Monday Morning, Horse Lake

Hard to believe I don’t have work. I dreamed of shooting a field howitzer, aiming and shooting it, much like a rifle.  Don’t know what that was about.  Gilbert was coughing. I’d wake and go back to sleep.  Eventually I got up to walk Gilbert.  Only when I climbed down from the camper bed, he was there trying to climb up. He wanted to be with his mommy. Laura spoils him by giving him morning massages. I’m woken by the dog so he can get his massage. It’s 6 am. I’m glad for the time to make espresso.

My aunt would call the temperature ‘brisk’.  A keen fisherman would head out now to catch a big one. I’ll sip my coffee with honey and cream and write.

I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer. I begin my day thinking of God.  I meditate at home before work. Here I’d planned to walk the dog.  Now I’m writing. God is everywhere, the fabric of creation, the thought and word.  

Yesterday was Father’s Day .  The devotional that day was from Deuteronomy in the OT, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’

I certainly learned “honor thy father and thy mother’ as a child.  I don’t remember the rest but when I read it to day ‘that it may go well with thee’ , my mind says ‘or else’ and I heard my mother’s voice.  She taught us kids the rules.  Dad was there to back her up. As boys we were little ‘hellyons’.  When I see the riots and see so many children disrespectful of people and property I can only think that their mothers failed them the most, and likely the fathers weren’t there to back them up.  

Most children in American Black families don’t have fathers. Boys need fathers. I can’t speak for girls though I’d think that they must be  disadvantaged by the lack of fathers.  ACE, the ongoing Adverse Child Event study concluded that divorce was among the greatest harms for a child but the whole court system is in the Marxist business of divide and conquer, destroying families as Engels and Marx wanted. I was blessed in my Christian home, not that I knew it at the time. Father’s Day I remember my Dad. What a great man. He was there working and supporting Mom. At night over dinner, he’d always ask how we did in school.  On weekends he’d take us camping and fishing. I think of Kevin and Anna and their kids and it’s brings back the fond memories I had of my childhood, weekends and holidays.

Today’s verse is “Psalm 13:5 KJV. “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.”

Salvation.  

It’s hard to imagine a world that ends with death. I live as an immortal spirit. Death is a passage.  I live for today.  I learned that God was in the present, a gift, that was why it was called the “present’. I love the expression ‘just for today’. It began with quitting smoking, and quitting drinking, this AA idea of changing with the idea that one only had to do it ‘one day at a time’.  That became ‘practicing the presence of the lord’, Brother Lawrence.  I’d read ‘Be Here Now’, by Baba Ram Dass/Richard Alpert in the late 60’s and enjoyed Elkhart Tolle’s ‘the Power of Now’.  So here I was in the centre of time, no longer living so much in the past and future.  

If I’m living in the past, I’m stealing from today. It’s usually ‘resentments’ and ‘regrets’ that hold me back. Depression is always about living in the past and not letting go.  Living is the future is also stealing from the day.  It’s tied to worries and fear as much as anything.  I remember the pastor at the Minnesota Treatment centre, he was speaker at IDAA. He said, when people come into recovery they’re only 20 percent in the present. 40 percent of their experience is in the past and another 40 percent is in the future. He felt that by the end of the initial months of the new spiritual journey they were more likely 60 % in the present and only 20 % in the past and future.  

I’m more like 90% in the day now, having fond nostalgia moments mostly about the past, blocking negative thoughts. I was burning papers yesterday from an old war and read a bit of the insanity of the complaint to Laura, “Don’t read it,’ she said.  The government had spent nearly  hundreds of thousand dollars on this psychotic drug addicts complaints against countless people. He threatened to kill my dog and everyone he knew. I wouldn’t see him after he threatened to kill me but the College of Physicans and Surgeons and the Human Rights Commission took a year of my life investigating me and punishing me for doing my job. In the end, these parasites  diverted  hundred thousands dollars of government health care money and countless hours of my time from health care to their own greedy pockets and the fellow continued to do crystal meth and swagger with the power of offence and complaint.  

