Seaside Baptist Church, Bombay Beach, California

When I first attended St. James Anglican Church, I asked Father John, if my dog was welcome.  “Of course he’s welcome, I’m just not sure about you,” he laughed. He had two big dogs and we made this our church for several years.  At another church I told the worship leader I was a Christian psychiatrist and he responded, “Isn’t that an oxymoron.’  

Here, outdoors, on the iconic Bombay Beach, Jack the minister simply asked my name and introduced himself. 

 I’d ridden my Vespa with Madigan , my cockapoo riding along in his box. There was some large dune buggy and off road motorcycle event with a large gathering of RV’s and campers boon docking in the sand amidst the steam punk art installations.  I’d surprisingly become stuck a foot off the hard road. Two of the guys from that camp came to my rescue. “We’ve been doing this all weekend, “ they said ,” We’re getting good at it.”   Free of the sand and back on the road a little dog ran in front of me so I swereved and was stuck again. This time a fellow from the outdoor church helped me out. 

 Jesus comes as the anonymous stranger who rescues.  Already Jesus had already helped me thrice. It could also t reflect the the devil laying traps for the Christian returning to the fold. 

Jack the minister played Christian music as we congregated.  There must have been as many dogs as humans there. I loved this.  I’m ever asking if my dog is welcome at whatever  church I attend.    

Before the actual service the dogs had packed and run all over the beach exploring and peeing.  Madigan was in his glory sniffing and peeing and running with the dogs. . I loved watching.  A young dog was disruptive but leashed and as the service began the dogs all settled at the feet of their masters. Peace.   . 

Jack spoke of Peter the Fisherman and Jesus inviting him to walk on water with him. Peter succeeded for a few steps then sank.  He was  rescued by Jesus who said “Ye of little faith”. I felt that.  Ye of little faith. I am forever playing hide and seek with Jesus, seeing his handprints everywhere only to think the next moment I’m alone.    

Jack said “I’m a spiritual being in a human body.”  I loved his reading passages from the gospel of John, the disciple Jesus loved.   the resurrected Jesus and his time with the disciples after his crucifixion.   There were sounds of motorcycles and quads and a gentle breeze blowing in from the Salton Sea.  The scripture was of disciples and Jesus gathered by the sea.  I truly felt blessed,  grateful thankful to be here listening to Jack read from the Holy Bible.  

 Around me were the most interesting  people, wisdom and experience in their presence. .  The women were beautiful.  The men a real mix, young and old, bearded clean shaven. . I imagined some must be artists.  Some dressed in shorts and t shirts and others more clothed .  Jack wore  red t shirt,  blue pants and  high  red sneakers with a  bandana about his head.  In his sermon he referenced movies . The Last Temptation. This was Southern California.  LA and Hollywood only a 150 miles west.  The greatest story ever told had had many movies made of parts of it in part or whole.  Jack said the joyful scene of resurrected Jesus being seen by the disciples by the sea and joining him.  ‘That would be a great movie scene.’  

“Hope is what we have here”, he said.  Hope and faith.  “The Holy Spirit is with us and in us and around us.”  

When the ervice was over,  we were all invited to have coffee and cookies on the beach.  The dogs began to roam, pissing and sniffing again after the interlude.  I helped him into his box in the Vespa. 

 A  beautiful girl wore a t shirt with phrase ‘skull pony’.  I drove away thinking  about death and the ride and Christ. . I didn’t get my Vespa stuck on the way out.  I rode here to the Community Cafe to sit under the Da Vinci Fish art installation swimming over head.. Cafe latte and a muffin.  A young man on drums and a girl playing violin.     God is good. 

  

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Long Beach, California

What a wonderful church!  I read online that the mission is inclusive.  I had such a positive experience with Christ Church Cathedral and Rev Peter Elliott and my present church St. Barnabus with Rev Emilie Theresa Smith.  It has English and Spanish services. There seemed a wide range of attendees.  Young and old and more men than in some churches.  They reported on line special services friendly to dogs, like St. Francis animal blessing but I wasn’t as welcoming as the United Methodist Church. In Long Beach.  I considered that and have attended Methodist in the past. It’s like the United Church of Canada.  I actually considered leaving Madigan as he can be a distraction.

Today he was a good boy and was most interested in a labradoo/standard poodle sort of gentleman dog who watched him and a couple of times barked, once in greeting, to Madigan, the obvious new comer.   I’d forgotten ny hearing aids but the sound system was good enough that I felt I followed most.  I really liked the choir. Classical hymns  Lovely voices.  Anglicans/Episcopaleans are to my mind the best choirs for traditional English Christian music.  Today they sang We Three Kings and it was marvellous.  Obviously the Baptists, Pentecostals,  Evangelicals have the best contemporary Rock and Roll Christian music. I love the blues and rocking services with the big screen showing the words and everyone singing along 

The sermon was that mix of Bible and present day messages.  I really liked the clergy.  Father Antonio Gallaro and Father Yohanes Corbiellas were presiding

The peace was fine, people shaking hands and hugging, no longer the covid flashing the peace sign and keeping distances. There were a few, probably just having a cold that day, wearing masks but everyone else was family community. I enjoyed shaking hands.  Glad handing.  Some gentle touches others robust.  What a good feeling church it was. Madigan likes the “peace’ and glad sniffs all who come near.  He thinks this is the best part of the service, not those other parts where people are quiet and praying He can be impatient at those times.  

While I forgot my hearing aids, I remembered to take some American money for offering. All I ‘ve been using this trip is my TD American dollar credit card.  Interestingly they actually had a QR code for electronic contribution on the program.  Back home I write a cheque. There’s a tax deduction.   I did enjoy just putting cash in the basket the ushers brought round.  

The church is what city planners call ‘third space’ a place where you can gather, socialize and build community connections.  I think of it as a place where you don’t have to keep spending money to sit.  The park is the classic third space.  I always enjoy walking into churches that are open and sitting for a tine of prayer and meditation.  I especially liked the Catholic Churches for this in Rome and Jerusalem.  This was that sort of comfortable space.  In Europe I often felt that I could spend the afternoon or morning after buying a coffee but that here in the American consumer hub I’m expected to keep spending money on the hourly meter to reserve my seat.  As a writer I like to set as I did as a student studying in the ‘outside’ where I could look up and see people.  I like the library for reading and studying too.  Another third space.  

St. Luke’s is wonderful architecture and beautiful stainglass. I loved that Jesus was praying above the alter. Everything about the church was appealing and uplifting.  

I am truly blessed to be a Christian and be part of the Christian community. I like being Anglican Episcopalian because I attend churches when I travel and have been able to got to Anglican/Episcopalean churches in Hong Kong, Ethiopia and Athens.  What’s fun too was that often I’d speak to a minister and they’d know my minister. That happened with Guam where the Episcopalian minister knew Peter Elliott.  Rev Emile is so apart of the Latin community I wouldn’t be surprised if the minister here who was bilingual too didn’t know her because they ar part of the Latin movement in the Episcopalian/Anglican church.  Emile worked and lived in Quatemala and continues to go back. 

650 E. 7th Street, Long Beach -502-436-4047 is the contact information,

I certainly would enjoy coming to this church when I leave the cold and wet of Vancouver winter to enjoy the Sunshine and blue sky of Long Beach.  

Thank you Jesus. 

South to Sun, 2024, day 3 am , Alder Dune Campground, off 101 Oregon, just north of Florence

I woke at 4 am.  It’s been raining hard all night long.  It’s like sentient alien water drops are landing on the camper roof and seeking a way into the dry and warm interior. I’ve slept well despite the cacophony of heavy static sounding raindrops.  I see Madigan is still sleepy. I use the toilet and return to bed.  

