"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.

Christian Medical and Dental Society Annual Christmas Banquet

I love CMDS (www.cmdscanada.org). It comforts me just to know it is there.  The doctors I’ve met and shared with in this organization have so impressed me not only for their excellence as physicians and dentists but for their compassion as humans. They’re mostly family people as is the Christian way. They celebrate their partners and their children. They are close to their churches and their Bibles.  They are hopeful people.
This year we met at Kaya’s the fabulous Malaysian restaurant on Broadway at Oak.  Dr. Tam greeted us at the door immediately making my friend, Laura and I feel welcome.  I had the pleasure then to speak with Dr. Jeffrey Greenman, President of Regent College. His wife is a paediatrician. I shared how I’d fallen in love with Regent attending the courses of Dr. James Houston.
“He’s teaching another course next year,” Dr. Greenman told me.  “He’s 94 this year and has more energy and enthusiasm than some of us half his age.”  Later at our table I’d share how much Dr. James Houston’s simple book on Prayer had influenced me.
Meanwhile, my friend Laura, had met Kirsti, the Art Historian wife of the Ken, the esteemed violinist North Vancouver  family physician.  They were talking about their children and travels.
A collection of medical students and seasoned CMDS musicians and singers had come together for the occasion leading us all in singing Christmas carols through the evening.  Singing Silent Night, Holy Night, and Joy to the World did wonders for my soul.
Delicious food began to arrive miraculously.  Plate after plate of marvellous morsels graced the table.  As a typical doctor I’d missed lunch and was soon contentedly full with the delights of Kaya’s famed kitchen.
Dr Jeffrey Greenman spoke on the subject “Fear Not”.  I loved that he drew his message from the verses of Luke, the physician gospel writer.  I couldn’t help but think how often Dr. Willi Gutowski, missionary doctor and  long time member of CMDS had told me that Jesus had commanded Christians, “Do Not Be Afraid.”  He loved to say this wasn’t a suggestion.  I’d joked thereafter while sailing bluewater with a Christian buddy that “worrying is wicked’. When our cockpit awash and the ship was floundering in a terrific blow and I was struggling on deck to reef the main, this grinning Christian card had called to me, “Are we wicked yet, Billy?"
Now here was Dr. Jeffrey Greenman,, Oxford and Regent College theologian expanding on God’s message.  “The opposite of fear is faith,” he said.  Then drawing on story after story of Luke’s testimony of the birth of Christ he shared how first with Zechariah and lastly with the Shepherds God’s appearance was overwhelming startling, even paralyzing, but then God said Fear Not.  For the message of the Christmas season is that Yahweh, God almighty has been born as a child in a manger.  This is the Messiah. This is the promise.  All shall be well with God among us.
Dr. Greenman didn’t exactly say ‘god among us’ or ‘god incarnate’ or "the transcendent God”  of the ancients had become the " immanent god of Jesus”.  He didn’t speak theologese at us.  Instead, he  chose simple all embracing words.  He referenced  Roosevelts famous words, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  And went on to expand on the fuller passage that one line derived from.  He mostly read passages from Luke.  His voice was soothing and melodious. He let the truth of Luke work its calm and  healing   I felt tears welling in my eyes to hear once again the blessed assurance.
After we sang more Christmas carols, the dining area though spacious, felt cozy.  I was again happy with life and felt as if Jesus had once more lifted a burden of worry from my ailing back.  I was here among loving and kind folk who daily faced my frustrations with the struggle to comfort and cure patients in  the horrible politics of todays medical system.  We all had suffered at the hands of the Herods of Government Health Care and the Pontius Pilates of Wrong Judgements.  We’d cried at night when despite all our technical knowledge and decades of intensive learning and experience,  despite  our deepest faith,  we’d still fail to Lazarus that one person we really believed should live. We’d all learned acceptance and humility in those dark nights of our medical souls.  Thy will be done not my will.
Here we were again, eating together, singing together, and praying together,  thankful for that reminder this Advent season, that Jesus, the Messiah was born that blessed day.  Fear Not.
