t want them are not. And that can lead to trouble. There are a lot of angry people wearing masks they don’t want to and a lot of vindicated people who are ruthlessly and righteously on guard for those who don’t. The fervour on both sides is palpable. For some, the wearing or not wearing of masks is the red-line in the sand. It is where they take their stand. Even though it is all very early in this game of what will happen. So be still. Breathe. One day at a time.

When you come across someone who isn’t wearing a mask you have four choices: 1) You stay away from them and do your own thing, 2) You ask them kindly why they aren’t wearing a mask and hope to learn from each other 3) You scream, argue and shame them. 4) You report them. Which choice does love and kindness give you?

Love may not be reason, but love is reasonable. We need to listen to each other and stay on guard that we do not become the monsters we fight. Be kind.

2020-07-10T13:59:00.000-04:00

The Legend of 3G Tripod

Life is full of foolish things--for those of us with fanciful souls. Here in our little community of Chelsea nestled in the Gatineau Hills of Quebec, we (as with communities around the world) are coping with this time in history as best we can. And the search for hope and promise and beauty inside the darkness was and is a challenge. We have made it through some dark times with floods, tornadoes, developments and scandals. More than most communities have had to. The response to all of these things has made us unstoppable as a community. We found neighbours. We found unity of purpose around kindness and care. We found strength. Oh, not to say that there isn’t the odd kerfluffle and hurt feelings and bad things but overall, here in such an unlikely place we have gained so much. What happened then with Covid and the like seemed and seems at times to be too much. Much more than we needed, that’s for sure. On top of everything. Yet, for all that our little community has gone through we were gifted. We were given 3G Tripod.

3G Tripod is a deer that appeared in our community. She has a broken leg.

When I wrote this story of the lessons of 3G Tripod it was a very bleak time. But something in me said that this deer we named 3G Tripod was a message. After I wrote the story i was living a bit of fear--that we would hear she had been killed on the road, or shot or worst of all someone tried to rescue her and take her away which would have been the worst thing to do altogether. I guess i was waiting for how it would turn out. Just this week Max Gibson posted a picture on our local forum that brought me to tears. The lesson now was clear. Out of pain and trial comes birth. 3G Tripod has a fawn.

Here is what I wrote then:

Ahem… Weekly rant. Thank you all for taking care of the vulnerable and taking care of the caregivers and watching out for your neighbours. I hope everyone is taking their zinc and Vitamin D. And maybe Vitamin C. It can’t hurt. Do not drink bleach. When you don’t know what to do, love the one you’re with. This week’s rant is about the deer.

For those of us inclined to fanciful thoughts, the wounded deer with a dangling leg wandering about Chelsea tells us pretty much everything we need to know at this time. She arrived as a lesson in hope and faith and endurance. We are more than gifted with her presence. No matter what happens to “3G Tripod” (affectionately named Gimpy, Gerta and Gustavia and Tripod by various members) we can accept her gifts to us now during this Covid crisis.

3G Tripod is oblivious to the ruckus her very presence causes. The solution from authorities is to let her be or shoot her. And so we are faced with deciding whether her life is worth living or not. It is painful to see her so damaged with leg dangling. We are moved to pity, to horror, to outrage but we are not indifferent. There is no longterm care facility or retirement home for this deer. She cannot be put out of sight and out of mind. She is always there. So should we just shoot her and put her out of her misery? But she isn’t miserable. She is being a deer living her life. Who are we to decide her fate? Her presence upsets us because it is an “in your face” reality reminding us that sometimes life isn’t all pretty and Disney. It hurts us to see her. It might even annoy us. And the pragmatists say just shoot her. And the predators say she’d make good eating. And the empaths want to care for her. And the authorities say leave us the hell alone about the damn deer because we’ve got enough on our plate. And the perfectionists say she is offensive to look at in our pretty little world. And the philosophers wonder about the purpose of existence. And we all look at 3G Tripod. Because what are we to do?

3G Tripod doesn’t much care about all that. 3G Tripod simply carries on as she has over the last winter munching leaves and grasses in the company of her herd. Except for the leg, she is managing her life—doing what needs to be done as a deer. She isn’t lying in the field moaning and weeping and wondering about her horrific lot in life. She isn’t curled up in a ball in the woods somewhere. She isn't seething with anger at the car that must have hit her nor is she wondering what the motives might have been. She isn’t comparing herself to the other deer nor does she spend much time worrying about how much grass there will be come autumn. She is enduring. She is doing what needs to be done. She lives quietly resourcefully and carefully in the moment. And that is all that we need to do. We don’t need to be upset by the reality that 3G Tripod represents, as cruel as it may seem. We need to be thankful. She lives her life as we all can, doing what needs to be done in the moment even when damaged. It is life. Be Calm. Be Loving. Be Safe.

2020-07-09T17:56:00.002-04:00

Heart Level Change

We, wearing our masks when it feels like 40 degrees Celsius can’t catch much of a break from this heatwave here in the Gatineau Hills. It feels like gravity is stronger or something and we are dragged down just for the spite of some mad decree by unseen gods. Masks in this heat… It’s torture really. It is really amazing we do what we do for the sake of others. Protecting. Caring. Hot. Irritated. Slick with sweat. We prefer not to go out if we can. We drag ourselves heavily through the day looking for ice cream and water and air-conditioning mostly or the purring thrum of fans labouring in the hot air.

Some of us go to the river where silvery fish swim down to play tag in cooler waters. They have learned to love the places where there are shadows in their river. Up here we can see in odd places, the parched grasses catching the warm yellow sun where there was green not long ago. There seem to be no cool shadows on the greenery now, just feeble greys sometimes, like laundry washed too often. There is not much respite. We are not fish. We live up here with the sultry yellow sun. Our river is the very sky around us.

When everything is so bright with light we hide where we can because this place, this dry place dazzles us. But we always know the storm will come. The one that rushes water and jagged thunderous streaks of light from our sky and for a few hours, maybe more, we are appeased.

It’s a trying time to be alive right now. The stark sun on the world’s landscape dazzles to painful squints. It hurts to look at it. It’s as surreal as it gets. At least so far. There is very little we can do about the world I’m often reminded. And that is wise advice of course. So little we can do in a world which at this point seems pretty unfathomable. And that is a fishes’ word—unfathomable. The depths of the waters we are swimming in and its extent not able to be measured by any of us. We watch. We wait. We weather the storms. It is one of those times in history we could never have prepared for but which has happened in similar ways before. If you look at history long enough. And us standing here squinting at the sun means we got through it all then and we will get through this now…whatever that is. At the end of the day, we take care of our families, ourselves, our community. This is always the way it is done. Has always been done. The details hardly matter.

For some though, the details are everything. They’re in trouble. The bills. The jobs lost. The loved ones sick or threatened by this mad virus. The curtailing of our usual forms of fun and comfort and freedom. The price of food. Tempers flare. Worries ebb and flow. Too many worries to count some days. That’s when you say, there will be a better day and you grit your teeth and get through it. Best you can. You are not alone. There are many like you. Most of all you cut down the noise of the world around you. It may seem a sad thing to know that sometimes when epic change demands of all of us, it is not all of us who can afford to charge ahead to make the world a better place. It is an odd and strange privilege of time, person and circumstances. There are too many of us now who can only do what needs to be done for our families, ourselves and if possible our community. And you know what? That’s okay. Because each struggle, all these struggles and fears we go through individually change the world in the way it is meant to be changed. Where it matters. Where the heart of change happens.