I’m not able to sleep.  I’m thinking of the AT&T new phone and my old phone number and how am I going to get back on Telus so I have two phones because everyone knows to call the old phone number. It’s also the one use in 2 step verification.  But with the phone broken I can’t see that. I don’t like going back to the little phone either. My fingers are too big. Of course I can sort all this out at an Apple Store in LA.  

I also thought of the 60’s horror show, probably Twilight Zone where the sailors come upon an old ship cover in dripping fungus. They board and look about but bring the fungus back to their ship and become another floating fungus garden. The crew first noticed patches on their skin then they are slowly devoured.  It’s that rainy and wet here.

I’ve also had “worthy is the blood of the lamb” , chorus of a Christian evangelical song playing in my mind.

____________________

I remember a capsule headed to what I think today is Mars but something , perhaps a big asteroid knocked it off course and I landed on earth. I always felt strange. Mom and Dad were wonderful and lovely but I felt peculiar. When I was particularly scared as a child in bed I saw an angelic couple above my bed, spiritual mom and dad, telling me all would be well. Mom appeared then and the world restored to normal though I’d have out of body experiences when I’d visit friends and do all the other things that shaman books describe.  I certainly felt good with animals and especially loved the family dog.  We were on the same wave length.  

Later I’d think we were souls who had to learn to control our minds and impulses.  The spiritual world was instant gratification but what one thought of that became. Like my memory of the Fungus ship. I feel for Steven King and his wonderful horror stories.  He drank and the darkness no doubt was the source of his writing.  I am only now beginning to clear mind mind.  I learned from St. Paul to ‘pray unceasingly’.  I’m old now so perhaps this journey is coming to a close and another beginning. I might make it to Mars yet.  To do so I must have ‘peace of mind’.  Marijuania and Alcohol and other drugs make this near impossible.  

From an early age I sought spiritual guidance.  The church leaders were mostly about morality.  I had great advice from Dad and Mom but was so egotistical when I was a teen.  I was on a journey of discovery hoping to make sense of my physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual world.  I was raised Baptist and studied the Bible first as comic books and later as the book iteself.  I liked going through the 365 day Bible reading a bit each day though another time I just read as much as I could and completed it in about a year too. I studied it at University in English Literature.  The Bible as stories and later I’d study it as myth and eventually as a key.

‘Worthy is the blood of the lamb.”  Sacrificial messages and codes.  

The ministers talked mostly of morality and ethics and their prescriptions were like those of public health while I was searching for a personal message.  I wanted a ‘friend in Jesus’.  

The Trinity according to the Chancellor of Regent College, professor of Spiritual Christianity, described it in terms of 3 persons in one.  The mystery.  Of course there was God the father , God of Gods, Creator, omniscient omnipotent omnipotential, the very fabric of reality, the omnivores, alpha and omega, everything and nothing. I liked to say that in the Beginning there was God and he created the Heavens and the Earth. There wasn’t God and Building Blocks.  The one bccame many.  I saw the holograph and later the DNA as evidence of the At OM ness of the one , the true Home, the Self.  

This did explain the binary relationship of Buber’s I and Thou.  First I and the other then I and I and then with humility and a true appreciation of Grace, I and Thou. I struggled with friends ideas of fate and free will. When things went well they claimed responsibility but when things didn’t they blamed anything but themselves.  I however had the benefit of studying eastern religion, first though Emerson and Vivekianada and later Paramahansa Yogananda.  I enjoyed Herman Hesse and the Glass Bead Game.  So much of what I learned was the writings of authors not religious leaders per see. “I sing the Body Electric,” by Walt Whitman, the poets, and writers like Mark Twain.  Their ideas about the universe and themselves and heaven and earth.

In the Trinity the Son is Jesus or the Messiah.  He is the advocate who was God becoming God being crucified and resurrecting.  The caterpillar butterfly image. The lost and now I’m found story beyond the Hubris of the Wall Street Gods or the Graeco Roman competiont gods driven by time. They are all over the on line games. I met them first in Duke Nukim.  It was like the fool on the hill. I’m fine alone and meditating.  I’m the movie ‘a boy and his dog’.  The difficulty is the Holy Spirit.

The job the son is to obey the father.  It’s taken me most of my life to appreciate the wisdom of my earthly father and poor Jesus didn’t live long enough to get back to carpetntry. I’ve lived long enough to re visit the worlds my father introduced me too when I was a child.  I’m living his dream and my own dream.

But what of Mom.

When I told Willie, my evangelical mentor that I thought the Holy Spirit was the female he was annoyed. I realize now that in his world men are men and women and women.  His Holy Spirit is masculine i anything. But I’m of the era and age where the Borderline is the cross over.  Where as in the world of the 50’s the extrovert personality disorder were described as Narccisistic , Antisocial, Historionic and Borderline. Mostly men were described as antisocial and sent to prison while women were described as borderline and sent to the asylum. The gay and lesbian commonly were sent to the aslum. It was part of the men’s era and intent. Men were intentional or not

Kate Lister the brilliant author of Curious History of Sex said that Freud described the female as the ‘dark continent’.  It was appropriate she said because he was obvious lost and afraid of the natives.

So the Holy Spirit is this sense of connectedness which I equated with the sense I had that my mother always knew what I was doing.  Somehow there was my conscience which game me the right answer and may choice which was wrong but good.

Freud’s idea of the ‘ID” was that it was something primitive like the idea of the untamed ,dis organized, the early man free to follow urges and like an animal sensual and not controlled by a higher power or such.  Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel makes it very clear that the primitive man was not the impulse seeking sensate of the 60’s mod scene but rather one dominated by taboos and restrictions.  To put it bluntly he wasn’t free.  Nor was he the ‘noble savage’ which is being white washed and paraded out again by none other than the ancestors who like the Nazi once did in their ‘ancestor worship’ , perhaps the oldest religion.

By contrast, Milton Erickson, father of American Psychiatry and Hypnosis said Freud was afraid of the unconscious . I’d argue that Jews and Arabs and those who are tribally connected by genital mutilation at an early age might well have good reason to fear as such. But then another might just speak to the birth trauma.  Personally I’m Caesarian Section so I didn’t want to be here and was dragged forth while others escaped the mother at an early age. I liked the umbilical cord and boom box heart sound.  This world has been tough by comparison.  Erickson said that when someone fell their unconscious righted them, indeed much of their systems of safety were on automatic , eating sleeping and all so the ID or primal unconscious was protective.  Jung described Freud in also afraid of the unknown.  He was an empire builder and a genius but needed to be in control and striving to be ‘number one’.  

Personally I’ve just been glad to be on the team.  I am thankful to be invited in and given a place by the fire.  It’s cold out there and warm in here.  I believe I was very young when I realized the challenge was beating my yesterday self not my opponent. I saw losing at chess as my mistake. I also learned in my study of martial arts from an early age, my friend Kirk and I doing Jugitsu together in the back yard after my dad taught us boxing in the basement with the boxing gloves he brought home one day.  In Zen the master is said to be the one who kills you and so doing teaches you the secret you will carry into the next life what will save you for being kllled that way again.  

Reincarnation is central to the east and west.  In the East the Jews knew it or they’d not be confused as to who was resurrecting.  Similarly for Christian’s it was Constantine the Sun worshipper who excluded reincarnation at the Council of Nevis when Christianity became the ‘STATE’ Church,  

Now I’m living ‘One Day at a Time’. So reincarnation is a daily experience. When I wake a new life begins. The past is memory and the future is yet to come.

Willie, reverend, doctor, psychiatrist, said that Jesus said over and over again ‘Be not afraid’.

When asked to sum up the scripture he said that the key was ‘Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself”. 

‘Worthy is the blood of the lamb”

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It’s 630 am.  I got going yesterday at 7.  The rain and dark are still here. I was on the road about an hour before it got lighter and at 9 am we stopped at Macdonalds’ for breakfast on the run. 

