19 yo to 20 yo Morocco, London, Winnipeg

When we got off the ferry in North Africa we boarded a bus to Tangier.  Moroccan border officials boarded the bus and challenged an American sitting in front of us. He had long hair pushed up under his hat. Rather than being polite, pleasant, and cooperative, he took the exact same attitude and approach that I have proved was the decidedly wrong approach to border crossing officials.

« Fuck you, » he said with bravado.

The two guards bodily carried the young man off the bus and with the assistance of others threw him on the ground. With guards sitting on him one did the sheep shearing till his hair was all gone and bleeding scalp was left.  Crying he got back on the bus. We all headed onto Tangiers.  Our introduction to a sometimes brutal nation.

When we got off the bus, street urchins tried to grab our packsacks, our only possessions and all our worldly goods, insisting on letting them carry our bags for a fee. We told them ‘no’ and carried our own bags. What would stop them running off with our bags? The boys and some teens then began to pelt us with rocks. We were being stoned and it hurt. Baiba was less than impressed as she ducked missiles.  

« What should we do? » I asked Gerry. 

« Throw bigger rocks. «   I thought that a great idea.

So began my greatest rock and stone fight with our side winning and the street urchins dispersing bleeding. Gerry and I were very good throws.  Baiba’s had not participated and stayed behind her ‘guardian knights’.  

 When we arrived Ramadan was in progress. We were told everyone was fasting and there was no food to be had.

We were shocked and unprepared. I thought the situation desperate until a kind Moroccan took us into the back of his cafe and said that because we were foreigners he could feed us.  We ate then and drank, the weather being terribly hot and dry.  The only thing was, that a mere few  hours later when sun down came everyone began feasting. Knowing Hindu and Christian ‘fasting’ we simply hadn’t considered not eating in day light hours anything of a hardship especially with the orgy of fare that appeared everywhere in the night with all the restaurants open and doing brisk business.

I was smoking a pipe these days. I’d had fine meershams and ornate German ones and corn cobs.  I’d run out of British Three Nuns pipe tobacco in Spain. I really did like the flavour and smell of Three Nuns.  In Spain though the tobacco industry had become  state controlled. This resulted in there only being two types of tobacco. The merchants told me 

« There are only two types of pipe tobacco in Spain. One tastes good and smells like shit and the other smells bad and tastes like shit. ». 

I took the one that supposedly tasted good and it sure did smell like shit. 

Sitting down in our first evening in Tangiers a young man  sat beside me in the outdoor cafe where I was having delicious Turkish coffee and smoking my pipe.

« That smells like shit. » he said.

« I know it but it tastes good. »

« The other Spanish tobacco tastes like shit and smells like shit. »

« You know. »

‘Every one knows.’

He took my stubby pipe and pounded it empty on the side of the table. Then he filled my pipe from his pouch.

« Here smoke this. It tastes good and smells good. »

I did and he was right. A major improvement over Spanish Tobaco.

It was high grade hashish. He offered me a large big chocolate bar of it for roughly $20.  In Canada a thousands of that would have cost as much.  Gerry and Baiba were soon as enamoured with Morocco as I.

The next day a hotel owner on the water front asked us if we would move into her penthouse suite for next to nothing. We were glad to. The reason was a young American woman had been murdered just inside the entrance. They’d done their best to get the blood stain on the floor out and were going to get a new rug to cover it. But she said people were superstitious and no one would pay what it was worth until someone else had stayed there. We were definitely not superstitious and for something like $10 a week we were staying in a luxury penthouse looking out on the harbour.  It would have normally cost a thousand.  

At that time the telephone poles had lots of pictures of missing American and Canadian girls. We were told that the white slave and sex trade was the most likely explanation.  Years later I’d read Maggie Trudeau’s ludicrous memoirs of her time in Morocco and how it was so safe for her and her girlfriend to roam alone through the streets unaccompanied. What she failed to mention was she was with the Australian Rugby Team. Moroccan hospitality was really wonderful for men and men with women. But women alone didn’t roam the streets without major risk of disappearing especially blonds who fetched a higher price.

I actually sold Baiba for a camel.  We were in this shop. He’d asked me what I wanted and I’d joked that I wanted a live camel as at that time I’d never ridden one and fancied myself Lawrence of Arabia, my favourite movie. He asked me if I’d trade ‘the woman’ for a live camel.  I was having fun bartering in Morocco and would be told often that when I did I got better prices than the locals. I just considered it a tremendous waste of time but for people without sex and other entertainments it appeared that business and bartering was their only orgasmic activity.  With my pipe always full of hashish time slowed down and I was content to barter. Just like playing chess which Gerry and I spent hours doing. 

I shook my head and the the merchant raise his bid to three camels and perhaps a horse and some carpets and a camel saddle.  An old bearded guy he kept dying Baiba lasciviously, sort of drooling out of the corner of his mouth while I kept indicated more. I was doing well. Baiba had been looking at jewelry and came over to ask what I was doing.

« I’ve traded you for three camels, a horse and couple of rugs and a camel saddle so far. ». She was aghast and furious.  

« You’re not serious ».

« I’m pretty sure I can do better. »

« They’re not joking, Bill. This isn’t funny,. »

Well at that two more men with knives appeared. I realized she might be right. It was  looking like we were going to have difficulty leaving the two new guys moving to bar  our exit.  Baiba darted past me for the street and I was a close second. The men from the store stopped chasing us within a block when we returned to the main thorough fare.

Baiba was very angry.   She wasn’t going out by herself already with either Gery or myself accompanying her.

Not that many nights later I was having  a Turkish coffee and a smoke writing poetry in the kasbah, or inner walled city. We’d been told it was not safe for foreigners to be in there after dark. During the day it was wonderfully exotic. I loved the boys carrying large circular flat bread on their heads. Stalls had beautifully coloured birds for sale. Old men smoke opium from water pipes 

 I was finishing up a poem and noted the light dying but I was moving  slowly. Like one does when mother calls for dinner and you’re doing something you as a child think is more important. Twilight and danger were rapidly approaching.

The minute I stepped away from the cafe veranda two men with short curved swords tried to pounce on  me. Literally jumped together right out of the dark alleyway swinging and jabbing their weapons. They would have cut me or run me threw if I’d not been quick of foot and richly blessed. It was a life and death chase with me knocking over clothing racks and running around and over displays of rugs. The knife and sword wielding thugs stayed hot behind me faces covered with scarves.

 No one seemed to care.  It was as if the locals were somehow in agreement with these men « policing’ their kasbah from foreigners. If I was killed and robbed it would have been no matter. As it was I ran very fast and was very thankful to be out of the Kasbah gate. They didn’t follow. The new city was better lit and more cosmopolitan.

 The kasbah had been fine during the day but never again at night. It was where the old men sat in little rooms smoking opium from long water pipes and illicit transactions took place.  We tended to stay together, the three of us, after I shared my near death or near maiming encounter.