It is wisdom to understand that the heart of change happens in the cool shadows. Not in the bright and demanding sunlight where there are many voices clamouring at us. We can’t see it necessarily so clearly in the dark. The man who lost his job is stronger than he was yesterday because that is what he has decided. The woman frantic with worry over her parents has a look now about her that speaks of determination and compassion. The ingenious finagling to find results on small scales in all the small businesses. The parents finding patience where none was before. The neighbour that said, “let me help you with that.” The old man who said on this I will not compromise and know it. The treacherous child who learns forgiveness. A person's anger and judgment now changed to compassion. The heart of change does not sometimes happen at protest marches and in great and lofty halls of government. It happens when heart meets strength it never had before. It happens when kindness and a quiet courage replace outrage, one to another: the heart level of change.

You will find that here at the heart level, the changes grow stronger every time. And by the taking care of just those small things by so many people, the world changed. That’s sometimes how history goes. That is how you will find yourself on the right side of history. Quiet. Resolute. Strong. Unwavering.

So when people say there is little you can do and you are not able to scream and yell and protest and fight for causes, know you’re already doing it. You got through the day with strength and kindness. One more day. And you will do it again tomorrow. And by gum, you have no idea how strong you are. Even when you’re crying. Even when you’re afraid. Even when you see no future. Even when you’re madder than hell. By gum, it is heart level change that will get you through. And you have no choice about that.

If it all gets too much this week, this month: wake up early. Somewhere between 3 and 5 in the northeast you can see by the naked eye in that vast river of sky where we spin on this little green planet, the brightest comet we have seen in decades. It is not an omen. It is light, a heart light, alone swimming in the cool waters to an ancient rhythm of time and space and promise. It reminds us we too sometimes swim alone in shadows but how damn glorious we can be. Be Strong. Be Kind.

2020-06-24T10:54:00.001-04:00

The forest

Even the early mornings this last week in the Gatineau Hills were hot and languid and heavy. For those who had to work outside it must have felt like a slavish oppression by Mother Nature who, adding insult to injury, sent in the mosquitoes to feast. Most of us not dipping into the river or riding in cars top down were huddled in our air conditioned houses if we had air conditioning. Those without simply stayed stupefied in front of fans or lying drowsily in hammocks under a forest of trees. We watched the world on our TVs and computers as it struggles waiting for the heat wave to end. The world itself seems as if it is burning and roiling in the heat of politics and rebellion and chaos.

But we are here and the world is out there. We watch our gardens grow lush with the thunderous rain and feed the miracle of birds that drift from the somnolent sky. Some, now back to work, escaped to the offices and stores in our small town but mostly to the city across the bridge. Above the colourful masks, eyes peer and furrowed brows catch at the heart. The worry is palpable. The struggle for some is painful. We don’t know what the new normal is supposed to be and we are, if nothing else, logical about things. Rational. Ready to do what needs to be done but unsure of what that is now. In this world. In this crazy world. So in our lives we simply do what needs to be done that day. For that day is all we are guaranteed and pretty much all we’re prepared to cope with. And that is okay. For now. We do that day sometimes determined, sometimes on edge, sometimes with flaring tempers or dull dark with anxiety and worry. We are human. We aren’t normally like this. Not normally. But then, nothing really is normal now.

How are we too reckon with all this? This worldwide epic change swirling, churning, billowing around us, insistent on itself even as we fight for perspective. All we can do is live inside our quiet place, our familiar place. We watch over our family, our neighbours, our communities. We wait. Sometimes we make a stand but mostly we wait.

I’ve written before about all this madness in the world. It seems like chaos but it is simply a reckoning. As if the world was striving towards an unseen goodness in a sea of angry opinion. All these “isms.” It makes us creep about in conversation fearful of mishap, worried about taking any stand, going hopefully with the flow, most too tired now to care. Most of us want to be left alone to think what we think. It seems like an individual is lost in this, and well they are—hostage to monumental forces. But that is okay. As I’ve said before, I believe all of these “isms”, environmentalism, feminism, veganism, anti-racism form a prism--a stunning piece of glass reflecting all those colours of the human spirit. It is magnificent. It is hope. But we must guard with our very lives the good here. And what then is the good?

I know only what good isn’t. Good is not hatred of the other. Good is not contempt for the other. Good is not judgment. Good is not ignorance. Good is not these things. And that is where this epic, this Homeric Time demands a reckoning—our only task as individuals in this sea of change. They call it, for wont of a better word, a soul-searching time. It is for many a great “undoing” of everything that they believed in. When jobs are lost, when people we love die, when the sand beneath our feet slips away we can only hold on to what matters. We can only gauge ourselves by our searching. So by what do we gauge ourselves?

Do we gauge ourselves based on how we were educated? How we were raised? What our peers believe? What our favourite political party tells us? What our job demands? There comes, to us all, a time when we are alone with ourselves to fight our way to what matters. What truly matters. And that is not hatred. It is not okay for a white person to hate a black person because they are black. It is not okay for a woman to hate a man because they are men. It is not okay for a man to hate a woman, a vegan to hate a carnivore, a communist hate a capitalist, a liberal hate a conservative, a child to hate an adult… No. It is not okay. Any institution, philosophy, political party or community built on these things is not okay.

These “isms” are just trees in a forest and we need to see that forest. A forest is made of mighty trees stretching high to the sky—many limbs arching to the sky. A forest seeks only to live in community, harmless, quiet, in sunlight and shadow. By what do we gauge ourselves with? Certainly not a forest fire of hatred. Certainly not an opinion of others that rolls eyes and points fingers. If you were taught this. If you were educated to this—unlearn it.

Why do you need to unlearn it? Because you are left defenceless against what may be a fight for us all. We want goodness, not hatred. We cannot fight what we have become. And that battle may come. You cannot fight what is bad in this world directly: you must increase the Good.

We gauge ourselves by kindness. One to another despite all differences. That is all.

2020-06-16T01:29:00.002-04:00

What is Kindness?

In this tumultuous world we have only kindness to rely on: one individual to another. We are the other person and they are us. Some people know this instinctively. They are the kind that go into burning buildings, treat Covid-19 patients, serve the public during a pandemic, race to help downed protestors. These are rare and cherished people.

I'm thinking that the great challenge in charity, kindness and love for many is the doing of it without expectation of return. Someone I know said that they didn't think that possible—that the act of being kind makes people feel good so it is selfish in that way. And I say, every good parent in the world knows all about giving without expectation. I'm not learned enough to know all the philosophical thought that goes into this argument on altruism. I can only write here what I ponder. I don’t write this because I am perfect in any way shape or form. We are all creatures on a learning curve. We will all in our lifetime need the act of loving kindness. We are only human. I give this not in judgment but in observation.

IMHO, If you find you are being kind and expecting all sorts of behaviour and recognition and gratitude and indebtedness or (pathologically) control in return, look to yourself first. Did you really give so that "you" could feel good? Or did you give so that the “other” could feel good? Some would argue it is done for both and boom--there is the expectation. What if they are not able to be happy or grateful? What if they have nothing to give you back, emotionally, financially, or otherwise? Would you still give? Kindness has no expectations. What if they reject you, mock you, misjudge you, deceive you, take advantage of you? Kindness is not judgment but it requires discernment. Protect yourself.

Do you give to increase or create your self-worth? True giving comes from a place of self-worth. True giving is the by-product of self-worth. You will find yourself tangled up in many situations if all your worth comes from giving—ever dependant on the outside to create your inside. Do you give at your own personal expense in hope of worth? This is not wholeness but desperation for validation. True unfettered kindness comes from wholeness and is inevitable if not instinctive.