Time to stow.

Thank you Jesus. 

Christ and Christmas

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,”. John 1,1-6

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world”John 1, 9

This is the meaning of Christmas,  Each year the earth moves away from the sun and the days grow shorter, Each year the earth returns to the sun and the days grow longer,  In each life we do the same,  Each day, for there is only one day, we move away from the sun and return to the sun,  This is called the coming of the Christ.  Enlightenment. 

God is all,  I am a child of God as Jesus was the child of God.  

The Ascent of Mount Carmel, the dark night of the soul, and cares left among the lillies.

My Sweet Lord, I really want to know you, George Harrison

Christmas is the tine of contemplation.  In the lighting of candles, families reunited, peace on earth, theRembrandt of birth, love not war, prayer and meditation,  

It begins,  

The days become longer, Another cycle renews,  We go round and round and round in the circle game,  Joni Mitchell.

Yes,  

Thank you

My mother taught me to get on my knees beside my bed and pray to god giving thanks, praying for the health and wellness of my friends and family.  She taught me as child to have faith and trust,  Do not be afraid Jesus said time and time  again,  Forgive,  

Thank you Jesus Thank you God, Thank you Holy Spirit

Sin and the 12 steps

Richard Rohr, Franciscan monk, proposed that sin was the biblical word for what we call addiction today.  Sin was used in archery to denote ‘missing the mark’.  

 In Romans 7:19 Paul said, For I do not do the good I want to do but the evil I do not want to do …this I keep doing.”

This gets to the core of intention and outcome.  Dr. Phillip Ney felt that the second law of nuclear physics pertained to sin in the world,  A perfect state would be described by the first law of thermodynamics without entropy.

Milton in Paradise Lost best described the first angel , Satan, as preferring to look at his shadow than to turn around and lose himself in the light of God’s gaze.  

Pride is the first sin and also the hubris of the Greek philosophers.  

The 12 step programs once called  the “way out’, describe the individual aa overwhelmed by separation and alienation and seeing their individuality, the ego, as all.  Psychological studies of alcoholics and addicts showed them to be developmentally regressed, selfish and self centered..

Anna Freud, the child analyst daughter of Sigmund, described the developmental journey from the narcissism of the baby to the altruism of the grandparent.  Alcoholics and addicts were seen as “stuck’ in childhood or adolescence using coping skills which no longer served in the mature adult world.  

C.S. Lewis , the great Christian theologian said ‘ don’t look for God in the wall’.  That’d like looking for love in all the wrong places.  

The old joke about the materialist scientist of the distant future is that they confront God and say they can create human and all of life from dirt just as God did. But as they are about to demonstrate their prowess God says, ‘get your own dirt’. 

In the church the sins have been separated in to most serious or mortal or lesser. Venial..  Pride is considered to generate all other sins,    Humility is considered the ultimate antidote as is the understanding of Grace,  The song of addiction is Frank Sinatra’s I did it my way’.  I especially like the Eagles Song, Desperado. The first step of AA is ‘surrender’ but not as in the military use of the word which my friend skips to say ‘her own position was likely overrun’.   It’s more like the Kenny Rogers song the Gambler. You have to know when to fold them,  We don’t need to take the down elevator to the basement or subbasement. We can get off at any floor.  

The 12 mortal sins are 

1, Murder

2. Adultery

3. Theft

4. Bearing false witness

5.  Blasphemy 

6. Apostasy

7. Despair

8. Gluttony

9. Greed

10. Lust

11 Sloth

12. Envy

AA and NA address these in the 12 steps and it’s interesting to consider the 12 step spin offs that have occurred.  Sexaholics anonymous focuses on lust , Overeaters anonymous on Gluttony.  Indeed Alcoholics, narcotics, cocaine anonymous and marijuana anonymous could all be said to focus on gluttony and sloth.  The addiction is not just what is done but what is neglected.  

Dr AbrahamTwerski addresses much of these ‘errors’ in his classic book ‘Addictive thinking, understanding Self Perception.  The alcoholics and addict wants to be the ‘victim’ and say ‘poor me, poor me, poor me another drink’. Yet in AA the men say’ get down off the cross we can use the wood’.  

The idea of right size is finding purpose and meaning and joy and pleasure in right measure but not in over indulgence or unhealthy abuse,  As Joni Mitchel sang of Wood stock we have to get back to the garden. For  most that means we have to sacrifice something, the apple being the image.  Each person’s apple is different.  The epidemic of America is obesity and fentanyl and the study of disease is about not judging the person who has a different addiction  Take the log out of your own eye before you try to take the sliver out of another’s eye, said Jesus.

Trungpa, the great Buddhist teacher,said that we in the west suffered ‘spiritual consumerism’. We wanted to ‘own’ and keep that which is at best rented or leased.  Ernest Becker wrote the classic psychiatric book, the Denial of Death.  Existential angst is fundamental root of human existence.  Yet in communion we can love and only love conquers all.  Jung talked of the shadow self. In 12 steps they say we are as sick as our secrets. Addiction is the symptom of the spiritual disease. The anxiety we feel is described as the god shaped hole that substances can’t fill but community can. We are not alone.

St. Barnabus Anglican Church

So glad I made it to church. It’s always a pull.  Today the devil was saying , it’s going to rain, it will be too cold to take the Vespa, Madigan had a hair cut and it will be too cold to ride on the Vespa. It’s too late now to take the car. It’s going to rain. Why not lay on the couch and have a snooze or read a book.

The fact is I always feel better after going to church. It’s community. It’s spiritual. It’s inspiring. I love seeing Priest Emily. She’s such an amazing soul.  The piano was terrific too..  Traditional hymns and the wonderful old church. Such reassurance.  

I loved seeing Maureen.  I actually know people in the church and they are glad to see me too.  That’s comforting.

I felt badly because Madigan was a terror.  He had his hair cut under anesthetic with North Road Veterinarian a couple of days ago. .  Laura figures his  PTSD was triggered.  North Road Veterinarianns  are angels  Madigan had a terrible experience with a groomer.  Thankful Dr. Bienecki came to the rescue.  

He’s still all grumbly and snarly.  It  also probably doesn’t help that he is terribly spoiled his overly indulgent master.  It’s a bit of a  game now too.   He growls and snarls at me with his tail wagging and gets his way. .   He wanted my  attention in church during the sermon.  So he started growlling, like a hell hound, devil dog.  Very embarrassing I took him outside twice. He really is just anxious and dependent. He loves Priest Emily statesman schnauzer Fritz, 11 years old.  Madigan is only 4.  

So I didn’t hear the sermon. Nell Seedhouse gave it. He’s a fine fellow, one of the back bone of the church.   

I was glad for the eommunion.  It’s reassuring to participate in the supper reminded of the sacrifice and love of Jesus.  I liked reciting the creed together too, the affirmation of faith. It’s good to be among good like minded people.

After the services Priest Emily asked me to join them for coffee. Normally I rush away with Madigan yet stayed and was glad I did.  Emily’s grand daughter asked me a whole lot or questions about Madigan. I was glad to be able to answer her, She’s such a curious bright child.  The future is bright if there’s even a few more like her.  With others we  talked of sailing.  I shared a UBC studying encouraging limiting  limitting social media for mental health.  Jokingly I also suggested a class action suit by  ministers to go after the secular politicians like Trudeau who are are stealing the intellectual property of  the old fire a brimstone televangelists.   Now the fear mongering is things like if  use a plastic straw you’ll burn and you’ll destroy the whole world with you.  

I’m not sure anyone followed me. I’ve just been annoyed with all the fear mongering.  So glad to hear the message of hope and love that Priest Emily always gives. I like being reminded that I do have a friend in Jesus.  Every day I recite Julian of Norwich’s All shall be well. 