It really was exotic though and relatively safe in the day. We loved Tangiers. It really was so different from anything we’d known. It brought back memories of the movie Casablanca and men really did wear the Fez. The Moroccans were very hospitable. After a week or two we were told that our presence had sufficiently cleansed the apartment , that it could be marketed again at it’s legitimate steep rate. . The murderers had not returned to kill us either.   We moved into  to a little less appealing room very modest rooms away from the harbour. 

Minarets.  Daily prayers.  Early music blaring.  Calls to prayer.  The delicious sea food.  Hashish and more hashish. I smoked my pipe with hashish as if it was regular tobacco.  We were all in a dreamy state the whole time in Morocco except when Baiba feared she’d been traded for camels or  I was fleeing for my life. We were so relaxed. I don’t remember much of our weeks there consequently. We were there some time and not wanting to leave. We didn’t have the money to go further and headed back to Europe to return to England knowing it was time to get work. 

I had a chocolate bar of hashish in my jacket as we were in line to board the ferry.  We saw that everyone was being searched so we began to devour the hashish unwilling to let it go to waste.  We’re lucky we didn’t get acute hashish poisoning. As it was a major storm came up suddenly at sea and the lower floors of the ferry were flooding with the water coming through the portals.  I remember going to the head to pee and seeing half the guests and crew in there puking., the floor awash with vomit. The sea was so bad the crew were sick.

Yet there were Gerry Baiba and myself full of anti nauseus, anti sea sickness hashish, totally unperturbed by the motion.  Unstoned it would have been quite frightening to see such high seas , a hundred foot at the time, crashing over the three story ferry which was having a terrible time making headway.  Passing through the freak squall we eventually arrived safely on the other side.  

We loved returning to Algeciras.  We’d purchased magnificent white lambskin coats for the cold northern weather and decided to ship our bikes and most of our possession north planning on selling the bikes in London; Spain was impoverished and no one could pay anything like what the bikes were worth.  

We hitchiked to Calais and took the ferry to England.  We saw the White Cliffs of Dover and were so thankful to hear English being spoken by everyone. We’d been in foreign lands for months. Being  able to understand everyone was such a joy even though some of the accents made the language still obtuse.

Our first disappointment was finding out that our bicycles and gear hadn’t arrived. It would be a month or so late in transit.  We had used the last of our money on the  ferry for  some English  pastry and tea. A celebration. We walked into a temporary agency and immediately were offered jobs in clerical.  Further we found a cheap flat with a flush toilet outside the basement suite door and a radiator that ran on bobs.  We’d late find the hedge came with the sweetest little resident hedge hog.

The final part of our plan was a trip to the Canadian Consulate. I’d forever be impressed by the Canadian consulate overseas at the time.  Our Foreign Affairs and beurocrats in general in these days were the thing of the English civil service. A matter of pride and true service sadly often absent in today smug government bureaucrat. .  Then was a great era.

« Yes how can I help you, » this well dressed kindly older man asked.

« We are flat broke.  We arrived from Europe and our bicycles we had hoped to sell for immediate cash haven’t arrived. We’ve a flat we can have rent free the first month and we each have jobs that will start to morrow.  We can throw ourselves on your mercy or  our parents would have to pay you for flying us back home or you could lend us 50 quid and we’d pay it back next month when we get our pay. »

« Well that’s well thought through and you’ve done what you needed to do so we’ll spot you fifty but you’ll need to leave us your passports. »

« Of course. » 

I believe Baiba almost feinted with how well received our plan was.  She’d  really expected us to be told to fly home then.  I believe we had our return flight but hadn’t told them that as it might have gone against us.  As it was we lived very poorly the first two months hardly eating and doing nothing but reading in a cold flat because we couldn’t afford to heat the place.  

The wool blankets were warm and we spent a lot of time in the bed.  Mostly fully clothed and reading but sharing a bed with Baiba in those days was heaven under any conditions.  Soon we’d be having fish and chips on the streets, eating pate and crackers and shopping on Oxford Street. We’d get extra jobs, me as a bar tender and Baiba waiting another evening shift. In a very few months our situation had changed entirely and we had money for dance lessons and nights at Jazz Clubs.  We’d make friends with a couple of beautiful sisters with handsome crazy South African ex commando boyfriend,  and some Australians. Gerry and his Girlfriend would be back together though Gerry was working for less money on the dangerous North Sea oil rigs than I was getting as an executive assistant in London working for the Mercantile Bank of London or the new TV station competitor to BBC. We’d go to dances with the Moody Blues and eventually take excursions on bicycle to all the surrounding villages. Our bicycles arrived with our souvenirs and others stuff. We’d have fun , really great fun.  London was so special.  I could go on forever about the wonders of that time and the city.  The history and sense of time was enthralling. Everywhere we walked and looked we’d see a little brass plague saying Dickens lived here or Maugham lived there.

Baiba wanted to stay and dance and dance.  

I wanted to return to Canada because I could get an education there. We’d been to Oxford and stayed in the rooms of a friend doing medical school there. She was a Quaker. We’d sat with other Oxford students and met dons. The whole idea of learning and study so appealed to me now that I’d had my eyes and ears awakened by travel and reading and museums. All the reading of the classics and all the discussions opened my eyes to what a real learning could be. I loved the Quaker medical students desire to serve and the Quaker service and silence.  

I don’t think Baiba would forgive me for bringing her home. She had threatened to stay alone but I’d insisted she return with me. 

We couldn’t get all our clothes into the suitcases so we flew 12 hours like Michelin men with 6 layers of our English clothes worn stifling hot on the plane.  

Our families were so relieved to have us home.  

Baiba would be the best ball room and show dancer  in western Canada  after that much learning and exposure to greatness. She absorbed dance learning like a gifted sponge.  She’d become the leading teacher at Ken Mathews and the principle choreographer.

Dr.  Carl Ridd would help me return to University of Winnipeg. I’d known nothing of the proper way to leave having felt that as I paid for the education and no longer wanted it like a unfinished meal I could leave it on the table.  There was however all manner of bureaucratic hoops to get me reinstated.  Poor Dr. Ridd.  He’d be my mentor and spiritual advisor so inspiring me to higher endeavours. My friends however would  one day  invite him to our apartment when we were all stoned and a little drunk. This was a great Christian leader who no doubt thought the experience anthropologically significant. I found it very awkward. I’d go on to be a straight A student studying more English, History and Shakespeare. I’d take one Biology course, the requisite science and fall in love with it. The next year I’d switch to all sciences.  I’d then consider medicine which came as the answer to a prayer in the University of Winnipeg chapel. 

I’d alsoalways  carry a a little framed picture  of the view out the window of Magdalene College Oxford, the medical student’s dorm where I chose scholarship over theatre and dance. Having  read The Glass Bead Game and become enamoured by the plays of T.S. Elliott and his poetry I was humbled and knew there was so much I needed to learn and that the university was a good place to begin,  I’d still teach some dancing and received some scholarship but with study and school and work it was a world that would pull me further and further from Baiba who continued to dance and party with our friends who felt I’d betrayed them by leaving the world of dance for the world of books.  

