Westminster Abbey Meditation, Mission Frazer Valley, BC

I often stop at the Mission returning from the west or north to Vancouver. After a weekend of camping, fishing, hunting, hot tubbing, hiking, boating or quadding, I’ll turn off the road at Mission and head up the hill to that sacred place.  Laura and I did this Sunday.  

Mission, the town was named after the historic St. Mary’s Mission of the Oblate founded in 1868. Westminster Abbey, the monster of Catholic men of the St. Benedictine Order.  “Wa are all made in the image of God."

I like to kneel and pray in silence in the light filled chapel.  This day a group of Chinese Christians with what appeared to be a ‘tour guide’ had congregated in front of the door and were reading loudly in unison rather happily and  communally, their chanting voices filling the interior of the church distracting me from my own silent prayers.  

I’d just come from the quiet serenity of Harrison Lake and was facing another week in the frenetic humdrum of Vancouver City.  This is normally where I stop and alone ‘gear up’ for another week preparing for all the toxicity and anger, threats and fear I encounter working with drug addicted patients.  

As I was leaving I interrupted their happy Christian community, disrupting their ‘dragon boat Christian loudness’ by sternly saying ‘your voices are carrying through the church, could you move to the side away from the entrance.”  I said, They were all terribly apologetic. I was judgemental of their insensitivity.  

I’d had a wonderful time in the woods.  I loved the freedom.  Now I was going back to a world where everyone was offended by everything and the government was the ‘thought police’ and ‘language police’ and ‘terror’ reigned everyone in that decidedly ‘apathetic’ rising drug addiction, consumer way that is so fundamentally Canadian.  Everyone smiling in fear , the enslaved, bowing to their masters, ever polite fore fear of offending all the ever offended social bullies backed increasingly by the government and Supreme Court.  Even comedians can’ t joke without law suits.  It’s Sharia Communism.  Journalists are rounded up in Turkey to be silenced. But in Canada the journalists have long been silences in all the mainstream.  If you don’t write what the politically correct dictators want you are out of a job.

I’m going back to an increasingly atheistic hostile world where the government demands more and more places for people to do drugs despite the exponential rise of overdose since the first of these was opened. Now as more open more deaths occur. All the while abortions go on at the billion dollar death industry.  

They were nice people.  I love my Chinese Christian friends. They have a happiness and harmony that is apostolic.  I’m Kierkegaard by comparison. One of the dessert fathers. My mentors are St. Paul and Isaiah.  I turn to Jeremiah on a good day.  

They couldn’t know their voices were carrying. They were gathered outside the church and worshiping in celebration of the risen lord. I’m watching his coming crucifixion.  Herod Justin Trudeau celebrates the persecution of Christians and brings jihadists to Canada to begin all over again the debate about whether homosexuals should be killed or ostracized.  The courts only gave struck down the laws that called for their arrest in the late sixties and early 70’s.  Now Sharia Law would have them thrown from the tops of high buildings.  Our gay priest rests on his laurels. He doesn’t exuded that ‘wealthy Christian’ good time feeling of the “health and wealth Christian’.  He probably knew those who died of Aids as I did.  I was at the bedsides.  I was terrified.  The plagues are still among us.  

It’s good to catch a moment of joy and celebration.  

I am droll.

I remember times in my life when I was positively ecstatic. I remember feeling my heart would burst with joy when I was younger. There were slices of reality that glimmered. I feel I’ve been touched by God over and over again. I’ve stood on the highest peak. I’ve known dreams and visions and walked in harmony. I’ve known sacred moments so deep and profound. I’ve been transcended. I’ve felt myself lifted on eagle’s wings.

All this comes and goes.  Today I’m ‘slouching towards Bethlehem’.  Today I have been punched in the hip. I’ve woken and my rib has been taken and I hear that shrill woman Hillary insist everyone should vote for her because she has a vagina, sexist cow. And what is worst so many will, just as they voted for Obama ‘because he was black’.  The racists and the sexists are those who say ‘me, me, me, because I’m me.”  And if you don’t accept them, they attack you . Evil.

Old testament stuff.

Fire and Brimstone.

But the Cross symbolizes the “Good News’.  God died for our sins.  The slate is clean.  There is a new accord. Jesus is my advocate.  It all boils down to our being saved, children of the one true God.

I am a crusader. I carry a sword. In WWI I would have flown a Sopwith Camel, in WWII a spit fire, in Afghanistan I’d have been a military sniper.  Always I’m a doctor. I heal. I pick up the pieces left from the industrial age. I clean up the remains after the battlefield.

I dreamed last night of cleaning up countless bodies, tiny Lilliputian women, naked white, in a sink, putting them in a plastic bag with a twist tie, hundreds like shrimp, the abortus, these fetus shaped full grown women bleached white in the sink, left over from the killing, and I was gathering them to bury in the woods and pray for all the women who could have been were it not abortion.

I still have nightmares about the abortions I did.  

I talked with a man last night whose daughter is doing so well in her young adult life that he beamed with pride.  The torch is being carried on.  

My babies were aborted too.  I am alone in life. No ‘flavour’ of immortality left to me.  We discussed last week the destruction of the Celtic Race, our place in the Bible as the Galatians.  We were ‘white’ and now the ‘white man and white women’ are the latest in a list of evils of the new revisionist historians whose arguments always ends with ‘make me king instead and give me all your money or else’.

I’m tired.  It’s the end of a week.  

I’m running late.

I’ve got to find the joy and channel hope.  It’s always there but I’ve surrounded myself with sickness and death all my life.  Others encounter it rarely and avoid it but I’m going again to hear the complaints about life and to offer pills and advice and to listen and admire.  Each of those I know have more than enough reason to homicide or suicide but we keep on. We keep on trucking. We do the next right thing. We move forward and hope that it’s up.  

We raise our faces to the stars. We lift our eyes to the sky.  We look out there and up there for a God that is within and everywhere. Be with me today. Help me do thy will. Thank you Jesus.  Forgive me for my lack of faith.  Thank you for the Abbey. It’s a place of retreat and it always touches my soul and reminds me that mercy is more than judgement and that joy comes in the morning.

Gratitude, July 26, 2016

Thank you Lord for this day. Thank you for my work. Thank you for my colleagues. Thank you for the staff. Thank you for the patients.Thank you for my teachers and mentors. Thank you for the joy I experience when someone becomes well and moves on with their life out of the stuck place that brought them to me. Thank you for all the knowledge that you have helped me to acquire, all the training, and all the experience. Thank you for your wisdom and teaching.
Thank you for my family and friends. Thank you for my buddy, Gilbert the cockapoo.
Thank you for the end of this day, the sunshine and blue sky and the peace and calm here outside at a picnic table, Gilbert watching for other dogs and entertainment on the street. Thank you for the green and this lovely breeze.
Thank you for summer. Thank you for summer vacations.
Thank you for people who fix things, repair things, make things whole. Thank you for Honda Centre, for Tom for his help, for Eric at Starlet RV, for Carolynn and her help and Joelle and her help. I love that I know people I can phone who have specialized skills that I can call on and they will be there to ‘fix’ something.  I don’t mind the cost because these professionals are so reasonable and the solutions are so rewarding.  Right now I’ve the second toilet problem this year, but one that involves a holding tank and sewage removal.  I understand how my colleague chose bowel and anal surgery as a speciality because people are simply so happy when these ‘systems’ are restored. Right now I’m using secondary systems, having an outdoor toilet options but I don’t like the inconvenience of walking to the building when it’s just so nice to ‘dump’ at home.  It’s only a day or two delay but I’m going to be so thankful when it’s resolved. I loved when Eric fixed my bath which was leaking.
I just love when people fix things. I fix things. I fix things at the physical , social and psychiatric and beaurocratic, medical legal and various paradigm levels too but it’s not as ‘obvious’. I arranged for a couple of surgical hernia repairs after getting ultrasounds and reviewing the reports.  I miss doing the actual cutting myself. I treated a few infections, cellulitis and std’s. There’s such a pleasure in the seen. I do all this other stuff in which I feel much like I’m just holding people on till they get out of deep water and it’s not so apparent and more I don’t really know if I’m doing the ‘good’ things, convincing people not to suicide, convincing people to get off drugs. There’s such a disillusionment going on. I’ve seen a few notes of colleagues and they seem happy enough to see people and do the text book stuff, not questioning the ‘raison d’être’.  I feel like the little boy with a finger in the damn.  It’s the insanity in the media, the feeding frenzies and manic depressive, paranoia and frenetic writing.  I muddle along.  Aging takes its toll.  There’s a same old same old, humdrum and I wonder if I’m doing okay.  So many people are so ‘offended’ and so ‘entitled’ and the expectations in the bureaucracy for others to do all the work for free is at an all time high.  People who wouldn’t lift a finger for a dying man seem to think you should give your left kidney and heart to their ‘pet of the month’.  Causes come and go.  The people who are being paid off our income living in palaces are the worst.