My phone rang and I stepped outside to answer an emergency call.  It wasn’t an emergency.  But I hopefully reassured this frightened and angry person that my assistant would try to book them in on Monday, but I was fully booked till sometime next year. I was sorry waitlists were so long.  Yes I was sorry I’d not be able to see them  this Friday night. It was already past 9 pm.  I was sorry their lawyer had upset them.  I was sorry their lawyer was costing so much money and charged them to talk to them and that I was free.  I was also sorry the government bureaucrats they’d spoken to that day had been so rude and refused to return their calls.  I appreciated their fear but there was nothing I could do tonight.  And no I couldn’t talk more because I was on call for medical emergencies that this was more a legal and beaurocratic problem which the lawyers and bureaucrats must deal with.  I did remind them that they didn’t keep their office appointment with me too and didn’t mention I’d not been paid when they just didn’t show and didn’t cancel.  I said that mostly  this was about money and their fears about their financial settlements.  No I couldn’t make a special appointment to meet with them on Saturday or Sunday either.  They were meeting with the lawyers next week and it was a family matter too which meant i couldn’t just speak with them alone but the only thing that could be decided had to be decided with all parties involved and I couldn’t choose ’sides’ in this matter either.  But really , this isn’t a medical or psychiatric emergency and when I give patients my number it’s for medical and psychiatric emergencies, matters of life and health and death and matters related to medication or treatment.  There was nothing more I could offer over the phone and that this would have to be taken care of at the office.  No I didn’t want them to suicide but what they were calling me about was really not a medical or psychiatric emergency but rather a legal and beaurocratic matter and I could not make a house call to discuss how no one cared. And yes I cared but I couldn’t tell the judge and government to go to hell for them even if I wanted to.  Would they call me at the office on Monday.  Would they be alright till then?   Alright. Good night.
Fear Not.

Keats Island anchorage, Boat Engines, Christianity, Personhood and Recovery

A picture is worth a thousand words. The pictures of sailing are always so much more explicit.  I wish the scent of sea air and the cry of gulls was captured too. When I eventually get a new pro Mac computer I’ll probably uplift more video.  Right now the MacAir takes too long to render. Also there’s the difficulty uploading video on slow internet connections.  You simply don’t get high speed cable at sea. What’s missing from pictures is the corkscrewing galloping camel ride experience of a boat in water.  Newbies find it contributes to sea sickness but the older a salt one becomes the more one misses that experience ashore.  Right now a ferry has passed and set me rocking as if I were in a cradle.  When I sleep in the boat at anchor I feel like I'm back in the womb with the anchor the umbilical ford.
I stopped by Stem to Stern Marine on the way to the boat.  I’ve paid all but the last $6000 for the installation of the new Volvo Penta.  The engine alone cost $12000. I won’t even discuss the rest of the installation costs simply because no one could appreciate all the work that Alex and Ben did that warrants what my friends and I know is truly fair and reasonable price for work well done.
(I feel self pity that as a Canadian doctor I’ve been paid a third the real value of my services.  The ‘doctor cost controls’ like rent controls mean I have no competitive income and feel sorely paying the real value of others professional services when mine are so mocked. Yet Canadians happy to pay millions for hockey players never have put much faith in brains.  We’re an ignorant land.  Meanwhile I can’t truly complain because I continue to work in the lowest paid front lines of the public sector when I really could be a fat cat doctor in administration or simply step aside and work for the upper classes in corporate medicine.  Canadians are smug in their universal health care, the charity of doctors whose hourly income for their years of training, call and no overtime and no pensions doesn’t match the much maligned ‘minimum labour’ so sacrosanct to labour.  Such feelings come to mind when I am faced with reasonable bills of the best of the best, such as those at Stem to Stern Marine.  But then also I’ve the Scottish gene that is pained by any penny that passes my hand so at least those of Scottish descendance  could appreciate  my pained expression parting with hard earned money.  I was sorely tempted, when faced with the bill,  to use the brilliant East Indian  Russell Peter’s father’s line, “Yes, but what is my price?"
I’m a very thankful for my life as it is.  My life and Gilbert’s depends on my sailboat, often home and sometimes expeditionary module. Since sailing back from Hawaii  in 2008  with Tom, when we broke the mast, I’ve put approximately $25,000 a year into restoring my sailboat to offshore specs.  That means I've worked longer hours and had less time off than I might well have done if I lived in a rented West End apartment like smart people do.  With the new engine from Stem to Stern, the new new genoa from North Sails, the rigging help from Pro Tech and the advice and help from Eric at Pocomarine, Dr. Phillip Ney's inspiration, Tom's appreciation,  the major heavy lifting work of restoration is complete.