.  

I enjoyed coffee and fellowship. It was one of my favourite parts of church before Covid and Madigan. Now I’m glad I’ve taken the time sit and enjoy community.   Madigan had a wonderful time running around with Frtiz exploring the church hall.  I had a welcome moment from the busy schedule.  

Peace .

St. Barnabus certainly brings peace.

 The ride home on the Vespa was a delight.  All round I’m so grateful for St. Barnabus and so glad I didn’t listen to my devil couch

St. Barnabus Anglican Church 25th Sunday after Pentecost

I am so thankful I chose to go to church this morning .It was a hard start and late wakening.  But I soldiered on, making coffee, I’d roasted Ethiopian green beans yesterday.,getting dressed and getting Madigan dressed for the Vespa ride there. Rain was forecast but the skies didn’t open.  The ride was chilly pleasant. We actually made it on tine,

Patty who often leads the music was in fine form. Her guitar playing was Bruce Cockburn with a touch of Ry Cooder. She taught the congregation a marvellous old hymn. 

It all took me back to my teen years in coffeehouses when Jim Donahue sang the celtic round  “may the long time sun, shine upon you, all love surround you. May all love surround you and  the pure light within you guide your way home,”. Back then Pete Seegers had  written Turn, Turn, Turn, taking the words from Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8. I’d spend a wondrous afternoon with just him and Arlo Guthrie and a few others sitting on  the grass in  Stanley Park. The Beatles sang Let it Be, George Harrison, My Sweet Lord.  Eventually Leonard Cohen would sing Hallelujah,  I loved the Third Day concert in Langley.  I love God inspired music so much more than booze and drug songs or another guy did me wrong music.  

I just love spiritual uplifting music. Patti, who has a marvellous singing voice, really brings alive Christian music.  Today it was this old hymn. Other times it’s been African and South American spiritual songs. Thanks mostly to her we’ve had some swaying and dancing in the aisles.  It’s a diverse congregation, young and old, here and there. 

Madigan was delighted to see his friend, Rev. Emily’s Schanuser Fritz.  I was especially thankful that he was quiet during Emily’s sermon on love and giving.  She shared some of her experience in Quatemala when she’d been there as a young missionary.  

I was happy and at peace , glad to participate in communion. There’s such comfort and depth in shared ritual. I say the Lord’s Prayer myself all the time but love when we say this together. 

I was truly touched too when Rev. Emily said we’d sing the Irish “Be Thou My Vision”  .   Be Thou My Vision is one of my all time traditional favourite hymns.  Right up there with Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, Blessed Assurance,, Holy Holy Holy.  I personally felt this as a gift of God, a moment of synchronicity to underscore the value of making the effort to join in spiritual community.   It was so good to go to  St. Barnabus today.   

What a wonderful experience.  Thank you Jesus.  Thank you St. Barnabus. 

St. Barnabus Anglican Church

What a whirlwind of activity church was!  One would have thought our poor Anglican Beacon on the Hill church had become Pentecostal. It was the second Sunday after Pentecost. So many people and so much going on.  Madigan, young cockapoo,  was jumping about so glad to see his friend Fritz, Priest Emily’s better behaved older schnauzer.  Steven Seegert son of Reverend Vivian Seegers who died of covid complications 3 years ago, carried on her multivocal Christian tradition of sage and smudging the congregation. A moving tribute to his mother who began the Urban Aboriginal Mission I was privileged to be a part of,

Patti Powell our resident songstress extraordinaire had her singers with her, I guess they’d be called a choir but word has it they just get together and sing each week because they love to sing.  Their ‘Wade in the Water’ was really moving, foot stomping swaying music. A couple of traditional hymns balanced out the inclusive Xhosa and Swahili songs. 

Ironically, Bishop John’s sermon was on ‘silence’.  It was hard to hear the opening with the children laughing and playing together at the back of the church.  But that fondly brought to mind Vivian telling me how she loved to hear the children when she gave her sermons. It was her peoples way, she said, that all participated.  All my relations.

The children quieted as the Bishop’s sermon touched the depth of spirituality in words of silence, 

Two were baptized today, 8 more confirmed and Bruce  reaffirmed .  I loved being present for the baptisms.confirmations and reaffirmation..  I loved sharing in the sacred ritual being deeply reminded of my own baptism.    Communion followed, Breaking bread and sharing the blood and body of Christ. Sacred ceremonies,loving community. All my relations. 

I was thankful for church today and the pancake breakfast that followed, the rich conversations. Thank you Jesus.    

Good Friday 2024

I am here and now in the multiverse. I imagine that the cross has been made and is waiting for Jesus to carry it along the Via Dolorosa.  The tale of Government, Church and World authority falsely accusing, betraying, torturing, beating and humiliating the Son of God who came to earth to teach and heal is in the DNA.  My mother taught me to pray on my knees beside my bed beside her, sharing faith and love.  My Dad joked and said he belonged to the Round Church where there weren’t any corners that the devil could catch him in.  

Tonight all creation past, present, and future with be rent with the sigh of the dying human, Jesus.  In years gone by I have felt more religious, more ‘with it’ spiritually.Today there’s a conventionality and less emotionality of the prodigal son.  It’s less I was lost and now I’m found than it is the footprints in the sand. I still love Phillips Book, Your God is Too Small.

Yesterday I picked up From Black Land to Fifth Sun , the book by Fagan about sacred places.

I have been blessed to have been to London, Rome and Jerusalem. It was as important as my visit to Maguerafelt and Aberdeen.  Perhaps the whole of earth feels holy compared to other planets though an infinite number of Jesus may have incarnated everywhere and every when. Or this is a shattered holographic plate or minuscule strand of DNA.  The microcosm and microcosm.  

Jesus prays this day preparing to do his Father’s will, truthfully, not relatively truthfully but truthfully, no approximation but fateful and determined wedding the free will of Creator and creation.  

I am small and vulnerable and find solace in Good Friday.  Maybe with my death I’ll rent the skies and conquer hell and rise to heaven showing my friends my scars before I fly.  Good Friday is more relatable with the cur Trudeau our Local Herod throwing taxes and police at us Canadians and using his troops to trample with horse peaceful demonstrators. I suppose Biden is Pontius Pilote and perhaps Xi Jin Ping or Putin is.  Any one of them might be Tiberius.  Tiberius , Roman Emperor at the time of the Crucifixion of Jesus and the boss of Pontius Pilate and superior to Herod, he doesn’t get the phlegm he deserves.  The fear of authority on earth is such that the ‘middle management’ Pontinus Pilate gets blamed while Tiberius is not on the front lines, a back room leader, a money man, maybe Klaus or Gates or Rothschild , some person who can keep their name out of the records so the Pope, Constantine the direct descendent of the Roman Empire and Tiberius, can be whitewashed. The winner writes history.

The times were worse than today with Baccanalia, animal sex and scenes to make the Kardasians Blush, the Roman Empire so much more refined that the courts of Atilla the Hun, Gheghis Khan, Sultans andd Moguls, Pagan superstions,and later Mohamed and worst of all the godless communist murderers Lenin and Mao with their execution chambers for innoscents and intelligent .  Like the gas chambers of Auschwitz for Jews,  Gypsy’s, Polish and homosexuals by the nightmare Hitler, a little man, a corporal .  All of this is within for the past is gone like degraded computer memories.  Zeros and ones in binary codes  dissipate with time.

There is only now. This day, Good Friday.  I will move through it and feel nauseous with the pain and suffering, the crown of thorns and look forward with the faith my mother shared and hope Easter Sunday. I love the trumpets and cries of ‘hallelujah! He is risen!’  but now much reflect on the cross.

