Loss at Christmas

It's coming up Christmas.
I was woken from sleep at 3 am. Nightmares.  Again.  Wet pillow.  Tears.
I was reminded today of a woman who had the courage to refuse an abortion and how she was hounded for years after and abused terribly till she was no more.  Everyone who tried to support her was attacked viciously.  I feel I've come close to pure evil again and was strongly reminded of this today.
I found myself missing a lawyer friend, Dugald Christie. We sat in church and talked about God, love, ethics, morality, society on drives to the jail where he got  me doing pro bono work.  I was blessed to know him.  He was killed.
I learned of another patient who died today. HIV and drug addiction.  I talked with him of his whole life.  So many fine chapters in that blessed book. These last few pages were miserable and his death is a kind of blessing. I'll miss him.  Another patient hung himself earlier this fall. He'd been turned away from the hospital and refused services.  We did our best in the community but it wasn't good enough. We have no resources and we are punished for caring.  Our thinkings is wrong because we're not looking at things from the perspective of profit and these people simply aren't profitable.
There's more talk of euthanasia for the elderly.  Legalize marijauna, give them cake, have everyone stoned and it's Matrix and the Holocaust all over again but now we'll all be 'high' so it will be okay.
I feel so alone at times.
I miss my mother and father and aunt and grandparents.  They're dead and I'm old and it sometimes seems so sad.  I pick myself up and pray and pray. I meditate and I try to exercise. The pain gets to me more some days.  I'm blessed beyond belief but I grieve.
Loss is loss. There's no getting around it. I miss people who have gone.
I miss Jesus. I think of him being killed by Herod and Pontius Pilate and Peter being crucified upside down by Nero and stupidly I'm reading about William Wallace tortured and quartered by Edward Plantanget.  These are the real morality tales.
I should be reading about birds and flowers.  I think adults who have children have a buffer, they get to read all the fairytales over and over.  I miss the fairytales.
I don't have answers or solutions.  Mostly questions.  I dare not ask why anymore. Mostly I just ask, where?  'Where are you Jesus?'
The great lie of the secular world is that atheists are foisting the notion that theists are killers but the only religion of atheism is communism. Russian Communists killed 80 million people in very few years. Chinese Communists killed 120 million people. And I just came from Cambodia where Cambodian communists, the latest generation of atheist government, killed 3 million in record time, 4 years, more than a third of the countries population of 8 million.
I swore on a Bible today.  I liked that,  It felt good under my hand.  In a break I read psalms.  They were comforting as they always are.  Still I'm sad.  So very very very sad. But this too will pass. It's just a hiccup. I could take a drug, smoke some grass, have some wine, not 'feel', 'numb' myself out. I tried that years ago after the divorce, after being held hostage, the life threats and the deaths, so many, back then. HIV and suicide.  "Man up!!!"  "Shake yourself out of it."
I remember the shame and embarrassment I felt kneeling and crying in the hospital corridor when the boy died despite all I did to save his life. He died because he stopped taking the medication that was keeping him alive and here I am years later, still crazy after all these years, trying to stop people from taking drugs that are killing them.  Will I ever float down stream?
I sat with a colleague and felt his fear at the threat of being hounded in retirement. He's scared about the babies he delivered. He did his best. I know. He's the best doctor I know but we're not perfect and now there's so much money to be made by destruction. No one's into creation. It's out of vogue.  Bankers even bid on insurance against collective suicides they've engineered for power and greed and we're pawns in the insanity of politics.
I'd rather be in a storm at sea alone than in the crush of media hype hysteria. First they built enough bombs to kill us all a hundred times over then they were supposed to stop that and needed a whole bunch more money to clean up the mess they made and then some of that clean up didn't work and Syria has gassed its people and it's no long global but regional and we're supposed to make sense of it with all the false prophets and misinformation.
Trust me I'm a politician.  Trust me I'm a reporter. Trust me I'm a government representative. Trust me I'm a lawyer.  But if I say 'trust me, I'm a doctor', everyone thinks that's funny.  Weird and twisted humour this planet earth has.
I probably should walk the dog more along the river where I take pictures of the beautiful birds that live there year round.  I could lie on the beach.  I could sit a lot longer in Rome churches with the smell of incense and the place of worship.
I'm an ecumenicalist.  I believe that all spiritual seekers are on the same path.  I pray to the 'saints of all religion' and believe that Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Jesus all were further along the path than their followers. I see these spiritual men walking out at the front where God is calling to his son and all his children, to come home.  And death is that home for me but I can't get there till I love this gift of life to it's fullest. And I don't feel I'm living life as lovingly or as meaningfully, gratefully or graciously as God would have me.