Naturally, as all sailors know we could have bought a new boat with the cost of repairs. However, as sailors, we know that there’s too good a chance if we sold our boats we’d never return to the sea, seeking instead to become fat and arrogant in a condo or apartment which clearly doesn’t try to kill you on a routine basis.  Sailboats are hazards and finicky and commonly named for women. I did indeed comment that my sailboat didn’t cost as much as my divorce and when you compare the proverbial cost of a boat with the cost of girlfriends, the boat is cheap in comparison. This explains why women rarely can bring themselves to own boats never appreciating their relatively low cost despite the high maintenance . (ha! ha! )
I do like taking people out sailing and have enjoyed infecting several people with  boat insanity. Not one individual has been so smitten by the disease that they’ve thanked me for changing their lives for ever. They're young. They folly of the young!
There’s a lovely breeze right now in this bay.  It’s gentle and smells of pine trees and sea air.  Gilbert is panting with the heat. I think he may need to be shorn to enjoy summer more.  These 30 degree temperatures with clear skies are incredible. I just feel a little guilty I don’t make it to church.  I confessed to Farther Mark at St. James Anglican Church that I was a “winter Christian’.  The truth be told I’m a ‘rainy day Christian’.  God is speaking to me now out on the water.  The other smell here is Hawaian coconut oil sunscreen lotion and coffee.
I’ve towed my AB Profile 12 A hard bottom dinghy with centre console and 20 hp honda.  Since I’m breaking in the Volvo Penta D2 -40 Ben at Stem to Stern, as well as Alex before him, said I couldn’t ’troll ‘ with the engine. For the first 50 hours you need to run it with a load, as well as fluctuating the rpms.  So I’ve been running it between 2000 and the 3000 FOT position.
That said I’m like a girl with breast augmentation wanting to wear a push up bra.  I’d love to be fishing. I love trolling for salmon in the sailboat at a thousand rpm running alongside  islands in the 100 to 200 foot depth mark, having the boat on autopilot, watching the rods in the Scotty down rigger holders, reading a book and drinking coffee.  That’s my idea of fishing. I’ve caught a lot of salmon doing just that but this morning I didn’t get up as planned.   I was supposed to be up before dawn fishing with the dinghy.
Towing the boat I lost a half to a knot of speed but still the bigger engine kept me cruising at 6 knots.  With the old Yanmar 26 hp towing the boat dropped my cursing speed from 5.5 or 5 to 4 to 4.5.  I like the added power of the new engine. It worked well last night.  But today I slept in.  I finally anchored at midnight and didn't get into bed till after 1 in the morning. The light came in at 7 pm when I normally get up for work.  I was in the V Berth and turned my face to the wall. Gilbert jumped up into the bed and began licking my ears at 8 am.  But I only got up at 9 when the cabin was beginning to get warm and close. Coffee was calling. I didn’t meditate as long as I ‘should’.  I pray but then I’m always praying to God. I feel like a toddler pulling on my mother skirts in a shopping mall kind of "prayer warrior". Not particularly Goliath.
I like that my Telus Huaweii USB wifi hot spot allows me to get mail here. I have cell phone coverage so don’t have to be concerned I forgot my Satellite phone. I'm always on call and commonly answering emergencies in the oddest places.  This week it was in my car. Another time I was called up north and had to discuss an emergency from a tree stand.  Commonly I'm interrupted at sea.  So far so good. Just "urgent" emails.  Everything is urgent these days with no resources and the aging population, all the older 'full service' gps and specialists retiring and none of the young doctors being stupid enough to die young.  So many of my favourite colleagues , the best of the best, have had stress related illness, heart attacks, cancer, addictions, suicides, divorces.  I'm so very fortunate to be alive and living the life still.