Baiba took a lover.  Vecsmamin was furious that I did not bring her home. She stayed out all night and Vecsmamin told me it was my job as a man to get her.  I went to the house of two men who’d joined the studio. One was sleaze ball, a 50’s throw off, greaseball in a suit acting debonair but with no class. The other guy if he’d not been shagging my wife would have been okay.  However when I arrived the party where all the booze was flowing and the music was loud.  Baiba and Bobby, was that  his name . bobby? were in the bed room. I walked in through the screen door and the grease ball told me to get out. 

« I’ve come to see my wife and am not leaving till I do. »

He pulled our a revolver and pointed it in my face.

« You’re going to leave right now our I’m going to blow your face off. »

I think my experiences with crazy Lonny and his gun and my growing up around real men always affected my attitude to cowards and losers with guns in their hands.  

I stared him in the eyes and said.

« I told you. I’m not leaving till I see my wife. If you want to pull that trigger go ahead. »

We were so into dares and playing chicken when we were young. I’d later drive my truck straight at another and watch him peel off in the ditch as I have this edge of insaniety that stood me later in good stead with my patients so many of who especially the criminals, ex military and dangerously insane who shared that trait. I just had a little better control and always played defence despite knowing the best defence is a good offence.

Baiba appeared deschevelled obviously having just scrambled into her clothes with Bobby following pulling up his pants. She stared at us, the ass, slowly lowering the gun from in front of my face. Someone had spurned off the music. Everything stopped. It was a tableau scene. 

« I’d like you to come home with me. »

« I’m staying’

« Vecsmamin told me to bring you home. »

« I’m staying. »

« Alright. »

I turned and left  then. She’d seen the gun in my face and the room mate back away when I didn’t back down.Bobby was just a little boy. Baiba was telling me in no uncertain terms she was unhappy.  

She didn’t like Winnipeg. We’d been staying in the basement of her mothers. I’d made it known I was applying to medical school and she simply didn’t want to be a medical students wife in Winnipeg where she’d already surpassed all the dance opportunities. Besides I’d almost traded her for a camel. I certainly couldn’t be trusted. 

She asked me to come with her to Toronto but I said I couldn’t.  I had support of faculty here and getting into medical school would be likely here and not so likely in Toronto.  I suspect I could have gone with her.  I could have tried for Toronto if I’d kept my faith in love. But she’d chosen Bobby and I’d had a gun in my face.  

I was more interested in scholarship and simply loved books, labs and biochemistry, and this whole other world that was opening to me. It was  so alien to the play world of the theatre and dance. I had become pretentious. I was going to be a missionary doctor. I was going to save the world.  

Baiba was wise to leave. I was an idiot to let her go.  But then life carried on. I moved out of Maija’s basement, a very awkward experience, having to wait a month to get the rent to get my own place.  Maija and Vecsmamin and the family were all so gracious.  Disappointed in me as I was in myself , self centred as I was. 

 Unloving I’d driven Baiba away yet to study pre med and medicine is a most narcissistic endeavour like preparing for the Olympics.  There can be no other gods.  To dream the impossible dreams. I was climbing my own Mount Everest. I had had a calling and I was going to do ‘my utmost for his highest’.  I was a thorough prick.  

Alone in my austere bachelor apartment next door to University of Winnipeg the cafeteria became my kitchen, the lounge my living room and the library my study. I lived and breathed chemistry, biochemistry, biology, physics , mathematics and then moved onto medicine. I had left my old love and had a new love. I was fickle but this new mistress was so utterly demanding and infinitely  rewarding.  

First United Church, DTES, Vancouver, "Church without Pews"

I was in the downtown east side, shivering in my jacket and sweater togue and scarf,  looking at the people lying on the street  in the below zero cold today .Some are brain injured. Some are schizophrenic.  Some are addicted. Some are just lost with nowhere to go. Mental illness and Addiction are diseases. Homelessness isn’t a glorious life plan  It’s not a career choice.   I wondered if we would have a similar attitude if people who had had strokes and heart disease were lying on the sidewalk.
The song, “Streets of London” came to mind. It could be called ‘Streets of Vancouver.”
Though I’ve long worked in the area I’d never before entered First United Church.   There’s usually a lot of people standing around it. It obviously provides a lot of service, spiritual and social.  A safe place in the city. A good place, like Carnegie.  Salvation Army.  Union Gospel.   Places where people can rest.  The DTES is not an easy life for most. Only the drug dealers and predators fair well.
At First United I was surprised to see beds in the church. Passing it hundreds of times I’d always thought it was a church with pews and altar.   It’s now a shelter for 40 men and 25 women. Dormitories for months with pets allowed.  A strange assortment. No pews.  The sanctuary an open area with tables and comfortable chairs.  Coffee and breakfast are served at different times.
 I heard about Rev. Jim Hatherly before I saw him.  Staff and clients I was chatting with sang his praises. A lovely lady there was called a ‘listener’ .  I liked that. So many people end up in the DTES after they’d been silenced one too many times.
Rev. Jim Hatherly happened along as we were talking . He was  delightful in person.  Handsome, casually dressed, calm, attentive, caring. He has a great smile.   “This is the sanctuary still,” he said.  It looked more like a university coffee room meeting place, some asleep on the chairs, others reading, a few talking quietly in a corner.  It did feel like a sanctuary.  It truly was a sanctuary. We were also standing on  sanctified space.
 “When the temperature dropped a few years back we took 300  people off the streets,” he said.   The fire department had come by after that.  They’d  had to comply with safety measures. “They were concerned about fire hazards.”  I gathered that’s when the pews began to depart.
It was moving to be here. To see what Christians,  goodly godly folk were doing.
“We still have the chapel but the pews are gone in there too.” he smiled. I’d told him that though I’d passed by many times I’d never come in. I just always thought the church would  have pews..
“I was married here,” he shared. “This sanctuary is still used for services.” He’d worked in street ministry years past.  It turned out too,  he'd lived in Winnipeg.  He’d  worked at Deer Lodge Hospital..  We both had studied with Dr. Carl Ridd, United Church Minister and University of Winnipeg Professor.”He was one of my most important inspirations.”  Rev. Hatherly shared. He’d been that for me too.   University of Winnipeg was where I studied before teaching medicine at University of Manitoba.
“The former minister here  was my inspiration too”, he said.  Then we both spoke lovingly of our first greatest inspirations, our Christian mothers.
When he'd told me he’d worked at Deer Lodge Hospital in Winnipeg, I’d told him how my mother had been so well cared for there at the end. . I’d been especially impressed  by an Ethiopian Coptic Nurse. Because of her I’d become interested in the  Coptic Church.  I'd wanted to Ethiopia or Egypt  ever since.  I  might well  soon, before more Coptic Churches are destroyed and Coptic Christians killed and persecuted.
We chatted then about denominations,  the often silly things that divided people and  Christians. While I’m Anglican today, I once was United and know the The United Church of Canada has always been the most inclusive and welcoming of Christian churches.  Good works though, like those being done here, are what brings  us all together.  
 It was a wonderful visit.  Especially considering the season.
There was a peaceful feeling in the presence of Rev. Jim Hatherly.  A bit like the feeling I had meeting Bishop Tutu. The selflessness and hands on caring of godly men and women of action:  a joy to know.   I was uplifted by my visit to First United Church.
It’s so sexy for the  jetsetter  sort who are giving millions of dollars to celebrity causes.  Meanwhile  here in the core of the city,  Rev. Jim Hatherly and others like him humbly do the daily heavy lifting, the hewing wood and carrying water.  I left good just to be there..
At St. Barnabus Anglican Church we’d lit the first Advent Candle this week. It stands for Hope. First United is that light of hope here in the DTES.  I could see that just the heat in the building, running water and indoor plumbing were such a gift for the people of the street.   Not only that ‘listener’s and inspiration.
I thought of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
I had to get back to the Dr. Horvath’s Docside  clinic where the patients would  be lining up.