Do you give so that you can control the outcome? I know some people who will not give money to beggars on the street because they will spend it on drugs or alcohol, they conclude. So your judgment of their behaviour dictates your kindness. What is it to you what they do with what you give them? Some may buy a sandwich for a friend. You cannot know nor should you care. It is that very act that separates the people who give with judgment and those who give out of instinctive kindness. So some put their money in a slot machine for charities that care for street people. They will, it is concluded, ensure proper behaviour and needs met. Kindness with judgment is not charity. It is an act of charity but not necessarily a kindness.

Do you give because you judge them lesser than you? As a way in effect to prop up your own sense of self as separate and above? Do you give so that you would look good to others? Or because it is trendy? Do you make all sorts of promises in front of others but never follow through? This happens frequently on social media platforms where "looking" good to others rather than actually "acting" good in real life becomes very obvious to those whom promises are made. It is best not to promise what you cannot give.

Do you "always" give through a proxy, a charitable group, a Go-Fund me campaign so that in fact you do not face the humanity or cause you are helping? Do you do this for photo shoots to prove you are a good human? Such hands-off giving can be argued is better than nothing but it fails the giver in failing to fill the heart with any form of fellowship with humanity. Do you insist it is because you have no time? There is always time for person to person kindness. It is the lifeblood of being human. Yet there are people who, themselves broken, seem incapable of empathy and perhaps it is best they outsource their charity to those who understand others pain. Those are the people who give for charitable tax write-offs usually. They did their duty. They can be seen as kind. It is the best that they can do.

Do you give because it is proscribed by your religion, your duty to family or by profession? Then you may be working from the outside in. You are a human being and not the role you play. Search your heart for truth and you will find it.

Do you give and find yourself complaining and growing bitter with the challenge? The onerous burden? The ingratitude? You have lost the reason why. Giving is not easy and it never was and it is often tedious. Kindness demands beyond the self. If you cannot reconnect to why you are being kind, best withdraw if tired rather than push on into a dark place where you feel only tiredness and judgment.

The greatest kindness is given without much fanfare and a humbleness of spirit. A recognition of the inequity of life that puts you in the position to do such acts for a fellow human being or a cause. The greatest kindness thanks the recipient for the gift they have given you. The very best kindness goes unseen; requires no gratitude. Kindness—one to another—despite class, race, age, nationality, ideology, religion or gender, is the only solution to a very troubled and divided world.

These trying times seem like we’re in it for the long haul and many people are going through some very traumatic things. When in doubt, be mindfully kind. It can’t hurt. A community committed to kindness is a force to be reckoned with. Nobody is perfect but we can try. Everybody is doing the best they can. Take care of the caregivers. Be at peace. It will all eventually work itself out. You are not alone and never have been. Nurture each other. IMHO

2020-06-08T17:10:00.003-04:00

On how it sometimes is

Here. Here in our communities where we sit nestled or some would say slammed, jumbled, forced here in the green of the Gatineau Hills you can sometimes early in the morning maybe, or maybe at twilight or maybe when forced to stillness by universal dictate catch the green-ness breathing. It is sometimes a smoky mist upon the river or in the catch of breeze rustling sun speckled leaves or in the ponderous silence between breaths heavy with humidity. This “Being”, this greenness born of an infinite Will answers to a time where there is no time. It knows that the noise that scratches at its skin is not anything but passing. It knows no importance of itself. It just exists where clocks do not.

North of where I live here, in Masham a woman tends her garden. As long as I have known her, she has tended her garden. And in the summer she sometimes arrives with ripe tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans in a basket to share. A humble offering. A pride. A simple thing. Her garden has always been. And when people are crazed by the world and the noise and the pain and mostly the fear and they might ask me what to do I always tell them to put in a garden if they can. Tend a garden. Put your hands in the naked dirt and catch the promise of the green-ness breathing.

Last week my friend called to say she had lost her cucumber plants. For it is going to be one of “those” spring summers we know well: We swelter in the heat and yet at night in the green-ness there is a killing frost. The seedlings she had nurtured would not see their promise. Where some would be angry, and some would despair, and some would be frustrated, my friend gathered up more seeds and planted yet again. Because that is how it is. You do what needs to be done. For those who live with hands that have long caressed and coaxed and loved the sacred green-ness, a killing frost is just a killing frost.

Around me here, the world is testing many. And there is much fear. And hermit as I am, I watch the scramble and sometimes cry. We are all each other’s children. So I beg them to be kind not knowing if they know what kindness is anymore. Kindness sometimes is a basket of fresh-grown tomatoes. So I tell them when I can, when I myself can find a stillness of spirit that does not cater to myself and my own fears but to we the children: Plant a garden if you can. And if you can’t plant a garden, plant a pot of red peppers. Some would say I can’t plant a garden because I don’t know if I’ll be living here long and I say plant a garden anyway—for those that would come after.

Many around me I see have planted gardens. I pass them sometimes when I have ventured out. I know so many who have planted gardens because it is a practical thing to do. It is also born of fear. “My God,” they think, “there is a famine and inflation and the supply chain might not be there I have to put up stores and I have to prepare!” Some have planted gardens because well, that’s the trendy thing to do and they don’t want to be unlike the other. Some have planted the gardens with a competitive spirit for what type of seed or how carefully plotted it all is. I smile then. I do not care why they have planted a garden. Because I know that what they have planted may have been born in fear or pride or competition but will grow in wisdom. And if they can listen, and what choice can they possibly have?, they will hear the green-ness breathing; not the scratching scrabble of the world. And if a killing frost comes yet again, or whatever it may be, whatever reason that they might have for planting, they will still know hope where hope never was. It is always there. They will know a tending and a watching and an insistent toil to the harvest. For that is all it is.

To every life there will come a killing frost. Sometimes you plant again and sometimes it comes again. Or it is something else—a hungry grub, a bitter sun, a grazing deer, a scratching and a scrabble. Now we can rage, or we can cry, or we can go out and plant again. Sometimes it is too late to plant and all that we expected is not going to come. So we plan next year’s garden. And we see how that will grow.

If you don’t know what to do right now. If everything you believed and knew and worked for, seems in shambles, love the one you are with and tend your garden. And get a chicken if you can. They have things to teach us too I imagine. Do what needs to be done. Take care of your family, yourself, your neighbour and your community. There is nothing else right now.

2019-03-21T00:32:00.001-04:00

2018-12-04T08:56:00.000-05:00

Eternity in Ten Seconds

We stand next to eternity every day of our lives. Some are closer it seems to the profound nature of being in the world than others. They have no need to question their actions. They simply respond to a higher natural order than the rest of us. And so it was for a man named Isidor Howson of Kazabazua, a humble 40-year-old carpenter.

Isidor is just a man. A man living his life. He had a fairly long drive home from Shawville to Kaz and as he usually does he left his shoes unlaced so he could take them off if he wanted to. That Saturday he hesitated undoing the laces. He didn’t know why he hesitated but he did. But then he untied the laces. Just outside Shawville he saw a house on fire. Two older women were standing by the road. He stopped his truck to help.

The women were shaken. They told him there was a man inside. He hadn’t come out.