I burnt the paper copies. Piles of arts student writing. I felt sorry for the lawyers, brilliant men, arguing his psychotic drivel. “Don’t read it.”  She said.  I burnt it. It felt Good. The digital copy is in the computer. I’ve unloaded some weight and look forward to letting go of more of the insanity that was the government.  So often I saw the system supporting criminals and hate. This man hated and he had the full support of the College and the government and they gently abused him with the lie that they would do anything. They did hurt us.  All of us. They were his tool.  The College of Physicians and Surgeons destroyed health care more than they served it.  They once had merit but up close I saw that this was the norm. Terribly sick spiteful people played the legal lottery and attacked good men and women doing their jobs the best they could.  The system was flawed and the College sought scapegoats to assuage their own guilt about their fundamental betrayal of their own oaths.  

When I began medicine, we’d have dealt with a psychotic meth addicts threatening to kill a half dozen people and their dogs, with a meeting. We’d have met, with him and others in a room.  An hour later the meeting would be concluded and he’d be threatening to kill the College administrator and threatening to kill the College administrator’s dog and he’d be put in an asylum or jail till he was off crystal meth.  It would not have gone on for a year with half dozen others like me punished by the smug arrogant self serving useless holier than thou system.  I rue how many patients I could have helped if I’d not been distracted by these administrative  dog and pony shows. 

And there,  I am living in the past. Here is God. Here is the present.  I laugh as I let go of the hook to go back and fight an old war. In the end I was exonerated by people I had no respect for.  We’re all generals in old age. Better to remember the creamy thighs of an ancient lover, how her smooth skin and soft words aroused me to forget everything until my loins were sated and we lay in each other’s embrace.  God those were the days.  Young love, binges of carnal pleasure.  

I worried about the future, too. When I was at the university, an assistant professor, on the long career path I remember feeling trapped. I had the mortgage , the wife, the position and a day timer that was booked years in advance.  Each day was laid out. I think the mother in law from hell was a blessing. I died each time I attended a family dinner.  Nothing was more stultifying.  I was suicidal then. I’d look at my wife and see she was fully satisfied and I was in utter despair.  I left that nightmare and took my ‘walk about’.  I promised myself I’d never again build a trap for myself.  I have future plans but nothing is written in stone anymore.  If I feel closed in I make changes. There’s illusion in the certainty.  Camus called that ‘the plague’.  It was inside each of us, that belief in our own plans.   With Covid 19, everyone’s plans were changed. But that’s the reminder we really only have this day.

I’ve woken to a Monday and I don’t have work.  I have a blank slate.  The dog defines my day mostly.  Laura told me that as a result of being a mother she wakes thinking of what she’s going to have for dinner.  “It’s what mother’s do.” She said.  “I have to figure what I have to make dinner and what I’ll need to get.”  I laughed.  We had smokies on buns with mustard last night by the fire I’d made.  

My fixed events in the day are Gilbert’s medicine. It’s a challenge to get him to take it. I wrap it in cold cuts of roast beef. Just a bit to hide the pills so he doesn’t spit them out. Then there’s Gilbert’s walk. I told a man taking pride in his goodness that his children were his ‘police’ and that he should acknowledge that he was a good man because he’d chosen a ‘family’.  Family life curbs indulgence. I could more easily wreck havoc without family to contain me. Like the James Taylor, Bartender song, “I’ve the 4 walls to contain me.”  Our love and hate are contained by the constructs of our life we allign ourselves with. 

Today I’ve the dog, demanding, loving little guy, Laura, who really isn’t demanding at all, photography, my latest passion. I’ve done photography all my life since my youth with my darkroom but now I ‘m loving taking pictures of little birds. I’m challenged by the difficulties. My Audubon photographer uncle said it was ‘the ‘shadows’ that made it so difficult. I’m still at the phase of trying to get the picture when they face me. Little birds are constantly moving. I told my photographer nephew Graeme, that they are mooning me and he said, ‘they do that to me too’. 

I’ve the fishing. It was the plan.  I’m more into the platform. The skookum Colorado XT pontoon boat has been like something from IKEA. I  think I’ll ride into town and get the battery connector I need for the electric motor. Yesterday I was really proud, getting the pontoon boat assembled and then actually getting it out on the water. I like the motorcycle too. Yesterday I  explored old logging roads till the wet mud made it too dangerous.  So much to do. And writing.  I have books to write and frankly all I seem to do is this blog. It’s a ramble.  When I think of ‘retirement’ I just think of having the open ended time to do a book. Just like putting together the pontoon boat only occurred because I had a few days open ended. When I’m working, work takes precedence. It can suddenly expand to fill days and weeks. Emergencies eat up evenings and weekends. Patient’s distress derails the plans I’d made.  Projects and books get side tracked.  I know these are excuses and admire those who organize their time better so achieve more.  I’m content.  