Jesus was the good son. Like my brother. I’ve been the black sheep all my life. The prodigal son. Much loved and blessed. Not too ironically as my parents saved my life countless times when I was young I saved my parents life when they were old. The circles are more truth as they spiral like twin helixes while we kid ourselves with snippet linearity or old Jerusalem and New Jerusalem. Meanwhile the Buddhists with nihilism and black humor chuckle at the ego and seeking the Hindu self beyond maya and desire.  I am the river make me the sea.  We go to God. Somehow  here we gather stuff ,  circumstance and storage lockers and clothing,  yet we come naked and go naked.  The worm turns.  I am Thee not this.  I choose. You choose.

This Day God died and rose again like the sun with night and day like impermanence. There is science and adventures and travel bit nothing permanent save God. .  And  perhaps taxes.  The oldest law is the Chinese Law of the Fish: there are big fish and little fish. The little fish must be fast and numerous. 

I’m not so fast with age but there may be an infinite number of me. Larvae and caterpillar and butterfly. Competing sperm and egg. Gulags and prisons can’t keep me anymore than Jesus, My Lord.  The Bible is the most banned book.  It’s is the most dangerous book.  Not the Old Testament, the old news,  but the Gospel.  The Good News.  

Jesus was a Jew killed by Jews.  God was a god that killed God.  Ouroborus.  A tale of wine and wafer. This is my blood shed for you. The sacrifice. . The illusions of light and shadow.  Here in the darknesss of Good Friday I am alone and confused and could easily deny my maker till the rooster cried .  I don’t listen. 

I am a sinner, that magic word that archer’s used to say they ‘missed the mark’. I am not a perfect shot. I’m a good man, good enough perhaps, struggling and trying and falling and getting up like the toddler I am. A baby really. I’m facing the time when fitted sheets and beds beckon.  I will go gentle into that still night. I will end the long dark night of the soul.  And some time today the universe will rent.   I will feel the depth of human failure like the Mariana Trench. 

I will cry , Eli, Eli Lama sabachtthani. My God, My God Why hast thou forsaken me.  And I will pray that I am here this Sunday.

Thank you Jesus. Thank you God.  Thank you Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

St. Barnabus Church

It was a close call whether I’d get to church this morning.  I slept in. After the first coffee I’d thought I’d have to get dressed in a hurry.  I did. Madigan needed a walk anyway. Once dressed all is possible. 

I actually was amazed as we arrived almost on time the service just beginning. It was March 17 St. Patrick’s day. I had my green flannel shirt and my Irish rag vest I’d bought in Dublin. 

Priest Emily gave a wonderful sermon on rebirth and resurrection in the preparation for Lent. With the help of a child from the congregation she showed how what appeared dead in nature, seeds, came to life in Spring. I enjoyed seeing the daffodils near my place were in bloom.  Madigan was glad to see his friend Fritz.  Bill was there and Patty kept the singing alive.  We are blessed with accomplished pianists.  

I enjoyed the coffee after church.  I talked with June again whose conversation and wisdom I’ve so enjoyed.  I met Jill and talked with Margaret who is such an amusing raconteur. It was good to see Bill. He was in spring clothes and not dressed for official capacity. I liked the coffee. So often I have enjoyed the coffee meeting after the meeting. People are so interesting and those in our church so diverse and amazing.  Lovely people.  

Yuma - love

I ward off fear every day.  I like that religion is for those who have never been to hell and spirituality for those who have been and don’t want to go back.  My very life and being and mind were threatened by a satanic man .  I knew fear. I’d seen the torture provided in the name of justice. I’d witnessed the grossest abuse of power.  I was afraid. I was experiencing ‘incomprehenible demoralization’ and cried out to Jesus.  I had felt beyond Grace. I felt every path I took was blocked. I thought ‘how could all these bad things be happening to a good guy like me’.  I felt the depth of betrayal and knew terror and despair.  I cried out to Jesus.  I cried out to God.  

“My God  My God why hast thou forsaken me?” “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’  I was in the long dark night of the soul.  

I survived. Later I’d be in a hurricane in winter at sea, days inside of the washing machine like sail boat unable to find comfort, totally at the mercy.  I  felt then the  same physically as I’d felt imprisoned by enemies.  This time I did not feel I was alone or that I had done wrong. I felt close with God.  I’d not turned my back on Jesus but knew he was with me. I had faith and trust in the Lord.  I’d clung to him in the darkest of times and been rewarded.  I’d confessed my sins. I was no longer alone and alienated. I’d been the Prodigal Son returning to my family. I’d sought the guidance and leadership of  Christian missionary doctors and Christian professors, and spiritual friends.  I’d begun the path back to the god of my understanding. I once again sought to know daily God and God’s will for me. I prayed daily and eventually ceaselessly as St. Paul had taught. I meditated as I had long ago learned.  I lived.  I humbly turned my will and my life over to God. I accepted I was powerless over alcohol and drugs and that my life had become unmanageable. I found the lost strength and hope within me. I attended church and meetings and studies.  I pilgrimaged to the Holy Lands and prayed in the places of worship of the holy.  I literally let go and let God.  

I contrast the time I have today with that turning point decades ago. I’d put my faith in romance back then and looked to sex and drugs and rock and roll for answers. Today I talk directly with God and ask for his forgiveness and guidance.  Each day I begin the day in gratitude and ask for the presence of Jesus Christ in my life.  I pray to God and the saints of all religions . I am a seeker and yet trust in the Hound of Heaven. I know the footprints in the sand and see the hand prints of God in my life. Theres’ a fourth dimension I often stumble into. . That flow or consciousness that is beyond all human understanding, the transscendence.   I fear at times I am a spiritual consumer seeking the nectar of God. It is a journey and destination. I accept I am in this life and enjoy food,  .exercise, sleep and fellowship that  is itself Godly.  I live in this world but I ‘ m not of this world.  I am a child of God but I am vigilant, less naive, older. 

I dreamed of being given marijuana by a taxi driver last night. I took the package and woke.  I still have dreams like that, not using, but as C.S. Lewis say thinking that God could be found in the wall of his creation. I want direct contact with God . The old tantric path was thoroughly explored. The journey is forward not back.  It served its time back when.  Now it has no future.  I don’t know why it came to me out of my memories, as a tease or temptation.   I imagine it was because I ‘ve been watching 007 and revisiting the 60’s.  I’m remembering youth and love and dancing in the streets of San Francisco with flowers in our hair.  I’m reading a book on the history of Northern Africa and remembering being in the Kazbah, me and Bobby McGee. I’m grieving my youth.   

Today I’m old and life has been a grand adventure with my Doystoeyski encounter with the sophisticated devil who offered me a choice. I look the road I did and the one he din’t not know. Now I’m feeling sometimes that I’m in Heaven’s waiting room but I know that’s decades a head.  It’s the weariness that assails me now sometimes.  I remember the single footprints in the sand then. I say All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. I remember Hal’s teachings on an Attitude of Gratitude. I try to get over myself.  I try to keep my head in the same room as my ass.  I know God is in the present. 

It’s best then I go for a walk.  My dog is always happy to walk with me. He’s a great teacher.  

Thank you God for rescuing me from myself. Thank you God for loving me as father and mother and giving me a father and mother who loved and taught me love. . Thank you God for this life of mystery and adventure. Thank you for the journey, companions and memories.  Help me do my best today, Grant me serenity, courage and wisdom. 

Yuma — Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes

Matthew 5

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs the kingdom of heaven

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled

Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God

Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Blessed are you when people insult you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me

Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you

Nicene Creed

When I first began a serious study of Christianity, I’d been a biblical student long before, I learned the Apostolic Creed.  This is the profession of faith that predated the Nicene Creed of the Council of Nicea of 325 ad called by Emperor Constantine who made Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire.  It dates from the 4th Century and is thought to originate in Gaul or France of today.