But thank you Lord for the joy I experience. Thank you for the things I maintain and need to fix. Thank you for this little dog and the vet. Thank you for my brother and his doctors. Thank you for the nephews and sister in law.

Thank you for the church and the meetings and the literature of hope.
Thank you for prayer and meditation.
Thank you for TV and Hagen Daz tv.
Thank you for iPhone.
Thank you for Apple and Netflix movies.

I really did enjoy Divergent Alluvant last night.

I’m so looking forward to go ing to the theatre to see the new Star Wars.

I hope that we can get away and enjoy the summer long weekend.

Thank you for New Orleans and my conference there this year. Thank you for Laura caring for Gilbert. Thank you for the lovely Chinese lady who does my laundry in loads.I”m glad I’ve bundled a pile so I actually have some clean clothes in the coming weeks. I hadn’t realized I was running low having no time to do my own with all these demands for reports and records and meetings.  I’ve enjoyed it. But can only consider that these positions were made for ‘back up’ and I’ve lived so long on my own without the assistance that the position were originally designed for. It’s my choice.  I have independence  and more freedom to come and go but looking back at my mother’s help to my father and realizing I’ve never known that, myself the ‘wife’ in my relationships as well as the major breadwinner I can’t see the merit in the modern marriage but I do miss my cleaning lady and I so admire my sister in law and brother in law on their maintaining their large home and taking care of all the guests.  They’re regular hotel managers.  I’m overwhelmed with Gilbert and I.

I was thinking that if I cleaned up my trailer and unloaded all the excess in the storage locker which needs sorting too I could take this trailer off for the weekend but instead I’ll whine and moan. I could get the tent out too.  It’s there in the storage locker and I could really enjoy tenting this weekend rather than worrying about finding a cabin which isn’t booked this high use time.  I’m so looking forward to being away in the wilderness though maybe by a lake. I really out to swim.
Thank you Lord for summer.
Thank you Lord for all the possibilities.

Now thank you for the peanut butter and fresh bread I bought. I’m going to enjoy myself right now.  And the new Hagen daz Coconut ice cream.  Gilbert loved licking the bowl as much as I loved this new flavour I’ve not enjoyed before. Normally I love hagen daz coffee and vanilla but this coconut is so summer.
Thank you Lord Jesus.

Bungalow Motel Cabins, Harrison Lake and the new Honda 500 Pioneer Side by Side ATV

I love Bungalow Motel at Harrison Lake.  They are a set of rustic cabins off the main drag in Harrison going towards the East Harrison Road across from the Church, right beside the boat launch. I’ve been staying here now for a quarter century, every year.  Some years I can get away more other years work has won out and I’ve only been able to get there for an overnight.  Every time has been special.  The owners are magnificent.
I purchased a Honda 500 Pioneer Side by Side ATV trading in my former quad.  With the new machine, Laura would be able to sit beside me and Gilbert, my dog, had a place to sit on a blanket at her feet.  We’d not all three been able to ride the quad and after Gilbert hurt his back last year I didn’t want him jumping up and down as before.  My hunting friend’s all approve of the ‘side by side’ seating arrangement because none of them wanted to ride in the quad’s  ‘bitch’ seat.  I’ve done it and frankly by the time we'd untangled and dismounted and got our rifles out  the game we’d seen was long gone.  The ‘side by side’ is simply the best way to go if you’re not always planning on being alone.
We drove the short ride from Vancouver to Harrison’s Friday night after picking up my new Honda from the awesome folk at Honda Centre at Boundary and First. I’ve been doing business with them for a decade at least and buying Honda for my back woods off the grid camping, hunting and exploring needs or for off shore sailing use for at least a quarter of a century too. I’ve had outboards, generators, scooters and motorcycles and now this incredible Honda 500 Pioneer. The beauty of the machine is that it’s narrow enough to sit in the truck box like a regular quad.  The minor disadvantage for hauling purposes is that like a ski doo, the length requires the gate of the truck to be down.  That’s going to affect how I hitch the RV to the truck when the Honda Pioneer is on board though it will fit in my RV Toyhauler’s garage.
Laura loves the Bungalow Motel.  When we arrived it was about 7 pm. We’d stopped in A&W in Mission where there was 50’s hot rod car rally with Elvis music going on.  We ate burgers and onion rings as we drove up the beautiful #7 highway to Harrison. Gilbert loves getting the A&W beef paddy though his favourite is MacDonald’s.  .
The particular cabin we were put up in this time has the best view of all.  It looked out on the park where Canada Geese had collected and beyond to Harrison Lake where the BC Sailing races were going on all weekend.  At the other end of the town by the Harrison Resort, the Dragonboat Festival was taking place as well.  Harrison Lake is a hopping place in the summer with bikinis galore and all the muscle men out, along with a full array of outdoor activities going on.  It’s the most interesting place that way, with a near by provincial park that caters to the outdoorsy set, the marina for sailors and all the fishing and guiding activities, and nearby backwoods. Meanwhile there are luxury hotels for those who just want to drinkie poo on balconies in the sun.  The Harrison Hot Springs Resort and Spa we enjoy most mid winter for the ‘waters’ is always a going concern.   The town has really built up since I began coming here in the 80’s.  The golf course is especially popular now and there are so many great restaurants.
Laura and I like the Bungalow Cabins for the rustic charm. Each has a little patio and we enjoyed sitting outside reading and drinking coffee.
After arriving and settling in and eating pizza we walked Gilbert in the park and had a fairly early night in the ultimate quiet of the surroundings. Outside the sky had cleared and the billions of stars were radiant without the city lights obscuring them.  I love sitting outside at Harrison Lake and looking across the great expanse of water to the mountains beyond.  It’s the most meditative place.
In the morning Gilbert, as usual, got me up so I took him for a walk in the park.  He loves all the scents and was the happiest I’ve seen him in months this weekend.  
Then we  walked the short distance to the down town mall where Chuck and Kitty’s cafe is. They serve the best morning coffee and egg cheese and bacon buns to die for.  I carried all this back. The dragon boat folk were gathering at this early  hour while those who’d danced up a storm in the pub were probably sleeping in.
Bringing a beautiful girl breakfast in bed definitely gets one brownie points.  It was about 11 am before we got ourselves organized to head back country.  I’d brought my Ruger Mini 14 semi auto 223 shell rifle for back woods target practice so confirmed with the "in the know” Bungalow Motel folk that the top of the lake would be the best for off the grid 4x4 ing. There’s a whole lot of logging roads up there with gravel pits where you can set up targets without fear of disturbing vegetarians.
We drove the Ford F350 with Honda Pioneer in the back past the Sasquatch Provincial Camp and the Bear Creek Camp and the Cobalt Point campsites. They were all full of young people and I remember when years past I had the last, a long beech area, all to my self, mid summer. Now they’re all full and I believe some have to booked ahead.  They all even have facilities and there’s lots of picnic tables that never existed years ago.  The Harrison east road is gravel but so good that all manner of cars and trucks and bikes had ridden up there parking along the road to access the beach.
We found a great hill to off load the Honda Pioneer at. I am always anxious at the loading and off loading phase where there’s that moment of commitment when I can’t help but fear I’m going to fall off the end of the truck or flip somehow.  I love ‘terra firms’.  As always, the unloading went just fine.  We then locked up the truck and Laura and Gilbert and I set out to explore.
What a glorious little machine!!!.  There’s an advertisement Honda uses of a man and woman, admittedly half our age, really enjoying driving along a narrow wooded trail in their Pioneer 500..  Despite their perfect hair and teeth, I thought we looked just like them and definitely were having twice the fun.  Honda’s advertising really is truthful.     I looked over at Laura and she was beaming.  I just loved driving this little mini jeep and it’s perkiness.  Lots of gears.  Great clearance.   Gilbert had lots of room on a blanket at Laura’s feet.
We even had a couple of doe cross the road in front us and I had time to find my iPhone in the pouches set under the roof and get a shot with the camera. This machine is going to be a great hunting platform for my friend and I come fall.
After driving for a bit on the main logging road we took a sketchy little road off to the beach.   Laura squealed when we slid sideways in a muddy stretched.  I noticed she had her seat belt on and at times had a hand on the bars holding herself in on turns.  This was a truly off the grid place where what we think of as kids had set up tents and were quadding and off road motorcycle camping along the beach.
“We’re not old people police! Continue what you’re doing.  We’re just stopping for coffee”.  I called out to this group of 20 year old whose youth space we’d obviously invaded.  They laughed, but clearly were at ease with the idea we’d not be staying.  At the end of the beach we stopped and pointed the Honda at the lake. I got out a thermos of coffee while Laura shared some cheese slices with Gilbert.  I sat in that perfect little Honda Pioneer 4x4 side by side looking at this most wonderful of lakes with the sky clearing, a beautiful girl beside me and Gilbert chasing bits of wood in the sand.  Life doesn’t get any better.
We drove back to the main road and took some side roads before heading up into the mountains where we found a narrow bridge which could only be crossed by ATV’s.  We were off the grid there and had a lovely drive up in  the hills. We picked berries along the road and the wild flowers were lovely   We crossed a little mountain stream by a waterfall and stopped for selfies.  Then I  set up targets and got out the Ruger Mini 14.  We’d earlier seen bear scat and as usual Laura was concerned so I’d said she needn’t be because I had the rifle.
Well, it turned out the rifle was jammed and it took me all of 10 to 15 minutes to get it working.  Naturally Laura figured a bear would have had more than enough time to eat her so I had to reassure that  Gilbert would have protected her as bear hate barking little dogs.
While we were driving up there she’d suddenly started flailing about with her hands. I stopped to see if she was alright and she said . “A great black spider landed on me.”  We couldn’t find any evidence of this hallucination but when I put on my Sturges North Hoodie I felt a crawly in my sleeve.  I won’t say I flailed about but rather that I had the hoodie off with some alacrity.  It turned out that our guest was not a big black spider but rather a very large black cricket.
We both admitted we loved crickets and enjoyed watching it fly away.  I’d turned the vehicle around using the reverse several times in the day but suddenly without any warning the reverse function didn’t work.  Laura got out and helped me push the little thousand pound machine around so I could drive a hundred yards back from the targets. I couldn’t think of any reason the reverse wouldn’t work as all the other gears did and didn’t figure on figuring out backwoods repairs. The lovely little machine would still get us back to the truck.
So I shot off 20 or 30 rounds till I was getting a good grouping in the centre of the target all the while Gilbert was ecstatically hoping that grouse would start dropping out of the skies.  Gilbert absolutely loves grouse hunting. While I was practising target shooting he was practicing sniffing and weaving and pointing. Laura was waiting patiently while the boys were having all the fun.
On the way down we had to cross the bridge.  While the one side was an easy rise the return side was a steep ramp.  Laura and Gilbert got out and I gunned it.  I remembered hearing the word ‘commitment’ from the Gaylor at Honda and from the owner of Bungalow Cabins when we’d discussed steep ramps.  I gave her and Laura said it was a thing of beauty.  “You were air born and landed perfectly.” My heart was in my throat but I only could have been a foot off the ground yet being as it was over a roaring river it all had lots of psychological significance. I swaggered with my chest out after that maneuver though it was something I’d done countless times and with much more air on my former quad. This is just what my friend Dave lives for when he goes quadding. I was even thinking of backing up the steep except with the loss of reverse I had little choice and could see nowhere to look my winch too. In for a penny in for a pound. I committed. And it was glorious!.
We drove down the mountain from there  and got the Honda Pioneer situated on the little hill for loading, having to adjust the truck to the quad because without reverse,  I couldn’t position the quad. Laura shouted directions to me watching for alignment and it was good.
With the Honda Pioneer on the back of the Ford F350 I just had to tie it down.  Then we drove back to Bungalow Motel.  We’d been riding about for maybe 6 or 7 hours and I was exhausted.  I loved the shower and Laura ordered pizza.
There was nothing on TV even though they had cable.  Both of us read and we all loved the ‘meat lovers’ pizza with cold coca colas.  Gilbert thought we’d chosen well.
We slept in.  My body is still aching.  We packed up and headed home after another magnificent weekend at Harrison’s.  I’ll get my Honda fixed this week and maybe next weekend we can do it all over again.  We were lucky to get into Bungalow with a few days notice because of a cancellation.  I can’t wait to return.  I always feel like I’m in one of those grand little places I stayed at near Boston or outside of San Francisco where movies are made of  artists who go to get close to nature.
They have an outdoor swimming pool we’ve enjoyed in the past getting a bit of that Palm Spring lying around in the sun  pool experience. It was really hot this weekend.  I did think of walking over to the beech and diving into the lake. The water is perfect this time of the year.  But there’s never enough time to do all the things you want to, as the Jim Croce song goes. I didn’t even get to the hot spring pool in town like I usually do.  It such a Gordon Lightfoot John Denver getaway.  The town is definitely becoming more a Beach Boys scene.
Back in Vancouver I feel rather than two nights away  like I’ve been away for a week. Heaven would be staying there for a week or two.   Bit I have to get back to work having had the very best of breaks.  It’s hard to believe it’s only an hour a way.