Shilo-Fifth Avenue United Church, New Westminister

It was wonderful to attend Shilo-Fifth Avenue United Church.  Rev. Shannon Tennant greeted Gilbert and I at the door and welcomed Laura. “Everyone’s so friendly,” Laura said.  “The United Church always reminded me of a folksy bible study group. I used to always enjoy going to the United Church with my mother in law when my kids were young."
I’ve always loved the United Church of Canada and attended and taught Sunday School at Fort Garry United Church in Manitoba.  My mentor, Dr. Carl Ridd, was an English Professor and United Church minister when he taught me Bible at the University of Winnipeg. I’d read the Bible and heard countless sermons from the Bible as a child and teen but it was Dr. Ridd’s scholarship that began my interest the in-depth study of the Bible.  The United Church of Canada was founded in 1925 as a merger of protestant denominations: Methodist Church,the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec,  the majority of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, and protestant churches of the prairies, with later, evangelical mennonite churches joining. In Canadian church humour it’s been called the ‘prayer of the NDP’, (not today’s NDP but referring more to the NDP of Tommy Douglas)  It’s  middle of the road left leaning political orientation.  
Laura as a Catholic loved the relaxed nature of the community.  The songs were a pleasure to join in. The readings were about Ezekiel.   Thereafter I couldn’t get the song, “Ezekial saw a wheel way up in the middle of the air….” out of my mind.  The sermon on grace was uplifting.  The prayer was quite moving.    I liked the collective readings. Before we knew it, the service was  over. They were having coffee and potluck in the hall but Laura and I had to get home with Gilbert.
It’s was a lovely service in the St. Barnabus Anglican Church building on 5th avenue. We look forward to returning. A place of warmth out of the cold of the coming winter.

"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief"

“Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid.  I asked our disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not."
“O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “How long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?  Bring the boy to me”
“So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion.  He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.
Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”
“From childhood,” he answered.  “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him.  But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us."
“If you can?” said Jesus, “Everything is possible for him who believes."
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief."
When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit, “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.”  But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.
After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?"
He replied,”This kind can come out only by prayer."
NIV  Study Bible,  Mark 18-29
I often think of mentors and what they have told me would make my life better or help me in my daily life.  Many have told me over the years the importance of daily reading off the Bible.  Dr. Willi Gutowski showed me this when I stayed with his family.  We were in the tropical paradise of Saipan. I had breakfast with his wife and he.  And daily at breakfast he read a passage from the Bible.  It had been a lifelong activity that had done him well.  Willi and Anita have all the outward success of human existence, loving family, love for each other, long history of work and service for others, as well as abundance.
It’s one thing to hear about things. It’s another to see them.  I loved reading Dr. Paul Johnson’s, “Intellectuals’ cause it showed so well the hypocrisy that is common in the world.  Dr. Carl Ridd, my early university Bible teacher lived a special life of a special man. I knew him in and out of the classroom and would that I knew him better. I counted it as a true blessing that this man took at interest in me in my twenties and kept in touch with me for nearly 20 years.  Not only did he teach me to read the Bible as great literature he introduced me to one of the greatest writings of the 20th century, Brothers Karamsov by Dostoyevsky.
There is little talk of morality today.  There is so much propaganda and knee jerk cowardly ‘consensus’ thinking. The herd instincts run strong. The goose step has returned. There is little independent thinking.  Yet people struggle on with leaders who are known more for their lies than their contributions.  It was not always such.  Individuals I have known decided their actions based less on narcissism or consumerism and more on right and wrong.
Dr. James Houston taught me to read the Bible as well. He was especially fond of Psalms.  He wrote a seminal work on Prayer but his main thrust was to ask about the person one was and wanted to be.  He used words like purpose, person, and meaning. He loved the inner world of the mystical saints of Christendom.  He was a gentleman and a wise man.  To him him and his wife together was to know love that had lasted long and run deep.  He now speaks so highly of his son but still revels in his work of teaching.
So I open my Bible and read this passage today.  Some say Mark is the oldest gospel record of the life of Jesus.  There are 4 Gospels and they are witness accounts of the life of Jesus. They’re followed by the Acts which tell of his disciples after Jesus is crucified by the authorities.  Then St. Paul, the Hebrew persecutor of the Christians is converted and joins with Peter and the others teaching the “Good News”.  For Good News is what Gospel means.  It was a story of personal relationship with God and that God was first and foremost love. Jesus taught that all the laws was to be understood in the key which was ,  love God and love your neighbour as yourself.
Reading this passage in Mark, I was touched by the phrase , “Oh unbelieving generation.”  Dr. Scott Peck believes this world is a kindergarten. We are hear to learn most that we must harness our thoughts and learn to focus them on loving rather than on fear and resentment.  I think an unbelieving generation isn’t limited to the time of Jesus in history but refers to this life.  The reason is simply that this generation, the one I am living in, seems so much and “unbelieving generation’.  But even there I know I must believe in this generation.  I feel for the human frustration of Jesus though.
And the father’s “If you can” resonated so well with my own approach to life, and belief and action.  “if you can’.  It’s all the little provisos.  It’s all the little legalisms that I myself couch my statements in and limit my belief with.  I’m like the father.  I’ve had Gilbert’s back to heal directly in my home and I’ve watched my own ‘tentative’ healing work.  I’m always saying ‘thy will be done’ not so much as to give credit to God but to create a back door if my own prayer and belief don’t work.
I hated that so called Christian song, “Even if the healing doesn’t come’ because it was itself negative.
Now I don’t want to be pollyanna. I know "if I have the faith of a mustard seed I can move a mountain."
Jesus says here, “Everything is possible to him who believes’.
But this passage hits it squarely with the father’s timeless statement that spoke to the very centre of my being.
“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief”.  Now that could be tattooed on my forehead it is so me.
“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.”  That will be my prayer today.  “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief."
Then I like the casting out of the ‘evil spirit”.
“You deaf and dumb spirit.  I command you come out of him and never enter him again.”
I must remember this and say it over and over again in my mind in my day.  It has the feeling of the formulaic.
And I like the mystery of the final statement he makes to the disciples when they ask why they failed, “This kind can come out only by prayer”.  No doubt the disciples prayed. I certainly pray.  Yet there is something deep and meaningful in this simple sentence which speaks to the whole of the gospel.  “this kind can come out only by prayer.”
Oh well, now I must go to work and hopefully I’ll think of this all through my day, I want to walk in the light.  I want to know the joy that comes with know Jesus. I want to fill my day with service.  But most importantly “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief"
“Because everything is possible to him who believes."