Just as I was going to cast off last night, Tom came by.  He sailed with me back from Hawaii and the last few years restored the boat's hull and mast integrity either himself or supervising others.  I think he's afraid I'll ask him one day to join me on another ocean expedition and wants the boat to be safe enough he'll survive.  He was in picking up the old Yanmar to fix up and sell with his diesel mechanic buddy. In exchange I’m hoping he’ll do some of the electrical ‘glych’ work that still needs doing on the boat. I had the new radio installed but it wasn’t connected to the GPS. Once this is done I’ll be able to see any other big boats location. That’s a new requirement from Homeland Security. It’s not ‘necessary’ but it’s sexy and I’d like to have it completed some day soon.  I’ve a windspeed indicator too that’s been disconnected.  I worked on the electrical myself yesterday afternoon and found the short that had disconnected the inverter outlets. I found this by getting shocked.  (Do not wash your hands before doing electrical work).  I topped up all my batteries and did further maintenance checking all the other grounds.
Tom arrived with the spare parts and oil for the Volvo.  Naturally that was a great excuse to sit around below decks jawing rather than getting going.  He’d been in Toronto with his family and now was back in Chilliwack.
He wanted to see the new engine, my Volvo Penta D2 -40 . So I got to show off the new baby and listen to the appreciative oohs and ahs.  “He (Alex) really did a good job on the engine mounts.”  “They’ve put all new hoses in here.”  “I guess they don’t want anything to go wrong during the time of warranty.” I had to think that a warranty was a very good thing to motivate Stem to Stern to be as thorough and caring as they are.  As I’ve got older I’ve found that I like having the manufacturers recommended teams do installations because the work is done right from the start if only to avoid warranty costs.  Tom was impressed as I was impressed.
Tom’s an engineer and he’s rarely complimentary.  I ignore his negatives a lot therefore, but appreciate his positives especially when they coincide with my own praise.  Tom had met Ben when he picked up the old engine and liked the work that Stem to Stern did. I pointed out my new sail but confessed I was not sure when I’d get the sail up because this Volvo “iron jenny’ was just giving me too much joy.
We drank bottles of Perrier Sparkling water from my freezer while we talked.  Girls always think guys are drinking beer and they're so out of date with the real world of the working man.
It was 7 pm when I said I finally had to go. Tom helped push the Giri’s bow out. Gilbert, dressed in his Outward Hound form fitting life jacket was sad to see his favourite buddy staying on the dock.
In Coal Harbour ,  I stopped at the fuel barge where the great guys there helped me fill my rear tank with 85 litters more of diesel.  It’s nearly a couple of dollars a litre which made me think I really ought to use my sails more. I filled 10 gals of jerry cans for the 20 hp Honda.  Gilbert ran all over the fuel dock.  I bought some frozen herring strips and ice cream bars.  The herring strips are for the fish and the ice cream bars are for me.
8 pm and we were finally going through First Narrows under Lions Gate Bridge.  The sun sets late in summer so it was out till 9 when a full moon took over. I got some pictures passing Point Atkinson. All the pictures were with my iPhone 5.  I’ve got the Navionics app on the iPhone and use that as my charting gps navigation aid.  When night came on and I was just coming around the Finnestere south east point of Bowen Island  I turned on the radar.  I had my steaming lights, navigational lights, iPhone Navionics gps charter, and my hand held gps, the depth indicator and hand held vhf radio,and Raymarine autopilot.  All these little stars in the boat darkness inside coupled  with a beautiful full moon lighting the calm seas outside.
I slowed down coming into Plumper Cove.  I know Plumper Cove so chose it as a destination over other anchorages. Even then I nearly missed it in the dark.  Thankfully some sailboats had masthead lights on and I was able to be certain with the binoculars showing the boats at the dock that this was Plumper Cove. The anchorage was packed. I tried setting my anchor. It was midnight.  I was in a little hole but there simply wasn’t room and I had to pull up the anchor.
I love the Italian Lofranz electric windlass.  I had to try setting the anchor three times in the dark before it took hold. I’d gone out of the Plumper Cove anchorage and around the corner to the east. A Ketch was anchored there so I chose to get in beside him. First the anchor didn’t catch and then the next time it dragged. Another boat put on it’s light and shined a flashlight at me fearing I wasn’t aware of it.  Poor boater. Midnight and this great hulk bearing down on him with engines revving and outgoing anchor chains clanging like a ghost. I’d seen it but I ‘d not expected my anchor to drag.  So I went further out and dropped the anchor in 70 feet with lots of sea room and ran out a whole lot of chain.  I wasn’t so much protected from the wind but I was hooked.  I sat anchor watch for an hour remembering the Mexican anchoring places which were far less protected.