Isidor immediately ran to the house. How many of us would have done that? With the flames on the roof now fierce, the heat rattling the air, the smoke acrid in the wind? Isidor tried the front door, the back door, the windows. Through the front window he could see a man in a chair in the living room. And despite the screaming and banging, the man did not respond, already perhaps overcome by the smoke. Isidor only describes his actions as driven by a higher will than his own perhaps. By right action, by adrenaline, by divine providence. That’s the mystery of men like this. When asked, Isidor confused almost by the question simply says, “it was the right thing to do. I’d do it again."

Isidor went to the front door and began kicking it in. He lost his shoe in the process. His laces were untied. He was cut, bruised and shaken but managed finally to break in. He retrieved his shoe, and just 10 seconds from having broken in the door he reckons, the entire upper floor caved into the living room burying the man in the chair.

Isidor was 10 seconds too late.

That’s how Isidor told the story. That’s how Isidor remembered the story: he was 10 seconds too late to save the man. If only he had not stopped to get his shoe. If only he had laced them up. If only. And Isidor went home eventually broken and haunted. It was 10 seconds. And that defines a man like Isidor. He did not see it as 10 seconds where he himself could have died (as his friend eventually pointed out to him), but as the time he did not have to save the man. What makes men like this? Who can really know? Just a man. Just a man living his life.

But life has a way of making its profundity manifest. It has a way of teaching us things we don’t understand. For a man like Isidor, who was haunted by those 10 seconds, by the unlaced shoe, there was no comfort really. Only perhaps time would heal.

Isidor went reluctantly to work the next day at a construction site in Wakefield, exhausted from a sleepless night. Why he happened to be standing right there when his co-worker took a phone call from his wife, Isidor doesn’t know. But that co-worker was from Shawville and his wife told him their neighbour had set the house on fire and then shot himself. Isidor could not have saved the man even if he had had those 10 seconds. These were facts that Isidor may never have known if he hadn’t been standing there to hear it. The details are still under wraps.

Isidor could not have saved the man. Instead he was given 10 seconds of grace. And that 10 seconds saved his own life. That is how providence works. That is the irony, the twist of the archetypal story. Isidor thinks about how he could have died for nothing if he hadn’t lost a shoe.

No longer haunted, but simply sad. It is a story to tell now for Isidor. Not the one he thought it was, but a different one altogether. It is a sad story but a transformative story for him in ways words can’t describe. He is just a man. Living his life, 10 seconds away from eternity.

2018-10-27T21:05:00.001-04:00

What then is happiness?

Some of us live on the boundary line, the slow shuffled measured pace between black/white and the known/unknown, the right/wrong, the tragic/comedic, the coward/hero, the stupid and the bright. It is not a striving for equilibrium but a condensation of our divided Being funneled to a finite place on this planet where we roost to watch the affairs of our fellow creatures. It is a precarious vantage point--neither here nor there but in between. It was never a choice we would have made if we had had the choice.

For some of us the leap to a conclusion is a slow emergence from unfathomable depths to make our way in a languid drift to a faraway shore. It is why we are old before our time, for the blustery skies we fly in batter our very souls. It is why we are quiet for our solitude exists in a noisy crowd and has no answer to what it sees. It is bewildered by the pain of others demanding reason and yet others suffocating in emotion. It is partly nature and partly circumstance that held us in what we thought was confusion but was in reality capacity. It was a clarity defined by images and not thought. It was a clarity of emotion and not reason. But the painful translation of that clarity to reason brings depths of understanding for those who live in-between and can suffer the journey on that fragile bridge from here to there.

There are not many who have the time to think. And for those of us who do, it is our curse to do so.
Hence the painters, the poets, the writers, the philosophers, the mystics and the misfits. And even the mad, for they dance and sing and cry and rage in memory and prophesy where most have never been and would never choose to go.

What then is happiness to those who skip-trip to the heavens? And does it even matter. Predestined perhaps to lives of living in between, they play translators to a universe few seek to understand. They bleed their love at daybreak and gather it again at nightfall from the stars to strew across the vast clamoring daylight. They never had a choice.

2018-09-20T16:22:00.000-04:00

In honour of all the bears we seem to be sighting, this is my story from 2010 from my book "The Get-Over-Yourself Self-Help Book" written before I understood bears...

The Unbearable Lightness of Beans

The bear was sitting at the entrance to the deck looking at me. Well, at first it was just looking at me but then, it decided to gaze off into the trees in a very zen-like fashion as if it was contemplating the meaning of life and I was just some static in the way of the transmission of a universal collective unconsciousness. It seemed to be having a revelation.

This I could perfectly understand given that it had just salvaged the trashcan leftovers of a frozen cabbage-roll entree that I'd found on special just last month at Walmart. I myself felt that very same way after having tasted the stuff. I'm certain those leaves were not cabbage at all but then, the Walmart spokesperson insists they were, even though I insisted right back that if I'd dried those damn things out and smoked them I would have gotten far more bang for the buck I'd say. They never listen to me, these spokespeople; that's because they earn their degrees in Communications and then spend their entire working careers trying to find ways NOT to communicate the truth as it really is, such as the use of psychotropic "cabbage-leaves-my-arse" in their entrees. But anyway...

The bear had resumed looking at me. It wasn't a major bear, really. It was a little bit bigger than the dog, but considerably more hefty... a "big-boned" bear. I figure it could easily have wrestled me to the ground and killed me dead, so I was grateful to see I apparently had a Buddhist bear on a spiritual quest at the end of the deck instead.

The only reason I knew, of course, that we had a bear was because the neighbours were good enough to call out and let me know. The dog, who goes into an apoplectic barking frenzy over june bugs and chipmunks, was sitting at the other end of the deck looking at me... quietly. Now, the thing was, I had to walk towards the bear in order to get to the door in order to open it in order to tell George to call
the fire department, an ambulance, the SPCA, my sister in New Zealand, Chelsea Pizza and CSIS.

Anyway, I decided to walk towards the bear because sometimes you must throw caution to the winds and leap headlong into your destiny or lack thereof. The bear lifted its paw and continued to look at me. It was obviously a bear with some fashion sense that gravely disapproved of my orange striped outfit, because he shook his head back and forth in deep condemnation. I just knew I should have bought the other outfit instead, but the salesladies were completely disinterested in helping me choose because all they do is spend their days watching to see if you're shoplifting instead of helping you make a decision between plain plaid and orange stripes. I figure I'd have had better luck if I'd brought the bloody bear to the store for an opinion. Not that he seemed like he'd be the kind of bear that would like to go shopping, really, I was thinking.

So I opened the door... I did this apparently for the dog. The dog, deeply relieved, practically knocked me over as she ran like the wind itself into the living room to cower behind the recliner where George was watching a documentary on the building of the White Canal by slave laborers in Stalinist Russia.
"George," I said, "there's a bear on the deck." Given that the bear was about six feet away, I thought I did rather well keeping my voice and all.

"Don't be silly," said George.

George, as it turns out, was no help whatsoever because we ended up in the kitchen arguing over whether to use the fire extinguisher or the rocking chair to defend ourselves. Eventually we decided to scare the bear by banging pots and pans, which didn't work out so well because George wanted to use the cast iron skillet along with the brand new Teflon-coated crepe pan. Well I couldn't have that! So we eventually found ourselves standing out on the deck peering into the now darkening landscape with an eggbeater, a broom, and a can of Heinz old-fashioned maple-syrup beans.

The bear, having listened in on the debate, had left, no doubt deciding to forsake all forms of civilization thereafter--which is a good thing... for a bear with any sense whatsoever.