Jesus and Christmas

My mother taught me to pray beside my bed.  We’d kneel together.  I’d clasp my hands resting my elbows on the bed. I remember this.  Talking to Jesus, with my mother.  She taught me gratitude.  She reminded me who to pray for, and told me about Jesus sacrificing his life for mine and for the whole world.
Mom was Baptist. I like to remember her and her sister, my Aunt Sally, belting out hymns  in the church, the loudest women there by far.  Their Christianity was exuberant together.  My mom and her sisters had grown up in the church. The church was their social life, their home and their place of worship.
By the time I was in school my life revolved around hockey and my friends. And my friends weren’t Baptist.  There wasn’t a Baptist church in Fort Gary.  If they were religious at all they were Anglican, Catholic or United.  I remember one was Jewish.  I don’t know if there were Buddhists or Moslems.  All that mattered was whether you played hockey or not.  Then later it was volleyball and gymnastics.  Then it was just sports and girls.
I dated Christian girls but they weren’t ’easy’.  I liked ‘easy’ girls most. Easy girls were sexy and I liked sexy. I didn’t really think they were ‘easy’.  I thought they were saints and I was a charity project.  I was so thankful.  We didn’t talk much about Jesus.
I attended church through high school and became the President of the Amalgamated Baptist Church Groups in Winnipeg.  My best church friend, Doug, became a minister.  My first room, Jon, mate was a Unitarian.  We talked a lot about God.  We talked about meaning, politics, purpose, afterlife and aliens and Vietnam.  We also talked about girls.  Breasts and legs and heavenly places.
I was raised Christian.  There were Christians all around me.  Three Christian churches within a block of my home though mom made Dad drive us to a Baptist church all of 20  minutes away in Fort Rouge.  Trinity Baptist Church.  I attended Sunday School and later sat in the church. I remember best a missionary from India and her slides one of which was an old Hindu man with banners from all the religions. I liked Sunday school when I was little and liked teaching it later as an adult.  I can’t say I remember any of the sermons of my youth. Lots of hell and brimstone.  I liked the choir though.  Trinity had it’s own pool for dunking and that provided drama..  Baptists are long on sermons and heavy on prayer.
Christmas Services were the best time of year for hope and faith and love.  Hell and brimstone gets toned down for Christmas.  Even the fundamentalist fundamentalists have some propriety. The cookies and cakes in churches at Christmas are truly sacramental.  So much love goes into them.
I attended Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in the basement of the church. We had great suppers there too. Mom and the other ladies would man the kitchen.  We’d enjoy veritable potluck feasts.  Everyone pitched in. There were picnics in the summer too. I remember the three legged races best.
But the whole world of school and sports and friends I hung out with, Garth and Kirk, and later Jamie and Wes and Keith and Colin and  later many others made up the centre of my world. Church was something on the side. Not like it had been for my mom and her sisters .  Their world revolved around Jesus.  My minister friend was like that.  I wasn’t.  I was more into the smorgasbord of life.
I began writing poetry well early, and playing guitar badly early, too.  I loved to dance and Baptists didn’t like dancing.
We joined the YMCA.  That’s Young Men’s Christian Association.  When I began organizing and running coffeehouse in high school years I’d left gymnastics and sports for the Manitoba Theatre School. That was the secular world I’d live in with dance and drama and music.  I’d found the music and lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel, Gordon Lightfoot, the Beatles.  I was reading Al Purdy, Catcher on the Rye, Leonard Cohen  The Wise Eye Coffeehouse we organized with the YWCA girls was a secular time. But the ideas of the music of the day, those of Pete Seegers and Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary and locally the Guess Who and the Donahues were exploring the intellectual and spiritual.
When I was in school there’d been daily prayer and then time for prayer and eventually no prayer.  I learned to meditate young and martial arts was tied to a universal spirituality. But despite the Christianity of the Knights the winning warriors of WWII we never thought of Christians as martial artists as kids.  Not then. Now yes,  but not then. Then I was learning Ju Jit Su and much later Tai Chi.  My father taught me boxing and shooting  we wrestled in the Y. All those were Christian but Hollywood had already begun to rewrite history,dumping it down and taking the God out of Creation.  Telling the Lies and Bigger Lies.
At University though I was fortunate to study Bible under Dr. Carl Ridd.  He was a former basketball champion, English Literature Professor and United Church minister. I loved my undergraduate days at University of Winnipeg.  Dr. Ridd had  taken it upon himself to teach a course called “Literature of the Bible.”  It’s was one of the most moving experiences of my whole university career right up there with looking in a electron microscope and later assisting in neurosurgery and doing psychotherapy that cured neurodermatitis and stopped people wanting to suicide so bad.
I became a yogi back then too, studying Paramahansa Yoganandya who taught that Jesus was fully enlightened. The Hindu Christian belief was that of Christ Consciousness.
But really I believed ‘all we need is love’ and with love I meant passion. The women in my life, the dancer, was the most passionate and adventurous and beautiful goddess any man could hope to know.  She was  holy. Our love making was transcendent. I wanted to live in perpetual orgasm and that would be heaven enough for me.  My wives would teach me that the Song of Songs didn’t begin as a description of love of God.  The song when I was 21 fit me too. I loved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford in the Way We Were.
Christmas was a special time though. I ‘d find myself each Christmas reflecting on Jesus.  That was before the great intellectual wine and fabulous food fest dinner parties of married life became their own Last Suppers.  We’d get together with family.  We’d have this wonderful time.  Turkey dinners with my Aunt in town. Hockey on tv. My father and brother and the dog. Opening presents under the tree.  Tobogganing in the afternoon as kids.
As adults the politics would begin, dinner at her place, Christmas eve dinners, dinner at my place,  Shrimp and Lobster dinners. Christmas day, always a tree, and tangerines,  and presents and friends, and cross country skiing.  The women were always so beautiful.  Holidays were glamorous.  We danced back then.  Viennese waltz.  The movie to end all movies was Dr. Zhivago.
Church wasn’t as competitive with the university, hospital, the ballet, the dinner party,  the theatre, the night clubs and the bar.  Even the coffeehouse was more interesting. I married sexy women and Christianity wasn’t sexy back then. It sure is today though. The women I married weren’t Christian, though one was nominally, so I would often find myself alone meditating and praying.  I’d occasionally go to church with my Mom and my Aunt.  Church and Bible were not a part of my marriages.  I’d learned to pray by my bed with my mother but now my bed was a holy temple of it’s own.   I’d pray elsewhere,  Often under stars.  I’ll forever have a fond memory of the chapel at University of Winnipeg.  Later Hospital chapels were places to go and be alone with God.  Normally I’d be up earlier in the morning meditating in my homes.
Then a Jewish atheist psychiatrist I so admired in my psychiatric residency told me meditation was harmful for the brain. I began my training under him in  psychoanalysis.  Only later I’d realize how shallow he was but I never lost my love for Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. I especially loved a play done recently at Pacific Theatre with Ron Reid , one in which C S Lewis meets Sigmund Freud.  I loved C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy and Mere Christianity, not to mention Narnia.    I returned to prayer and mediation but first smoked dope for a while and drank some wine.  Jeremiah was a Bullfrog.
