The Write Side of the Page

2012-01-17T10:52:00.000-04:00

The Times and Transcript has made its online copy a "pay to see" service. So I am going to resume posting my columns on this site after the fact.

FAITH TODAY - Times and Transcript - December 2011

Most of us self-identify in some way. We are happy today, or sad; we are young, or old; we are male, or female.

Some of those identifications get thrown onto us, like whether we are part of the lower economic trenches or the middle class, or wealthy. When people say someone is poor, they have an image in their mind, and whether or not you fit into that, you are labeled.

Some of them are classic genetic differences that we cannot really do anything about, like being left handed; or fitting more into the world as an introvert or an extrovert.

So you are religious or atheist, right?

The best line ever in my education was this story about one of our professors. He was teaching a first year religious studies class at university; those classes are almost always filled with hundreds of curious students by the way and one very angry young man confronted the teacher after a lecture.

“I don’t know why I’m even here,” he said, “I don’t believe in God!”

To which the wise professor replied, “Tell me about this God, perhaps I don’t believe in them either.”

This is what always gets to me when I read books like Christopher Hitchins “God is not great” where he argues against Christians as being silly. Well, I have been ordained for 16 years, I went to church for a couple of decades before that, and I have undertaken four university degrees in religious studies; and you know what, I think the Christians he is talking about are silly too.

He picked one narrow definition of someone who is religious and attacked them as the stand in for everyone.

Pick any issue of the faith that you are concerned about – were we created or did we spontaneously erupt from protoplasm, for example, and there will be people in the church, the synagogue, the mosque or the temple who will believe every single scientific and philosophical variation of this issue possible.

In other words, religious people are just as human and just as different as anyone.

I guess I mention this for two reasons: the first is that when I say I am a Christian, I am often judged, and judged in a way that is not very accurate of who I am. Most Christians for example, seem to argue I am not.

Which is neither here nor there, just that we do not all come from a cookie cutter mould.

The second reason is that one of the things that has brought religion to its cast off state is this precise problem. People in the church think everyone has to be the same, or think the same, and act the same. We assume when people come to worship they are all looking for one thing.

Think about it, for the majority of people worship is: 200 year old music, liturgical moments where the leader does something almost magical, prayers that sound the same as they always have.

Now, on the plus side, tradition evokes emotion and allows us to easily enter into the experience. On the negative side, they are all cookie cutter moments designed for one type of person.

Within the pews of my church as an example, I have six generations of people. Some of them grew up listening to swing music, some to hippy folk music, and some to techno pop. What music should I play to inspire an emotional response from them?

There are people out there who firmly believed that moral issues like abortion, divorce, homosexuality and the like are so bad we should not even talk about them; while the people younger than me cannot even fathom why these should be issues.

And when it comes to faith my parents grew up in a world where a Catholic would not talk to a Protestant; by the time I was maturing that seemed silly, but there was no way a Muslim or a Jew or Buddhist was right about anything. For those born today they will not be able to fathom why we thought there was such a big difference between any religions.

Whether we are talking about church or culture, the one thing we need to do as soon as possible is realize that almost everyone is different. So let’s respect that and incorporate it into how we do the things we do.

Then, perhaps, we can turn this world around.

Beyond Theism

2010-12-05T14:34:00.000-04:00

FAITH TODAY - Published May 15th 2010

I wish everyone would go out and read the book God at 2000.

This nifty little book by Morehouse Publishing is a series of lectures given at the University of Oregon by some of the best of today’s religious thinkers from our three sister religions; Islam, Judaism and Christianity. It is an easy read, because the question was one that we can all relate to. “Who is God for you? What does that mean to you?”

So there is very little academic double speak, or contemplation of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; instead, we find Marcos Borg, or Karen Armstrong, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, or Desmond Tutu all talking about their own personal faith in ways that we can get.

Since this is a work about modern Christian thought; the challenging thing for us to hear is that none of them see God as anything like how we saw “him” while we were growing up in Sunday School.

It is strange, isn’t it? How the way we see life, the universe and everything changes all the time, but the way we see religion, or our faith, or God, sometimes seems like it is stuck in Molasses.

So who is God to you?

The closest thing I think I have ever come to a personal definition is the concept of The Force from Star Wars (the old Star Wars, before there were microscopic God like aliens altering the fabric of the Force). This is not as wacky as it sounds; I don’t know if George Lucas was channelling God when he came up with this or what, but the force is a concept of divinity that actually makes sense to the modern post enlightenment, scientific, cynical, questioning people we have become.

I am not alone, I am connected to all things, and all things are connected to me. There is an invisible bond that has power, that inspires, that empowers, and that changes the fabric of the universe and my interaction with it. Consider that this force is neutral but can become either light or dark, and one chooses how they are going to interact with it becoming either Jedi or Sith.

Traditionally we call this Force the Logos; the Greek word for the creative Word of God. Which was in the beginning and all things came into being through it. Jesus became so capable of channelling the force that he was the living example of it, the Word Incarnate...

Think it is strange to use a Science Fiction movie to define God? Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, one of the greatest living scholars of Judaism, defines life as a video game:

It is a game that is played in a virtual environment we call “Earth” and has five rules:

1. You never know when the game is going to start.

2. You cannot ever stop playing the game once you start.

3. Just to keep you on your toes each player is awarded random and undeserved gifts and handicaps as they play.

4. Points are awarded whenever you discern that life is about more than you as a player, or whenever you catch glimpses of the divine.

5. Everything is connected to everything else.

Which brings us full circle to the force; and the modern concept of God that is actually not really mine, although I have applied it to Star Wars; but rather, the way a lot of people are seeing God and our relationship with God these days.

There has been a lot made about all these famous Atheists writing about how God doesn’t exist. The problem is, they suffer from the same thing that is stopping a lot of people from coming in our doors, and they are trapped in a thousand year old way of seeing God that just doesn’t make sense anymore.

I encourage you to read the book, to think about your faith, and to accept that God is beyond any way we can possibly explain it.

On Burning Qur'ans

2010-09-13T12:16:00.006-03:00

This is an alternative column for this week - I did not get time to write it and get it published before my due date... so... for your consideration....

The news this week had a disturbing story for those of us who call ourselves Christian.

It seems there is a pastor in Florida who has convinced his church that it is a good idea to hold a book burning on September 11^th of this year. There is one book in particular which has been targeted: the Quran, the holy Bible of the Islamic Faith, passed down word for word to the prophet Mohammed in a vision.

The guy’s name is Terry Jones; and he and his church were unknown until this pronouncement. Now there are 11,600 news stories about him according to the Google news search. Oh, 11601 because I just gave him another one.

What would I have to do to up my Google count from 1400 to 14,000? Maybe convince my followers to drink Kool-Aid laced with arsenic? Perhaps I should lead everyone down to the rain forest and start sending out mysteriously ominous twitter messages? Or how about stockpile automatic rifles and get a few more wives?

I bet those things would get me in the news.

You know what won’t get me in the news? This week in church I will use, at the suggestion of another minister on Facebook, the first Surah of the Quran; the opening prayer of the Muslim faith, as the opening prayer for my congregation.

This week I will give a loonie to someone on the street who asks for it.

This week I will listen when someone tells me why they are having a bad day.

This week I will quietly sit in my office and pray for Terry Jones.

It is not simply that it is a publicity stunt; it is that it works. We eat this stuff up; and what we forget is that “news,” by definition, is anything out of the ordinary. It only makes headlines if it almost never happens. A plane crashes, a politician has an affair, an innocent bystander is murdered, quintuplets are born, and Santa Claus goes on strike... this is news, simply because it almost never happens, or happens so infrequently that it surprises us.

Our minds play tricks on us. We read news and categorize it as universal. A rogue wave hits a cruise ship and we will never, ever, go on a cruise. A plane is flown into the World Trade Centre and all Muslims are terrorists. A crazy nobody in a small town church says God told him to burn the Quran and all Christians are hate mongering lunatics.

It makes me want to resign. It makes me think I could do a heck of a lot more good separating myself from a fold that is broad enough to include Mr. Jones. But then.... But then... he wins.

As the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote almost two centuries ago, "Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.” The theatre piece for which he wrote those words, called "Almansor," was addressing the Inquisition's burning of the Quran. In 1933, university students in Heine's own beloved homeland burned his books, along with many others. They burned people soon after.

But then, we are talking about a couple of crazy national socialists who formed a political party during a time when Germany was reeling from defeat in a World War. They played up nationalism, and hid a lot of what they were truly doing.

75 years later we still talk about “The Germans” as if any but a chosen few actually knew what the work camps were all about.

This is always my fear. This is why I want to scream when I hear about some crazy Christian proclamation which is racism wrapped up in religious language.... we are not like that. The spiritual wisdom we all received by our connection to the divine, whether we wrote it down in the Quran, I Ching, Baghavad Ghita, or Bible all says the same thing – Love will save the day.

Anyone who says anything different is lying. So say we all.

Are 'hipster Christians' really that different?

2010-09-13T09:43:00.001-03:00

FAITH TODAY Published Saturday September 11th, 2010

Have you ever heard of Hipster Christians?

Me neither. That is, until this week when I all of a sudden realized it is everywhere down in the United States, thanks to some American preachers I follow on Twitter.

According to the press, admittedly, some of their own press, Hipster Christianity is where church and cool collide. Catchy phrase, that.

The problem is, I have no idea what they are on about.

Here are some qualifications for being a "Hipster:" You might have an artistic temperament, or play in a garage band; you might have piercings or a tattoo; you like movies, books and music that is well respected and well, normal; you don't listen to Christian Contemporary music; don't like political evangelists, or televangelists; and don't think people are going to hell.