This morning I didn’t get out fishing. I read the mail from Bernice and felt guilty for not going to the Bowen Island writers day.  What a great event that would be.  Another year I think. There are so many great things happening in the summer and all I want to do is be out in my sailboat.  Alkali Lake Round Up is on this weekend. On Wednesday when I was at Whytecliff with Archie  Jamie was heading out to this.  I remembered riding up on the motorcycle one year.  Sweatlodges and dancing in the rodeo grounds.  Great time.  I heard from Archie that George is visiting family in Scotland and Jane may be joining him.  We can expect some poetry competition for Robbie Bruce then.
Of course I’m supposed to be fishing now. Instead I made coffee and also some of the delicious instant Quaker Oats.  Gilberts panting.  I’ve kept his water dish full. I’ve been reading Alexander Kent’s A Tradition of Victory, Read Admeral Bolitho fighting “Bony’s” naval forces of the north of France.
On Thursday I was out for dinner with Dr. John Christensen, Dr. James Houston and Helen.  Helen had been in the Sudan doing missionary work. She had returned and is organizing a fresh water project for the province. She’s been talking to environmental engineers, raising money and spearheading a project  in this huge area where there’s been so much war.  She’d told of her work in the fall when she’d gone there just before the nearby fighting had broken out again.  Christians being killed by machetes and guns.  We’d worried about her and we were all glad when she came home safe.  Now in a few months she’s begun this amazing project to get fresh clean water to the area where she’d taught the children the weeks she’d been there in the fall.
I am so amazed by her industry. God works in amazing ways.  She's a wonderful channel for the Holy Spirit. She's spearheaded this project here in coordination with the Christian leader she’d met in the Sudan. The missionary group she’d gone with was just a little local group who were keen to physically and spiritually help. Now Helen has become a regular locomotive with a cause.  Dr. Houston knew a leading environmental engineer who’d led other successful water projects near there so he gave her this quiet Christian man's name whose already ensured tens of thousands have clean water in Africa.  I love how Christians are moved to do God’s work.  That's the way with the Evangelical Medical Associations work too. There's a need. Then there's prayers. Then there's someone who volunteers to do all this work. And finally there's this amazing success and all these humble people say how it was God's work. t
Asked about the Downtown East Side I caught people up on the corruption of Portland Hotel Society Scandal and how  millions of dollars were diverted to pockets, parties and limousines.   There’s a continued housing crisis because the money didn't go to the poor but rather the rich favourites of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.  It’s so sad because half the money that was spent by Portland Hotel Society on housing for the poor was good .  So much money was squandered on the Safer Injection Site. Dr. John didn’t know about the millions lost.  People are just aghast when I tell them about this. It's like something out of a bizarro comic book. Hundreds of thousands spent on giving alcohol to alcoholics.  Portland Hotel Society staff teaching alcoholics to make their own alcohol and no 'adult over site' for all this costly corruption.  I continued to speak of the harm reduction to abstinence projects with Methadone and how I’d initiated a patient that day on Suboxone, the ethical concerns balancing the palliative care approach of harm reduction with the knowledge that the obvious "cure' for addiction is 'abstinence.
My friends wanted to hear of our Recovery talks and I told them about the Addiction Dialogues with David Berner, Recovery Day with Anna McCullough, and my being on the board of the Canadian Society for Drug Prevention.  Dr. Christiensen was pleased to hear we were supporting the 12 step programs as they worked so well. I told them about the great Christian work, the real heavy lifting  work of Union Gospel, the Salvation Army with Harbour Light Detox, the Catholic and Anglican Churches housing societies, First United Advocacy and Father Mathew from my church, St. James Anglican, working with the isolated men in the DTES.  I celebrated the hope I saw once the Corruption at the core of Portland Hotel Society and Vancouver Coastal Health had been addressed by the Provincial Minister of Health’s call  for accountability.
I told about reading Jackie Pullinger’s work with Heroin addicts in Hong Kong. Dr. Houston knew her and told us of the old Kowloon and the Norwegian missionary society that had started it’s work with heroin addicts there in the slums. Helen had met Jackie Pullinger when she came to speak at Mission Fest.  Helen said she said “she didn’t want people with hard hearts and soft feet who would just walk a little way on the journey but those with soft hearts and hard feet who would go the distance.'