Next, we may be discussing why Hitler was a better dancer than Stalin.

2018-09-10T15:32:00.000-04:00

How do we make it different this time?

What if Canada's first nations people looked at the people who arrived here on ships and said "Look at them! They have no respect for nature or our gods, they are destroying what we believe in, they are having lots of children and more and more are coming, they have their own laws, they are taking our land, they don't respect women as we do, they are going to force us into becoming like them or we will pay the consequences because they have powerful weapons, they are not like us and they have no respect for us, they stick with their own and won't mingle with us." What if they did? They would have been right. We see the results. We are all immigrants. How do we make it different this time?

It is important to understand that the Syrian refugees are just that--refugees. They are not immigrants in that sense. These are refugees fleeing from a country in ruins. They had no choice. They are uprooted, displaced and dispersed far from family and what they knew, running from a horrible situation. Why are they refugees in the first place is a question best left to others to determine. Canadians saw an influx of refugees during and after the Second world war. One of its sad realities is that the children of these refugees often were subjected to being raised by traumatized and alienated parents. It became for many a source of great suffering through the generations. How do we make it different this time?

One thing is clear: Politics will not solve this problem. If anything, in this political climate, it is creating greater divides than need be. Polarized as it is. This is a people problem. This is a neighbour to neighbour problem. If a person is hated, they learn only to hate. Hate is a function of fear. That is all. For this, the onus is on all of us and on the refugees themselves, struggling as they are to learn a foreign language and foreign ways and deal with trauma and isolation, to dispel the fear and make common ground. And that common ground is one that requires dialogue and good neighbours.

Out there in the world, law enforcement is facing the results of what happens when fear rules. This is an undeniable fact although it is denied. The level of frustration, anger and concern is palpable because these are men and women who have put their lives on the line to protect the public. And the general public does not know what they know. And they are burning out, leaving, if not committing suicide. Their reaction is understandable because it is not discussed in the public arena in a meaningful way. Their hands are tied and they have no place for honesty. And by not being discussed or faced then how can there be solutions? It is not up to the media nor the politicians to silence reality. Reality is what it is. No amount of social engineering or positive thinking can replace honest dialogue. The onus belongs to those who can see a better way and that includes overcoming fear to bridge the gap. I believe it is possible. It requires good will from both sides. How do we make it different this time? That is a question I put to the politicians, the law enforcement agencies, the refugees themselves and we ourselves.

No amount of arrogance; of race, religion, class need be tolerated from any of us on any side. When it comes to human to human relations, one is no greater than the other. We are all in this together. How do we make it different this time?

2018-09-09T20:49:00.001-04:00

You never quite heal. Not quite ever...

I will never leave Himself to rest. Why should he have all the fun cavorting through time without me? I know right this instant he is at the pyramids and all the questions he had about time and meaning and existence are answered. He has found the why and all I can do is know he holds that for me and for the ones he loved, one day found when we follow. But now, I will not leave the man to rest. I guess that's just the way it is for some of us.

And for all that I've gone through I have no advice beyond a dedication to not becoming bitter. That there is no point to blame. That the rest of your life is a remnant of your love carried to your last day with courage and a prayer and a faith forward.

And love the one you're with, with the aching understanding of how precious the time we are given is. For it is precious.

It was both a curse and a gift that we were given knowledge of our own death one day. Life's struggle is to find the gift whether you are the one that is to go or the one that is to be left behind. And when you find that gift, much becomes irrelevant; the affairs of the world a sad if not mad distraction. Love is all we have. The fear of loss is the curse, the understanding that comes with it, the gift. And if you can find the laughter, well, you've found it all. Just love the one you're with. But do not cast your pearls before swine. Forgive when you can. Kindness always. Compassion within reason.

That's all I've learned.

Have a loving week everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmactMIhrRM

2018-09-07T15:33:00.001-04:00

Love and Peace

Some days it feels as though we are surrounded by fear and anger and judgment and the failed expectations of a generation. There are people who would call those who ask that we practice peace and love, naive and idealistic. That’s fair enough in one sense. Yes, there are bad things, bad actions by people, groups, governments, countries. In this we are not, any of us, naive. But idealism is not a dirty word. It represents hope. And that is what we have to foster for our children and grandchildren. It is vital.

Those calling for love in the face of atrocities and miscommunications and greed and disappointments are not naive. They are the wise. And that wisdom is powerful. It is the act of loving understanding and compassion that is the antidote to anger. It is the antidote to fear and it is the antidote to despair. To bitterness. To futility. It is the antidote to divisiveness. And it is the only “rational” response to the world we have now.

I am going to quote Scott Alexander who said: “I don’t know how to fix the system, but I am pretty sure that one of the ingredients is kindness. I think of kindness not only as the moral virtue of volunteering at a soup kitchen or even of living your life to help as many other people as possible, but also as an epistemic virtue. Epistemic kindness is kind of like humility. Kindness to ideas you disagree with. Kindness to positions you want to dismiss as crazy and dismiss with insults and mockery. Kindness that breaks you out of your own arrogance, makes you realize the truth is more important than your own glorification, especially when there’s a lot at stake.”

There was a time after 9/11 when Canadians desperately attempted to explain to our younger siblings, the Americans, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and they didn’t really need to invade it. They didn’t listen to us of course but the point is, we Canadians were sane then. Whatever has happened?

No matter what the issue, We can observe. Not absorb the hysteria. That is the difference. Observe, support, work towards whatever we believe in, bridge the gaps of understanding most importantly, but we cannot absorb such nonsense of divisive politics and judgment. We have to remember who we are. Canadians. We are a peaceful people. We make peace. We are neighbours.

IMHO We do not need any more social justice warriors. We need social justice peacemakers. This does not mean giving up ground or gains achieved or goals but an understanding that the present and the future needs to be negotiated with good will at its heart between all sides. And though sometimes this is not possible when some are incapable of good will because they are lost in anger and righteousness, absorbing that is incalculably damaging. Observe. Forgive and if necessary move on.

Loving kindness is the simple solution to a complicated world with complicated issues.

2018-08-01T14:45:00.002-04:00

The Climate Debate

When I was 10 years old I received my first Barbie Doll. It was made of plastic. Did I know indeed for the first forty years of my life that plastic was going to wreak havoc on the planet? No. I did not. We walk in the light that we have. And we did not have that light. I’m writing this for two reasons: 1) Guilt serves nobody but self-flagellists and 2) Hope is important.

It does not matter who caused global climate change; if it is man-made or a natural occurrence. Most would suggest its man made and that it is undeniable. It does not matter. What matters is that in fact it is happening. What matters is that we do our bit in the light that we have now to change our own behaviour. What matters most of all is that we do not put this out there as the end of the world. We have children and grandchildren who see no future. And worse, feel responsible to fixing the whole world.

Of course it is important to teach, guide and model behaviour that respects and attempts to remediate the planet’s woes to our children. What we do not need to pass on is this self-loathing of a generation for having wrecked the planet and this sense of hopelessness that pervades our lives for the future. It also creates divisiveness because one person cares more than another person and so begins the judgment cycle. Who’s to blame! Who’s to shame!

Let me tell you, it’s not individuals. It is big picture greed. And if I’ve learned something in this life, it is that you don’t fight evil directly. You increase the good. We do not encourage our children to hate our generation, themselves or those who do not respect the same values. We increase the good by showing them what it is indeed that is to be loved about nature, and the planet. We don’t chastise them for using plastic bags, we show them the way the fish flash sacred in the water. We don’t tell them you ride a bicycle instead of getting car rides because the air is fresh with the season and the sound of their heartbeat is universal connectedness. We don’t apologize for what we did not know and model this form of self-hatred for our children. We show them that when problems happen, you begin where you are and work from love instead of self-hatred. It’s pretty basic.