Rainy Day Vancouver

There needs to be a new diagnosis for depression for Vancouver.  Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is related to the loss of sun with seasons.  I think there's a need for a DSMV "Rainy Day Blues" diagnosis.  The treatment would be staying in bed till the rains stop and the sun comes back.  On Facebook there was a post from Scotland with a picture of the 'one sunny day' of summer.  I'm feeling summer deprived here in July.

Also Gilbert's back is sore.  He was hurt again at the groomers and hasn't been able to jump since last Friday. All he does is lie about appearing to not want to move because of pain.  Having traumatic joint arthritis myself I'm "feeling the weather" in my bones today too.  I've gone to work. I brought a little bed for him to lie under the desk here so he'd be more comfortable.  I may take him back to the Vet's again.  He injured the disk last year jumping out of the truck and then doing more harm jumping down from the ATV.

Adapting to my poor little dog, so he won't jump up or down from waist height, I've traded the Yamaha Quad in for a Honda 500 Pioneer Side by Side.  That way Gilbert can step in and out just like in the car.  Of course as I'm hunting more with Tom and taking Laura along more the passenger seat is a must.  Also there's a roof and windshield and roll bars so it's an upgrade.  It was occasioned by Gilbert though.

Today he couldn't even climb into the low lying Miata. I've been picking him up and carrying him whereever there's stairs.  He sleep on the floor beside the bed rather than on the bed like he usually does now despite my making a ramp for him to get up.  Poor little guy.

My disappointment with the groomer is simply that, he was well before, and he was lame again after. So something happened. Possibly playing with another dog or resisting getting his ears trimmed. Whatever a part of me believes that something happened and that someone noticed but in our sick society no one notified me. It's possible they didn't know.  I don't even know if they were notified of his back being sensitive.  Still, because I don't know I can't use that groomer again.  The 'unknown' makes the place more dangerous.  Avoidance is a great coping mechanism.  I just can't risk another injury to Gilbert.  The weekend was spent caring for him and now there will likely be a vet bill possibly because someone was careless. I don't know.  I feel all those helpless and guilty feelings that parents feel all the time.

On a rainy day I find any excuse for 'self pity'.

"Self pity' is that go to place that the mind is seeking an excuse to find.  Daily I resist the alluring temptation of self pity by constantly reciting "All shall be well, All shall be well. All manner of things shall be well.'

I let a weasel of despair into my mind on the way to work.  I'd heard the Trump and Obama speech copy and thought how very sad that 'speech writer's' can make such an important error.  I can see how it happens. Nothing is new.  Everything has been said.  I found myself wanting to go to the tombs and find who had said Obama's lines which Trump had apparently copied.  The Stair Way to Heaven debate just finished. The whole "intellectual property' debate is a mine field.  Harlequin Romances are factory produced 'storys' endlessly repeating.   The University Professors are constantly facing 'plagiarism' these days, whole essays lifted from the internet.  The Media is the worst.  Repeatedly we've seen that whole stories are copied over and over again like human reports are Celtic Monks rewriting Reuters copy, the human photocopy machines.  Yet these narcissistic hypocrites go all politically correct "I'm offended" when a woman with English as a second language repeats three sentences which were not that original in the first place.  I recognise one 'phrase' and another 'sentence' and really would like to know where Obama plagiarized that from given the limits of originality.

It's a rainy day so the image of the petrie dish with the man's brain removed from his body and placed there by his arch enemy.  A good scientist and his wife are struggling in this horrifying future movie to wonder how they will reconnect this disconnect alive brain to some body or even a communication device. He continues in his dream chasing his love.

I'm that man on rainy days.  I'm in this life which the Biblical Ecclesiastes writer describes as "All is Vaniety."
___________

I just did some distracting work at the office.  The essence of depression is narcissism. In the care of others I am distracted from my own suffering.  Kiekegaard said 'Life is Suffering Unto Death".  And the more I focus on myself, the more mental masturbation I do, the more I let my ego be the determinant of reality, the more depressed I am.  In the act of caring for another I am "enlightened'. Little Prince is a book about a little boy on an Asteriod caring for a Rose .   It's in caring for the Rose that he loves.  Love is an action verb.  Little Prince is one of true classics of love. Unfortunately mutuality seems lost in this day.  (See the self pity meme slips in, unwanted.)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is all about 'replacing' or 'blocking' the negative 'memes'.  The word 'meme' is like 'gene' but refers to a make up of the mind rather than the body.