I have to tell you that I have never been called hip in my life. I sometimes thought I was cool, but certainly not in a hip way. I think you would like me though. I am also very much a mainstream protestant minister - and have been one for 16 years now.

My favourite band is Third Eye Blind. My favourite movies are the same as most of yours - although I am a guy reared on Monty Python, so I have some stupid humour problems. Love Steve Carell, for example.

I read graphic novels; my favourites are Planetary and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I play a level 80 Paladin in World of Warcraft online.

My ear was pierced three times until I was 30. I have a tattoo and want another one. I dream of owning a Harley.

I have mostly dressed as Dracula for Halloween and have read and seen every vampire movie there is.

Oh, and I write science fiction for a hobby.

I also visit in hospitals, council people with problems, volunteer my time for organizations involved in change, sit with the dying, mourn with the widows, give to the church and World Vision and the World Wildlife Fund.

I hope you see the point.

Almost every one of the people I know is a Christian. We all drink. We all play Xbox. We all can't wait for Harry Potter to come out. Half of us love comic books and the other half think we are stupid for loving comic books.

To me, "Hipster Christian" is a definition of normal person.

In what far-fetched corner of the galaxy is someone who likes movies, songs and stories that are critically and artistically judged among the best of the best some strange sort of new evolution of humanity?

The labelling has to stop.

I don't even understand why we have Protestants and Catholics anymore. The things we fought about back at the end of the Middle Ages certainly don't matter anymore, let alone the 10 million denominations - and now we are subdividing denominations according to fads?

People do not come to church because they think the people in church are not like them, plain and simple.

Jesus spent his life trying to be "just some guy who understands what you are going through" and he changed the world for the better because of it.

The truth is those inside the church are exactly like those on the outside.

They make mistakes, they make stupid choices, they spend too much time watching TV and eat junk food too much of the time. By creating a whole movement that says "hey, there are Christians who are relevant, who are hip..." you are implicitly stating that the bulk of Christianity is irrelevant and anachronistic.

Which is a lie.

Jesus was a social engineer who lost his life because of his politics. He was not trying to get people into Heaven. He was not trying to leave the world behind. He was trying to introduce religious values into everyday life.

Pray - because it connects you to something greater than yourself. Be humble - you are not the creator of your destiny, the universe is. Love - everyone is connected and we all need each other. Respect - there but for the grace of God.

You get the idea. Stop imagining me as something I am not. Those who are religious, they are pro-human, pro-love, and possibly the community you are looking for, hip or not.

Evolution

2010-09-02T14:36:00.001-03:00

Religion Today - Published July 24th 2010

Anyone who picked up this month’s National Geographic would have found a fascinating read on human evolution; and the somewhat shocking discovery of human remains from over 4 million years ago.

Of course, there are those that also argue the world is only 6000 years old; plus change.

Apparently it is some sort of test of faith to believe that the definition of “truth” is severely limited to being written down in history.

I had a High School history teacher who once told us that history is recorded by the victors. By which he was trying to say that the people who sit down and write the history books only tell one side of the story, theirs...

The Bible does in fact contain “a history.” That history has to be understood in two ways, however; first, it is a history told for a reason, it is the history of our religious development as Christians... so a lot is left out. Secondly, it is a history written by the people who saw everything from one side, theirs. One would get a very different history of the Middle East by reading anything written by Canaanites, or Egyptians, or Romans.

I mention this because that whole 6000 year thing comes from the fact that the Bible records, give or take, some 6000 years of the desert trials and tribulations of a particular band of nomads who trace their roots back to the probably real Abraham and Sarah and the mythical archetypes of Adam and Eve.

The only thing that is actually six thousand years old is our ability to write.

And since most of us do not have very long memories, no one wrote about Ardi, the slightly shorter than four foot female of the “Ardipithecus Ramidus” branch of humanity. She wasn’t that far away from Israel, after all, being born and living out her short life in northern Ethiopia.

Evolutionary history can now be traced back conclusively through three periods of human development over 6 million years. For the last two million we have been Homo Erectus, pretty much what we are now, large brain, tool using mammals with opposable thumbs. For the two million before that we were Australopithecus with longer legs, larger chewing teeth, and a bit more facial hair. And then, for as far back as we have discovered before that, we were Ardipithicus and hung out in trees as well as walked, lived in the woods, and ate plants and animals.

As near as they can tell, it was 8 million years ago that humans and chimps diverged.

By the way, it was as far back as 160,000 years ago that we became religious, thought about death, and earned the title Homo Sapiens... the thinking person. They know this because they have found a child’s grave in which the body was prepared for death rather than just disposed of.

So, a whole group of people out there will tell me that I am just believing stuff that was made up by scientists with some bizarre plan to discredit religion. But seriously, why would they do that? What is there to gain in saying that we have been here a long time? What is there to lose in saying we have been religious and believing in God for some 154,000 years longer than the Bible talks about?

The Bible is not a science textbook; and science and religion are not at odds. In fact, religious scholars were the only scientists for most of the history of our planet; and most scientists today are religious.

Those that say they are atheists are probably just so fed up with people who read the Bible wrong and try to enforce their views through violence... unlike the person they are supposed to be following Jesus, who believed in everything the Jews, Greeks and Roman’s knew; and just realized there was more we did not know.

Religion will die out or become irrelevant if it continues to fight against the truths that God has opened up through scientists. It is time to start seeing the world for what it really is, and living faithfully in it.

Summer Sabbath

2010-09-02T14:36:00.000-03:00

Faith Today - published 19th June 2010

The natural rhythm of life is an interesting thing.

Summer is virtually upon us and it has brought with it a certain different pace of life; or at least a different set of activities.

I often wonder if those who live in the Polynesian Islands see life as being more constant than we do. I suspect they do, as they do not have to deal with the vagaries of summer following Spring following Winter. Or at least, I suspect they follow a completely different set of rhythms.

Of course, we are Nordic people with a limited growing season and an even more limited outdoor pool season. So we know life has rhythms, we see them every day as we watch flowers spring up, wither, and return to the ground.

For some reason we fail to see this as part of our spirituality – we fail to see that this is the way the world is intended to be.

Those rhythms are also present in the human body and the human condition.

My legs ache almost half of the time now that I am over forty. My ability to compete in reflex based video games also seems to be waning. Of course, I am gaining some wisdom and stability and perseverance to overcome these bodily defects; I suppose I should see it as a trade off, r at least accept it as part of the natural rhythm of life.

Passion wanes and re-ignites over time as well. It is a constant ebb and flow of rhythm that changes daily whether you are talking about passion for your loved one, your chosen career, or a particular ice cream.

This too is related to our faith.

This is something I think we have lost when we became mostly urban, mostly consumed with career, mostly over-rushed people. Any rhythm in our life that could be called natural has been pushed to the background by the artificial rhythm of 24 hour availability, 60 hour work weeks, 10 minute family times, artificial lighting, and time shifting PVR cable... any number of things that make it so that we control the rhythm and no longer follow the rhythm of nature and the world.

In my last column I compared God to the Force from Star Wars. In essence what I am talking about is the original Christian doctrine of Logos the Greek word for the creative power or spirit of the Universe. You see the universe functions according to rhythms and progressions that have to do with life and death, high energy and low energy, movement and entropy.

One ancient writer famously coined it thus: “for everything there is a season, and a time for everything...”

In a little over two weeks my church will close down, people will be off at the cottage, or visiting relations, or hanging on the beach. Hopefully some of them will visit our sister churches if it is rainy on a Sunday morning. Hopefully some will head to Synagogue or Mosque; a contemporary service at Allison or something at the Wesleyan church.

Perhaps not though as summer is a time when t he rhythms slow down and allow us to be focused on rest, relaxation, family, and sunshine.

And I guess the point of all this is that I think that summer and doing less is exactly what we were created for; and exactly how we get in touch with our true selves and commune with God.

In old fashioned religious terms we are talking about the Sabbath.

I don’t believe the Sabbath is Sunday. I don’t believe it is Saturday or sun-down Friday to sun-down Saturday either for that matter. I believe Sabbath is any time we accept and live the natural rhythm of life and become one with God.

Sabbath can be the ten minute coffee break where we find ourselves staring at beautiful fluffy clouds, or the week off fishing in the woods.

I encourage you over the next few months to build Sabbath, and the appreciation of life itself, and therefore God into your rhythms. There is no better time than summer to reignite your passion for the life you are supposed to live.

A little bit of doubt goes a long way

2010-04-28T11:29:00.000-03:00

FAITH TODAY -Published Saturday April 10th, 2010

There are a few undervalued heroes in the biblical story -- and my contention is that Thomas gets a bad rap.

Here is how the day after Easter unfolds, at least in John's Gospel; the disciples are afraid for their lives, and hiding in a locked room. Jesus shows up, not having knocked, and convinces them that he is really back from the grave. They all rejoice and are happy and unlock the door.

What happens next is a little sketchy, but we know two things: First, Thomas was not there, and does not believe them. Second, within a week they have let fear get the best of them and are back behind locked doors.

I mean, it is not like these guys are the heroes of the day; even after supposedly encountering the risen Christ, they are still too afraid to do anything about it. And they turn on Thomas. As if it would be any different if the situation were reversed: If Thomas had been alone when Jesus showed up and he tried to convince them all of resurrection, they would have called him crazy, right?

Strange story; and Thomas goes down in history as "the doubter" when, in fact, he is just being realistic.

In fact, according to the story, Jesus himself doesn't berate Thomas, simply shows him the wounds and nods...

Since this story was written anywhere from 50-100 years after the events of Jesus life, and since Thomas has already gone on to be a hero, along with the rest of them; I'm thinking it is not really meant to be history -- it is meant to illustrate something about human nature.