I sailed too and it’s true. There are no atheists in fox holes or at sea. I’d not been in fox holes but I certainly regained humility and awe at sea.
Dr. Willi Gutowski and Father Fred came along like teachers do when the student is ready. .  They were living Bibles.  I read the Bible again began  praying as a good habit, not just because I needed to get out of a bad fix..  Meditation would return.  I’d spend long times silent around Christmas.  I studied  prayer at Regent College with Dr. James Houston, attended Vancouver Theological College and later St. Mark’s with my dear friend Dr. John Christensen.
Christmas carols stirred me again and I cried.
I wrote more about Jesus.  I often said that I’d found Christ as a child but only met Jesus after a third divorce and the disillusionment with the corruption in politics, hospitals and academia.  All the characters of the story of Jesus seemed so much apart of the present day.
Dr. Phillip Ney introduced me to pro life.   Herod had killed  babies fearful of the return of Christ and here the abortionist s were making a killing hand over fist sucking the life out of wombs.   Meanwhile our government’s  evil when it gave  the Order of Canada to that murderer Morgentaler.  I’d trained with a genius, Dr. Jack HIldes who introduced me to northern medicine and taught me community medicine, a true mensch of a man. He’d been given the Order of Canada and I was proud to be Canadian when  I learned that.  But the older I became the more I  found the lies stifling in the secular world.  More and  more I saw that men and women in my church were at least trying trying to be Good. There was hypocrisy. We are all human. But the Godlessness and cruelty and lies grew with the increasing persecution of Christians by the Supreme Court and Government.
I saw that  Christians at the Salvation Army were walking the walk.  My sponsors Bernie and later Hank were both Christians who would talk for hours with me about morality and virtue and God.  My other sponsor Scotty was a celtic pagan sun god worshipper. His actions were admirable.   We all just seemed to get along. My psychiatry mentor was a Moslem man of great integrity.  My psychiatrist friend was a Buddhist doctor.  We all just served.   Medicine brought use all together, even the atheists who much preferred to talk, rolled up their sleeves when the time called for it. Jesus was a healer and a teacher.  He was only a warrior against Satan.  With people he was a friend and fellow.  I learned most of my loving of service from colleagues.
So Christmas was the birth of a healer. He was also an educator.  Luke the apostle was a doctor.
I became a member of the Christian Medical and Dental Society thanks to Dr. Gutowski and Anna Borowska.  There I  met another living Gospel, Dr. Lam, a humble Chinese doctor who served as a missionary with the Evangelical Medical Association.  His example in life and his love of his wife and family were incredibly moving .  He loved music too.  I loved the drawing he showed me he’d made of Jesus.
Christmas dinners brought all these thoughts together.  My sailing buddy Tom and I would talk and argue about liberal and conservative Christianity.  I loved Bishop Michael Ingham’s ecumenicalism and Peter Elliott and his coming out,  the Rainbow Church.  We would talk for hours about sexuality and spirituality. I’d lunch every month with my Christian sponsor,  I’d join Promise Keepers and a Christian Men’s Breakfast.
I’d felt my first divorce had cut me off from my church.  You couldn’t be a deacon if you were divorced then. I was tainted and impure.   Meanwhile single and divorced women were popping up as ministers.    I’d remember the standards that had ruled for us men.  Then there were gay ministers.  Once you let the single women preach there was no restrictions.  I liked those married ministers of old  best, the disciplined ones, those who had somehow faced the temptations that were many and still maintained their marriages and family.  I grew fond of celibate priests too though frankly sex was as sacred as chocolate for me and something I’d forsaken for a year or more but didn’t think was something I’d want to forsake for life.   When divorce no longer kept me from the church then my homosexual experience and my drunken stoned escapades certainly excluded me from the church.  I felt more comfortable talking with men in a 12 step meeting than I did in church till I was older.
God never left me though. I left him. Indeed in the depth of the abyss fearing death at sea I’d prayed the Lord’s Prayer knowing I was backed into a wall where only the song Jesus Loves Me, this I know,  was kept  in reserve to keep me  from despair.  Up all night delivering babies and saving lives on call in emergency I’d had no difficulty praying for help.  I’d thanked all my teachers and all the books for helping me be of service to my patients all those years.  But here I personally was uncertain that I’d not got beyond God’s grace.  It sounds so  silly  to me today.    I love the book, “Your God is too small”.  I especially love the saying, “Get down off the cross, we can use the wood.”   God had sunk the more I focussed on myself.   “I might not be much but I’m all I think about.”
Now thanks to so many I found my way in rooms,   church basements and churches propers.  We began again to talk of God and a what it was to be a good human.  What was a good life. What was our role. What was the meaning of life.  Surely it was more than illusion or reaction or pleasure and war.  Once again I came back to the contemplation of Jesus in a manger.
I travelled to Jerusalem hearing Leonard Cohen on a taxi radio in Israel.  Hallelujah.  I sang “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem with a dozen others in as many languages in the church in Bethlehem built on the site where Jesus was born.  Millions have prayed there as we did. Like my mother taught me. On my knees.
Now another Christmas is coming round.  I’ve got a Master of Divinity on the wall now. Not a particularly good one.    I penned  a national article on my being a better doctor than I am a Christian.  I muddle along.  I’m still reading the Bible. Reading the Bible every day at meals with Willi and Anita Gutowski leaves a mark on you.  I’ve read the Bible through several times thanks to the encouragement of Prof. Ridd and Prof. Houston.  Now al this helps me in my work in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver encouraging addicts and alcoholics that there is a better life in Recovery. I am mostly giving hope and offering a Way Out.  All the medicine that I do is secondary to this.  It’s healing.  And I’m healing with those in my other clinic where my patients are dealing with depression and anxiety, grief and trauma. Many are struggling with serious physical disease and I encourage them and help them with all the education and training and experience and resources I have to give.
The story remains the same.  I was in the church plays of nativity and remember interrupting the whole show to call out hello to my brother Ron.  He  was also in those early Sunday School  plays.  He had speaking parts. Mine wasn’t supposed to be.  But when I saw my brother I just had to call out to him.. I would have  been 5 or 6 at the time.  My brother was more mature, 4 years older and always looking out for his little brother who could be quite the handful.
The tears are the same.  Each time I read the story of Jesus I cry.  I cry because of Jesus, because of the man and because of the God.  I cry.  I’m not supposed to cry. They beat me and gained me and locked me up.  They even  took away my Bible and told me not to read it but I did. I was even offered riches and high position if I’d just forget about Jesus and never mention him again.  I know parts of the Bible  by heart. I still like to read it.  It’s the stories I love and remember.  Mostly the stories of Jesus.
Of course I know that Christ consciousness filled the world with his life and death and resurrection. it’s a String Theory thing.  Nothing is impossible in the miraculous. There’s dimensions and there are dimensions.
Christ is born. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.  Hallelujah. Welcome Baby Jesus.

