Willi and Anita invited me to a birthday party in Chilliwack. I remember being there with them and a few family friends feeling how kind they were. They’d talk of their missionary medicine days in Africa, delivering babies in primitive conditions, witnessing miracles.
My friend Kirk and Dr. George and a few others in Vancouver had celebrated my birthday too. Since my divorce when I’d been a kind of ‘hostage’ I’d developed this vast network of friends and was ever being asked out to dinners. I was out most every night, meetings, round ups, Bible study. My beautiful neighbour from Winnipeg greeted me at my first Vancouver North Shore Round Up. She’d told me she’d arrived a decade before and said it would be okay. I met Bill Gyles there as well and felt that I was with friends from Winnipeg in this new land. The only status here was the days of fasting.
I became a half a century old. I was lonely in a way. I remember that odd feeling. I was closer to God and surrounded by close friends and acquaintances. Still I felt I’d come this far and yet I felt I’d not accomplished anything. With Tom as my sponsor I”d been baptized at Christ Church Cathedral by Bishop Ingram and Rev. Peter Elliott. They were controversial characters but deeply moving human and spiritual men whose genius I admired. I’d read Bishop Ingham’s book “Many Mansions’ and been moved. I loved Ecumenical Christianity. I believed spiritually that God showed himself to all and called all. I summed my own personal journey at that time as having ‘known Christ but now I knew Jesus”. In my Baptist youth and study of Eastern spirituality I had come to know the Messiah and feel the world at the death of Jesus permeated by the Holy Spirit. It had changed. There was a cataclysmic shift. It’s been called Christ Consciousness by some and I felt that I’d known this since I began formal daily meditation in my 20’s and carried on for decades.
I was attending Christ Church Cathedral where my lovely Oxford Group friend had encouraged me to be a reader. She’d actually taken me sailing in the harbour with her friend for a day when I’d been heart broken, a restless landlubber and still without my sailboat.
Not long after I would be living on my sailboat anchored in False Creek. I’d have these months at a time when I couldn’t find a marina slip so anchored in the harbour and would dinghy a shore. I’d arrive at my office on Broadway in wet rain gear , slipping that off to don my sport jacket for the day of patients before the evenings of study for Addiction medicine exams or for theology classes with John.
I’d actually thought marijuana was a ‘spiritual herb’ that enhanced my awareness but then over time wine and women and rock and roll intervened. In the end it all seemed shallow and hedonistic. I’d truly felt like I’d lost God in the storm at sea when my crew mutinied and I found myself fervently praying the Lord’s Prayer. I felt that all I had after that, to fall back on, if it ever got worse, was singing “Jesus Loves me”. I was that far from the ‘home’ I’d know in Christ. My crew and my wife were Christians and we all talked that night about Christ as I asked each if they’d been praying to Jesus and they admitted that they too had. I felt then a great sea change. The effects of that night would resonate and I believe lead to the beginning of the great ‘fast’ a year and a half later. I’d sit in church on Sunday’s crying when I saw the children and smelt the ‘church smells’ and felt the smoothness of the wood pews remembering the ‘innoscence’ and ‘comfort’ I’d known in church with my father, mother, brother and aunt. I’d felt so long from home. I was the prodigal son returning. I’d know Jesus as my personal saviour and friend then and now.
Today I joke because I am optimistic and believe we are evolving and ‘all roads lead to Rome’ but I say that being Anglican I’m going to be in a better housing district than others especially those who land on the ‘other side of the tracks’. There is a great awakening. I love the Call.
When I’d studied Tagore and knew his songs were sung in India in the mainstream I so longed to be surrounded by spiritual music. I’d always loved the Beatles and other rock groups for songs like Let it Be, My Sweet Lord. I’d love Pete Seegers Ecclesiastes’s, I was always touched by soul music. Today there’s Praise music on the radio . Communism fell in Russia and when I visitted Moscow and St. Petersburg the Orthodox churches were full. Dr. Lam introduced me to Chinese psychiatrists from underground churches there.
Before I’d sail to Hawaii I’d have gone on to complete my American Society of Addiction Medicine Exams and my Medical Review Officer exams. I’d also achieve my Canadian and International Society of Addiction Medicine Certification. One of the highlights of that time was my forming a study group. I learned from the Society who was preparing for the exams that year and called them up inviting them to a monthly study session. That’s how I met Paul Sobey whose sense of humor and joie de vivre still delights me today.
I’d become friends with Dr. John Christiansen through his sister Kay. She was friends of Suzanne. Being a member of an elite club, called ironically, the ‘last club on the block’ I’d be surrounded with the most extraordinary women. Truly beautiful and elegant ladies who had amazing senses of humor. Suzanne was such a lady. Great spring hats, tall, eye catching and always haute couture fashion. She’d actually been a beauty consultant and I always considered her make up and her face a work of art. Kay another beauty but one who quite well might have sheered sheep in her no nonsense mood would walk on either side of me as we moved down a street. Never has my ‘credit’ among men been higher. We especially loved our Commercial Drive on Saturday rambles, often joined by Dr. George. Breakfast laughter, amusing anecdotes, just a splendid time all round. Dr. George was the greatest raconteur and the ladies loved him. He was a jazz pianist as well as a greatly admired doctor. We’d both done our tours of duty in the north, he serving in the Queen Charlotte Islands before establishing his practice in North Vancouver and raising his great family.