The books are ‘travels with gilbert’ a variation of travels with charley, Steinbeck’s inspiration.  Then there’s the Christian history and geographic piece including my photos and travels these last 20 years. There’s the great Canadian novel, of course. I’ve a ‘how to’ book about psychiatry , just a way of playing four dimensional chess. It seems a bit outdated given that reductionism of today.  I think of these things and ‘retirement’ would have these events, but mostly I’d be doing more of what I’m doing today.  Camper, truck, motorcycle, boat, dog and Laura..  I laugh because all around me there are old family men doing much the same.  RV world is a lot of retired folk and young families.  

Now I’ll get on with the next event, walking the dog.  Heavy schedule.  The demands are not that onerous.  I am so thankful for this day. What a wonderful reward. Thank you God. Thank you Mom and Dad for showing me this world . I love that I’m following in your tracks.  

The Multiverse and Christ

The study of physics celebrates the grandeur and infinity of God.  All possibilities exist in God.  Man has limited His miracles and capabilities always reducing His possibilities to the limits of his imagination.  The truth is much more.  God is all and everything and everyone.  We exist in and of God, our creator.  We are made in the image of God;in God’s imagination we exist. Life is a dream in God’s Dream and we are co dreamers in His infinite expanse of fluctuating energy, slow and fast, mass, matter, energy.  Oscillating, interacting, interfacing. We encounter God with every thought we have of God.
The linear progression of time is illusory for reality expands from the centre, goes off in every direction from each moment with countless opportunities.  Choice abounds.  There is one consciousness attuned to God.  A forward motion of the individual psyche.  A thought that rides a wave of infinite waves and infinite thoughts.  Each action begets unnumbered possibilities. Each thought and each action and each feeling expands like ripples.  A pebble dropped in an ocean creates circles upon circles  of motion.  Out from the centre the brain prunes the past possibilities as every path reduces the dwindling number of choices. The wee small voice becomes quieter as another voice expands in volume and waves intersect with waves.  There is  still has a literal  cacophony of sound in the wee small voice, in the ultimate praise to God, the soundless silience, the paradox of paradoxes, God of God.
Everyone everywhere is reincarnating. God is always birth and death and renewal.  The telescope shows expanding universe and the microscope begets electron microscope.  The aha of child looking into the pond and the wonder of the shepherd looking at the stars of the night sky. Stories upon stories.  Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Out of the stuff of miracles are countless futures made.  Miracles are the norm and the norm is sacred.  The dance is everywhere  and everything.  The music is there always to be heard.  The Love is ever near.
St. Theresa of Avila in Inner Castle points to distractions.  The light calls. There is always the light and we walk towards the light.  There are many castles.  There are many doorways. Distractions.  Proceed to the light.
As Plato said, there are projection of life on the shadows on the wall but the projector is God.
Parallel universes and every possibility expand out from a centre of now. Practicing the presence of God as Brother Lawrence said,  God is only in the now. Time as we know it, is an illusion.  History as we know is manufacture.  Saving the appearance. The Holy Bible is the holy in deepening awareness with every encounter.  Each day begins fresh.  It is we who cling to the residues of yesterday. It is our fear and resentment that limit the divine possibilities of tomorrow.  God's is a god of infinite gifts.  We have but to pray and believe. If we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can move mountains.  Jesus says, “ye of little faith’. He is speaking directly to me.
The collective reality of today is the ‘norm’ , the ‘least possible’, the ‘lowest denomination’ , the materialist jungle.  Only gravity pulls down our imagination. We fear to let go of the past. We cling to our memories and deny Revival.
We fear.  Jesus commands, "Do not be afraid."  Still we fear.  We fear death.  We fear change. We fear  and Satan is fear. The opposite of evil is life.   The collective fear is gravity, so grave.  We are pulled down from soaring like eagles by the gravity of fear.  Death does not conquer. Jesus rose again.  Jesus called, "Follow me" And we shall rise again.
Shout Halleljujah.  Sing psalms of deliverance.  Give thanks unto the lord. Soar as on Eagles wings.  He lives. He is Risen. And so are we. The Good News. The Gospel.