We all have doubts. We all have fears. We all hide from the unknown. There is an opportunity with God's help to move beyond this.

It is not just Thomas who has a bad reputation; it is the whole concept of doubt, which is unfortunate.

Doubt is a safety valve for the human imagination. Doubt is the driving force for scientific research. Doubt allows faith to become praxis, which is a fancy way of saying action.

Somewhere along the way a lot of Christians got it mixed up, and doubt became the enemy of faith. To have faith became the exact same as "believing without doubt in..."

So, if you believe the Bible is entirely without error and you have no doubts about that, you are faithful.

If you believe that Jesus died on the cross to save you without doubt, you are faithful. If you believe that God created the world in exactly six days out of nothing, you are faithful. It was not so long ago that being faithful had nothing to do with belief. It had to do with the way you acted.

There is biblical precedence for this as well. Almost every prophet, major and minor, was only thought to speak on behalf of God after a good majority of their prophecies seemed to work out. It was the actions that determined the reliability of the witness, not some confession of faith.

That's the thing. A whole lot of people show up in church on holy days like Easter and never darken the door otherwise -- but do so as fully and faithfully as they can; and a whole lot of other people come every Sunday and mouth their parts.

I am not pointing any fingers here: I just think we should all keep in mind, even those of us who would never think of going to church that what really counts when you get down to the nitty-gritty is what you do from Monday to Saturday; and not simply what you do on Sunday morning.

2010-02-03T17:14:00.003-04:00

We're all connected and we should all help

2010-01-26T11:13:00.000-04:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Tuesday January 19th, 2010

A friend pointed out that no matter how many times they show starving children from Africa on television, it will never have the same affect on him as the SPCA ad where abused animals are featured to the soundtrack of Sarah McLaughlin.

I suspect he is not alone. Nor is this specific illustration the only one it applies to. I find myself really, really upset when I hear about the mistreatment of animals. Not only that, but if I see something in the movies where an animal is tortured or killed, I react much more strongly than if it was a human being.

I don't like seeing human beings tortured, or killed, or starved, or drowned, or done in by any other violent act. I am not trying to say that I am OK with humans being tortured but not animals; I am simply saying that my visceral, "oh that is terrible" reaction is stronger when I see it happen to animals.

When I stop and think about this, I wonder why it is true.

There are a number of possibilities. Perhaps we have been so inundated with the plight of the poor that we no longer really feel anything when we are told someone is starving. Really, tragedy happens almost daily now. There are famines and floods, warfare and corrupt leaders, all of which contribute to the mess we have made of this world.

Some of it is our own fault, like warfare or soil erosion; but too often it is simply fate that sends a Tsunami, or destroys a city with an earthquake.

Don't get me wrong. When we hear of Port-au-Prince and the devastation and destruction they are facing in Haiti we do feel sorry for them. Almost everyone does. But it no longer moves us to tears. Nor does the feeling stick with us; I imagine many of you may have already set that bit of news aside by the time you read this column five days later.

So why tears when faced with an SPCA ad? Could it be that somewhere deep down we really do feel that human beings have the possibility of helping themselves; where animals do not? Do we feel more responsible for animals than for other humans?

Well, certainly they seem more helpless, more dependent, and therefore more in need.

But are the people in Haiti not helpless, dependant and in need right now too?

Of course they are.

Is compassion a limited resource? I don't think this is true. So what else stops us from feeling the full extent of tragedies that surround us?

I wonder what television has done to us. Since we have seen everything we can imagine happen on the big and little screen, has it built up a tolerance for real life disaster and violence? Or more pointedly, has it made everything we see seem fake whether it is or not?

I went to see the movie Avatar over the holidays, it was the best movie ever, and one of the things I have told people made it so good was that it was seamless in its integration of animation and real life. I honestly forgot that some characters, animals, and habitats were actually just cartoons. It seemed totally real.

Well, reverse that, if anything I can imagine can be made to look completely real on the screen; then what faculty do I trust in terms of determining credibility?

If you show me a starving girl, is she really starving or just made to look that way? Is she really in Africa or is that a backdrop in Los Angeles? Was that really an earthquake, or is it just some CGI animation? I watched my brother's production company "create" the Halifax Explosion for a movie. Perhaps it was a bit of history, but I also know it can be faked.

Which is not to say I think anyone is faking a natural disaster, or hunger, or pain of any sort. I am talking about our subconscious minds.

Perhaps it is easier to dismiss tragedy because we have seen so much staged tragedy as part of our 'entertainment.' Could that be true?

Is it easier not to think about because somewhere deep inside you suspect you could just change the channel and it would go away?

Here is the thing I have come to realize: tragedy is closer than you think.

People die all around you every day; and most of them were completely unprepared for it.

There is some chance that a hurricane, or earthquake, or tornado, or nuclear accident, or any number of catastrophic things might happen to devastate our part of the world. We should not think so much in terms of us and them, and pretend like we might never be on the receiving end of tragedy.

At the same time, we should work on getting in touch with the actual 'tragic' part of tragedy. Life is short as it is, and to have it ripped away unexpectedly is always an incredibly sad thing. We cannot let the frequency of tragedy, or the artful portrayal of death on television dry up what should be our real feelings.

We are connected to each other. That is true whether you are next door or thousands of miles away. The truth is that we all feel pain and loss, and it is never a good thing. Anything we can do to help one another should be done. At least, it's a start.

AN ANNOUNCEMENT

2010-01-18T15:56:00.003-04:00

Although it may not affect people who only read the online version of my column via this blog: The actual physical column is moving...

From page two Monday
to Page One Tuesday

This site therefore cannot legally contain the article until Wednesdays now. As the Newspaper owns all first day publication rights.

(since monday is the lowest circulation of a weekly paper - this is in fact a bit of a promotion (grin)

Why New Year's resolutions never seem to last

2010-01-11T09:45:00.000-04:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday January 4th, 2010

New Year's resolutions never last long do they?

How many have you broken already?

I have a theory. I wonder if the problem is that most of our resolutions are self centred, and so personal -- and more importantly, so independent -- that we are doomed to failure.

"I am going to stop smoking" or perhaps "I am going to lose weight" or even "I am going to run a marathon" are the types of things most of us say.

We might even get around to personality driven resolutions like "I will be happier" or "I will be a better father," but they are similar to the type I am describing.

And here is where they go wrong; the first word . . . "I."

Do you know that it has really only been over the last 30 years that we as a culture have moved away from the concept of "we" and focused on "I"? That change came about because of the 1960s. That is the simple truth of it.

A lot of people blame the past for a lot of things. I want to make it clear that there are hundreds of things that happened in the 1960s and 1970s that I am fully in favour of and think made society a much better place: the emancipation of women for example, or the civil rights movement and a greater move towards equality. I would even say the Vietnam War protests changed things for the better when they showed us that we can question motivations for government action.

Here is where it fell apart: the 1960s brought to consciousness the philosophical ideal of relativism. Relativism began the slippery slope to individualism. Individualism, well, it destroyed the fabric of society.

In a basic way, relativism is exactly what it sounds like, everything is relative. Which might not sound like much, but do not be fooled; if everything is relative, well, then nothing has any meaning.

There are certain truisms which we say all the time now, such as "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" or "that may be true for you but it is not true for me" that are the hallmarks of relativistic philosophy. It has so invaded our culture that we forget there was another way of seeing things.

For thousands of years philosophers and artists argued that there was such a thing as "beauty" which was universally true -- you could look at something and it would be beautiful. Whether or not you liked it was another thing altogether, but you had to admit it was beautiful. There was no such thing as beauty in the eye of the beholder, in fact, very few people were felt competent enough to judge real beauty; and the majority of people just accepted that a master work was just that, masterfully beautiful.

Same thing with the concept of true; when the folks sat down to draft the American Declaration of Independence that said: "We hold these truths to be self evident . . ." There was no question that everyone would agree it was true that everyone was created equal, that everyone had the same rights to life, and freedom. There were just certain things, certain axioms that were inviolate; no matter who you were or what you thought, they were true.

Relativism changed the focus from universal truth to independent truth. This is true for me; and that is all that matters. So you might think smoking marijuana is bad, but I think it is good, and who are you to tell me what to think? You might think that God exists, or that modern art is interesting, or that chamber music is boring; but in the end your opinion really does not matter to me and I will live my life the way I want to. Period.

Here is a concrete way that this has changed society for the worse: professionals. No matter what you do, most of the people you encounter will think you are doing it wrong if you are not doing it the way they want. Doctors, lawyers, ministers, politicians, dentists, writers, lawn care experts, life guards, waitresses . . . no matter who you are you are consciously questioned and people second guess you.

This is relativism and individualism at its worst. When someone off the street is able to say with confidence, "I don't believe you that it is just the flu, I think it is chicken pox and you are not going to convince me otherwise!" to a doctor and believe that their opinion is just as valid, there is something wrong.

We simply no longer believe that some things are just universally true, which makes it difficult to navigate how to be around other people.

Take that one step further and the focus becomes getting my needs met; sometimes at the cost of the needs of others. What is important to me is of course the most important thing in the universe. So I should get the promotion and the rest of the company be damned. If there is one Pinkie Pie My Little Pony left in the store before Christmas, my kid should get it, even though she has 100 other presents and the father who just missed picking it up is buying the one thing he can afford for his daughter and it is all she asked for and he is crying, and well, tough . . . me first.

And so, relativism has destroyed our society by making us believe that we are more important than we are.

Which is a long way around to telling you why your New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure; you will fail because for some strange reason we all think it is completely up to us to make it work.

"I" cannot do anything alone. "We" can do anything together.