God is Spirit

I am a soul. I have this body. (Paraphrase - C.S.Lewis)
I am a spiritual being living in a material world.
The duality I experience is an illusion created by the mind. Physics teaches me that matter is slow energy. E=MC2 The laws of quantum physics don't just apply at the edges but are the essence of creation. Improbability and probability are central. My thoughts attract and create my experience. Others of like mind are involved in this my reality. The murderer and the murdered are part of a dance whereas elsewhere the lover and loved dance too. All is God and God is good. What seems now senseless and terrible is not as it seems because I "see but through a glass darkly". When I judge events of the world I am only having an opinion on what I am told and the selection of information as presented. What I can know is my own journey, my relationship with God, myself and others. From that experience I can have great empathy for the experience of others. In all the events of my life there were possibilities but where fate and free will applied much was fated. Ancients believed this was a product of reincarnation and projected this idea into the future as a way of modulating one's own behaviour. It is a fact that I was born with 10 fingers and 10 toes, my eye sight and hearing and physically fit to a loving family in middle class Canada. It would have been a different matter altogether if I was born without hands or feet in poverty and sickness left for adoption. I have no knowledge of why I was by most standards of this world 'gifted' to be born in Canada rather than Rwanda or Vietnam at the time of their wars.
I was introduced to God by my mother who encouraged my little flannel pyjama'd body to kneel beside my bed and pray. We prayed together like this and in church and Sunday School. I remember this as early as 5 years old but have little recollection of prayer before that though believe it was a part of the family heritage. I was raised Christian. Our church was Baptist.
There was a sacred magical sense in my childhood that lingers in my memory. As a child and later as a teen ager I was very aware of the presence of God. At many times in my life that sense of being in the midst of a loving higher power has been deeply real for me. I related to the Biblical reading of Adam in the Garden of Eden and God coming to walk with him. That sense of a guide and wiser spirit presence, a loving Father, has been with me often.
I have felt too that my prayers were answered. I have been so struck by the phenomena of synchronicity and coincidence and the miraculous that I have seen prayers 'manifest' reality. There has always seemed to me to be an association between my inner world and the outer world. I have studied psychiatry and know this is not the 'ideas of references' or the psychosis that some would insist all experience other than materialistic sex and aggression drives are. I have found Freud tedious as an aetheist. I much preferred the scientists like Einstein, Newton, Carl Jung and Milton Erickson whose faith in God and the ultimate holiness of creation was established. I thought Martin Buber a genius whereas Henry Mortgentaller was a sick and tragic man. I have considered much of my life in relationship to the spiritual and always found that I have worked better with the faith and knowledge of God and consideration of God and prayer than when I have struggled without. In my personal life I have most admired those men who have had a strong spiritual connection like early academic mentors, Dr. Carl Ridd and Dr. John White.
I have always struggled with the notion of sexuality and spirituality. I have seen that the majority of people have shared beliefs and like Dr. Owen Barfield felt this is the 'mainstream' of society's behaviour reflecting on perhaps the spiritual pathways one may follow. I've always enjoyed Dr. Scott Peck's ,"the road less travelled". And I tried to do the 'mainstream thing of heterosexual marriage and monogamy" but like 50% of the men of my generation we were faced with radical feminism and a 50% divorce rate. I have seen men I most admired, ministers, pure and sweet souls, from the finest homes with the best intentions and the greatest love devastated in the relationship wars of the 70's and 80's. I have called this 'social communism' and only now do I see women especially no longer angry and blaming and playing the 'gender card'. We are all in this together and I admire those who have successfully married, had children and raised them. I know that they have better skills and worked harder than I ever did and had greater compatibility. I married predominantly professional women who didn't have children and in retrospect didn't seem to want children and while sexy didn't seem that interested in sex compared to many other aspects of their lives. I believe that in relationship the 'blind man marries the deaf woman' so that we are with our complements and that my lack of children reflects either 'design' 'fate' or 'determinism' or an unconscious desire not to have children causes me to choose specifically women who didn't have children. I believe too that psychiatric truism "ask a woman why she hasn't had children and she will mostly likely tell you why she feels her mother didn't want children". Certainly the feminists, call them radical or whatever, of my era considered children least and saw careers, status and personal life fulfillments as most important. Children were a hindrance and a burden to these radical women who quite frankly appeared to imitate men. Today they strut about in business suits and have fancy cars, aetheism, materialism and flaunt young boys as their sex toys. I remember when they condemned the men who did this very same thing. They were vociferous in their criticism but then Freud did teach us that 'identification with the aggressor' was an immature defence and coping mechanism so we can all consider these 'shallow' 'hollow girls' as T.S. Elliott might call them as failures of humanity like their male brethren. That is, if we believe that 'altruism' and 'care for others' as opposed to 'narcissism" and strict care of one's self and pleasure is the goal of life. Happiness is many things. All over their are orgies and drugs and alcohol are part of the world of leaders of state male or female. Indeed the advance of women in society has brought them all the 'diseases' and 'stresses' that were once thought 'manly' so these 'radical feminist' executive women male like in their overall behaviour share the lack of 'fulfillment' and physical stress medical ills that had an earlier generation of men turning to spirituality as a means of making sense of existence. These women without children are now buying lulu lemon yoga pats and meditating on the meaning of existence. Oprah like Buffet and Gates and the truly great man, Carnegie, before them are devoting themselves to altruistic care of others with benefactorial community responsibility. The media tells us about the failures of the rich and famous men and women and takes greatest interest in the naked breasts of a princess or the naked buttocks of a prince insisting the masses want this and indeed ensuring the masses want this by giving the masses only cakes and ale, yet thankfully the internet gives all the diversity of information that allows some to look more than at the surface of things. Don't get me wrong I'm as voyeurstically attracted to the breasts of princesses and buttocks of princes but there is so much more that occurs each day, like the rescue of a child, or the education of a student, or the space walk that seem to be sidelined for the sake of the drunk and stoned who cannot appreciate more than the basest of experience.
In the midst of all of this I pray to God and ask God. A friend condemns homosexuality and I can't find it in me to do this. A friend condemns all relationship but monogamy and again I can't find it in me to do this. I'm a divorced bisexual man who through fault or choice have not succeeded in striving for the heterosexual monogamous family Rockwell Biblical prototype ideal where children are treated like little Gods and Goddesses, princes and princesses and the world as I know it is set out predominantly for everyone to be involved in just that task. Indeed, I taught thousands of children, delivered a hundred babies and saved thousands of children's live and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes for children's services that have helped others and their children without direct benefit to me. I don't have children and when it came down to it the women I married told me they didn't want them either. Then one day I was old and frankly figure I was doing enough for others children that I was happy not to come home to my own. Today I'm happy with my dog.
My friends with children have been 'policed' by their children and the institutions that surround their children. I remember female doctor colleagues who were drunken pot heads socially cleaning up their acts overnight after becoming pregnant. I know literally dozens of close friends who were given the ultimatum to clean up their acts or they'd lose their children. I've watched doctors be hauled in before principles about their language. I've stopped going to homes of friends with children because they are indeed living in a Disneyland repeat of some childhood experience that they didn't seem to get enough of. I "did' childhood thank you. I'm happy to watch a movie where people actually 'fuck' and there's blood and guts and 'reality' rather than a 'white washed version' of events 'for the sake of the children'. I am like alot of old farts wanting to not have any children around me and am very fond of 'over 55' housing and activities. I miss the family communities of the country where children and old people and dogs and cats were all present at the weekly dances but I don't want anything to do with soccer moms and hockey dads' and that whole 'little miss sunshine' thing with parents using their children to live through. I have my own life and I'm not expecting my dog to be a basketball star because I wanted to be a basketball star as a kid and wasn't .