Waking Up Sober

There’s no hang over. The room isn’t twirling.I’m not asking myself what I did last night.  Not so much what I did, but what did I say that I might regret.  I’m not wanting to die. I’m not hating work and the human race and wanting to curl up in my bed and never come out.
Instead, the soft light of dawn comes through the window panes.  I step out of bed softly.  The way the light falls on the bed is beautiful. I’m happy.  I look forward to the day.
Crossing the living room I enter the bathroom where I have an old beat up tattered and torn copy of Around the Year with Emmett Fox. It’s pleasant to sit on the toilet and read today’s passage.  Metaphysics is science and art. We learn by doing. And there’s a quote from James, “be ye doers of the word."
I’m thankful to be sitting on the toilet and not on my knees beside it with my head down the hole, retching. Retching beyond retching, dry heaving, like soiled seizures, without the comfort of coma.
I sit down to meditate. I pray to my Higher Power.  At the advice of my spiritual friend, Willie, I’ve been praying to the Holy Spirit.  My sponsor, Bernie, called his Higher Power, Holy Spirit too.  I talk to Jesus sometimes still. Then there’s a pantheon of names of God that blindfolded men have used to describe the elephant.  God is infinite, finite, omnipotent, omniscient.   Holy of holies.  I go on in my head detailing all I think I know.
Recently I’ve been riding my Harley Electraglide motorcycle to work listening to Steven Bell. Two refrains from his music  play over  again in my echoing brain:”We’re not alone” and “It’s always been about love”.  We're not alone. It's always been about love.
As I’m sitting quietly considering my breathing, repeating Psalm 23,  I hear the little guy get up.
Gilbert, the cockapoo is my room mate.  I saw him laying stretched out on my bed when I woke up. Now he makes his way over to the couch where I’m sitting cross legged. He jumps up to sit beside me. I feel his paw on my knee.   “It’s always been about love”
I open my eyes. The little guys big brown eyes are looking at me expectantly. One paw on my knee. He's made his morning greeting. It's my move.  I hug him, roll him over and rub his tummy and chest.    He squirms with joy.
I go back to meditation.  A little while later he’s sitting beside me, again,  with his paw on my knee, big brown eyes boring through my closed eye lids.   I know I shouldn’t reward this ‘behaviour’.  I should focus on my meditation. I should listen carefully for God. I should be focusing on my ‘quiet time’.   "It's always been about love".
 I look the happy fellow in the eye turn him over on his back and rub his chest for a longer while.  Then I go back to meditating, thinking too that he came over when my mind was wandering, wondering about the external manifestation and synchronicity and flow.  I’d begun thinking ahead too, to my day, worrying about the myriad of details that could overwhelm me, the recent crisis of betrayals, mutiny, disruptions, equipment failures,  physical threats, world war, zombies, alien invasion.
He next appears with a ball.  I get up then. We're not alone.
Years ago I remember kicking my dog, Shinto, hung over, him greeting me with wagging tail and me pushing him away and then kicking him as I staggered to the washroom to be sick on a country morning.  I wish I could take back that shuffling kick.  After he came back and licked my foot worried he'd hurt me. Shinto was a saint sent to be with me through the end days and early days.
After him, still early days though I didn't think so, came Stuart, the white Scotty.  The drug dealers who threatened me ,wanting me to pass their marijuana dirty urines so they could get high paid government jobs. When I wouldn’t, they poisoned Stuart.  They sent me a “message”.   Cowards.  I didn't pass their urines dirty urines but years later you could hear my voice at the biker rally when Steppenwolf sang out, Goddam the Pusherman.  And we all sang along remembering friends and family the slime had killed.    
I put the coffee on.   I like that I’ve fine coffee, my own stove and coffee maker.  It’s mine. It’s not rented. I own this. I pay taxes.  I’m a contributing citizen.  I put on the kettle for the instant porridge. Once hunting with my friend Luke, he brought these little packets of delicious.  I don’t know if I had encountered them before, but they tasted so good on that trip in the woods with all that camaraderie and humour, I just love having them now for breakfast.