My New Year's resolution is to stop believing I have the power to change myself or anyone else without asking for a lot of help.

Anything is possible!

A resolution everybody can make for 2010

2009-12-31T13:51:00.000-04:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 28th, 2009

Ah the proverbial nothing day.

Christmas is over, the weekend is over, New Years is still a few days away. This is one of the slackest times of the whole year.

Did you take down your lights? This is my personal pet peeve. Everyone begins celebrating Christmas as soon as Halloween is out of the way, and then on Boxing Day it all gets packed up again.

Everyone remembers the 12 days of Christmas, right? Well, day one is Christmas and it lasts until Epiphany, or the eve of, on Jan. 5. That is when we should be celebrating! Christmastide is the season, a little over a week long, that comes after Christmas.

The most popular Christmas song of all times, perhaps because it is one of the oldest, even lays out the presents you should buy for each day. Oh, and in case you did not do the math, if you got everything that they sing about, all those maids a milking and geese a laying, you would have 364 gifts; or one for every day of the year; and lest you run right out and buy it; the PNC Bank publishes a price index each year for current market prices of buying all the gifts in the song and the 2009 figure is $21,465.56.

But I have a less costly solution which I hope, accomplishes the same thing. And I would like to suggest that as you sit around waiting for New Years and all those resolutions, you consider the song, the Twelve Days of Christmas, as your starting point.

What if our resolution was to fill the next 364 days with reminders of the love and grace and nostalgia and joy we feel at Christmas?

What if we could bottle the Christmas Spirit into a way of life for 2010?

You see, I was talking to someone this past week who pointed out that 2009 was a terrible year; for many, many people. Perhaps it was that the economy tanked. Perhaps it is that the weather has really been horrible. Perhaps that whole Copenhagen, climate change, end of the world sort of thing is finally starting to edge its way into our subconsciousness.

Whatever it is, I think almost everyone would agree that we need a do-over.

And if we are going to do the year over again, then why not do it over in Christmas style?

It seems I quote Charles Dickens in almost everything I write over the Christmas season, but there is a reason, he said it perfectly when he said: "I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

And it is so true, people will hold doors for each other, people will stop fighting, people are more generous, everything seems a little more festive and a lot more hopeful. But this is not something that needs to be mired in one block of weeks come late November. With very little effort this could be a year long way of life.

There was a movie and a movement a while ago called "Pay it Forward." For those of you who missed it, the concept was simple, do something nice for someone because someone has done something nice for you.

I know I am using too many quotes, but here is the concept as explained by the character in the book:

"You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do 27." He turns on the calculator, punches in a few numbers. "Then it sort of spreads out, see. To 81. Then 243. Then 729. Then 2,187. See how big it gets?"

It almost sounds too good to be true, but it is not.

Want a simple experiment about the power of suggestion? Go into a crowded room, yawn, and then wait. People will start to yawn. Even reading this, odds are that you are going to yawn.

The same thing is true of a smile. It is contagious.

So how about Christmas cheer? Let's pass it on and make it contagious.

If you cannot think what you could possibly do, here are a few suggestions. Hold the door open for more people. Let people pull out into traffic all the time. Buy the coffee, without even telling them, of the person behind you in line at Tim Horton's. Randomly give people gifts. It can be as large a gesture or as small as you can imagine.

And we all know it would work. If you win a free coffee, how does it make you feel? Realistically it only saved you a couple of bucks you were going to spend anyway, it is no big deal, but the whole world looks a little better when even one insignificant nice thing happens.

So there it is, while you are finishing putting away Christmas, and as you wait for New Years, make this your resolution: 2010 will be better than 2009. I will do what I can to make it just a little tiny bit better for everyone I can. Christmas never really has to end.

You deserve it.

The date isn't important, the meaning is

2009-12-31T13:49:00.000-04:00

Faith Today - Published Saturday December 26th, 2009

Well, today is the second day of the season of Christmas, turtledove day if you know the song, or Boxing Day for those of us who live in countries that maintain a little British Empire in us.

Boxing Day is one of those bits of culture and religiosity that has totally gone by the wayside. Most people don't even know what it means.

In Victorian England it was the tradition to take leftover food and durable goods and distribute them to the poor on the day after Christmas, or St. Stephen's Day. These donations were boxed up and delivered; thus the name.

There are a lot of things that are just "traditions" being carried forward.

If you think about the church and the way we do things, the way we schedule things, and our calendar, many of the days and dates are just set because of convenience.

Boxing Day, for example, made me think about Christmas. There is, I suppose, a 1/365 chance that Jesus was born on December 25; but it is unlikely. The story doesn't fit with the cultural norms; for example, shepherds and sheep wouldn't be out on the hills in December in Palestine back then.

The Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 6, for example. Was that Jesus birthday? Again, you are probably looking at a 1/365 chance that it was.

Am I saying Jesus was not real? No. Am I saying the church is lying? No.

It is a very modern and very North American thing that we have confused details for the truly important intent behind stories.

Here is the thing, there was this guy named Jesus, who happened to be born into a poor and humble family. The original word for Jesus' father's occupation was tekton, which meant he was probably a stone mason, but perhaps he was a carpenter... he was a tradesperson who worked with his hands in a backwater town.

We know from historical Roman records that there was someone who got the people all riled up, and that later, his followers were blamed for some fires in Rome.

But unless you are an emperor, your birth date was not really all that important back then.

So why the 25th of December?

Well, some people claim it is because that is nine months after Jesus was conceived (again, this is just a guess -- I am not even 'exactly' sure when my own daughters were conceived) but it was also the date of a very important Roman Festival which corresponded with the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.

The Romans had a feast in honour of the "Sun" to remind it to come back out and warm things up; since it was getting darker and darker.

This sounds extremely sensible to me, by the way.

And when Christianity became the official Roman religion of state, some 300 years after Jesus taught it to his followers, the idea of the sun bringing light to darkness was shifted, ever so slightly, to the son bringing light to darkness and, voila, Christmas.

The church just took something that everyone already understood and gave it a Christian meaning. It was not contrary to what they already wanted to say, and it was convenient.

Just like having a long weekend in May is convenient to celebrate the birthday of our monarch in the British Empire, whether or not it is their birthday in reality.

Does it make the story any less powerful because it also happens to fit perfectly with the understanding of the Roman winter solstice?

Or does it become even more appropriate when you realize that what we are trying to celebrate is not just one man, Jesus, but the way of life and faith that Jesus brought us to understand -- one that every culture had pieces of already?

There are people out there who think that those of us who have faith are ignorant of science, and history, and psychology and the real things of the world.

Quite the opposite is true. We just know that there is something with deeper meaning than a calendar, and that truth has nothing to do with accuracy, it is about the bigger picture.

Of course Santa Claus is real and with us!

2009-12-22T10:39:00.000-04:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 21st, 2009

I believe in Santa Claus.

It is as simple as that. I see no evidence for the non existence of Santa Claus. Quite the opposite, in fact, Christmas is as filled with magic and unexplainable moments as any day can be.

Even if I told you my life story, which is fairly recent, there would be some myth, mixed with interpretation, mixed with magic, tempered with reality. It is no different for Santa, whose origins can be traced back to Turkey, of all places, and Saint Nicholas.

His wealthy parents, who raised him to be a devout Christian, died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young. Obeying Jesus' words to "sell what you own and give the money to the poor," Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made the Bishop of Myra.

Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships.

Under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians, Bishop Nicholas suffered for his faith, was exiled and imprisoned. The prisons were so full of bishops, priests, and deacons, there was no room for the real criminals -- murderers, thieves and robbers. After his release, Nicholas attended the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. He died Dec. 6, AD 343 in Myra and was buried in his cathedral church, where a unique relic called manna formed in his grave. This liquid substance, said to have healing powers, fostered the growth of devotion to Nicholas. The anniversary of his death became a day of celebration, St. Nicholas Day, Dec. 6.

The fact that most of Western Culture has been shaped and influenced by Christianity is dying out. Every generation wants to believe that they invented the wheel; and I suppose that is just the way of the world. However, when we throw out our knowledge of the past, we start to be able to dismiss reality as Faerie Tale, which are also all true, by the way.

Santa Claus was and is real. Almost every sailor who found themselves storm tossed on the malicious ocean can tell you that Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and children, was there on deck as the waves tried to sweep them over. He answered their prayers and they found themselves surprisingly safe in port.

Vikings who converted to Christianity and sailed to Greenland dedicated their Cathedral to him; Columbus, after supposedly "discovering" the New World named a Haitian port after him; Spanish Conquistadores named a town in Florida St. Nicholas Port (for some reason we changed it to Jacksonville); and most importantly, Dutch Settlers, who had claimed Nicholas as the Patron of Holland, brought him with them to New Amsterdam; better known to you and me as New York, while the Germans brought him to Pennsylvania.

If you have ever seen a European Santa Claus, and you all have, you would recognize the long flowing red robe with an ermine sash, along with a hood trimmed with fur as well. Those are the robes of a bishop. Think about the Vatican and the different coloured robes that each level of cleric wears; the priest in black, the bishop in dark purple, the cardinal in bright red and the pope in white. Each colour gets lighter and closer to the purity of God . . . Santa is somewhere in between a bishop and a cardinal with his dark red robes.

In the late 1800s; at the end of the Industrial Revolution, the world was changing dramatically. Prior to this, children were seen almost as slaves, especially poor ones who often worked back breaking hours in mills and mines. Charles Dickens wrote books like Oliver Twist to try and change this and at the same time he wrote books about Christmas to help us embrace the values of the season, like Hope and Joy and Peace.

They also began to link the patron saint of children to this new idea that childhood was sacred, and since his Holy Day was in December, well, why not combine the two?