Each of us carries a collection of these 'Mutated Memes", memes that induce sickness rather than wellness.

"Things may be going well now but that's just life fattening me up for the witch to eat me."  ( forgetting the children 'escape' from the Gingerbread House and just focussing on the beginning of the story and all the variations of that."
"I loved her once and she was a bitch so all love is going to end badly"
"The rich and elite have success all sown up and I'm never going to get ahead."
"The only way to succeed is by crime so the best way is to lie, steal, cheat but don't get caught'.
"It doesn't matter.'
"All is Vanity'
"Might as well kill myself."
"No one cares".
"There is no God"
"Life is just meaningless"
"The one who wins is the one who dies with the most toys"
"Women only want you when you're rich."
"Men are always cheaters."
"Women are always cheaters"
"We are all oppressed".
"The Government is all lies and theft."
"You're no good."
"You're a loser".
"Alien lizards have taken over the planet"
"We're all just wage niggers."
"The Bankers have fixed the game"
"They're put poison in our food so we get cancer."
"They're trying to kill us off."

The list goes on.

I've been listening to psychotic thinking for 30 years or more.  I've heard every new insaniety meme as it appears, They're like flu viruses.  My favourite is that I'm in feed back meaningless dream loop with no escape.  Watching the science fiction movies and reading the horror stories helps one understand the mind of genius and insaneity.  I don't judge my patients when they jump off high rises in hope of flying.  Maybe when they splat they are flying in a parallel reality.

I'm stuck here in rainy Vancouver.

I could walk out.

I could walk away with my injured dog and just see how far I get. Maybe take the Harley.  The geographical solution to bad weather. Go south.  End up in Hollywood. Get a job as an aging busboy in some off beat diner and wait to be 'found'.  I love the optimism of the Jim Croce's working in a car wash song, "I should be smoking a big cigar".  Everyone wants the manger job. I want God's job.  I loved the various omnipotence stories, the best being Doystoyevski, Brother's Karamasov, or better perhaps is Job in the Bible.  We're always 'defining' deity.  Yet the fact is that there might just as well be an eternal arbitrariness. The creative claim they want originality but faced with the true unknown, even Moses, as good a follower as there is, shields his face.

To know the face of God, the see the face of God is to be lost.  We hold onto our separateness. The self is the little self and the Self is the greater Self.  But the ego is the part of me that sees myself as disconnected. I am an escapee from the group mind.  I fear being absorbed. But that is Nirvana and Samadhi of the Hindu/Buddhist meme.  "I am the bubble make me the sea."  Being more Christian I'm struggling with what Paul Simon of the Old Testament called the "mother and child reunion.'  Looking back over my shoulder I'm a baby banging on the woman's vagina begging to be sucked back into the womb. I think of Leonard Cohen with that image. But Prince Charles said it best when he said "I want to be your tampon".  Really, admit it, I want to be back in the womb.  The vagina is just the edge.  Imagine effortless sustenance, mother's feel good hormones channelling through you, dreaming.

Are any of born?

The "Born Again" movement, being born in spirit. The Spiritual rebirth, sadly so intellectural and emotional for many, when there is a dream of something transcendent.  Let me out of here!!!!
Beam me up Scotty!!!! Where's the fucking Rapture when I need it?

It's just a rainy day in Vancouver. I'm at the Downtown East Side clinic waiting for the next heroin or fentanyl addict to come in.  I prescribed methadone.  "It's too dangerous out there." He said. "I just want to get high. Take a vacation from my mind. I don't want to die. What's going on. Whose killing off their customers."

The police have traced the bad fentanyl to the Chinese. The Chinese military hacked into all of Canada's computers on a few occasions.  Justin Trudeau and his father Pierre Trudeau before him are in league with the Chinese. The United Nations Agenda 21 is a document for killing off the poor. Get rid of anyone but Liberals and Democrats and those who believe in One World Order.  Bring on the Totalitarian State. The great Corporate Consumer Paradise.  The Catholic Church tried this. The Roman Empire and all the African and Asian empires. Now there's Brexit.  Allah is all. Everyone must be Islam. Kill the jews, destroy Israel, the followers cry and another Jihadist attacks a soft target.  Trudeau, Obama and Merkel blame Christians and white people and trucks and guns.  Whose buying these puppets.  It's like the days before WWII when Goebels was writing script for the Nazis.  Marketting and advertising selling some crazy dreams. Eventually Freud said "Maybe the paranoids are right."

My back is sore. My dogs back is sore. We are Atlas.

There is Existential Angst.  The Scream on a wood block sums it up.  I just saw the movie  Cell. It's a variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I met a schizophrenic man who had Capgras Syndrome. He believed everyone he knew, his closest family had been taken over by aliens.  I met another man who had the opposite syndrome, he believed he'd been taken over by an alien while everyone else was well. Reminded me of Metamorphoses. Kafka.  I am a cockroach.

They say if there is a nuclear blast sufficent to wipe the earth clean, a cataclysmic WWIII then the cockroaches will still survice. Maybe our consciousness will switch to the insects and two cockroaches will be chatting each other up in a futuristic cockroach bar.  Einstein said that if we keep having World Wars we're eventually devolve to fighting with sticks. He was optimistic. I'm already considering fashion accessories for Cockroach Vogue and GQ.

It's just a rainy day in Vancouver.

The tough question was whether there were as many Jesus incarnations as there are liveable planets in the galaxy multiplied by multiple universes. I had my first encounter with my own insignificance when I got a child stethescope kit as a birthday present and looked in my first drop of pond water.  How can any one be arrogant and grandiose after the sudden realization of oneself as a drop of pond water in some bigger stethescope of some bigger kid.

I am insignificantly significant and significantly insignificant.  I coined t his meme or affirmation for my bipolar patients who struggled with 'right size'.

I just gravitate to self pity.

The more intelligent one is the greater the risk of depression.  That was the message in the most brilliant computer in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  :"I am so depressed".

Another rainy day in Vancouver.

This too shall pass.

All God's Children are Precious to Him

in this present political climate of Buffalo Springfield "people carrying signs, mostly say hooray for our side' I wrote this song. Could have gone on and added endless verses like 'Girls and boys", "Liberals and Conservatives" but instead I figured that children could make up their own lines like they do so well with "He's got the whole world in his hands". As far as I'm concerned "polka dotted and candy striped" covers it all.