The apostolic creed is as follows:

“I believe in God the Father almighty Maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified, died, and was buried, descended into hell, rose again from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father almighty, who will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen”

The Nicene Creed from the  is as follows: 

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ , the Son of God, begotten of the Father, (the only begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God,) Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

By whom all thing were made (both in heaven and on earthy).

Who for us men, and for our salvation cane down and was incarnate and was made many 

He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven,

From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

And in the Holy Ghost.

(But those who say: “there was a time when he was not,” and “He was made of nothing,” or “he is of another substance or essence’ o “The Son of God is created’ or ‘changeable’ or ‘alterable’ - they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic church’.

There are slight variations and hair splitting and nit picking in the very august and important writings of the Nicene Creed in the Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian traditions. I have a book somewhere on the creeds and it was an immense work of scholarship that tended to put me to sleep after an hour or two like any committee consensus readings. The key teachings though are

God is - father the almighty

Trinitarianism is ‘Three Gods in one’ .  Dr. James Houston spoke of the Persons of God.  The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  They were all one and together from the beginning.  They are all and might represent functions or forms but ultimately all is God .  I joked once with an austere man of letters that it sounded me like the Father thought and the Holy Spirit did so wasn’t the Holy Spirit like the mother, activity.  He was not impressed. The mother of then and now is ‘mother of God’.  

There have been centuries of discussion of details and concerns .It culminated in the Medieval Question of how many angels could fit on the tip of a pin.

The Creed’s key is

1.  I believe

2. God the Father immanent transcendent, omnipotent, omnipotential, 

3. Jesus Christ, God the son, Lord

4 God the Holy Spirit

5. Jesus Christ was made man, suffered died and on the third day rose again, descending into hell and ascending into heaven to sit on the right hand side of God 

6. Judgement and Salvation.

I love the Christian rock band Third Day and was blessed to see and hear them when they came to Abbotsford.  Celebration.

I like the painters who for thousands of years painted the vase of flowers, the bowl of fruit and the mother and child. I love how each is interpreted and the would have meaning conveyed in the exercise.  Like the scales that musicians do and the history and respect for tribal culture that is carried in the learning.  I was a hippie of the 60’s generation who said ‘do your own thing’ but as a dancer I studied ballet and jazz and loved the evolution from jerk to pas de  deux.  As a physician studying surgery I was thankful to the teachers who went before me and loved the learning of civilization that allowed me time and time again in assisting with healing using centuries of wisdom passed through the ages.  

I love spirituality and religions and have prayed, meditated, sat with monks and priests and worshiped with the leaders of many religions. After accreditation in physical medicine I studied the mind and psyhiatriy obtaining my psychiatric degree and working as a clinician many years before subspecializing in addiction which has a spiritual component. At the time i studied Christian Spirituality in several theological colleges and studied eastern religion as well obtaining a master degree from California university in comparative religion. The great irony of my Masters of Divinity is the school that offered the diploma failed.  This was at a time when my American medical degrees were being limited to 5 years making all the medical degrees through history defunct after five years. An interesting development in education seen by many of us as double dipping and the means by which the already literate were taxed further by the declining institutions who were increasingly sidelined in releavance beyond the high cost of the fancy suits of limited value.  The dichotomy between spirituality and religion was playing out big time in education and other institutions.  

I am planning to attend Christmas Eve service to sing carols with my tribe and stand together and renew my faith in community.  It’s that time or the year.  The C & E Christian is someone who at very least makes it to Christmas and Easter Service.  I attend church at other times and read the Bible often but not as often as I did when I was formerly studying theology and taking so many evening courses and reading so many commentaries.  I miss the conversations with pizza I had with my friend John.  I loved fellowship with Willie and Phillip.  It was a joy to see Anna at the Christian Medical Assoviation meeting and hear her sing in Handel’s Messaih.  I loved hearing Carl Ridd talk of his experience with the study of the Bible.  I am blessed to know the Christians I have and continue to know.  

Thank you Lord Jesus. Tonight we celebrate the coming of the king.

Yuma, Arizona, Christmas Eve Day, 2023

As young as I can remember Mom prayed. She prayed with me on my knees beside my bed at bedtime. She prayed at meals.  We attended church Sundays and we read the Holy Bible.  She gave thanks to God the Creator and Jesus Christ.  We were raised Baptist Christian and attended Sunday School.

Christmas was a time of worship, gift giving and family meals with turkey.  Christmas Day was the day of celebration but Christmas Eve was important too.  Even Boxing Day had meaning and was the secular celebration following the spiritual celebration of the birth of Christ.

When I was young I still believed in a linear reality and that time was fixed.  Now I know the circular reality of time of the East and that Time is relative according to physics and spiritual insight.  Today is all there is. Now is present.  I am here and now. God is in this moment. There is no permanence but God and I am perception.  My relationship with God is I and the other, creator, love, Jesus.  

The birth of Christ and creation of all is happening now in my consciousness and memory and belief.  It’s is the meaning of this relationship of the material and spiritual.  God became man.  Jesus the servant God, creator creation, spoke of the love and truth of the Father.  The Kingdom of God was more than the material kingdom of earth. This dichotomy of mind spirit and body material is central to my perception but not necessarily reality.  Reality is much more and much less. God is one.  The mystery lies with me and the sense of being lost on the journey.  God is not lost.  He is within.  Being born today in Bethlehem a mythical and real place I have visited and known Miracles in.  Miracles are everywhere and every when. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear.  

Joseph, Mary and Jesus are all within in the Biblical story with the evil dictator King Harrod who killed John the Baptist and the Judges and Rabbis who condemned Jesus and Pilate the Roman overseer that could have stopped the crucifixion.  But that was all 30 years later in the life of Jesus. 

Christmas we celebrate his birth.  Immaculate conception.  A miracle.  A gift of God.  Anything is possible with God.  God is great.  God is not small. I am small. I am limited. God is infinite.  I am afraid and I scoff. I am a man of hard facts but I’m also a scientist so I’m never closed to possibility.  I am humble as a scientist and open minded but not so open minded all the marbles fall out.  The idea of a God becoming man is not new in the spiritual realm. History is replete with men becoming Gods. The myths are early history.  The essence is they are now, here and now and each day I wake up and choose what I will do with what I’m woken too.  

Celebration of the Baby Jesus is a good thing.  Jesus talked of love and said ‘do not be afraid’.  Believe.  Have faith.  Have hope.  

One of my all time favourite songs is Monty Pythons ‘Look on the bright side of life “ sung by men being crucified”.  The absurdity of life is too easily forgotten. The Harrods are without humor, sub human really,  muscle bound, clever cretans living in fear like Pilate and all the others dependent on this world for joy.  Yet Alexander asking the greatest philosopher of his day what he could do for him was told simply to step aside as he was blocking the sun.   This wise man knew.

Today we hear the angels and shepherds sing.  An event that changed history and raised the eyes of the world to heaven and inward to heart.  A baby is born.  A ruler to be.  The Birth of Christ.  Love wins.  

It’s a great story with Harrod killing hundreds or thousands of babies and Joseph and Mary and Jesus, Jews, fleeing the Jews.  Escaping to Egypt.  The all time thriller and action movie of the era.  Joseph the greatest hero, protecting his wife, adopted child and children from countless warriors, soldiers, police and those who would steal the child and sell him to death for profit.  

There’s no story like Jesus.  There’s only one Jesus story.  Lots of similiar ones. But today is the harbinger of the day he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey facing censorship and obliteration by the terrified men with toys and women and drugs and lust.  30 years he survived till that day which is celebrated in a few months at Easter.  