Then there was a poem; "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" which became "Twas the Night Before Christmas" that brought to light the nocturnal activities of Christmas Eve which heretofore had only happened while people slept. Washington Irving started to illustrate Santa Claus as a little more elf like, smoking a pipe, just like the poem suggested. A few years later Norman Rockwell and others changed the outfit and associated him with Coca Cola, changing the colour of the robes to the colour of a Coke logo.

By the way, Santa Claus is the way we English speakers struggled to mispronounce the German for Saint Nicholas, Sankt Niklaus.

There are those who want to dismiss Santa as just being made up to sell Coca Cola or adorn Hallmark cards. But the tradition goes back to very, very Christian origins; just like the rest of Christmas.

Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Reformation in Germany in the late 1500s and is one of Christianity's greatest theologians put up the first Christmas tree; but that is another story.

There are others who say that if Santa ever lived, it was almost 2,000 years ago and doesn't matter now.

Well let me tell you, I have seen presents under my tree that I am pretty sure my parents would never have bought. I have seen strangers inexplicably have their hearts melted and help each other. I have seen Santa in a shopping mall moved to tears by the requests of hurting children. I have seen ordinary fathers put on a red suit and be magically transformed into a Jolly Old Elf.

I have seen starving families fed and fighting families reconciled, homeless people sheltered and benevolent programs funded. I have seen whole villages in the developing world given wells, or farms, or schools.

Don't tell me there's no Santa Claus.

Walt Disney's world born in humble beginnings

2009-12-17T13:12:00.000-04:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 14th, 2009

OK, so I love Walt Disney World.

It has been over two years since I have gone and I am suffering from withdrawal. This week was also the 'birthday' of Walt Disney. He was born on December 5th 1901.

I will not bore you with too many biographical details; but Walt's life story is really interesting.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois, his father, Elias Disney, was an Irish-Canadian. His mother, Flora Call Disney, was of German-American descent. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl.

Raised on a farm near Marceline, Missouri, Walt became interested in drawing at an early age, selling his first sketches to neighbours when he was only seven years old.

Mickey Mouse was created in 1928. He made his screen debut in "Steamboat Willie," the world's first fully-synchronized sound cartoon, which premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York on November 18, 1928.

Walt's drive to perfect the art of animation was endless. Technicolor was introduced to animation during the production of his "Silly Symphonies." In 1932, the film entitled "Flowers and Trees" won Walt the first of his 32 personal Academy Awards. In 1937, he released "The Old Mill," the first short subject to utilize the multiplane camera technique.

On Dec. 21 of that same year, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Produced at the unheard cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Depression.

During the next five years, Walt completed such other full-length animated classics as "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," "Dumbo," and "Bambi."

In 1940, construction was completed on Disney's Burbank studio. The staff swelled to more than 1,000 artists, animators, story men and technicians. During World War II, 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special government work, including the production of training and propaganda films.

The story goes on, and on, but you can see that Walt was responsible for single handedly changing most of the animation industry -- he also changed tourism forever when he built the fist theme park, Disneyland, in 1955 as a fabulous $17 million Magic Kingdom.

A pioneer in the field of television programming, Disney began production in 1954, and was among the first to present full-color programming with his "Wonderful World of Color" in 1961. You might also remember "The Mickey Mouse Club"; I can still sing the song even though I have not seen the black and white show in perhaps 30 years.

So Walt was a success. One man, whose drawings were originally rejected by an animation company, went on to create an empire.

Here are some interesting statistics to chew over about the Walt Disney Corporation today:

There are over 300 licensed Disney characters all brought to you by over 100 separate business brands. To give you an example, Walt Disney Pictures also own Miramax, Pixar and Touchstone. Then they own ABC, the television network. They have cruise lines, travel bureaus, condominiums, product lines.

All of which lead the company to a staggering 12 million dollars a day in profit; or four and a half billion a year.

Interestingly enough, the majority shareholder in the Disney Corporation is Steve Jobs, founder and owner of Apple Computers. He owns seven percent and is on the board of directors.

So consider this: every day Steve Jobs could potentially be making $ 840,000 profit from the Walt Disney Corporation, essentially just because he was clever with his investments. In case the math staggers you, that is over $300 million a year.

But most statistics about Disney and its theme parks are staggering. Four percent of all photographs taken in the United States are taken inside one of the two Magic Kingdoms -- Walt Disney World or Disneyland; Walt Disney World is larger than the city of San Francisco, covering about 4000 acres of land.

There are 240,000 pounds of laundry done each day while some 32,000 costumes are dry-cleaned.

And even if I don't make it down to Disney this year, some 47 million other people will (and they will drink 75 million cokes.)

Sorry, I just find all of this to be fascinating. I also find it reassuring to think that if you put your mind to it, and you are creative enough, you can succeed, sometimes beyond your wildest dreams.

But more importantly, this entire conglomerate of influence and imagination is based on the concept of leisure and make believe.

There is something extremely important buried within this basic idea. We live in a world where we will pay millions and billions of dollars to escape.

We go to Disney World and pretend to be pirates, or astronauts, or princesses, or race car drivers. We watch movies and television to immerse ourselves in other realities, we buy books and make up and gym memberships; all to escape the here and now.

Walt was onto something when he tried to make people smile with a funny little mouse.

We need those temporary ways out; we need to relax more; and we need Disney World.

It is the one place where hardened adults suspend their disbelief and allow themselves to be swept up in a dream; one that the cynical part of us has long given up on.

I will never fly with Peter Pan; but I have. I remember the first time the little boat I was sitting in lifted off the ground, flew out the window, and over London. I was a troubled little kid... it was magic. It was magic when I did it again at 40.

I will raise a glass to Walter Elias Disney this week. He died shortly before the Magic Kingdom ever opened. His dream lives on and inspires the rest of us. Thank God.

There must be a better way to organize our society

2009-12-09T14:24:00.001-04:00

Social Studies - Published Monday December 7th, 2009

Work and kids and family; running a household and having hobbies; it seems hard to talk about these things without getting in some sort of trouble, but I think it might be necessary for us to rethink some things.

I do not think the way we live is the way we should be living.

Not that we are not trying as many different variations as possible. I could use my own family as a subset here. I have four brothers, and they have amazingly varied careers. Some have remarried and created blended families as my own father did. Some are professionals and some are just starting out.

Out of the five of us, or 10 if you count spouses, nine people work.

I have seen possibly every variation of having to figure out work schedules and household management and day care that you can imagine; from which I have determined that there are no good answers.

My wife and I tried working opposite each other for a couple of years. I would work one day and she would work the next, or she would work from eight to four, I would work from four till midnight; and then we would switch. Then there is the five days of day care. Even when one spouse does not work, as is the case for one of my brothers, the other spouse works hard and long enough that you still never see each other.

I do not want to raise the hackles of the feminists who think this is going to become a sexist rant -- but I don't think society should run like this. One income should be enough to run a household. It should not matter which person works.

Mind you, I don't think anyone should have to work any more than 35 hours a week to earn enough money to run a household. So perhaps both could work, but only work half time.

You may think this is just crazy dreaming, but for the most part economics are completely made up and we could in fact change the prices of things, or the wages earned, to make it work. An example of this would be my house. My wife, kids and I live quite comfortably in a three bedroom house on the Salisbury Road, which costs us exactly one quarter of a three bedroom house in Dieppe.

You have to trust me on this, but I am pretty certain there is no real explanation for the $300,000 dollar price difference.

The truth is that our economy is completely based on artificial measures of what things are worth -- the so called, 'market value' which really means what someone can get away with charging. At some point the amount charged began to make it impossible to live decently on your salary.

We are talking about 10,000 years of settled human history before someone decided to start making it nearly impossible to raise a family, own your own house, and get around. Never mind the astronomical price it would cost to take a vacation.

Also false, by the way, a little over a decade ago I went to Walt Disney World, stayed in a hotel, bought food in restaurants, bought souvenirs, and spent a little over $2,000. Now the same trip would run about $10,000.

So two people almost have to work; and then the kids need to be in day care. But we also have to work longer and harder than ever, with more economic and cultural stress; so for the two hours we do get to see our own kids every day we are either too tired, too stressed, or too rushed to be genuinely present.

It is a never ending circle too; we end up too tired at the end of the day to figure out how to get supper on the table; and if you are leaving work at five to rush to get the kids across town at five, and they are going to bed at seven -- how are you possibly going to cook within a reasonable amount of time? So you go to a restaurant.

Now, there is a costly way to escape stress and an unhealthy way as well. Better get a gym membership to use for those two or three hours you might manage to have for yourself. But the restaurants and gym are costing so much now you need to work even harder . . .

I am not suggesting we go back to a divided world in which men are the breadwinners and women run the household, but there has to be a better way to find life balance, and I think it has to begin with how we work. Or at the very least, what we earn.

Or perhaps we need to reassess what we 'have.'

Do we need as much stuff? Is that what is causing us to have to work so hard? Maybe it is the new car every couple of years, or the cost of replacing electronic gadgets every two years. Perhaps it is because we all need to instantly have furniture right out of Better Homes and Gardens.

There are a number of things that have gone out of whack in society to be sure. The problem is that we really have no idea what the long term consequences are. We already know that there are more divorces, more latchkey kids, more violence, and more crime than ever before. What will it be like when the next generation of kids, the one that has no real attachment to family or place, and any long term traditions or history, ends up taking over?

I was so looking forward to capitalism failing; and now they seem to be resurrecting it. I really wish we could all wake up and find a better way.

More openness and some humility will move us ahead

2009-12-09T14:21:00.001-04:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 30th, 2009

Opinions being what they are, there is always something to write about.