Journal Entry Thursday

It was a hard start this week.  Monday was a rough Monday.  I thought Sunday was saturday.  I’d been a way the week before and this confused me.  I returned to 2-3 times the work I left and the week I left I had 2-3 x the work to leave.  It’s always been that way.
I remember talking to doctors who simply gave up taking holidays because the work was overwhelming to get away. So many of my rural colleagues can’t get locums.
Some of it too is that I go away for a week and I'm out of the mines, out of the routine, out of the flow.  I have to think about things again that were almost done on autopilot. I made a mistake with a medication yesterday that was just 'stupid', writing a totally different medication down that vaguely 'looked' like another. The pharmacist phoned to ask for clarification and I made the correction but it was essentially like a produce manager giving you a cucumber when you asked for tomato.  I was just renewing the script so it was obvious given the previous record, still. That's the sort of thing that happens and worries me so much with the homungus multiplication of details and paperwork.  In the community I get this more and more with 'parts' errors so common that I'm actually surprised when a store gives me the right one first time.  I remember my friend getting the 'wrong' part on a vacuum cleaner bag 6x.  I remember every single error I've made with medications and prescriptions and I've noted a couple a year more caught by staff, pharmacist or patient. None life threatening but all unnerving. I went years without a single error and now the 'system' holds these errors within the process of prescription renewal and the multiplicity of drugs, pharmacies, specialists.  I miss the days when I saw young patients principally and they were not seeing a dozens specialists and on only the medication I was prescribing and only one pharmacist was involved and I knew him or her as the case was.  I have to accept the stress is overwhelming at times and change whether good or bad increases stress.  A half dozen of my favourite colleagues and referral folk have retired. I didn't realize that most were 70ish. I thought of them as younger but they've closed their practices and no one is there to take their patients over.  I 'm taking a few simply because I admired one colleague and we worked in a similar vein.  Patients constantly tells me everywhere they go the system is functioning like a factory. "I'm only allowed one complaint."  "She only has 5 minutes to see me." "The psychiatrist only saw me the first time and since then it's a nurse or a group.'  The complaints are systemic. I live in fear of the hoards of regulators and police watching the police watching the police and the media watching everyone and no one doing the front line work anymore or those who do so often have no skills or experience.  It's all troubling but surprisingly things go along and most work out.  There is a sense of foreboding in the air. That general sense that something is about to burst.  All the debts and struggles to pay the rent.  Several of my patients are not eating more than one meal. They're on pensions, spent their lives working and now have to go without eating to pay their rent.  Always there's anger.
Then there were the suicides. Early in my career every time I took a month vacation with the university or hospital I’d return to some patient having been turned away by the ER or someone not taking them seriously so they hung themselves or overdosed.  I was devastated because they all sought help elsewhere but it was ‘my fault’ because I ‘abandoned’ them.  I was doing psychoanalytic psychotherapy extensively in those days with borderline personality disorders who’d had multiple suicide attempts and were always suicidal.  Relationship therapy was the basis of there getting better. They’d see me weekly and to their astonishment I’d not beat them up or have sex with them.  All their care givers before me, mother, father, uncles aunts, boyfriends, girlfriends, siblings and even some health care workers had done that. So they just assumed that I would.  They were full of rage.  So when I would be away they’d go to the ER and tell the doctor they were suicidal and really and he/she’d send them home with some ativan, (‘brush them off’), there were ‘no beds’.  This is a real reason , a real medical reason, for an admission.  I can still feel my anger at those days.  It happened each year and I was afraid while I was away, wondering if my patients would get care. The dynamics of these suicides were mixed in hate/fear and full of ‘transference’ but in the end my ‘counter transference’ was simply that I chose to take 2 week vacations at most. Nobody killed themselves when I was away only for 10 days or 2 weeks.  There have been exceptions. I was sailing for a month back from Hawaii with a 3 week window planned only to have the mast break but by then I wasn’t doing mostly psychoanalytic therapy and patients were a really mixed bag with mostly drugs and alcohol, ptsd, somatic issues and head injuries.  Most services were ‘enabling’ borderlines or having passive aggressively written them off so I wasn’t doing in depth therapy. I liked that the borderlines I treated back then went on to be rich famous leaders and success stories.  I always felt that craziness was just going in the wrong direction and if you could turn it around the person would be going as fast in the right direction.
Now I’m working with a lot of other doctors and less alone but still there are no back up resources.  The advantage now is that there’s coverage at the gp level or walk in clinic level.  Then the cell phone has made all the difference. I’ve had calls most days while I’ve been away and that seems to be enough for my chronically suicidal patients.  No one has killed themselves in years while I’ve been away for years. Thank you  Jesus.
All weeks been a little sluggish but that’s mostly been the weather. I’ve had a whole lot of work and been exhausted at the end of the day. I suspect that’s aging. I ordered a pizza and simply watched TV I felt so drained. Went for a walk with Gilbert and a friend.
Was really thankful Thursday had arrived. Wednesday the ‘hump’.
I’m looking forward to the weekend.
Hate being inside with the sunshine, now that it’s returned. Fear that I need to get every ray to bolster me for the dark and grim Vancouver rainy season.
All’s well.
I’m thankful for Thursday and that no one is killing themselves.  Suicide is such lonely social terrorism.  Like a bomb going off and everyone around hurt by the blast.
I do like the sunshine today.  Thank you Jesus

Political Absurdity and Hotel Canada

Just turned on the CBC radio for 1 minute, and heard "Harper is the blame for that!" Didn't bother listening further but hit the Sirius Radio button that gave me praise music.  Justin Trudeau has been prime minister for almost a year now and they continue to 'blame' the past and deny their own accountability like a truant 13 yo child,
The liberals have all but dismantled Canada, shipping billions of dollars offshore, denying our energy industry access to ports, after 50 billion dollars transfer payments per year to Quebec, not requiring Quebec to support the rest of Canada but rather transferring all new contracts to Quebec and letting the rest of Canada suffer.  Justin Trudeau has mostly flitted about the world at taxpayer expense playing Jetsetter Playboy with his dufus wife and her 2 nannies  and taking his in laws along. He's allowed countless terrorists to be brought into the country by not vetting migrants but fast tracking the Syrian Sunni muslems who have already been shown in Europe to be infiltrated by warriors. All accross Canada Muslem Imans are involved in hate speech and Danish muslem migrants are marching in the streets saying kill Danes.  Meanwhile white men and especially pro Israeli jews are being targetted by the politically correct liberal totalitarian regime presently 'fixing' the voter registry to remove 'representative government' in Canada.
Climate change is a political lie without scientific basis and Trudeau, scientifically illiterate as he is, has created a ministry of Climate Change and Environment. This is akin to a ministry of "Leeching and Medicine."  It's as bizarre and unconscionable as the Gotthard Base Tunnel celebration that had former East German communist Merkel watching a neo pagan satanic rite with the celebration of the "horned man'.
Right now Justin Trudeau, has had his bro event with Obama and the Mexican leaders and removed visas for Mexicans despite the cartel criminality and the criminal migration which caused the need for Visas in the first place. Justin Trudeau is in a hug fest with the Communist Chinese leader just like his Mao and Castro loving father Pierre. The attraction of communism is it's totalitarianism, what Lenin called 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.  
There doesn't appear to be any any benefits for Canadians except for the signing of the trade agreements which Mr. Harper indeed created, for instance the Ukraine Canada.
Countless billions of dollars were promised for infrastructure spending , the so called 'modest deficit' but this money has gone offshore and been used as payback for Liberal cronyism.  The country is indebted, just like it was by Pierre Trudeau for generations to come, the young paying and their children paying for the Trudeau accounting scandal.  Make the grand children pay!!!  School debts rise, no one but the rich and elite can afford housing and there is general unrest which is concealed by the propaganda media which refuses to report anything but 'pro Trudeau' 'fashion' adverts.
In the US Hillary has been caught breaking the law and letting her emails go unsecured and thereby causing death and destruction to US offshore interests. She apparently is as sexy as her husband Bill but her preference is the Saudi Hunan whose 'beard' husband sent pictures of his penis around Washington.  As a friend said, the Game of Thrones is tame compared to the Clinton dynasty.  Bernie dropped out of the race and Trump remains republican.  Behind the scene billionaires puppeteers are pulling the strings and UN military vehicles are being sighted all over the mid west. The Mid west is where New York Hillary Clinton destroyed the mostly rural incomes of the predominantly Republican citizenry in the classic "White Water Scandal " which was thought to be the 'flagship' for the Fanny May and Goldman Sack destruction of the world economy for profit.
Only Iceland jailed it's bankers. Wall Street continued and trembles because Trump has threatened to 'audit the IRA".  Too many bodies and bribes of all the elite are buried so there is 'satire' constantly in an attempt of undermine the 'populist choice'.  The movie 13 hours, showing the State Department Clinton abandonment of the American ambassador in Libya with the hienous 'Benghazi' scandal has just come out.
Black Lives Matter has held up the Toronto Pride parade and with social terrorism 'extorted' the Pride committee to attack the Police which is what Beyonce has been demanding anyway.
The lies about the shooting of blacks by police are so extraordinary that Goebbels is definitely writing the script.  Orlando , Islamic terrorists stage another massacre and Obama appears to cry crocadile tears though when a black criminal is killed attempting to kill a cop the White House mourns as if Lincoln were shot.  Meanwhile more cops are killed by the Black Lives Matter supporters and the new black panther supporters.
French authorities say France is on the verge of civil war as migrants rape children and the police don't respond. The hundreds of women raped and sexually assaulted in Cologne Germany are told to stop being racist by criticizing Islamic men who call western women whores.  The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal saw 1200 children raped and sexually assault by gangs of Islamic men and the police and authorities covered it up.
The Left has lost all moral relevance as their ideology is simply described as dictatorship of the Sharia Communism.
The new Phillipine leader is killing the Islamic pirates who were beheading Canadians while Justin Trudeau took selfies of himself after screaming in the once hallowed Canadian parliament "Get the fuck out of my way!"
Pot is yet to be legalized in Canada but pot dispensaries are everywhere.  Further supervised opiate injections sites are spreading across Canada as fast.
Canada is the new money laundering location for the world with every suspicious character buying million dollar plus properties in Canada and leaving them vacant.
Taxes are rising exponentially.  The air we breathe is being taxed with the new Carbon Tax that claims carbon dioxide , what we exhale needs taxing. Soon their will be a meter on the urinals and toilets to assess individual tax potential while Hydro meters blame Canadians for the humungous corrupt energy rips offs by the Ontario liberal leaders.
Canada's dollar is 75 cents on the American.  Canadians lost a quarter of the savings this year and no one gets it. Their pension plans are being taken by the Liberals and those who are the working middle class will be pushing Safeway carts and Superstore carts left for them by the better housed migrants and drug addicts.  Veterans have no say in Canada today.  Pensioners are told they can have marijuana or physician assisted suicide.

It doesn't look good.
But that' the irony and humor of the theatre d'absurd.

Justin Trudeau and Canada are the biggest joke.  The emperor has no clothes but the corrupt media, especially CBC, communist broadcasting corporation, continues to spin the lies.