But time is millions of years and Christianity has survived only thousands. A drop in linear time.  Perception.  Today that time is far away and we celebrate his mother being told by an angel that she will give birth to the Messiah and now she is fleeing in labour to give birth in a manger because there is no room in the inn for a pregnant woman giving birth.  Talk about people not getting up for old men and old women on a bus. Here is a middle class woman. Joseph was a carpenter.  Here she is in the barn giving birth because no one would give the mother of God a bed with clean linen for her to have her baby.  Wise men arrive. They follow the star.  They don’t visit the inn keeper or the penthouse or palace but they come from afar to be there for the humble birth of Jesus., child of God. The coming of the King.,  Gifts of frankincense and Mirh. 

It’s happening today. Right now. Here in our hearts. Jesus is being born and will escape to Egypt with his family because the authorities are afraid.  And he will teach and heal one day  and destiny will be served.  

I’m just glad to have a coffee today and remember all the wonderful times with my mother, this Mother and Child day of Days.  I will pray too. Thinking of Joseph as the great escape artist and manly man like my father who kept the kids safe and together long enough to reason on our own,  It’s so easy to disbelieve.  Aetheism is a fools realm.  Angry adolescents and ‘no’ shouting toddlers.  To believe. Now that is Shakespearean.  Today I believe.  Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not come. Today I believe and look forward to singiubng songs of praise and thanksgiving Christmas Eve with others who celebrate motherhood and babies and escape from tyranny and stupidity.  Christ lives.  Christ is born today.

Easter, Christ Church Cathedral

My mother and family attended Dufferin Street Baptist. Toronto. I have her New Testament and Psalms on my desk.  I was raised Christian, first Baptist, then United Church , then Anglican.  I attended evangelical with Willie and Phillip and attended Catholic services with Laura and John. . 

It was Christ Church Cathedral that I was baptized with my friend Tom sponsoring me and Rev. Peter Elliott leading.  It was a sprinkling like the christening as an infant. Later  I’d be baptized full immersion in the River Jordan, Israel.  With Peter and Tom I felt I was lifted on the wings of an  Eagle. I had felt a tremendous weight of guilt and shame lifted from me as I’d confessed to Father John a year or so earlier.  In Israel I felt grounded,  God is an experience.  There’s always at moments like these an inner sense of the self shifting into something a kin to overdrive. 

I attended Christ Church Cathedral after my third divorce when I abstained from marijuana and alcohol having experienced ‘incomprehensible demoralization’ betrayed by my self, my profession and my wife,   having felt I’d lost the path of God I’d taken since praying by my bedside with my mother.  

Here I was again in this magnificent cathedral of high ceilinged architecture, polished wood, blessed  stained glass.  I loved being here praying in the dark night of my soul.  That year I left marriage and medicine and reaffirmed my faith, feeling safe and at peace here. 

I began pastoral counselling and returned to theological study. It had been so many years before at University of Winnipeg I’d studied Literature of the Bible with Dr. Carl Ridd. Here I’d be challenged by the profound thinking of Dr. Peter Elliot. I’d come here with my friend George and after ,over lunch, we’d  discuss the sermon and theology.  I’d go on to study more theology at Vancouver Theological Institude.Regent College and St. Mark’s Catholic College. I lived in the West end and came here for Compline so often. I’d come for the noon time prayers as well. I’d share my struggles and fears with Peter and he’d be welcoming and caring. 

I’d become a reader here.  It was a different view from the front yet the same.  Humility is like that.  Looking out on the congregation I looked up at the truly magnificent organ where the great works of Rupert Lang began and the choir that annually won Canadian awards for church music sat. Here I felt connected to the church all the way back to Peter the rock.  The history of Rome and Constantinople and the Church of England and all joined on this hallowed Musqueem ground. I kneeled to pray with saints, sinners, and the redeemed. It was a place of discovery and recovery, a place of welcome.  I healed here and felt comforted for a decade or more.

John Stephens is the bishop today. I loved his sermon of Easter talking of Mary Magdalene and the resurrection, faith and patience.  It was a moving sermon, an uplifting sermon, a sermon of hope.  I’d not been here at Christ Church since before this last three years of Covid and lockdowns.  I’d been attending dog friendly St. James with Gilbert my first cockapoo,  then Rev Emily’s  dog friendly St. Barnabus with  Madigan, my second cockapoo.   

This Easter  I just wanted to hear the brass again. Christ Church has each Easter added horns and trumpets to the organ and choir.  It’s like attending the Vancouver Symphony, with the Vancouver opera and a lecture worthy of UBC along with children and family all affirming their faith in Jesus.  It was all I hoped it would be. 

 There have been so many deaths these last few years. I’m at an age where the grieving doesn’t seem to end.  It was like those years in college when friends were having  weddings after weddings..  

When I travel I visit cathedrals.  The spring of last year I was in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Oxford, London and Paris. The sermon and service at Christ Church in Oxford was so spiritual as was the sermon and service here. I felt the presence. I entered the flow. I joined in communion with my fellow man and God.  It was a holy time as was this.

When it was over Laura and I left the church to go out into the world, It was raining still and we opened our umbrellas as we were joined  by Laura’s friends, Julia and Patricia. Laura too me Patricia had once played organ in her Trinidad church.  Asked about my colourful Rembrandt umbrella I shared how I loved shopping in the stores of art galleries. It  was a happy time.  Touched by joy we celebrated the risen Christ and glory.  Back in the world of the mundane we carried on.  

Madigan was so excited by our return. He is little and anxious for a guard dog and  enormously glad to be relieved of his lonely heavy duty.  His joy is ever a reward.  Laura would make the Hamm , mashed potatoes and asparagus for our Easter meal. It would be a memorable day.  I would be so grateful for this life and thankful for all the love and joy I had known.  Church is a time of reflection and a reminder of the otherworldly essential so easily overlooked in a consumer society.  Church  is my place of refuge and inspiration, the city equivalent of a walk in a garden with God as companion. .  Thank you Jesus for your presence. Thank you Christ Church Cathedral.

Easter Weekend

It’s Easter Weekend. This is the time when even the C&E Christians do their second pilgrimage to the hallowed halls of higher learning.  It’s also the weekend here when the North Shore Round Up of AA takes place.  This year the round up is at the Vancouver Convention Centre.  

Before Covid when George, Vivian and Antonnio were still alive we’d have these wonderful reunions, lighting up when we saw each other, shaking hands and sharing embraces, our smiles so wide there was no room for face.  

George and I with our lady friends would begin the weekend with Friday night at the speaker meeting for AA.  Antonnio would connect with us then. Along with hundreds of others dozens of whom we called our close friends.  Vivian might be there or we’d connect with her on Saturday.  Being a priest she had so many duties with her church Easter Weekend it was a trial for her to slip out. Saturday meetings at the Round up and the dance that night, often after a dozen or so dined together was, always special.  I remember all these incredible story tellers from the round up, Dr. Bob’s son, and the nun whose vodka bottles clinked when she walked, the lawyer for the Hell’s Angels, all these wonderfully funny inspirational folk who brought us together in the evening.  

Sunday morning though George and I would meet at Christ Church Cathedral  early to get in ,as with each passing year the overflow increased. George, a jazz pianist and physician, would ,like me enjoy the incredible choir and organ at Christ Church.  Easter was the time the Brass was added with horns and trumpets.  We’d burst with song and Hallelujah. Christ is Risen.  We’d love Peter’s sermons and talk of them later over brunch. Often we’d be able to make the spiritual speaker at the Round up after church if we slipped out after sharing communion.  

We’d say hello to Antonnio, Barb, Andrea, Stephen , Vivian, Jackie.  Archie and Bill were always about.  So many people bursting with joy and celebration, clear eyes, where to stones had once been.  Scotty and Michelle, when Scotty was alive and still bursting with wisdom. I loved connecting with Lorne from the country, and others who came in often fo the annual gathering.  We’d lunch with Kevin and Anna before all their kids came along.   I loved most when the AA roundup  was held at the Hyatt with it’s chandeliered  ball room the weekend before EAster.  Then we’d be able to take in both  celebrations before it grew so big it moved to the convention centre.