I have not written in a month, in that period I have been taking some time to reprioritize my life and my thoughts, so I would like you to indulge me if for my first column back as I turn inwards instead of out.

You see, while writing these columns I am always thinking about what is currently happening in the world around us; be it as universal as global warming or as local as the causeway to Riverview. As an opinion writer I search for a position that I think I could uphold morally and ethically and then write it as definitely as I can -- hoping for two things, to get people thinking, and to get discussion started.

Many of us have opinions. Oh, who am I kidding, all of us have opinions. Many of us can voice them eloquently; while still more of us can voice them passionately. From what hockey team to cheer for right up to who to elect as a leader, each of us chimes in within society to try and make our voice heard. Or, at the very least, to try and get our friends to think like us.

Deep within our consciousness, I believe each and every one of believes we are right. Absolutely, universally, right. For some reason I believe I know how to solve the economic woes of the country. Despite the odds I know for certain I could run the government better. Heck, I probably even believe I could cure my own diseases better than my doctor.

Does any of this ring true for you?

Does any of it sound sort of ridiculous when you stop and think about it?

I do think this is the way most of us think. We act like and interact with people as if we could do their job better than them. Every day we believe that we have a better system or idea than the experts who are trying to solve problems.

Have you ever heard of Albert Einstein? He was one of those people who thought outside the box. He revolutionized physics. He played a huge role in developing atomic concepts (as in the atom bomb and nuclear energy). If we ever get time travel or teleportation down it will be because of Einstein's thought and work.

When they did an autopsy on Albert they found out that he had a brain defect. It turns out that the regions involved in speech and language were smaller, while the regions involved with numerical and spatial processing were larger. He simply thought about the world differently. He was a one in a billion random genetic mutation who could grasp space and time better than almost every other human being.

In many respects, he also failed. Albert would be the first to tell you this. He had a failed marriage, failed relationships, and even many, many failed scientific theories.

It is because of his failures, more than his successes, that Einstein said some of the wisest things I have ever read; one of which is this: "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it."

I have decided to make this one of my personal credos.

For me it means two things, first, it means freedom of expression. Second, it means humility.

Let me explain. What we need in the world is more honest communication about deeper issues with each other. We need a free press that can challenge conventional wisdom, and we need everyone speaking up about what they believe.

Although it sounds easy, there is an obstacle: this requires honesty.

When someone asks me how I am, I have to admit that I am a little messed up. I am sick, or sad, or lonely, or stressed . . . I cannot understand the instructions to put together the table I just bought, the weather is bringing me down, and I wish we could rethink capitalism.

At least, that is what is in my head. What I actually say to people is "fine."

How are we ever going to have authentic dialogue and learn to trust each other if we gloss over almost every aspect of our lives as we interact? We need to free ourselves to communicate with each other on simple things to make it easier to talk about the harder things.

Which is all wrapped up in the second part of my solution to the world's problems: when we are open about our thoughts and feelings we will discover that we cannot really solve all the world's problems. We are just one person, and we need help.

I came across another great quote this past month, this one from an even more unlikely source, the DJ of the original Woodstock concert back in 1969, Wavy Gravy.

According to Wavy Gravy, "We're all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride."

How is that for a philosophy? From the cleverest neurosurgeon to the happiest bus driver, we are all just bozos on the bus. We have our own idiosyncrasies and problems, we are geniuses about something, and idiots about something else, and we all stumble through life and make mistakes. We are human.

The good thing is we also all do incredibly miraculous wonderful things.

But we need to remember that we are just bozos.

So every week I write about something I believe in. I try to change the world in my own little humble corner of Monday morning's paper.

But the philosophy behind why I do things is tied up in these two statements -- sometimes it takes the views of a different person to help us see our life a little bit more clearly; and we are all bozos making our own mistakes.

When we operate from there and are truly open to each other, I am convinced everything will change.

Visit to past reveals path to future

2009-12-09T14:19:00.000-04:00

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday November 21st, 2009

This past weekend I attended a wedding.

My step-brother, recently converted to the Orthodox faith, got married in a Lebanese Orthodox church in Halifax.

Curiously, for all my travels and education in things religious, I have never before attended an Orthodox Christian service.

It was fascinatingly interesting to see your own faith from another perspective.

Here is a quick primer on church history.

Things went downhill from the point that Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

It used to be that all of us looked back at that as the beginning of the glory days, but that was the point where the religious movement dreamt up by those followers of Jesus suddenly became more political than social.

Rome had so much political intrigue throughout its life that you almost could not help but get caught up in it.

And here is where church echoed state.

There were, in essence, two capitals. In the early fourth century, having just made Christianity the religion of state, and having just united a divided Roman Empire, Constantine rebuilt the Greek city of Byzantium, named it after himself and tried to make it the capital of the empire . . . and thus the church.

Five hundred years of bickering among the bishops of rival cities eventually led to further and further division and the church of empire divided into two churches, East and West, Roman and Orthodox.

The Eastern Orthodox Church of today has over 225 million members and traces its roots and theology back to Paul, the author of most of the books of the New Testament.

In fact, most of the churches founded by Paul are now clearly orthodox, in orthodox countries.

From all accounts, it just might be us westerners who broke away from the true church and went off on some tangents.

But back to the wedding; it was both familiar and unfamiliar. Some of the readings and prayers were in Arabic and some were in English.

The stories from the Bible were pretty much the same ones you have always heard read at weddings.

There were three stunning differences to me.

First, the biblical stories were connected so concretely to present life.

For example, it was pointed out that he couple getting married were just like Abraham and Sarah getting married, and God would continue to be faithful to the promises which were made to that couple -- lots of children and long life.

The married couple was compared to Isaac and Rebecca; the celebration was compared to the marriage feast at Cana where Jesus first performed miracles. It just all tied together.

Secondly, there was a confidence that this was the right thing to do and that God was present in the moment.

No wishy-washy 'God will be with you as you journey through life;' more like 'God is here right now watching and God says, honour each other or else!'

And lastly, there was such a concrete connection between family, church, friends and God.

These two people were not getting married in a church and then running off on a honeymoon and that would be the end of it.

They stood there as part of a 2,000-year-old tradition.

The community was agreeing to see them as man and wife, to treat them this was from now on and to help them be a family.

God was really present within the church, the family and the community and always would be.

There was no individualism here, it was all part of a larger whole.

I think all three of these things were once part of our religious heritage as well.

As little as 30 years ago it would have seemed much more familiar.

But individualism has crept into our church culture as well.

The modern way of thinking of everything as having to do with 'me' has separated us from the larger whole.

I for one am going to try and figure out how liberal Protestantism can reclaim some of what it has thrown away with the bathwater.

We have perhaps forgotten our roots and our traditions. Sometimes it takes seeing the way someone else does it to realize you can do better.

APOLOGIES

2009-12-09T14:16:00.002-04:00

This Blog went neglected over the fall. I was off work on medical leave and did not get to it. I am going to be updating it regularly from now on. Thank you.

It is hard to believe the statistics on literacy . . .

2009-09-15T12:24:00.001-03:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 14th, 2009

Okay, so the new literacy statistics seem unbelievable to me.

I have been thinking about it for three days, trying to figure out what is bothering me so much.

At least one third of New Brunswickers who live in urban centres and have access to university education are illiterate. Move to the north of the province or out of the cities and it rises to three quarters of all people being illiterate. Three quarters!

Can you imagine that this is true?

All told it means that more than half of us have no hope of ever getting a high school diploma, or even earning a decent living.

I want us to think of this from two different angles.

First, whose fault is it?

There are certainly many people who analyze the world and see it from an individualistic viewpoint who would answer that it is their fault. Stay in school or pay the consequences. That way of looking at everything blames the individual for not pulling themselves up by the bootstrap.

The world is certainly not black and white, and it is true that there are people who choose certain things, a life of crime, living on the streets or to put career ahead of family. Some people do choose to drop out of school and leave the world of education behind, to be sure.

The other side would say that society is to blame.

We do not educate our young properly. We do not treat people equally and so create social stigmatization. We do not put tax dollars into education. We are so self focused that we do not do things for other people.

Again, all of this is in fact true, while not being the single mitigating factor for anything.

Life is a combination of problems and the truth is that there are so many areas in which we as individuals and we as a society are falling down. We all make bad decisions, but too often we hide behind policy or blame others instead of trying to figure out how to do it better.

So I think people should buck up a bit and take life seriously enough to want to learn to read; but I also think we should buck up a bit and make this a place where we help each other want to succeed.

Which brings me to my second major concern; ultimately I think it will not happen.

You see, I have a sneaking suspicion that it could not have become this way without someone wanting it to be so. I mean, over half of the population unable to master the basics of their own language? There has to be a conspiracy here.

People who cannot read probably cannot easily vote. They cannot easily write letters of complaint. They cannot double check facts when a politician speaks. They cannot read the fine print on their cell phone contracts. The list could go on and I am sure many of you could come up with reasons that those in power would want a less 'able' society.

I am only being half facetious here.

I cannot believe that there are that many people that cannot read. I cannot understand how or why that could even begin to be possible. As far as I remember almost everyone I knew could read quite young. In fact, the targeted 'reading age' when you write things for mass consumption is a grade six reading level. To read a newspaper, or a novel, or a political tract, you really don't need a vocabulary beyond grade six, and everyone goes to grade six!

And another thing, why are we at the lowest end of the literacy stepping stone while it continues to get better and better as you go west across the country?

Take a look at the map yourself if you want to see a visual representation: www.ccl-cca.ca/cclflash/proseliteracy/map_canada_e.html

How can it be that as soon as you pass Winnipeg literacy keeps on climbing as you go west?