Welcome to Hotel Canada, it's a lovely place!!!!

Journal:Bits and pieces

I returned from seeing my brother and sister in law and nephews, sailing on lake Ontario, being surrounded by 3 cockapoos, Pepper, Eva and Gilbert and motorcycling around the Greater Napanee area. It was a fine time.  I felt wholly different when I returned to work.  When I’d left I was feeling really overwhelmed, mostly struggling with the burden of an ongoing threat against my life and my dogs life.  It seemed like a  straw that broke the camel’s back, the lack of consideration of the authorities for it’s citizens, as evidenced at this microcosm level and the macrocosm level of Justin Trudeau.
Back at work I enjoyed seeing patients again. Loved seeing my colleagues and staff.  The fish had survived surprisingly.  Even riding the Miata back from the airport was fine. The weather wasn’t. I find the sunshine, which we’re having today, makes all the difference.  We had grey sky last week and drizzle then torrential rain at night.
Gilbert was so pleased to see all his toys. We both loved visiting Laura and walking over to Max’s for a sidewalk dinner.  There are good routines that are a joy to revisit.
Tom and I had another delicious meal at Vasili , the Greek restaurant on Kingsway with the red ferrari parked outside. A beautiful Kurdish waitress made the experience enjoyable.  Tom didn’t know about the Kurdish Women Fighting Brigade that’s been winning against ISIS. Canada had provided them air cover until ‘feminist’ Justin Trudeau withdrew Canada’s support.  Our waitress was proud of the success of the Kurdish women and happy when I noted it.  The lamb and calamari were excellent.  Tom and I talked about sailing, religion, politics and family as usual.
We’d been at Honda Centre where Lee and Lorry work.  I’d traded in the Yamaha 450 ATV for a new Honda 500 Pioneer Side by Side.  Tom was with me when we first came across it at the Sportsman Show.  It’s attraction over other side by sides is that it will fit in the box of the truck.  Since Gilbert hurt his back last year I can’t have him jumping up and down on the ATV so with this one he’ll be able to step up and down just like a car.  Besides neither Tom or I wanted to ride in the ‘bitch’ seat on the ATV when we were hunting together so this allows up both to be ready for game when we’re out hunting. Alone the ATV was a joy but I’m hunting more with Tom or taking another along when I’m hunting now as I get older or accept the lesson of when I rolled the Polaris and was injured so far from help after shooting the elk on Vancouver Island.  I’m just generally more cautious.  The roll bars on the Honda Pioneer are another attraction.  I’ve added the roof and windshield and door accessory as well as the winch and got the whole thing in camo colour. The roof and doors and windshield are rather ‘luxurious’. No more riding about exposed to rain and snow.  Laura looks forward to booting about the back woods with Gilbert and I.  Tom and I were celebrating the trade in and discussing weekend trips in the fall.
I was really happy to get on the Harley Davidson yesterday after the rain stopped. I’d been enjoying the Yamaha 250 out east. Gilbert met with Emory and Dave said ‘riding a 250 must have been like riding a scooter compared to your big bike’.  Good to see him and talk bikes. The dogs are best of friends too.  We think they’re wrestling.
My friends Aim and Alyson are pregnant and that’s just the best news!
Gilbert and I were up early this morning and walked the length of the river walk and back.  I got a picture of a bee in a flower.  Was taking the picture of the flower when the bee suddenly came out.
Watched the movie, Whiskey Foxtrot Tango (what the fuck) with Tina Rey and enjoyed it. I’ve been watching another season of Last Ship and can’t wait for next instalment.
I’ve just completed a few hours of ‘take home ‘work, which I try to avoid though can’t seem too. Patients have been calling all hours and I’m disappointed by the lack of resources.  It’s difficult for my patients and I see their plights in comparison with the propaganda of ‘perfect Canada’.
The Black Lives Matter did their grandstanding disruptive bit at the Pride Parade in Toronto. The shootings at the Gay Club in Orlando and then the sniper fire on the cops in Texas. They say there was just one shooter but it sure seemed like there were more than one.
Difficult and confusing times. Brexit in England and the Gotthard Tunnel horny goat celebration suggest strange times. Meanwhile the UN and Trudeau and Obama continue to lie about Climate Change and the scientific illiteracy is so profound that people don’t realize ‘carbon’ tax is breathing tax. They would I suspect, if someone said O2 tax but the level of stupidity politically and scientifically in this country these days has me wanting to say ‘beam me up, scotty, there’s no intelligent life here.’ The sad part is it’s just corruption all over.
Trump and Hillary are running for the American president and I’ve really been interested in politics for the first time, seriously , in almost a decade.  The last excitement was the Wall Street ‘rip off’.  Strange times.  I can’t help but remember that Freud when the Nazi’s were at the door and he was escaping said, “the paranoids were right’.  Given the politics of the day, the psychotics seem less crazy and indeed the paranoids might well be right.
Justin Trudeau seems to be doing everything in his power to have the greatest number of people stoned with his marijuana legalization and all these supervised injections sites for opiate abusers.  The message this gives to the kids is ‘drop out’.  We had that in the counter culture in the 60’s, a minority position, but now it’s mainstream.  Obama using cocaine and Justin Trudeau wine and pot affacionda.
Being ‘clean and sober’ I’m frowned upon because it really does give a ‘clarity’ that the abusers don’t like.  Not that i feel like I’ve any great insight right now. I’m just looking forward to getting out in the woods and enjoying wilderness. I also look forward to sailing again before the summer and fall are over.  Every year I just try to get enough good times to be able to survive the increasingly frightening winter months. This year 2 people died, one murdered and the other suicided. Last year it was a hanging and three overdose deaths.  I blame myself and don’t but I try my hardest to do the best.
I felt for my patient when he said “I just want to make a difference’.  His life had been one of service and care for family and others.  I feel irrelevant  We’re yesterdays news.  This aging process is physically disturbing but psychologically and intellectually it’s a challenge too.  I just want to sit in churches and pray or sit on the sides of mountains and mediate.
But there’s work to be done.  Thank you Jesus for the good times.



God bless.

Kevin, Anna, Izik, Alex and Kendra

I surely enjoyed seeing my friends and god kids at St. James Anglican Church today.  Gilbert loves Anna.  Kendra has the bluest eyes and reminds me whenever I see her of the fairy queen in the movie, Lord of the Rings.  She kept bringing me books and pointing to pictures throughout the service.
The children are all so well behaved.
I finally remembered to give them the little lamb toys Laura and I got for them when we were in Ireland a year ago.  The kids loved them.
I enjoyed the service. Too long since I’ve been to St. James.  The interim minister seemed more relaxed than when I first met him.  I enjoyed communion and especially seeing the church friends I’ve made over the year.
After church Kevin and Anna and the kids and I met at the White Spot on North Road and Loughheed. I’d been riding the Harley and dropped Gilbert off before joining up with the family.
Felt almost catholic and friday as everyone wanted fish.  I really do enjoy fish and chips at White Spot. Great service.  Crayons and booklets for the kids, booster seats and one high chair.  Kevin said grace and we all held hands except Kendra didn’t quite reach Alex.  Anna was looking smashing in new digs from place Laura knows.  Kevin in a jacket too. I was the under dressed one for church.  Harley leather.  Last week, Angle booked Gilbert for his summer spa visit hair cut and grooming.

Kevin and I talked politics.  How adult.  Last time we talked spirituality.  Anna brought me up to date with Elizabeth.  We all shared on matters of religion and family.
I was sorry when we had to part.  All the kids climbed on the motorcycle.
“If this was Cambodia, you as a family with the three kids would be driving like this on a 100 cc honda.”
Not in Canada.  Yet.
I wouldn’t want to emulate the Cambodia use of 2 wheeled motorcycles but really hope that one day we’ll be able to use quads in the city as they do in Europe.
Uplifted by the inspiration of Kevin and Anna and the children.