But we cannot teach our children that the tree they love is in danger. You create fear and panic and sadness. You teach them only to love the tree so that they grow with love and faith in a future they will participate in. Let's ensure they do not do so from a place of fear.

And when they say to you, “but the tree is going to die, and we are killing all the trees,” you show them the new trees growing from the seedlings of the tree they love and explain that yes the tree is going to die for all things will die a long long time from now but new trees will come and they will be the ones you must love and nurture. And you explain that one day when they are grown they may decide that that is what they will want to do with their life or they may do other things but there will always be someone who will love the trees. And when they say the planet is dying and we’re killing the whales and everything is bad, you say, “right now there is a tree to love and that right now is all we will ever have or have ever had.” All things pass away but the right to hope and the understanding of the cycle of life is what we must bequeath to our children and their children. Even in the face of what seems to be overwhelming odds, that hope and that endurance is what we can give, not sadness, guilt and despair.

---
I guess I was thinking of the child that gets up in the morning and puts on his proper shoes that it has been explained to him are not the result of child labour in china and his jeans that are not produced by exploited non-unionized workers in pakistan and when he eats his breakfast it is not made with monsanto-engineered corn and when he walks to school it is not because fossil fuels are creating wars and when he's learning about wildlife it is not because they are all in danger and when he comes home it is not to a home full of horrible people who are guilty of destroying the planet. There are some things that children should not have to carry throughout their day. They have the right to joy and to love and to hope and to a certain innocence.

I guess what I'm saying is that a certain segment of our generation think they are teaching their children how to fight for the planet but in fact are teaching them mostly fear and anger and despair. One child will become a warrior and the other a worrier. When I was a child we worried about nuclear war. Now they are worried about every single thing the planet has to offer.

2018-07-28T14:48:00.001-04:00

2018-07-16T18:40:00.000-04:00

What the bees taught me

When I was 11 years old, we moved to a house on a street in a small town. My room, if that is what you could call it was a curtained off section of the basement. My bed was under a window whose ledge was at ground level. There were flowers there when we arrived. Most of them were not there when we left, grown over with weeds. One morning I woke up and something had stung my calf. A bug of some sort. It was quite a ferocious bite and when I jumped it stung me again. I whipped the sheet off and found a bee.

I captured it with a glass and a piece of paper and took it upstairs. My brother or my father, I don’t remember which, told me it could not have stung me twice because bees will die if they sting you because they have barbed stingers that end up being left behind in whoever they bite and that kills them. Two days later I got another sting and another bee. So my brother killed it. And this became a regular occurrence for a number of weeks, waking up to a bee. I became quite adroit at whipping the sheets off when I first woke up to avoid being stung. Sometimes they bit me anyway. I would find out later that there are indeed types of bees that can sting twice.

The thing was, I began to feel sorry for the bees. Because if I brought them upstairs they would be killed. So I got a bowl of water and a dinner plate that I smeared with honey and then I began to collect the bees. They lived on the plate of honey in my bedroom. I would collect them and feed them the honey and watch their antennae-like things slipping into the honey. They seemed quite content to stay there. I had quite a few of them over the weeks. So I lived in the bedroom with the bees until one day I took them outside and let them go. That bothered me because I didn’t know who would feed them then but I had thought it the right thing to do.

On the surface of course one could ask why on earth no one cared enough to find the source of these bees that would sting me. No one cared to even notice that I had a plate of bees in the bedroom. But that is, although a factor of my life, not the thing that defined me. What defined me was that even though the bees stung me, I cared for them. It is why I have cared for even the monsters of this life who will sometimes sting you. It is their nature. Just as it is my nature to forgive. But I will not have a plate of bees in my room again. Forgive and set them free. That is what the bees taught me.

2018-07-16T18:35:00.004-04:00

What the wicked weed taught me

Oh it tormented me. I’ve lived here 31 years (minus one year where I made that mistake which is a terrible story in and of itself and has nothing whatsoever to do with what the wicked weed taught me). The point was, for 31 years I lived with this stupid weed bush thing on the side of the road on my property. Drove me crazy. It was a tenacious horribly ugly looking thing with many branches and innocuous leaf-like things.

I would hack at it and chop it and even once tried digging it up but the damn thing had roots that went all the way to China. So I just cut it down every year. And the people whose job it is to clear the side of the road would sometimes haphazardly with their machine on any given year lop the top off and that would please me. “There!” I’d say to the horrible thing.

Then the dog-strangling vine came and gardening of any sort took on an air of misery. And then I got quite ill and so the wicked weed went it’s wicked weed way for awhile. I would still lament it’s growth so ridiculously misplaced even for a weed thing, half on and off the slope to the road with its jumbly moth-eaten greenery lacking any symmetry of form. On the days when I was feeling better I would make an effort to dig out the dog-strangling vine around the thing so that it looked somewhat like a presentable if poorly chosen plant.

The summer when George had died and the silence of my soul came and turned my very being into a numb and broken thing; that summer was not even summer to me. It was just what it was. I would sit looking out at the sweep of trees and sky and feel nothing. Nothing made sense. Nothing at all.

Outside, the weed grew taller and the man who was clearing out the dog-strangling vine came into the house and handed me a perfect apple. One perfect green apple. And I said, “where ever did you get the apple?” And he told me it was from the apple tree on the front by the side of the road. It had produced an apple, my wild wicked weed… one perfect apple. No more. No less. So I went out and looked and there it was… my wild wicked weed grown tall into an apple tree. And me, a country girl, hadn’t even figured it out. Me, the one sent out with baskets to collect apples in the orchard up the road as a child. Me. I did not see what I should have seen.

Sometimes the demons that we fight. Sometimes the battles and the judgment and the struggles turn out to be a blessing. Sometimes we even forget that what we knew once can be forgotten and life may be a re-learning. Sometimes there are unexpected graces and they have no reason for happening. They simply do. This is what the wicked weed taught me.

2018-07-07T14:29:00.000-04:00

The 1001 Things List

When I was really at the point of my darkest despair in my grief I had stopped eating. I was barely functioning. I went to the doctor and insisted something was wrong with me because I couldn’t eat. I had no appetite whatsoever and that had never happened in my lifetime before. But the tests came back normal. I realized I’d better see a therapist because a person has to eat.

This year, on the anniversary of George’s death I went there again. The dark place and there was a part of me that rebelled. So I wrote a list of 10 things that made me happy because surely to heavens this kind of pain has to have a balance. I took it to my therapist. He said make it a list of 100. I made a list of 100. It was becoming very difficult. I figured I had to restrict how many times I mentioned food like escargots in garlic butter sauce and how many times I mentioned every animal I and my friends owned. He said make it a list of 1000.

And that is where I am. A list of 1001 things that make me happy. Mine took months. See something happens to you. You start spending the day looking for something to write on your list that makes you happy. It's the darndest thing. In the middle of despair.

I started out monosyllabic. By the time I'd finished that had changed. I started out with me. By the time I'd finished I realized it was about others. I started out with grey and ended up with God, however you can conceive he/she/it/they/them/zem to be. This is this antidote to this world we are living in. Watch the news: write something for your list. Someone maliciously attacks you: write something for your list. Wonder how you're gonna make it through the day? read your list.