I don't have an answer to the real reason it is like this. I suspect there is truth in everything I have said so far, including the conspiracy.

What really gets me though is that the world is not as I imagine it to be. I must be incredibly naive, I suppose, but I figured almost everyone could read this column if they wanted to. I thought that for the most part everyone who wanted one could get a job. It does sound pretty naive, eh?

What is stopping society from working though? Capitalism was my first thought, but Marxists did not fare any better; and National Socialists even worse. Apparently almost every commune, communal work farm, and open marriage is doomed to failure as well.

Someone has to come up with a better system really quickly. Because I fear things are just getting worse.

Perhaps it helps just to have the literacy stats before us. Perhaps this will force the government to step up and ask why we should be content with allowing this level of problem.

If we are truly going to make New Brunswick the place it should be, progressive, industrial, metropolitan, and a leader in every field, we are each going to have to take a good hard look at our misconceptions. Then we are all going to have to shoot a little higher and give the hand out and step up to those who need it the most.

Future belongs to those who can blend vision, reason, courage

2009-09-13T21:25:00.001-03:00

Religion Today - Published Saturday September 12th, 2009

Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty type of person?

Are you religious?

You do realize that the first question should be a no brainer if you answer yes to the second.

Religion by very definition is optimism as a system of belief.

In social scientist speak, the question is do you believe in the tragic vision of humanity or the utopian vision of humanity?

The tragic vision is, unfortunately, what seems to rule the day in most western cultures.

Humanity is basically completely flawed, and so we have to create rules that curtail human activity and bring society together.

A classical Christian way of saying this would be that humans are inherently fallen, and we need God's intervention and boundaries in order to help us be 'adopted' children of God.

If we follow the Ten Commandments, usually out of fear or in order to gain some reward, then we will be good enough.

Fear of God, a sense of awe and reverence, a knowledge that we will be punished for wrongdoings and rewarded for right all make up this idea of how the faith is.

Whenever people have a problem with those who are religious, they usually have a problem with these folks... and here is the reason, it never seems to pan out.

Good folks have terrible things happen to them. Evil folks prosper.

Atheists do good deeds for no reason. Faithful people cheat on taxes. You get the idea, it just does not explain the reality of creation very well.

That is because religion is supposed to be utopian. It is a glass half full type of way of seeing the world.

In a utopian way of seeing things, it is the social system that is flawed, not necessarily the people. In fact, it is up to us to work together to fix things.

This is far more in line with the way that Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, and Jesus saw the world.

We have the potential to do anything; we could move mountains if we believed we could and, together, we are working to make the world, which is fallen, into what God intends.

There are strains of this in the political world as well, the Kennedy family being a good representation.

Ted Kennedy, the senator who so recently passed away, said this at Robert Kennedy's funeral in 1968: "All of us will ultimately be judged and, as the years pass, we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects.

Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason, and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of society."

I am tired of being labelled as someone who lives in the past, who does not believe in the world, who is against progress.

That is not what it is all about at all. When people ask me why I go to church, let alone work for one, the answer I give is that I believe in the power of organization to allow us to change the world.

That is what Jesus wanted of his followers when he refused to be worshipped or to allow them to focus on following the rules.

It is about love, it is about how we treat each other, it is about working together to change everything that is wrong from the economic system right on up.

I think some of our biggest disagreements come from the fact that we do not communicate end goals, but focus on day to day problems.

If the end goal is to be co-creators of the world as it was intended to be, we are almost all working towards it.

Do restaurants understand why we are eating out?

2009-09-07T12:29:00.000-03:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 7th, 2009

If you follow along at home you may notice I eat in a lot of restaurants.

Call it an occupational and social hazard. First off I have two careers which keep me a little busy. Secondly, I have two young toddlers which make it sometimes necessary to eat out as a family to conserve energy. Third, I am a bit of a foodie and love to experience new tastes. Lastly, I am a military brat who has never lived more than five years in the same house and so I take 'field trips' to stay sane.

It is not an insane number of times, probably two suppers, one lunch and a breakfast every week. The thing is that I try to make the experiences as different as possible.

I have given this a lot of thought and I believe there to be a huge disconnect between restaurant owners and patrons. Here is the number one problem:

Owners are chefs, or like the food they serve, and think you are coming for the food. Patrons are looking for an experience and go for the atmosphere.

Hear me out.

If I am away from home on business, I am looking for someplace to relax and feel comforted. If I am taking my kids out it is because I am stressed and tired and need someone else to take care of things in the kitchen. If I am out with friends I am looking for a sense of fun and adventure. If I am on a date I want romance and attention to detail.

There are very few cases in which the food is the top priority. I go to the same pizza joint because I like their dough; I go to the same fast food place because I am addicted; I go to my favourite Vietnamese place despite the atmosphere because I want their imperial rolls. Most of the time, however, I am looking for a little help from the service industry to make me feel special.

I don't think people who work in and own the places understand this.

I offer this as a list of tips in case you happen to be in the food service industry. Or as a list of pet peeves that some of you may identify with.

When I sit down at a table, bring me something; a glass of water, a crayon, anything to make me feel like you know I exist; it will go a long way.

Make suggestions. I always ask my server what they would eat and some of them treat it like it is the strangest question. It is not. You see this stuff day after day, if you would still eat it, I know it is good.

Kids of any age have a short attention span. If you can't get me their food in 10 minutes, fill the time with other things, even crackers. Also, it does no good to rush their food out to them if you are still going to take 30 minutes to bring my food and I have no time or space left to eat it because they are done and crying.

Water. Every five minutes. Same with coffee. Every five minutes. I am not kidding. There are places I will never go again because I do not like feeling like I am trapped on the Serengeti.

If you are having a bad day, that is fine, tell me. I will be more forgiving. Impatience, rudeness or sloppiness are not what I am paying big bucks for.

Last, but the most serious, bring me the check. I can't tell you how many times I have sat for what seems like hours waiting for someone's attention in order to get out of the place. Once I have the check in hand, I can decide when to pay you, and I feel like you have empowered me to make my own choice about leaving.

That is the quick list, there are of course 100 stories I could tell, from the time we had no cutlery and the waitress decided to just throw a pile of knife and forks on the table and say "here;" to the myriad of times when I actually thought we must have been forgotten.

Don't get me wrong, I have had some of the best moments of my life in restaurants as well, times when the chef came and sat down at the table and talked about the food; or the waiter made me feel like I was the most important person in the universe.

Unfortunately, bad service is becoming the norm.

And that is the thing, ultimately. I go to a restaurant to feel special, to have an 'out of the ordinary' experience, and when you fail to provide it I am not coming back very often, even if it was the most amazing ribs, steak, salmon, or nachos I have ever eaten.

I think the people that work there have become so self-involved and self-important that the customer is no longer anything but a means to an end.

Here is how I handle it. I am a generous person, but I know a tip is a tip; it is an extra for value added. Mess with me and you get nothing. Smile at me and you may get 10 dollars at a coffee shop. I think if we stopped just automatically tipping some appropriate amount to people who don't deserve it, things might change.

Secondly; I tell managers that Lucy Loo has to go. I write letters.

Last but not least, restaurant owners need to become aware of the power of social networking. I tweet where I eat.

I talk about how I was treated and 500 people in Moncton read that and make their own choices. They also talk to their friends. I post on Facebook with actual photos of what I eat. We need more honest critique of the industry.

There is nothing like a good meal in a great restaurant. It is simple to make an impression, and even simpler to have it be the wrong one.

What we can learn from foreign foods

2009-09-01T12:31:00.000-03:00

Social Studies - Published Monday August 31st, 2009

Last summer I wrote a book review for Canadian Dimension magazine of the book "The 100 Mile Diet." I also, you may recall, mentioned it in a column.

The idea is that eating locally is an ideal way to remain healthy, support regional ecological differences, and at the same time, filter most of your money back to local producers.

There are huge benefits. It forces you to eat in season, while at the same time allowing you to get to know your eco-region at a much deeper level.

We are fairly lucky here; there are very few things that are not grown within 100 miles; although oranges and olives spring to mind.

This summer, I have been experimenting with the complete opposite.

In the last week I have been touring around the Maritimes eating in ethnic restaurants that I have found. The more authentic, the better.

In Saint John I ate at the Northern Chinese restaurant, where the women did not seem to speak any English. I had a soup which was among the worst things I have ever eaten. It was a vinegar broth with three types of dried chili, as well as fried tofu chunks and some kind of chili oil floating on the surface. It was so spicy I cried the whole time I ate it. The second dish was actually among the best noodle dishes I ever had. Thick egg noodles in a brown onion sauce.

This week I went to Halifax and had, in no particular order, Transylvanian Goulash with huge chunks of paprika sausage and sauerkraut in a creamy stew at Cafe Chianti; Moussaka and stuffed peppers washed down with a Greek red wine at the Taverna Opa; Nachos and Propeller Bitter Ale at the Economy Shoe Shop, and the best sushi ever at Hamachi House; with some warm sake, of course.

It would be a good bet to say that almost nothing I have eaten in two weeks came from within 100 miles; unless it was eggs at Chez Cora.

Even the snacks I have been eating have been from as far away as you can imagine. Yesterday I bought some pistachios from Iran, Dates from Greece, and washed them all down with a burdock and dandelion beverage I found from England.

Now, you might ask, so what?

Well, here are three things that have occurred to me. First off, the world is changing, astronomically. It used to be that the most popular accompaniment in Canada was ketchup. In short order the number one accompaniment for most Canadians has become salsa. As the world changes, the foods from the less developed and southern countries are replacing the old standby items.