Gratitude July 2016

Thank you God for my awakening. Thank you for the sweet memories of dreams of another world and time.  Dr. Carl Jung called this place the ‘collective unconscious’.  Thank you for being with me there and leaving me with memories of those I travelled with and spoke with then.
You God are one. All is you. I am a dreamer in your dream.  There are infinite possibilities. There is no limit to your imagination.  Grant me the joy of greater health and life for those I love.  Help them this day.  Cure them of their dis-ease.  Help me to see all that you bring to me as challenge is but lesson. Help me forgive those who I abhor.  Let me be more forgiving of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.  Help  stop their lies and treachery.
But Lord, it’s just security that disturbs me. I am afraid as I age that Justin Trudeau and his cabal of Quebec and pot head followers will steal my future. I have worked 12 hour days 7 days a week in the most dangerous and most difficult places with the most frightening and disturbed people.  I have been shot at and threatened, held hostage, my dog killed, even now there is a psychopath who threatens my life and the lives of others. I have hired a psychopath who lied and stole and hurt countless people because I trusted her and she was with empathy.  Help me to forgive her and all those who have hurt me because I trusted and helped them.  What is it today that people are constantly biting the hands that feed, hurting the very people who help but clearly they are unable to help themselves.
Liberal lies and ideology of divide and conquer, political correctness, destruction of freedom of speech and dismantling of democracy and the world I lived for is frightening to me. I simply have to admit I fear a future pushing a shopping cart or being killed by a liberal administrator smiling and saying they are killing me for my sake and I’m screaming as I am gassed or injected in the new ‘physician assisted suicide’.  I have met physicians who would kill for profit. The abortion industry has the most lucrative easiest jobs in all of medicine and the most unsavoury of doctors, banal sorts, serving them. The same will happen with the physician assisted sucide sorts, banality at its worst. And like Mortgentaller, the great Hitler killing machine to the unborn,  the irony of his ‘identification with the aggressor’, a disgusting degenerate human whose passion for killing was so well disguised. Yet our government gave him the Order of Canada.  That suggests that the elite want us dead.  They want the UN, a collection of gangster’s tyrants and psychopathic eurocrats like their monster confreres of Brussels, the Arendt banality, the Nuremberg sorts, the committee folk who like zombies deny responsibility and accountability, the perverse and weak, those who did it like the killers in those great 60’s experiments.
Forgive me Lord.
Emmett Fox teaches well that we must focus on the positive. God gives us what we most want and that is decided by our focus. Thank you for Rona Ambrose of the Conservatives. She has been a breath of light since the great gentleman Mr. Harper left the stage of politics.  I am so thankful for her grace and brilliance.  When I fear that women have all become petulant cry babies falsely accusing men of their own perverse imagining I think of Rona Ambrose and her strength of character and trust she would not deny men a place to speak and refuse to have places of dialogue like feminist do who play two face games of protect me and don’t protect me all the while loving the Muslim abuse of women, silent before honour killings but claiming ‘men raped me with their eyes’ and “I was emotionally abused by the man in the room.’
Forgive the horrid witch trial judges of our day, these false old men playing to the gallery and themselves unveiled. These have been horrible times.
Help me to focus on the light.  Let me know you God ,that all is right. That you are taking everything and turning it to your good plan.  I want to overcome my fear of death, disease and disability.  If I can believe that I’ll just die and not suffer torture at the hands of the bureaucracy, these banal Arendt type overpaid administrator sorts that stole medicare and made it bureaucracy care and claimed that they were doing right when the corruption of the Liberal government is so deep and eastern with money going to biker gangs and eastern mobs and nannies and the godless UN>
Forgive me for not seeing the light in the darkness. Be the lighthouse for me God. Be thou my lighthouse. Help me be optimistic about the future and as a kindergarten where we are learning.
Help me focus on my mistakes and be less adolescent in my criticism of the ‘big picture’ when here I am overweight, not exercising enough, not loving enough, not attentive enough , not focused enough, not using my time efficiently, grandiosely thinking I’ve done a lot when that’s only because I’m comparing myself to those who are not my cohort. Help me to be as kind and loving and bright as those I’ve known as mentors.
May I emulate have Dr. Willi Gutowski’s love of family and love of God and love of the Holy Bible. May I be like him in my inner spiritual quest.
May I emulate Dr. Phillip Ney’s brilliance and care for the vulnerable and joie de vivre and genius in research and care for the unborn and love of the mother and family.
May I emulate Dr. John Christensens’ strength and insight and love and compassion and his persistence despite all obstacles with his sense of incredible humour.
May I emulate Dr. George Chalmers love of family and clinical medicine and incredible observation skills as he so enjoys people and life and cares for others and writes such whimsical passages on the smallest and greatest keeping a sense of humour in all trials.
May I emulate Dr. Art Merrell whose family are so much a reflection of the love of him and Carrall and his genius is so much a part of his work and world of depth of insight and care of others and amazing down home humour and joie de vivre.  I must think of Art and see his smile and laughter at even the most difficult of occasions and know that right will right.  The good prevails despite all apparent adversity.
May I emulate Dr. Sam Sussman’s love of family and love of learning, his incredible erudition, wisdom and depth of character, his service to so many and yet his humility despite so much well deserved claim.
May I emulate Dr. James Houston’s love of family and friends and all especially his students and his profound insights into scripture as well as his ability to live his life in accordance with the very depth of his love of Jesus.
May I emulate Dr. Carl Ridd, his life,  and his insight into the depth and godliness is literature and his life of service and care for others.
May I emulate Dr. Nady el Guebaly whose research is so profound and his love of friends and camaraderie so distinct and his generosity of spirit coupled with such genius.
May I emulate Dr. Graham Cunningham whose sense of humour and care for others and his ability to make a silk purse out of any sows ear that comes to him is so insanely inspiring. He is a brilliant loving man who can reach even the darkest corner because he has such character
 May I emulate Dr. Nathan Pollock whose love of family and love of the simple and love of others and yet his outsider perspective of the odd is so warm and touching.
May I emulate Bernice Lever who sees the good in all and celebrates the spiritual sensuality in creation keeping the dynamic alive where otherwise there would be but static.  Thank you for Aussie Steve and his life of love and kindness and example of the highest humanity.
May I emulate  Margaret and Jean and Bob , Ben and Dennis and Margot for they are such good people and their love of family and friends and their struggles with themselves to reach for the highest in creativity and communication are so inspiring
Thank you for these and all the others who have inspired me, like Dr. Ray Baker and Don Hedges.
May I look around me to the highest and not the lowest. May I ever see the light and know it’s warmth despite the dark and cold.
Thank you God for all these angels, these amazing people who over the years have given me the finest examples of life and work and despite you sending them to me almost daily I still fuck up and stagger and cry and wallow and feel alone when it’s so obvious that there is such love and greatness in the world. Help me to ignore the hysteria of media and look to these real people I know and see that there is evidence of God and goodness in these amazing angels with the genius of Sam and Phillip and Nady and and the heart and compassion Willi and Ray and Nathan and John and so many others.
Help me give my head and shake and see these people rather than focusing on the negative.  I am surrounded by light there is no need to see only the shadow.
Thank you Lord for all the guidance and love you have shown me through the people, not just these but so many others and my family and my parents and my dearest closest friends and those who have worked with me as colleagues and staff. I must run now, as ever late, but thank you Lord for coming to me through people.
Thank you