We were all Christians. It was amazing how much fun we had. Absolutely none of the pompish non Christian petty judgementalness that passes for some as pseudo spiritual. The women were lithesome and robust, ladies of course, but oozing sensuality and walking like large cats or dancers. The conversation was free flowing and no one ever considered ‘correcting’ anyone or ‘being offended’. We were Christians and it felt so good to be among such great minds and with people who had lived fully, raised Christian and now again devoted to Christ. It was so alive and authentic and I felt that through the strangest journey I’d arrived where I’d always longed to be.
I felt like I’d found the Christian world of my Baptist Aunt Sally. She’d been the assistant to the Canadian Ambassadoor in Washington and her blond friend, Babe, had driven ambulances through the war. Babe swore like a trooper yet had the heart of mother Teresa. Their Christianity wasn’t the anemic parlour sort that reeked of pious judgementalness. Both those Christian ladies who’d travelled the world together retained their laughter. True Adults never had had time to ‘sweat the small stuff’ which shows the absurdity of today’s bureaurcracy and other Monty Python sources of humor. I loved the stories of Jesus with Fishermen, Soldiers and Mary Magdalene. Years later I’d have Passover Supper in Safed at Hotel Ron joining in the laughter and enjoyment of conviviality of shared meals with a Rabbi who well could have been one of the men who broke fast, a joyous time, with Jesus.
John was in a wheel chair. He’d been head of the UBC Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Society, one of the founders. He’d had a horse back riding accident, much like Superman ‘s Christopher Reeve. In his way John was a spiritual superman. He’d say that “if I had to become the man I was before , I’d rather stay in this chair.’ He told me of white light spiritual experience he’d had as his neck broke. “I felt my neck break and knew something terrible had happened but I also felt like I was finally falling into His hands.” He’d go on to tell me his life story, riding a motorcycle in the outback of Australia without a helmet of course. We seemed a fitting pair, him quadriplegic with his scars on the outside and me with my mind and soul troubled and so many scars on the inside. He’d laugh and say, “sometimes listening to you Bill I’d rather be trapped in this chair than trapped in your mind.” We ‘d go on walking and rolling dog walks and share thoughts and stories and insights on shared Christian readings.
I’d begun taking theology courses at UBC. I loved one at Vancouver Theology School where the Anglican professor introduced us to Julian of Norwich. All shall be well, all shall be well and All manner of things shall be well. My focus was Christian Spirituality. Dr. James Houston, former classmate of C.S. Lewis, had taught geology at Oxford , before coming to UBC to found Regent College. He’d become the chancellor but much preferred simply teaching Christian Spirituality. I’d invited John to join me and for years we’d spend evenings at the university taking in Dr. Houston moving lectures and then going back to John’s for pizza and coffee. We then studied with Prof Shirley Sullivan at the St. Mark’s catholic seminary at UBC. Laura and. I were friends then and she’d attend with us the St. Augustine lectures Shirley Sullivan gave on St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul. I loved reading Dr. James Houston’s book on Prayer and was deeply touched by Brother’s Laurence “practicing the presence’. After John could no longer make the courses at UBC James would come for dinner at John’s and we’d have these moving meals always joined by beautiful intelligent Christian women. Helen would go off to be a missionary in Sudan. I’d be so blessed by God to be able to listen to these great spiritual men share of their lives of services in amusing heart warming. anecdotes
I had Stuart at the time and Laura would take him when John and I would go off to study.This was all before Saipan. I’d sail to Saipan in 2003 when I was 53.
Willi invited me to come to Saipan. I’d take time off from my practice thinking that I’d have some weeks in the tropics and return to another winter in Vancouver. As it turned out the other psychiatrist there had quit and a position was open.They desperately needed another psychiatrist as Willi became the only one there. The Northern Marianas needed three psychiatrists and Guam had needed another 2. Willi and I would get by with two, the actual hospital and day to day management not at all onerous except for the wearing one in two call. One in three call had become the industry standard as constant and even one in two so affected sleep and the capacity to relax.
I’d return to Vancouver and close my practice. Laura and I would become intimate only after we were no longer working together and I could enjoy our time together with Stuart. Tom and I had been finishing off the boat.I’d decided to sail to Saipan even though the weather window was past and it was going to be winter sailing. I’d know this wonderful freedom from the constant grind and overbearing threat of the College autocracy with their regal arbitrary moodiness and political favouritism. Laura was such a beautiful person and I felt badly we’d only found each other as it were when I was setting out to leave essentially for good.
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