Dec. 7, 2020. Advent, Christmas is coming, Rejoice

I awoke today. A deep nights sleep in my own bed.  The puppy slept under the bed at the end of the bed, a little cave to the side first found and made a living space by Gilbert, Madigan’s cockapoo processor. Climbing off the bed I saw one of the two comforters had slid off the bed and was piled on the floor. Still no sound of Madigan.  “Omg I’ve smothered him,” I thought pulling the comforter quickly off the floor. He groggily stumbled from beneath the bed tail wagging.  “Thank God you’re alive!”  I said. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?” Was his tail wagging response.

He let me meditate a bit before attacking my finger.  

I thought of all the greatest men of peace after Jesus. Buddha  and Tibetan sensai’s collectively sitting in lotus position at the border of Tibet when the Aetheist communist Chinese rode across Tibet in tanks with machine guns murdering all the peaceful people.  What Gandhi had done with the British could never have been done with the Chinese.  The Buddhist monks collectively appealed to the God within in the Chinese but there was no substance. All was shallow in that classic Marxist materialism and consumerist way.  Take Take Take.  Like the Borg they moved across creation ‘Assimiliate or Die!”  The Dalai Lama escaped to India as a child. I met him years later.  A deeply spiritual kind man .  He carried the torch.  He was a living reminder of the millions of Tibetans genocide.  His homeland was invaded with tanks and machine guns, the women raped and the children put to war.

Jesus Christ means ‘god within’, ‘god will come again.’  When I sit to pray, I speak to him and open a space for his prescence. I want God within to be manifest in my outer life. I want to be guided by the Lord’s desires for me. I want to serve God and creation. My native friends call God , Creator. I know that God the Father is.  But God the Son is my friend and walks with me.  I pray that the Holy Spirit comes.  Holy Spirit come, I pray and I wait.  I listen to my breath.  Life is breath. Without breath there is no life for me. It comes in and goes out. The basic Oxygen Carbon Dioxide cycle.  I am a carbon entity being.  I’m part of a Neuro chemical matrix.  Energy and Matter are just different speeds of star stuff.

  I awake today and know I have today. Yesterday is a memory. Tomorrow is yet to come. I am thankful for my consciousness and will not do drugs or alcohol to lose my awareness. I want to live life on life’s terms. I want to be present. I know that God is in the moment and that practicing the prescence of God is being here and now. Yoga is the ‘yolking’ of the mind to the body , to the God in all.  The sacred is ever and always.  My monkey mind or ego is not me. I am a child of God and a spiritual being living a material existence.  Today I will do my best to be the best I can be helping others as I can with my training and experience, compassionately.  I will honour my teachers and try another day not to use vulgar language but to rise up to the finer rarer heights of communication. I will not judge in the negative superior way but use discernment to guide my action and words. I pray for awareness and ability to serve my God and fellow man the best way possible. I am thankful for this day and the skills and capacity I have to be of use. 

My dog is sleeping now.  He really is adorable. All is forgiven. In his busy moments, manic and unfocused, impulsive and almost satanic, he’s a mischievous little devil. I resist calling him monster, this bipolar creature will then crash like he is now. Thoroughly adorable. A peaceful therapy dog beside me resting his little puppy body next to my thigh.  Trusting , loving. 

He’s such a responsibility. I’ve carried so much responsibility for so many years and done my duty.  I entered a profession and took a former oath with a hundred other classmates. I know that my leadership today has failed that oath in many ways but that is no reason for me to be less.  There are truly leaders who have not only kept their oath but have done so in a way so much beyond my own capabilities. I must focus on the light and not on the darkness. I must celebrate the good.  

I am thankful these days for Elon Musk’s inspirational Space X program. I’m thankful for the biochemical and pharmaceutical researchers, those amazing doctors labouring through the night to develop new cures and defences against disease.  I am thankful to be apart of that adventure even though I’m little more than a single soldier on a long line in an army of light.  I’m reminded of Arjuna and Krishna or David and Saul.  These great metaphors of morality.  There is an intuition within me that guides me that helps me to know.  It’s is why I don’t do drugs or alcohol because that interferes with the connection to my soul or my conscience.  Namaste. God within.  Holy Spirit come.  

I will put on the armor of God for today.  I will read verses from the Bible. I will study medical texts and turn to Digital references all day. I will search the latest research papers for their assistance.  There is only 8 or 9 hours I have to do this work. 

Then the puppy and I can walk again. We have to walk this morning.  I don’t like waking in the dark.  Were it not for Advent and the rituals that guide us through the Eclesiastical Calendar I’d be forlorn. To think of shopping occasions as the meaning and being of life is dreary to the max.  Black Friday. Christmas Shopping. Boxing Days.  It’s mid winter and the promise of spring follows .  Hogmanay comes.True we’ve added the Christian story to the midwinter tale but it’s a story too of hope. The sun is coming. The Son is coming.  Hallelujah!

Thank you Jesus.  Covid 19 will pass. They said the Acid Rain would kill us. Then it was one catastrophe after another in the endless Cold War and constant media sensationalism and hysteria. Meanwhile I’ve loved and lost and loved and won. I’ve grown old in this life so dominated by the aches and reminders of former years of glory and near death.  I have my scars.  The memories are good.

My nephew told me that his wife is back to work. My sister in law Adell drives a couple of hundred miles to care for Finn my great nephew.  She spends Monday to Thursday with the little guy letting her son and daughter in law serve in their work and ensuring that family cares for the precious new member.  My sister in law has a heart the size of an elephant mother. I think of my own mother and how she cared for us. I remember her walking with us in winter at 40 below to the hockey rink to help us dress in the old club house with the coal stove so we could play outside.  She’d cheer us little bundled kids playing hockey. We were rotated off the bench solely to reduce frostbite and hypothermia.

Then we’d trudge home through waist deep snow. She’d  give my brother and I a ‘Wagonwheel’ cookie.  Mother love. My friend Anita is there with her daughter and grandchildren loving with her magnificent food and so very big heart.  Priest Vivian just drove across Canada in the winter to be at the birth of her new grandchild and help her daughter. Her son Steven was there too.  

Family is so important especially in the darkness of winter.  In the time when the little ones are vulnerable the mothers are there. My father and all the men stand behind them. I am as thankful for the men in my family.  Even when a father fails through sickness there’s a grandfather or an uncle or a friend that steps in.  My friends Willi and Philip and John are all the most admirable of men and their children have grown strong in their love and their mothers love. 

Even now our friends Anna and Kevin are doing the most important task of raising their children.  Anna is pregnant and little Willie is a year and some old. His sister Kendra watches him as do her brothers. The older ones caring for the young.  It’s Christmas and that’s when God’s son was born. Not this date but what we celebrate.  God of Love gave his only begotten son so that we might follow.  I am touched by all the love of family and the community that cares.  Here I am blessed to know so many grand people.  So much love is everywhere. It’s the very fabric of creation.  Eros and Thanatos. Freud said there was Life wis and Death wish.  Eros.  CS Lewis spoke of Agape.  

Agape.

Time to shower and dress and walk Madigan outside  before I enter the office and hope to be of service.

Wet dog

Our river walk

Adorable munchkin