I started feeling irritation about this crisis at work that has been thrown at me.    Enough time in the day for that later.
I moved my mind instead to remembering the wonderful woman who stepped forward to assist. She makes me wonder about genetics and pedigree.  Her family overseas is royal blood.  She has that fundamental understanding of ethics and morality along with a joie de vivre, immense talent,  skill and training.  She's been a blessing.
Rather than thinking about the negatives I focus carefully on the positives.  It takes effort. It doesnt come naturally any more.
In passing, sipping my hot delicious coffee, of the the group I was with yesterday. I find myself dwelling more on  the one person who I think wrongly or rightly doesn’t like me.  Then thought I see the ridiculousness of my thinking.     I let this person go and conjure up the smiling wise faces of those compassionate understanding old souled people that I hung out with.
In my head  realize I'd began writing a poem for the negative one, about their emotional land mines, their judgementalness and insecurity but stopped myself. I thought about the soft spoken worker, that Brother Lawrence in our midst.  I could so easily be distracted by the drama queen desperate approval and miss Brother Lawrence.
I see myself about to campaign, to run  Napoleonic war, with the emotional maturity of  5 year old or at most a 13 year old girl. This person likes me, this person, that person doesn't. She loves me , she loves me not.   Here I'm Napoleon again and I’ve taken Germany and Italy, but I still have to assault Russia with my charm,  good grace and diplomacy.  I caught myself almost taking her bait. She's erected walls and moats and hurled down flickering eye lids of burning oil glances and I'd stood 'bewitched'.  Meanwhile Mother Mary, Magdalene and St. Theresa of Avilla are all glad to talk to me.  I just wasn't giving them my attention. Meanwhile Russia isn't all about me, either.  
I conjure up my personal Mother Mary. She’s always true and curious. I love her curiosity and good will.  I envy her too.  Still,I want to think her life was ‘easier’ than mine, ‘more privileged’, ‘richer’. I want to dismiss her radiance and goodness.  I want to make unfair comparisons. I want to chop off the heads of others to make myself taller. But I can’t. I think of her and it’s just ‘all about love’. “I like Steve Bell,” she told me once.  Agape is what C.S. Lewis called it.
After being sick I used to have coffee and run through my mind all my enemies.   I never even thought about ‘winning them over’. I just imagined hunting them down and doing abhorrent things with their exposed intestines.  Mostly I scowled.  I’d take a couple of cups of coffee and fifteen minutes or so to ‘compose myself’. Then I’d " force myself" to do what I had to do blaming everyone else for my ‘having’ to go to ‘work’ , "having to put up with idiots’, "having to be diplomatic’.  I wanted my personal army, my personal rocket launcher and I wanted to nuke all the silly little girls with their ‘wrecking balls’ and their insufferable prissy little begging boys.  I felt sore that I was born out of time, fully equipped for a western but deprived of a Mexican cantina, some easy wrench and an obvious bad guy.  I always wore the white hat in my own drama. I even wanted my own spaceship with lasers. I couldn't be satisfied with a sunny day in the summer when I wanted a spaceship with quantum generators and planet killers.
Today I tell myself I have to be nice to those not nice to me, if only to reduce the blow back. I think Karma isn’t some intellectual thing but rather a spiritual law. The golden rule, is just that. Be unto others as you would have them be unto you.  I’m still trying to be more forgiving.  We talked about my ex wives yesterday.  I can list my own faults ad infinitum today and even think about theirs. Mostly I remember their infinitely smooth skin, the sweet smell of their hot sweat and the warmth of their exquisite miraculous bodies. We were all so young, yesterday.
I hope I do better today.  Today is my new canvas.  It’s time to shower.  Dress.  It’s a new day.  The wreckage of the past is lying out there somewhere. I don't expect to encounter it today. Mostly it's all new.  Only I'm projecting the past onto the present. .  And I know, “We’re not alone’.
“It’s me against the world,” I used to think.  I was an angry Bruce Lee.  After a days war I could settle down for a drink.
Today I’m really happy with the peace.  Especially the peace of mind.  Nothing tastes better than a tall glass of sparkling spring water too.