When the whining starts, which it will at around about the 212th thing on your list, remember I'm not asking you to sail the high seas in a raft in a hurricane. I'm just saying build a raft for when you end up in the high seas in a hurricane.

This is my gift to you. Because sometimes, happy as you may be right now, sometimes life is a nightmare. I know you know that. So you go back and you read your list. By the time you’ve finished your list you have found so much gratitude for this life, I can’t begin to tell you. You are to make a list of 1001 things that make you happy. And it will be hard! You’d think it would be easy but around about 437 you start listing TV characters…. Don't give up. My advice. Start with a colour. Green makes me happy.

Love to you all.

2018-04-05T15:24:00.002-04:00

I hope to start a website soon. Stay tuned.
Peace always.

2018-03-28T14:56:00.000-04:00

BEYOND FACEBOOK: Reality Refugees--Born to the Dream

Of course the child would be born on a cold night which turned snow to ice pellets to rain and sleet. Before Easter he was born to this world. He is the first native-born Canadian in the family and he is bright with newness, pink plump with a full head of hair. He is a gift. He is a promise. He is beautiful.

His mother is glorious with her accomplishment with that rare vulnerable essence that speaks of the ultimate strength of women caught like light at her eyes. She is also exhausted.

The father of course is proud as punch and I left them as he was holding the baby against his skin. They ask that now of new fathers when the mother is momentarily preoccupied. The father’s skin is warmer than the mothers and the baby needs that warmth. The little guy was quiet. I think he will be a studious sort. But his wide mouth looks ready for the smile of bedevilment.

We in Canada cannot appreciate the level of community that this family left behind. In Syria before the war the mother at this point would be surrounded by intergenerational family, women clucking and cooing and handling things; the cooking, the cleaning, the comforting, the stories. In Canada, technology attempts to replace that with Skype to relatives back home. I felt a great sadness that without knowledge of Arabic I had so little to offer. I tried to explain to the father at one point that his baby now “is.” He is the ultimate expression of the verb “to be” and present tense even.

The father has found work. He is happy.

He has also registered for a month long evening course in English in Ottawa. He is a determined man. In Quebec no such courses seem to exist in this region. Politics and reality sometimes don’t agree. My hour weekly simply cannot bridge the knowledge gap he has to leap. It’s a big leap.

Simply looking at written Arabic shows us how big a leap it is. Their beautiful almost pictorial language is full of nuance and meaning. The letters of our alphabet to them is as if we were presented with Arabic and being asked to learn it in six months to a year. And your very livelihood depends on it. The father insists that Arabic is far far easier. The way they handle past, present and future seems interesting from what I can grasp. The verbs don’t change but the addition of yesterday or tomorrow informs the verb. I’m quite fuzzy on that. Their language seems beyond my capacity beginning with the sound that comes from the throat. I laugh with the young son because he keeps insisting I learn that sound. And I’m utterly hopeless. Similar to my husband’s Polish, where 6 consonants in a row is simply inconceivable to an English speaker. I am, if nothing else, a source of great amusement trying to speak either Polish or Arabic. I’m absolutely certain I’m pronouncing it exactly as I hear it. But I am not. It is humbling to be a source of great gales of laughter. I suppose. There is no place for pride when learning another language. But humour. That wins every time.

Driving home in the sleet on the empty streets along Verendrye avenue I work at paying attention to the bright red lights and green lights shimmering on surfaces and catching at the dull slush of the road. I know I have to concentrate because my mind waxes philosophical. And birth of a child ranks right up there with musings. What world will he have? Will he grow up strong, tolerant, wise? Will this country embrace him and all that he will be? Are we a tolerant multi-cultural nation? Will he understand that? Will he love Canada geese sweeping high in the sky? No matter where he might go in this world he will always be ours. He was born here.

Welcome to the world child. It’s not perfect but it is yours.

2018-03-21T16:33:00.001-04:00

Life: It’s meaning

There was this thing. I found it one day in my less than stellar wanderings attempting to spring clean. It was a metal thing painted blue, about four feet long and it had a thingamajig at the top connected to a doohickymabob and at the other end there was a crooked whatchamacallit. I had no idea what it was. But we had it. It was there. It must have been a thing worth having at some point by someone in our life. So I took this thingamajig dookhickymabob to Himself and put it on his lap and said: “What is this?” And he examined it closely, turning it about in his hands and holding it up to the light and then putting it on the floor. Finally he looked up at me and said, “I have no bloody idea.” So we both looked at this thing with great reverie. And so then I eventually said, “Should we keep this thing?” And he said, “Well, we don’t know what it is. We don’t know what it is for. We don’t know where it came from and so, Yes, we should keep this thing.” And I agreed. And this was the conclusion we came to. Because it was the obvious conclusion to us.

So I would occasionally come across this thing and I would sneak it under George’s pillow so when he went to bed he’d find it. Sometimes I put it in the shower stall at night knowing he would come across it in the morning. Once I put it on the car seat. And once I put it inside his winter coat. One day I snuck it inside my jacket into Giant Tiger and put it in the sock bin before George made his way down the aisle to the sock bin. The unexpected. I did this just because it was bloody absurd. It became a game to play all our years together. Putting this thing where it was least expected. He would hide it after my prank and it would take me a few weeks to find it again. But I always did. I would drag it out of the back of the linen closet and put it on top of the wood pile where he would be chopping kindling the next day. Once I wrapped it carefully in a big box and gave it to him as a birthday present. He would look at me with a ragged flat expression and sigh. And I would do my triumphant smirk. And then we would laugh and the game would begin again.

There are people who are reading this who are trying in their head to figure out what that thing was. I can see their brains logically reconstructing and supposing and concluding. There are others who can’t understand the whole point of this and why we didn’t throw the doohickymabob out. And then there are the other ones who realize how funny it is. But most importantly there are those who truly understand how extraordinarily funny it is. Those are my kind of people.

Life is a doohickymabob: We don’t know what it is for. We don’t know where it came from. We decide to keep it because it is there. We don’t know what to do with it. We hide it when we can. Sometimes we pull it out and play with it and laugh. It always keeps turning up somewhere when we least expect it.

There are many people who think that we are living in a hell world now. That we have culminated our entire human history into an amorphous mass of conflicting angry and righteous opinions without sense. That we have descended into a theatre of opinion and rationalizations. Some think we are in the post-Ideological age, or on the cusp of robotic dominance, or creatures now reduced to living in a meaningless universe. We are none of these things. We are simply absurd. Meaningfully absurd in a foolish kind of way. And in our deepest being we know this. That our lives are a bitter irony leading to our biggest fear, that of death. That we are, after all is said and done, insignificant. I’m going to tell you something. We "are" insignificant. We are deeply absurdly utterly insignificant. It is this fact alone that makes life worth living. How in hell else can we not find that deeply worth living for? It’s extremely funny. And the search for our own significance is the funniest thing we ever will do. How many times do we find ourselves sitting inside the shambles of our deepest failures and darkest despondency desperately attempting to at least pretend to look like we’re not bloody idiots? How many times do we rush out to buy a book to teach us how not to look like bloody idiots? Or take up causes so we can join all the other bloody idiots trying not to look like idiots? We are all idiots. There are no exceptions.