Loyalist Cove Marina and Sailing with my Brother

It was a year ago my brother Ron was diagnosed with cancer.  I’d wanted to go sailing with him but it didn’t look like he’d be able to get to the west coast.  So that began the process of shipping my sail boat, SV GIRI, 13 ton, 40 foot steel offshore sailboat,  to southern Ontario. My brother lives on Hay Bay in greater Napanee region.
Thanks to Loyalist Cove Marina in nearby Bath,  this whole project could go ahead.  Dave and Kim of Loyalist Cove Marina were the most helpful and understanding people.  Andrews Trucking would move the boat with the help of Vancouver’s  Lynnwood Marina and ProTek Riggers.  But it took Kim arranging for a place to accept the boat.  These things always seem so ’straight forward’  to the planner like me but the devil is in the detail.
Andrews Trucking had to address the issue of ‘height’ of the boat and all the legislation about transporting while Kim had to find a marina slip long enough and deep enough to accommodate my ocean going craft and juggle moorage for when the boat would be launched.   Thankfully Dave has a superb secure storage facility right near the Loyalist Cove Marina.   The ship had never had to spend a winter on land. It had wintered the dessert in Arizona after sailing the Sea of Cortez and been on land in the West Coast rain forest but never known snow despite our trip to Alaska. Were it not for Kim I’d not have thought that with freezing the boat’s engine and water systems would need winterizing just like my RV.  The GIRI was made  safe through the winter.
Dave has a travel lift and also trucks big sailboats and powerboats himself. I called ahead a month before I’d arrive having arranged with some challenges in the months before  to have doctors covering my practice.
It’s not an easy thing to get away from my work.  Less and less government resources these days with fewer and fewer clinicians and aging and sicker patients.  As doctors we cover each other for holidays though there are so few psychiatrists in my subspecialty area that my patients in one practice have no back up but generalists, my phone number or the hospital.  In my downtown addiction medicine practice a couple of days a week six of us juggle the roster so we always have warm bodies in place.  It’s difficult enough for Dr. Gary Horvath who runs the clinic, where due to the patients addiction, it sometimes feels like working in an emergency or a war zone. So much acute and sometimes bizarre and often life threatening illness along with the primary diseases of heroin, cocaine, crystal meth addiction and alcoholism.  I don’t know when I last ‘burnt out’.  I was diagnosed with PTSD years past after being held hostage and just dealing with all the death I’d seen. Now I’ve seen as much death these last few years working in addiction as I did when I worked with AIDS patients in the mid 80’s when that epidemic was at it’s height.  I look on vacation, not so much as ‘vacation’ as being away from the ‘front’ and an attempt to recoup, to be able to go back to face the always  sad, tragic, desperate,  and increasingly belligerent patients, one of whom has been threatening me and my dog for a couple of months.  Just getting away from Vancouver is a relief.
It was really a joy to see the SV GIRI moved from land back to water and  a perfect slip that Kim had arranged.
My brother Ron’s cancer had stopped being held back by the UBC chemotherapy combination being provided by the brilliant Dr. Anna Tomiak and her colleagues, at   Queen’s University Oncology Department in Kingston General Hospital.  Fortunately, however,  Dr. Aaron Hansen at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto was beginning a new trial of treatment.
I accompanied Ron to the starting of that treatment in Toronto. Sonya, Dr. Hansen’s  research nurse was extremely informative and helpful. Later we met Dr. Aaron Hansen.   I enjoyed that he acknowledged a colleague but gave my brother his undivided attention, answering his questions with care and precision. Ron was thankful to be again on a scientifically based treatment for his difficult cancer. Ron studied science at the University of Manitoba and went on to be a senior administrator in the federal Health and Welfare Department in Ottawa.
 As his wife Adell says, “we don’t expect a cure but we’re buying time in hopes that there will be one”.  So far my brother has been a rock star success so I’m hopeful given the truly amazing breakthroughs that are occurring daily in medicine.  It shocks me that in my own career I ‘ve seen so  many ‘killing ‘ cancers now being curable.  The  general life expectancy is increasing dramatically so much thanks to education and scientific advances.
Back at Loyalist Cove Marina, Dixon, a Harley motorcyclist like me, stepped the mast and got all the rigging arranged only to encounter a problem with the roller furling. Lorry, whose laughter is infectious, had the boom holder and radar mast back upright and secure by then.  Thankfully Dave with his amazing wealth of experience figured out that the problem not a tangled line in the mast as had happened in Hawaii, but with the track on the roller furling. Dave fixed it this latest “challenge”  by going up in his “cherry picker’ machine and adjusting the tension on the track.
Hallelujah! The Genoa was raised.  The mast was up and secure.  The boat was ready to sail. Wiring could wait.  My nephew Andrew, doing research with robotics and geophysics for University of Ottawa, flew in to the CFB at Trenton from Alert, Nunavut, nearest to the North Pole.  Graeme my other nephew, chemical engineer at Deep River Nuclear Plant had come down too.  Allan the child psychologist would arrive along with Andrew’s wife Tanya, the graphics designer.  Everyone was there to go sailing with my brother and I.  Ron’s cancer has everyone sensitive to time in a way only cancer survivor’s can testify too. I was therefore so thankful when Dave saved the day with his ‘cherry picker’ elevator solutions and Kim found a space for the SV GIRI to live. I really believe when everything finally comes together like this that God truly is in charge.
Jack, who had family who had had cancer told me the marina had diesel and gas pumps which I’d not seen.  With exquisite care, definitely more skilled than I,  he filled my tanks without spilling a drop.  Through the crystal clear water we could see large bass swimming in the weeds on the bottom.
On the GIRI, Graeme  replaced the bilge pump that had died in transit and we both epoxied a couple of bits that had come apart.  Tanya and Andrew had done a masterful job of painting the boat’s bottom and topsides so the GIRI was looking good when we all got aboard. The next few days were heavenly  boating on Lake Ontario’s North Channel off Bath.
Canada Day was a big event there with fireworks and parades we passed on the way to the marina.  One night, after an afternoon sailing,  we had a fabulous turkey dinner at J&P’s restaurant in Bath.  “It’s just like mom’s turkey dinner’s”  I said. Ron agreed.
Sailing was magnificent.  I had to train my crew, mostly Graeme and Alan, roughly from scratch.  Andrew and Tanya soon had to join her family for the annual hilarity of their family’s Canada Day celebrations.  We all enjoyed the photos on Facebook of this over the next few days especially Tanya’s father’s Canada Day red “tall hat”.
Meanwhile Graeme and Allan, Adell and I had a terrific "Captain Ron” docking experience when a breeze caught the bow where Graeme was standing with the bowline to throw to his mother who had instead got off the boat and stood ready with the stern line.  I managed the repositioning the sailboat with some flair that had other boaters getting up to rush to our aid until I called out ‘I’m training crew’, then everyone relaxed.
The fact is I’ve never taught anyone to sail. I’m an offshore solo sailer.  What made things worse was I’ve pretty much lost the language of sailing so was stammering on calling out directions in precise nautical directions to crew themselves just getting a handle on nautical  language. “Starboard, right, eh?” Despite all the confusion we managed safely.  Any departure and return to a dock is like flying, if you do it safely, with no harm to boat or crew or others, it’s a success.  We always tell ourselves this when we are faced with the all too common embarrassing lack of finest.
When we were actually sailing a similar level of chaos and confusion occurred at the winches and helm jibing and tacking.  Helmsman problems that Graeme and Allan had with holding the boat true, something I do intuitively now, would remind me of my early days maneuvering sailboats. They’re a whole different animals than power boats which the guys knew.  They were all thrown into the deep end too without the classroom or hands on instruction I’d received in getting my ships captain papers. At least they had pleasure boaters licenses which gave them the rules of the road at see.  I really was pleased that despite my lack of nautical educational prowess, everyone was a quick study.
That said my brother was laughing at our three Stooges cum Monty Python antics when we gybed or tacked. .  I loved to hear his full bellied laughter.  It was something I’d not heard this last year.  His sons and wife and I were muddling about while he was clearly simply enjoying the whole sailing experience.
“Watching you all  reminds me of when I was boating on Lake of the Wood and you guys were just kids with  Allan still in diapers,” he chortled.  Meanwhile, I, the great off shore sailor, too long a captive of my medical office was huffing away after taking a turn on the winch hardening the main or reeling in the jib.
  “Just a bit out of shape,” Ron laughed.   Norman Cousins would be proud of me. Andrew and Graeme manned the winches too. At one point with o onne rope was too short and in the confusion a rope  wound backwards on the winch  so a lot of effort was being made for naught till Ron   directed Allan to wind the rope correctly and add an extra wrap on the winch.
Each day  and in different sections the North Channel  wind was different with funnelling and deflection off points. For a while we had  12 - 15 knot gentle breeze  and nearly flat surface,  Then  we had 20 to 25 knots of winds, a moderate breeze actually getting to a strong wind.  The spray was coming off the white caps which were all over.  We were doing 6 knots speed on a beam reach.  We zig zagged back and forth across the channel enjoying the sunshine and blue skies.  Close hauled we took water across the deck and dipped the rail with everyone getting a taste of fresh water spray in the cockpit.
 Alan liked that. “I like the speed best, “ he said, a racer in the making.  Meanwhile I, definitely a cruiser,  had  enjoyed with Ron and Adell, the gentler down wind sailing telling them, this is where I solo sailing, put on the autopilot  on go below, make a cup of coffee then sit on deck reading a good book waiting to arrive at my next destination.
Ron talked about his boating Lake of the Woods and sailing with his friend on his 26 foot boat , reminiscing about all the youthful adventures.  We even talked about boating days with Dad and Mom, fishing on Manitoba’s Blue Lake.   The last day sailing,  Graeme had to return to Deep River early evening, so with the wind up and waves bigger we brought the boat about, took in the sails.   Ron took over the helm motoring us back to Loyalist Cove Marina.
More great days on the water.   I loved seeing my brother in high spirits again.  Laughter certainly is the best medicine.  I especially loved his reminiscence of all the other great days on the water. We’ve always been a boating family.  It’s probably the Scots and Irish in us.  Island people.  Northern and rugged. Canadian.
I sure hope he can beat back the cancer another year. He’s planted fruit trees which will likely give fruit next year. I’d love to pick these with him.  The SV GIRI will remain at the Loyalist Cove Marina.  So we can plan for more sailing maybe later this summer or fall and hopefully next year.
I’m heading back to Vancouver now to spell off my colleagues. In the other room Ron’s reading with two cockapoos, Eva the female and my little male Gilbert.  They’re lying on either side of Ron, guarding him, or waiting for treats.  It’s hard to tell. Graeme’s cockapoo puppy went home with him. With three dogs we had a lot of racket whenever anyone came into the house.  Dogs know better than anyone the importance of greetings.  It will be sad to be leaving family  again though I do look forward to Vancouver friends.
I’m glad to be leaving SV GIRI in the capable hands of the folk at Loyalist Cove Marina.  Sailing has been a healing metaphor of life for me.  We make our way not by fighting the wind and currents but rather by working with them. Finally it’s  all in God’s  time too.