Dr. Christiensen was sad that prime minister wannabe Troudeau had condemned the Catholics of Canada saying  no one who was pro life would be accepted as a Liberal.  I said I was sorry that as a marijuana smoker he was so keen on everyone else smoking marijuana.  It haven't smoked marijuana in 16 years and certainly prefer the natural 'high' and 'spiritual' high to the low of "smoke'. I saw the ravages of the consequences of addiction and simply, the more available a drug is, the more societal problems there are.
The success of addiction medicine work is evident in the turn around seen with stopping tobacco smoking. Once everyone did it and it was glamorous, now only the tragic and ill do it and the huge costs are being tabulated while the psychopaths and sociopaths in the Tobacco companies market it to women and children and third world countries. The same folk are now behind the marijuana industry and the get rich quick goes on.
I struggle with the ethics of it all because clearly there is some medicinal benefit but in BC some 99% of so called "medicinal marijuana" was abused and diverted to recreational purposes.  All the while the medicinal benefits of marijuana compound can be met with a new pharmaceutical Sativex spray but my patients find it easier to get funding for the less medicinal ‘medical marijuana’.  I’m struggling with prescribing as are all doctors because the pressure is political and commercial.
It was very apropos then that Dr. Houston talked of business and virtue. His son is a businessman, my age , and he’s begun a project of making work serve people rather than people serve work.  Dr. Houston, long a champion of the human ‘person’ ,is himself now embarking on a grand project of a new book tracing the development of the soul through history asking friends and even former detractors to contribute essays to this project of looking at the what it means to be  human in the highest sense.  He feels society and business especially has seen the failure of using a solely 'social science' model to assess success.  He cited so many great businessmen of Canada and great corporations who didn't want their life's work trivialized as merely for profit. They'd been moved themselves to create theses great organizations by higher values and yet saw these being lost.  They were challenging the simplistic CEO's to make their work 'meaningful and worthy'.  Some of the people Dr. Houston and their son knew were the greatest families in the world and truly didn't want their 'legacy' to be a 'dirty business'.
Dr. Houston has been delighted by how people have responded positively and agreed to contribute in his book in their areas of greatest expertise.  It’s going to be an incredible work and I so look forward to reading it one day. Dr. Houston’s works on spirituality and Christiianity are classics but I’ll always love most his book on prayer.  He speaks so positively of Regent College these days having been the Chancellor and sees it now fulfilling it’s goal to serve Christians. He’d never wanted another education institution for training professionals but rather an ‘institute’. I really must check out the distinction because he said legally there is a vast difference in the meaning of ‘institute’ as it serves the people and ‘institution’ which the people serve. Regent’s College was an ‘institute’ and had run the risk he said of becoming merely another  institution.
All of us there had  found Regent so inspiring when we attended and being again with Dr. Houston was  again be in the presence of genius and humility. We missed his wife Rita who was unable to come.  He brought me a book of Herbert Spencer for me,  feeling that reading this ‘poet’ would enrich my own Christian development and my own writing of poetry.
It was a remarkable night as these always are.  A great meal in John’s house and truly inspiring company. It was hard to leave.
I of course talked about the engine the sailing I’m enjoying. I told how having exhaust no longer leaking into the cabin had stopped the occasional headache I'd noticed in the past while motoring.  Also I told John that I’d got a draw for a moose cow or calf in the area where his son and I had previously hunted so hoped Luke might get off time from work to hunt with us in the late fall.  My new assistant, Mabel, seeing the my success in the lottery, and being from Argentina had asked about moose. I told her to imagine the finest barbecue in the world and consider that for a city person like myself this takes years to obtain and at the end of the day costs as much as caviar an ounce.  A true Canadian delicacy little understood by anyone without royal blood.
Now here I am sitting in the glory of the BC wonderland.  Gilbert has gone off to sleep in the shade. There’s a cool breeze that’s just fine for me here ,in a bathing suit, in the sun. Now that I’ve reflected in this journal on the high points of my life I think I’ll make a cup of coffee and go back to reading  of wooden ships and cannon.  I "should" take the dinghy and  make a visit to the town of  Gibsons if only to give Gilbert some more to sniff. He pees and poops on the front deck so I don’t have to get him ashore for toilet but it’s another thing to do.  There's just so much to do and such heavy pressure upon me do something.  Maybe I'll just lie in the sun on deck till such thoughts pass.