Then Covid leaked and the lockdowns followed. .  I ‘m still isolating a bit. Each month I’m doing more , coming out more, socializing but still rather content to be alone . I’ve sailed solo so many years that I’m rather content with my hermit friend Laura and the crazy dog.  Our work is very intense and social so weekends I like to be alone in nature though as spiritual meetings works as well as the forest to still the soul.  I have a friend in Jesus.  I sing Hallelujah.  I pray and meditate.  I’m not going to St. Mark’s with John and studying Christian spirituality at Regent College anymore, so many evenings so many years, of meetings and classes after work. We all so loved the Christian dinners together when John was alive and James Houston’s wife was a live and Helen was back from her missionary work in the Sudan.  

As a child with my mom and dad and brother and often with my Aunt Sally visiting we’d go as a family to church, the ladies wearing white gloves and Easter hats.  I’d go on to be an intellectual, doctor, and study multiple religions, always striving to know God and self, the two entwined.  I was awarded a masters in Christian theology and comparative religions to go with the many other pieces of paper on the wall beside the MD , Psychiatry and Addiction medicine degrees.  Each year at this time I’d be as I am today surprised at the time.  We’re here again.  We are blessed to be alive another year.  Another year to contemplate the sacrifice of Jesus ,the deepest meaning of his parables and the beatitudes. 

This year I’ve bought a new motorcycle while Jesus was dying on the cross. It’s wind therapy and moving meditation.  Jesus Christ is an experience not an idea.  I don’t care to argue any more with aetheist prosyletizers or others who would contain God.  I loved Phillips book « your God is too small » . 

 Willie, the Christian psychiatrist would say that Jesus said ‘do not be afraid’ more than once.  He encouraged reading the Bible daily and every time I do I learn more from the living word. Phillip another Christian psychiatrist would say Christ is the celebration of life. Jesus also said ‘where two or more are gathered together , there too am I’.  He also came as a stranger.  Tom and I sailing or driving the back woulds in the truck would contemplate the song ‘were you there when they crucified my lord’.  « I was probably holding the spear’, Tom would say. I recently watched the performance on uTube of   the Thief by Third Day .  I took Laura to hear them when they played in Langley. It was truly a miraculous communion for all there .  The night air when we left was somehow more alive.  

Easter is a time of reflection, celebration and thanksgiving.  Thank you Jesus. Thank you Christ. Thank you Holy Spirit. Thank you God.  

St. Barnabus Anglican Church , Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

It was good to be back in church. I have said I’m a ‘winter Christian’ because summer and fall I so commonly am out of the city enjoying nature as a Celtic Christian. Celtic Christians see Nature as the other celebration and lesson of God.  It was good to be in communion.  I left Madigan as I was running late and didn’t want to be encumbered by his distracting ‘busyness ‘ in.  He’s especially excited when the minister’s dog is there and he can play ‘disruptive dog’.  

I missed Emily but enjoyed Honorary Asst Priest , Venerable Mavis Brownlee and Rev. Martha Cameron.  I especially love Sathia’s music and realized how I’d missed it.  All in all it was a most rewarding experience, taking communion for the first time in months.  Covid certainly disrupted my schedules and I’m trying now that fall is here to restore restore those good social activities that make the week more spiritual.  I love the church and am thankful to have been able to be there today, praying in community and feeling the presence of God in people sharing fellowship and worship.  

Thank you Jesus, Lord and Saviour

Home reflections

Home is a feeling but it’s tied to a place.  I’m here now. I feel safe in my home.  It’s known. It’s temporary.  Life is ephemeral.  My dog Madigan is here with me. I’m still struggling with Frazerway RV.  I have sent an email  to James Epp. He’s not returned the call.  

There I wrote a letter and will send it registered mail.  I looked up Better Business Bureau complaints and they’re the same kind. Bullying, covert aggression, gas lighting communication.  I wonder if it’s Dianna Smith or the company policy.  She does sound impaired or sociopathic. It’s hard to distinguish. Laura says she repeats herself.  She could be on psychiatric medication or cannabis.  I loved that our insurance agent described her communication style in the same way.  The complaints on Better Business Bureau refer to the same absurdities that we’ve been facing. 

Well. I was meditating this morning and that entered my mind.  I’ve taken action.  

It started to be a sunny hot day like yesterday but there’s overcast and it’s chilly.

I woke at 530 am and decided to get up to Madigan’s delight.  I really had appealing dreams. Surprising as I’ve been watching Stranger Things episodes.  

Laura is coming over on the weekend.  Staycations.  She says coming here is liking a holiday. She’s living in downtown Vancouver.  I feel a bit ‘bored’ with my existence but that’s really okay.  I most enjoyed this week lying outside on the lawn chair in the really hot sun. I have some tan.  It’s not the beach but frankly I like my back yard and access to all my ‘stuff’.  If I was away I wouldn’t have as much ‘stuff’ to play with.  

There’s so much I could do but I’m coasting.  I walk Madigan. I go for hot tubs and swims. I’m reading a lot.  I feel I should be writing books and yet I don’t do that. The most I’ve been able to do as a project is the reading and copying of St. John. I doing in depth learning. 

I don’t really know what I’ll do when I grow up,

I have the storage locker to sort.

I was sorry my friend Anne was sick. I’m hoping she gets over her flu or covid soon.  

We’re older.  We’ve passed a lot of the milestones for illness and the future is bright. Yet there’s that sense of egg shells as more friends die and we learn of the ages of our celebrities.  Arlo Guthrie 75. Bob Dylan 80.  The list goes on. Even the best of us are looking older.  I feel I exude less energy. There’s a paleness.  Yet I figure I’ll live to be 100. It’s a terrible thought that I’ll one day outlive Madigan like I did Gilbert. Stuart and Shinto.

He’s beside me chewing on a purple dragon toy. 

The nephews and friends children are all growing.  I am surprised when I think of yesterday and how often it’s only that in my mind. In reality it’s years past.  Increasingly I’m collapsing the time of the past and don’t really know when major events took place according to years. I have to look up dates and then am surprised it was that long ago.  

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Before this fifth wheel I had and RV. My brother’s sickness and death were pivotal.  Closing of my practice was too.  Yet it’s somewhere in the last 5 to 10 years. I feel I need to make a timeline.  

I’m enjoying reading.

Monkey pox and Pride seem omninous.  

I’m isolating a bit for safety, not liking the road rage, feeling safe here and not wanting to go out there. That explorer adventurer aspect is watered down. It may be another year of waiting for the rebound after Covid. Continued corruption with the Liberals and Ottawa Continues threat of communist infiltration and take over.  There’s even threat of nuclear war again.  My response is to stay home.  Funny that. If I want insaniety I can switch on the news.  

Meanwhile I”m enjoying being here.  I like skirts. Last weekend I was interested again in perfumes and colognes.  

I was looking at the hunting guide and didn’t have much interest in hunting or fishing for that matter.  Last year I wasn’t that interested in riding my Harley. This year I’m loving it again.  Not having the camper has disrupted my summer routine. I’m still remembering Europe.  

No new desire has arisen.  I don’t have any drive to do more than what I’m doing. The idea of reading in my back yard on a lawn chair in the sun is simply heavenly.  

Another day of work.  Not too difficult.  I need to do a lot more work on myself, my character defects often astonish me, they’re so recurring.  My fear and anger are still there. My frustration with government is still the same. I need to forgive and forget and trust God more.  

Thank you Jesus for another day.  

Thank you for all the blessings. 

Thank you for sobriety

Thank you.