I would wager more people in the Maritimes eat rice, grown in the tropics, than potatoes, grown in our own mud.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, did you know they grew pistachios in Iran? I didn't. All I knew about Iran is that their leader is evil; or is supposedly evil if CNN is to be believed. But here I was eating some of the best pistachios I have ever had, and actually thinking about who grew them, and where, and what life was like for them, and how they managed to get the pistachios so rich tasting. All of a sudden Iran was a real place with a real immediate impact on me.

I realize that I should care about them anyway, and I do; but this somehow made the Iranians more a part of my actual world. I could not imagine that the farmer who looked after this crop was any different than my neighbour growing corn.

Eating the food of another country is a way to immerse yourself in that culture. If you don't believe me, take a drive up St. George and go to the convenience store across from Wesley United some day for lunch. There is a great Korean couple who own the store, and while the guy tries to teach me Korean words, the wife cooks up a fabulous lunch with red chili sauce on noodles and barbeque pork. It makes you want to know more about them.

Third, and most importantly, when you stop and think about it, all of this food tasting from around the world says something very strange about how wealthy I am.

You see, before the Americans wiped out half of the world's economy one of the big news stories making the circuit was that the world was facing an impending food shortage. Then all we have heard about for a year was that the economy was ruining the average person's life. Something strange was going on in the background though . . . nothing.

Nothing has changed for the rest of the world. There is still a shortage of food. Most people in most countries where I have been eating food from could not afford, or even find, the food I have so easily come across in the Maritimes.

So in one sense my culinary adventures have brought me closer to other cultures. In another sense, I could not be further away from the day to day reality that the majority of the world faces. Despite the fact that we all spice things differently, food is the one thing we all have in common. Not only that, but we have so much in common it is interesting.

Every culture on the face of the planet has something sandwich like, for example. Whether it is beef wrapped in a fajita, lamb in a pita, duck in a pancake, or cheese between two slices of bread.

The other thing we have in common is that food is hard to come by. It seems simple right now because we are used to cheap transportation, storage, and mass farming. But the time is coming, for all of us.

We have to realize that we are all in this together.

Love is great, but there’s also the healing power of fear

2009-08-18T12:35:00.000-03:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday August 17th, 2009

You have heard it said that you should do something every day that scares you. For the last few years I have been dealing with infants and toddlers in my household, so every day was new and scary. Recently, I have discovered that the age old adage is in fact good advice.

I got a tattoo this week.

I always wanted one. By the time I was able to make my own decisions about such things I was luckily usually too broke to afford it. Luckily, I say, because had I have chosen an image to represent my late teens or early 20s I would most certainly regret it by now.

Not that others are not capable, it is just that when I left home I was pretty rebellious and angry.

I would probably have made the mistake of tattooing the name of some now long lost girlfriend, or my favourite band's image from the 1980s, either of which would have been monumental mistakes.

Now, it scared me to even consider getting a tattoo. It is permanent, it is societally frowned upon and sometimes (and more importantly) it is painful.

I was scared when I made the appointment and I was scared waiting the month for it to roll around, which seemed to me plenty of time to back down. I was so scared that I posted on Facebook that I was going to get a tattoo in order to make sure I went through with it. I was scared when I walked into the shop, and I was scared when I sat down in the chair.

Could you think of something that scares you that you could do? Every day, or even say once a week? What about public speaking, or bungee jumping?

There is an incredibly interesting program in the United States military right now which takes soldiers returning from Iraq -- especially heavy combat role soldiers -- and forces them to do adrenaline rising, risk taking, and yet mostly safe activities once a week after returning from combat.

So for example, they go bungee jumping, and white water rafting, and sky diving. It's usually something they have never done before is likely to scare them.

The theory is that these people have become adrenaline junkies, living in constant stress for the entire time they are in the operational zone. By teaching them safer ways to get an adrenaline 'fix' -- and also weaning them slowly off the need for stress and adrenaline --you integrate them back into the 'real world' in a safer way.

I imagine this will do wonders to minimize post traumatic stress. It will certainly teach them a safe outlet for the pent-up rage and fear that come along with adrenaline highs.

In a larger way the success of this endeavour would also show us something else; that fear can heal you.

Healthy expressions of fear are there for a good reason, and when we confront them, deal with them, overcome them, and figure them out we can become better people.

My tattoo experience was amazing for a number of reasons, not least of which was that it was psychologically and spiritually healing. Somehow, watching this happen, all of my passions, art, expression, writing, rebellion, merged into one thing and were given expression in a physical reality.

Because I was afraid of it, I put off getting a tattoo until I was totally ready to do it, and when I did it, it was just 'right' and instantly allowed me to do a lot of 'head and heart work' to reconcile who I am now with who I have been at different stages of my life.

Let me suggest to you that we fear things because they are important; we do not fear the trivial and so, besting that fear, we work through it and move beyond it. This is real growth.

It is not just about the adrenaline, it is about recognizing how you feel about things. Fear is not about what you think; it is about what you feel. The guy doing my tattoo jokingly said that it lets you know you are alive.

He might be on to something there.

We spend far too much of our time in our heads, criticizing, rationalizing, prioritizing . . . and there comes a time when you have to get outside of that and feel what you are doing. Perhaps you need to jump off a bridge with a rope around your ankle, or you need to watch a hypodermic needle puncture your skin 10,000 times, or you might just need to get up the nerve to say 'Hi.'

When the breath is caught in your chest, and it seems your heart is beating loudly enough for everyone to hear, when the sweat breaks out on your forehead, when that shaky feeling takes hold of you; you will truly know that you are alive.

More than that, you will be doing something that matters, truly matters, not just to you, but to the universe. It is in those moments when fear meets passion that creativity and art find expression. It is in the expression of our deepest held convictions, the ones that scare us, that we begin to create a world where we are truly being ourselves.

I think we really should try to do one thing that scares us each day.

It could be simple, or it could be complex.

It could change everything.

Facing down the mirror, and facing the truth

2009-08-15T12:33:00.001-03:00

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday August 24th, 2009

Have you ever seen a photograph of yourself?

It could just be me, but when someone takes a photo and I see it, the person it portrays is not the person I see in the mirror each morning. I don't mean that existentially or anything, I am being quite literal.

I do not look that old, or that overweight in the mirror.

My expression is more 'happy go lucky.' I am more muscular and certainly better looking.

Not in the photograph, however.

Which leads me to the concept of truth.

There are those out there, from every walk of life, who would like to think that he world is black and white. They would like to believe that the concept of truth is irrefutable; that there are certain things that never change. My suggestion is that they take a good long look in the mirror.

You see, even within the deepest recesses of our minds, truth is malleable. Our brains work more like Photoshop than like some safety deposit box.

All the info we store there is adjusted by feelings, attitudes, emotions, correlations, and comparisons. Thus my self image is happier, stronger and lighter than I really am, and voila, that is what I see in the mirror. I have edited the 'truth' to be what I want it to be.

I remember a beginning psychology course where we discussed the 'halo effect' of falling in love. In essence when we fall in love we blur the edges of reality. The bad qualities get swallowed up by this halo of goodness that comes from passion, or infatuation, or what have you. The truth of who the other is has been edited away by our minds.

The problem with this is that it sounds like it gives us licence to dismiss the concept of truth; which is the exact opposite of what I am trying to get to. I believe that because truth is a concept that is in flux while being part of our relationship to our selves, we have even more responsibility when it comes to what is true.

Truth is individual, but that does not mean we should not own up to it.

That woman who was kidnapped, or rather, who drove to Toronto for God knows what reason and then decided she would say she was kidnapped in order to avoid responsibility for her actions, is a case in point.

For some reason a lot of people think that whatever they like to say or believe is valid, as long as the end justifies the means. Truth being malleable, what is a little white lie, like saying we have been kidnapped. Just in case you are not sensing the irony; it probably cost you, the tax payer, quite a few thousand dollars in police investigation time, while allowing real criminals to get away with things while the police were diverted.

It also, on a personal level for the individual, did a lot of damage to this woman's credibility.

We create fantasy for a lot of reasons. It is better for my conscience to believe I am a good 50 pounds lighter, for example. The fact that reality often fails to measure up against fantasy is even more dangerous.

Take our relationships with the people we love, for example. At some point we are going to have to realize that what we fantasized our lives and relationships were like just does not measure up under the constant stress and scrutiny of running a household, raising children, and managing a career.

I think this is why the divorce rate is so high.

It all starts with the wedding; $50,000 buys you the fantasy that the prince and princess ride into the sunset in the white coach and live happily ever after.

"I have dreamt about this moment for my whole life," says almost every bride.

Well, did you also dream about what it will be like when you lose your job? When you first have to hold your husband's hand while he throws up into the toilet with the flu? Was it your fantasy to go a whole year without sleep or even talking to your spouse after that little bundle of joy comes along?

The truth of life is far closer to a Buddhist aphorism: "All life is suffering."

Which does not mean life does not have its moments of absolute joy.

The only way to find those moments is to take responsibility for our own truths. The fantasies we have are just that, false and twisted realities that do not help us to adjust to just how powerful our lives could be lived if we engaged authentically with the truth.

Instead of creating fiction, we need to accept reality for what it is and work together with those we love to rise above the suffering and find what we need to be happy.

To many people think that whatever they feel or think is reason enough that it should be that way, and so they are okay with the little lies, or even the downright truth altering of saying you have been kidnapped when you have not.

It is not easy to get out of bed in the morning and look around yourself with a sense of having to admit that this is as good as it really is. But that is where we find the power to change.

As long as the fantasy has the upper hand, we will never engage the world deeply and find a new way to be the people we always thought we were anyway.

Or to put it in a simpler way; tell the truth, accept the truth, work with it; it will make life so much easier.