My friend who is pure and angelic and has deep long term meaningful relationship with men and for all I know may not have genitals or go to the washroom though there is one in her place, probably for guests, dresses always in white and simply never married though she is truly one of the sexisest creatures I've ever known, finds that she has no 'place' in the church today as I find the 'church' mainstream excludes me. I believe the medieval church loved both of us. We were the single aunts and uncles who were ever present in 'community' but today everyone expects her to marry and have children as they view me as an utter failure for divorce and lack of children. Yet both of us attend church and when people go on and on about their children we both begin to bore them in return with our talk of travel and adventures.
Some Jungian woman with children and a degree calls us both as having "Peter Pan" syndrome. Yet I didn't buy the contraceptives and I did my best to sew my seeds and the scientists said my seeds were adequate to the task. I don't resent not having children in this sense but I do blame the courts for their lack of fairness and justice in the gender wars of the 70's and 80's. It seemed obvious to me that the courts were in the industry of taxing marriages by charging and arm and a leg for divorce while not holding the institutions accountable for divorce in the way we hold a bar tender accountable for serving drinks to a drunk who goes out and crashes his car. Having devoted a quarter century to making a physical family without success I really think I should get my money back from the church and state that instead punished me financially for the experience while the women themselves punished me financially too. Yet I could not claim victimship because adult men and now adult women could not compete with radical feminist women who abused drugs and alcohol and didn't have children but became childlike when they were hurt and demanded to be treated by society as 'child like victims' playing the gender card. Bob Dylan said it well when he wrote she acts like a woman but "breaks just like a little girl". In contrast this war culture with the militaristic attitude to men alone said, "man up" to us boys when we cried.
I wouldn't recommend a man cry today. When I've cried it's shown my enemies my place of hurt so vulnerable I've been injured more there. Crying is a very private thing in this society. When my mother died and I was grieving terribly a female minister failed me utterly, a female assistant used the opportunity to steal from me and attack me and the state used the opportunity to savage me. Thankfully lawyers, both male and female, helped stave off the attacks that my grief occasioned. It's not wise to show weakness despite all the encouragement in the pop psychology flakey granola world. Women who have been hurt in my experience are at equal risk of further pain if they don't stand up.
That said there are places and people where we must be open. It might not be with lovers who later in courts will use the intimacy to make money. It may be with friends or counsellors or doctors or lawyers. There's a place where we need to be open and we join with others mostly through our shared vulnerability.
Jesus was a 'servant king'. He taught of a God that didn't only care for the mighty but was there for the least. He washed the feet of his disciples. We are spiritually loved not just for our successess but equally for our failures. God is with us as my friend Milton, now dead, said, "in the whorehouse and in the jail." Now if the 'whorehouse and jail' were happy fulfilling places then no doubt God would want us there to but as they aren't the best outlet for creative expression in living with greatest possibility for happiness and most likely greatest benefit versus risk, God probably doesn't want that for us, though I don't know that God would 'disapprove'.
There are 'spiritual laws' in a way like physical laws. There are 'easier' ways of living. Clearly everything has a bit of the stockmarket gamble to it. Our society is to a large extent a great Los Vegas with investment houses little better than casinos at times. A friends father said that his 'blue chip' investments paid little and all his conservative financial planning did little compared to his 'wild' decision to invest in a start up company called "IBM". There is no certainty in this life. I would have preferred to live the mainstream with family and children. I have already said I fully admire those who have taken that route and today I don't think I want 'police" children in my life and am a little concerned about a society that justifies all manner of censorship based on the 'children'. Personally I think the 'children' are being used in this case for 'ulterior motives'. Indeed we are often asked these days to go to war 'for the children' when once we went for 'the flag'. I'm more suspicious in my old age and having paid so many hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes to help others raise their children and served children and families all my life in work I'm kind of looking forward to an adult world away from all that 'child police state' world though I'll forever miss the country community where children dads and grand parents all mixed at the dances. I loved growing up with my grandparents and uncles and aunts about but I don't have children and my life without children is very much not a part of the mainstream that dominates so much of society. I'm also single and divorced and the mainstream society serves mostly the intact families. Indeed when I first divorced, divorced men were excluded from partnerships and I was denied several positions of work because I was 'divorced'. "We don't hire divorced people" I was told by government and clinics. I was further told "My wife doesn't like me to associated with divorced men". "We only have married friends". I think that's good but I've lived that part of my life and today I'd rather be with other divorced and single people that are forming loving friendships than that group of people living in the mainstream. If I was a woman I would have had a child. I believe radical feminism was intrinsically 'anti-children" and indeed I was as much a part of the 'culture of narcissism' that describes well the social decadence of the 60's set now growing into senility. I'm the tail end of the 'baby boomers' and the ravages of drugs and boozer continue to take people I have known long before a life of less self indulgence might otherwise have taken them.
My father died at 94. I find myself reflecting on life again and wondering what is important to me now. Clearly spirituality is. I want to be 'ready' for death. I want to contemplate life and death and God. I want to live in love rather than fear. I want to continue to serve my fellow man and women and community. I want tyo participate fully in society but more so in those aspects that acknowledge the infinite and our relationship to a higher power. I'd like to get more 'right' with the world and God. I 'd like to lessen the 'pain' of existence before my aging puts me more in the 'pain' of existence just because of facts of life like gravity. People with children have their 'immortality' assured in someway in this earthplane but I'm not so focussed on this earthplane as I might well be if I had children. I don't know if that's true. I want to find a place where I am welcome as a single divorced old person who is spiritual and sexual and living as a spiritual being in a material world. I want to celebrate life more, sail, ride my sports car, field the wind in my hair, dance, hunt, fish, work, play and do all that but more with God in all aspects of my life and existence. I can't have the life my father had. Family dominated his world as did his wife of 60 years and he lived with other Christians mostly in a Canada where the majority of people he lived and worked among had been part of the fight against Nazism and Communism. He was as all Canadians were in those days communal libertarians of a sense but today the politics and cities are global and cultures are mixing faster than the legal systems and other institutions can adapt. It's a different sort of chaos I've inheritted and I must give order to this with the help of my faither and God and friends and community.
I never know if I should share these musings. Ramblings and journalling but I do. Messages in bottles from shipwrecked sailors on islands. Kindred souls have touched and communicated with me over the years. Other writers and authors and poets and songsters and scientists and police and judges and politicians and painters have all communicated in kind with me. It's what I like really. There are blogs of all manner of rantings and ravings and we know that people are thinking all manner of things and we can see that all around there is creation. Where there is creation there to the creator is.


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