The irony is I'm as likely to meet Spongebob in the afterlife.  Divine Comedy is what it is.
I'm kind of slouching towards Bethlehem.  I've got way too much attitude. I'm dragging a whole lot of luggage that's negative and resentful and poor me.  I'm so full of lust, sloth, gluttony, greed, and downright stupidity that I can't feel the wings of eagles or be lifted up to my Lord in Heaven.  I'm a slug wallowing in the dirt, hiding in fear a lot when I should be a kid in sandbox throwing the dirt in the sky.
I want to dance without pain, sing without hoarseness, laugh till tears stream down my cheeks.
I want Jesus.
The basic story is God was born man and killed by man. What could be simpler as metaphor.  Now I have to believe that God resurrects.  There is life after life and life after death and my family who have died, my friends who have died and my patients who have died are still alive, not just in my memory but where I can meet them again, like long lost friends, like high school reunions and comings home from distant lands.
Mary was like my mom, like every mom and Jesus was like me, like every baby.  And they had friends and they suffered governments and taxes and intolerance and greed and the powers of this world.  I've lived twice as long as Jesus and my mom lived longer than Mary and all of us have been living this metaphor myth story in our own lives as the cosmic Christ is within all of us.  God is born. God died. God will come again.  The trinity of father, son and holy spirit.  The beginning middle and end, Parent, child, holy spirit. But it's not linear. It's stellar
Contemplating the Christmas story. Advent and the coming of the king.  The servant king.  The message that God is a lover.
I have no children but my brother shares the men he and his wife created with me.  They're fine men.  I was with a friend and his sons. They're fine men too. They're all moving into marriage and having families.
The cycles go on.
I delivered a hundred babies, stopped an epidemic or two on Indian villages, saved a dozen infants with meningitis from brain damage.  All those nights without sleep. All those terrible unknown diseases. Being held hostage. Being attacked, The deliriums and dementias and the teams of people, teachers and friends.  I've been blessed to be a healer among healers.
When I studied buddhism and was a disciple and yogi in my 20's I learned about right living.  I figured that what Jesus did was right living.  So becoming a healer was okay and it's been okay.  It's been good.
I'm not allowed to do that so much anymore.  I feel I've been hi jacked for other purposes.  I keep thinking of missionary work.  But then I like my things.  I 'm a fat cat yuppie who lacks any real compassion, self centered, self serving, complaining, whining, twittering and face booking with my luxury computer and luxury I phone communication devices, and designer clothes and glorious motorcycle and fast sports car.  I worry about losing this hard won hard earned bit of the Canadian dream.
But I've not had heat secure for weeks and the water hasn't been sure. Basics like electricity are never things I can take for granted in my world. This cold snap caught me off guard, fighting beurocrats with too much tax dollars and not enough real work and no real life experience to learn humility.  I've no house and the really rich think I'm rich but my riches are my dog and a fishing rod and rifle.  I 'm a survivalist.
I can live off the sea or off the land. I haven't had much faith in governments and stupid people in groups not to crucify the citizenry collectively and have us all nuked and having to defend ourselves individually from zombie groups of marauder gangs.  I fear the break down of civilization and yet I've prepared for just that eventuality.  Boy Scout motto, always be prepared.
The core fear is what Pascal described as the God shaped hole inside me.  I can't find the architect God in the wall of the building. I have to find the light within that is the source of the light without. Easy enough to say and easy enough to talk about.
But
But
I pray and meditate and meditating am distracted by a myriad of 'things' in that quiet time when I listen for the wee small voice of God.
I would know you more fully, more surely more really. Let me be like you Jesus. Let me know you but lets accept you did the cross bit and that was for all of us so I can get down off the cross, take the nails out of my hands and feet that I keep putting there and use the wood to build a house.
I loved the 150 year old St. Thomas church where Steven Bell sang and played guitar last month. Now there was some mighty fine wood.
Maybe I can sleep again. The little dog is sleeping beside me.  I pray I'll be with God in my dreams. I love when I dream of family and dogs and friends who have gone before. I love the dreams of meetings and especially love the old ladies.  I'm walking towards the light, Jonah like, stumbling and twirling and back stepping , getting swallowed by whales,  staggering, side stepping, sashaying, skipping, hopping and crawling.  Sometimes it's so slow and other times its way too fast.
Thank you God for hope. Still my fear and comfort me in the loss.  Thank you for these days to come and Christmas.  Hi Jesus,  baby God.