The only difference between the bloody idiocy of our lives up until now has been the number of choices we have to mitigate our own idiocy. We have a lot more choices now. We’re standing at the Starbucks counter of life looking at the menus trying to pick the right coffee. No one ever chooses the coconut latino raspberry latte. Because nobody in their right mind would choose the coconut latino raspberry latte. This is why you have to try the coconut latino raspberry latte. George taught me that. It’s not the fact of life we need consider. It is the fun we can make of it. And the ultimate answer to life is the love that guides us in that direction.

In memory of my George. August 24, 1953 - March 21, 2016

I will always love you.

2018-03-20T16:39:00.000-04:00

BEYOND FACEBOOK: Reality Refugees--Lunar Terminator

The clear cold night of March stuns the sky with its moon. The waning crescent blinding in its beauty. Sometimes when it is particularly clear you can still see the outline of the shadowed part of the moon; as it was when I drove home from Hull. Stubbornly in the way of the full-on brightness of the sun, the earth itself was playing puppet shadow on the wall as we did with flashlights and fingers as children.

Between the bright dazzle of the crescent and the false shadow is a boundary line called the lunar terminator. It is the space of the moons hemispheres that separates the darkness from the illumination. It is in between the dark and the light. It could go either way. For some reason teaching my Syrian family English makes me philosophical in a foolish kind of way I suppose. The crescent symbol of Islam comes to mind. And that mostly round shape of the shadow of the earth echoed in the round belly of a woman whose child is taking his time to come into this world. His life is a promise. It could go either way.

Back months ago in the dark of winter I met a family and we could not talk to each other. And the slow sometimes painful weekly sessions stretched ahead of us. A mutual goal. A crucial goal far distant. And then one day you discover you are speaking to each other in English. You can’t touch that feeling when you realize it is happening. It is beyond words. I don’t think I ever saw a man work so hard at something. He’s devoted. And, it turns out, he’s bloody funny.

Despite never having taught English as a second language in my life I think I can safely say that the people you are teaching teach you how to teach them. This family just wants to talk. They want to share their life. They want to explain what happened to them that week, a year ago, when they were born. They want to know about our lives. They want to communicate. They want normal. And nothing beyond the love they have of their family is normal. And that, for everything there is in this world, is their saving grace. That, and apparently a wicked sense of humour.

In our last session, I had to explain that the past tense of buy is bought and not buyed. I explained that most verbs can be made into the past tense by adding ed because they were regular but SOME verbs are irregular. This ended up as there are two types of verbs: Verbs and Crazy Verbs. The father took this glumly. For he felt very encouraged with regular verbs. This week I was explaining the Crazy Verb “To Have.” He looked at me wickedly smiling and said, “Past is Syria” “Future don’t know.” Now Canada. ONLY Present. He said he only would learn present tense then. “I did not walk to store. I am walking to store.” And so, he brilliantly articulated every single philosophical theory in a nutshell. He was going to live in the present moment. It was easier he decided. And we laughed like fools. Who was I to argue with that?

I did not write last week about my session with my Syrians because it was a dark subject. Suffice it to say, health care in Quebec is bordering on Third World. At 39 weeks pregnant, the wife has not seen the same doctor twice. They are all giving some conflicting information and mostly it is “okay, out you go, next patient please.” They can’t find a family doctor. It is not the fault of the doctors but a ridiculous unforgiveable provincial government that fails its people miserably in this department. Consistency of care is key for everyone but critically so for new immigrants who speak neither English nor French. Their world has already been traumatized and rendered bewildering. Negotiating Quebec’s healthcare system becomes a reminder both of disenfranchisement and oddly the better health care they had in Syria before this debacle, this horror, this proxy war began. Consistent meaningful care after trauma needs to be a priority for new immigrants. If we really mean what we say when we “open our arms” to these desperate people. Particularly for photo ops. Talk, as they say, is cheap. Put your money where your mouth is. These are some idioms I could teach. If I wanted to get all political, which I am not going to do. So far anyway.

2018-02-26T22:46:00.000-05:00

BEYOND FACEBOOK: Reality Refugees--Scatterlings of Syria

How sublime a day it was today because you can taste the spring in the air waiting. We will know it is time when the Canada geese begin their symmetry in the sky and clutter the winds with their raspy singing. The moon in early evening sits high in the sky to remind us of eternity and our insignificance, while down here on the planet we scramble and play and make war and all the voices of all the human beings that live here are just whispers to the universe. We struggle and we love and we play and we die. We are each a singular journey sweet with memory, inattentive to the present and wistfully dreaming to an end we do not know.

I cannot find the world anymore sometimes for it horrifies me. I have to force myself to sit back and watch the children play and hear the giggle of babies and touch the soft fur on my fuzzy little dog to re-remember that it is not all bad. It is not all bad. That there is laughter in the hope and there is hope in the pain. And not everything is forever. And why would we want it to be?

I read this week the Guardian newspaper from the UK that "It has been a quieter than average week in Syria. More than 400 people were killed in the unimaginably awful siege of eastern Ghouta, most of them civilians. But in the seven years since the regime of Bashar al-Assad set in motion the Syrian civil war, almost 500,000 people have died – well over 1,000 a week.” My mind understands. My heart does not. My spirit cannot accept this but that is what it is.

I am apolitical. Mostly perhaps from ignorance. I don’t know who is right and who is wrong. I don’t know what in all honesty is going on over there. I know that all of the various entities playing out their games of war have all, each and every one, promised to protect and save the people. They’re not doing a very good job. Not one of them. What does the little child covered in dust from a nearby bomb too frightened and shocked to even cry say to these leaders about peace? What could this child say? It makes no sense. It is irrational to the heart. One small child. One very big world of rationalizations. Greed. Scrambling. Survival. Profit. Democracy. Power. At what price? At what price? And for who? These terrorized people?

It feels like, it looks like, it is quite arguably genocide.

The Syrians are left as refugees in flight, dropped into bits and pieces of places all over the world for those who will take them. Scatterlings. They bring with them no doubt fear, suspicion, anger and pain. This kind of stuff is not fixed overnight. I was asked why I was choosing to teach these refugees English and I say that I want this family, just this family, to know that we do care and that they are now safe. That they will not be hurt, that their children will grow up to a country that will not physically harm them in any way. That they can breathe again. It is a hard thing to explain if they have not known it for quite awhile. Perhaps they think that is just a dream. It is hard to know.

I am aware that the father in my refugee family has experienced torture and imprisonment. I don’t know by who or why or where and do not ask. The story does not go with this funny extroverted gentle man who so obviously loves his wife and children well. They tell me that their country is like a pizza. It is being cut into slices. It is crazy says the father. I agree. Is there anything crazier than this I don’t know? But that is politics and I am there to teach them what the word breathe means so that when the doctors tell the mother in labor to breathe she will know what they are saying. I say it also in French so she will understand.

This little child will be a big baby. He is still not quite ready to come out into this world. I want to say to him that it is okay now. You are safe here. I, for one, will not let you be isolated, judged or alienated. As long as I can and I have no idea how long that will be, I will teach you in what small way I can. And if not you, then at least your parents. Some of the refugees in Quebec, if they learn enough English will find work in Ontario where there is more opportunity and will possibly move back. But as long as I can, and with great hope I want them to know that not all people judge and/or discriminate. That they are welcome here. That people in Canada have good hearts and don’t wish them harm. I want to believe that.

These refugees don’t necessarily bring fear, suspicion, anger and pain. They may have all that. They also have strength, strong will, intelligence and fortitude. They also have laughter and kindness and love. I think this little baby that will be born will grow up and watch the Canada geese fly overhead perhaps all the days of his life. I want him to smile when he does.