Dr. Anna Borowska encouraged me to attend my first CMDS, Christian Medical and Dental Society, meeting in Vancouver. Something about her genius, beauty and extraordinary operatic voice made me happy to be her church friend. Admittedly she also encouraged me to sing Handel’s Messiah which was utterly beyond my vocal chords. I did buy roller blades and give it a go for a while since she seemed to make it look far easier than it was.
I preferred much better cross country skiing with Dr. Lam. Dr. Lam was more involved with EMAS the missionary wing at the time of CMDS and was so kind to share his testimony with me. Truly inspiring, he had a painting of Jesus he’d made when he was young and felt moved to express his devotion in just this way. When times are tough I can still see that picture in my mind’s eye and remember Dr. Lam’s kindness and wisdom. I had attended fellowship meetings at Dr. Robin and Margaret Cottle’s home, singing praise with students long before I heard them the lead the whole of CMDS in hymns and worship.
Dr. Willie and Anita Gutowski invited me to join them at my first CMDS meeting in Gimli Manitoba. Growing up in Winnipeg I enjoyed the opportunity to visit Mom and Dad and then spend spiritual time with Willie and Anita. They were my closest connection to Dr. Albert Schweitzer’ whose moving story had contributed to my entering medicine. Anita, a nurse, and Willie a physician had done missionary work in Africa for years. He and his family are living Bibles to me personally. Later. Dr. Phillip Ney, the most extraordinary sailor, physician, psychiatrist, founder of Mount Joy College,pro life advocate and creator of Hope Alive Group Therapy would be another mentor who encouraged me to attend CMDS, this time in Edmonton. We call him a prophet as he rails against the growing lust for killing in Canadian society. If he were here today he'd be lamenting the motherless child and talking of the slippery slope. One step ahead of the crowd you're a leader. Two steps ahead, you're a martyr.
I am blessed to be in communion with such remarkable Christians. They live their faith and so many are evangelicals who do missionary work as well. I’ve also been amazed at the quality of CME. Dr. Allan Ronald, microbiologist and Order of Canada recipient presented one memorable year on his work fighting AIDS in Africa. It shouldn’t surprise me. The most read daily reflections of Christians is “My Utmost for His Highest”. We’re not known as slackers. Christians physicians have been and continue to be the foremost leaders of clinical and research medicine. They are the salt of the earth.
In Edmonton I enjoyed that the conference was in combination with Catholics. I am an ecumenical Christian an Anglican but only loosely denominational. The physician who sat next to me told me she’d attended Methodist and United Church but was now a member of a Mennonite congregation. I enjoyed most hearing and sharing with Dr. Abdul Majid Katme, a renowned British pro life Muslim physician when he joined with Dr. Ney in Azerbaijan to discuss Post Abortion Syndrome. Another time I was honoured to attend an Addiction Medicine conference with Dr. Twerki, the famed Rabbi Psychiatrist and author. In Malaysia I travelled on a train with another theist clinician and discussed how often patients come to us having had horrible experiences with atheist clinicians. I feel a kinship in general with spiritual people.
I am enjoying this year’s conference at the Double Tree by Hilton in Downtown Toronto. Next year’s will be in Halifax, again a combination of Catholic and Christian doctors. I really hope to attend if only because I truly love Halifax as one of Canada’s foremost little cities. It has been a while since I had Lobster too. The last time was the year I attended an Addiction Medicine Conference at Harvard and rented a Harley Davidson after to tour the New England coast. I’m due for more lobster. I can always benefit from the CME and Christian fellowship at CMDS.
This year the ethical issue of Conscience Protection is uppermost. More and more Canadians feel the government and it’s totalitarian smitten beurocracies are turning the majority of Canadians into aliens in their only home. Christians need not apply. Quit medicine and leave Canada if you don’t like it, we hear. Shut up and do as you’re told. It’s policy. It’s protocol. Don’t think for yourself. We’ll tell you what is right. All the while the fallacy of the ‘ends against the middle’ rules and ’straw man’ arguments proliferate. The verbal abuse I’ve heard before by officials is shocking. At CMDS I’ve sat with doctors crying as they shared they were leaving clinical practice or going away from Canada because they didn’t feel wanted. Last night I sat with a young compassionate Ontario phsycian who had moved to Alberta because she couldn’t in good faith practice in Ontario. She grew up there, studied there, her mother and father and family reside there but the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario doesn’t want her kind of physician. Their ‘diversity’ excludes Christians.
“I don’t want to kill. I didn’t become a physician to be a part of killing,” another young woman physician told me. Her eyes were glistening.. A grey haired clinician shared that a senior beurocrat had positively gloated when he told him to leave family medicine and go into pathology if he didn’t like killing. The irony is ever lost on the intellectuals. The death culture grows in the consumer society. I walk among them in the DTES where drugs kill hopes and hide the soul. The light goes out. Increasingly no one "really" cares. The patient now a customer is increasingly a commodity. It's not like any of these strangers are Jesus to those who themselves deny the soul. CMDS is always a good reminder for me. I remember one year Dr. Margaret Cottle said at a presentation, "It may seem like we're losing but I read a good book that says we win in the end." I loved the applause that day Today there was laughter too and we all applauded and stood for speakers and gathered together for prayer.
Showing posts with label Dr. Phillip Ney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr. Phillip Ney. Show all posts
Friday, May 5, 2017
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Sailing with Gilbert and Horizon Unbound
Dr. Phillip Ney, Christian Psychiatrist runs three programs, Hope Alive, Mount Joy College and Horizon Unbound. His Horizon Unbound program is aboard his three masted ship Horizon Unbound. As an ex Navy man and fellow sailor he invited me to join him on his summer training cruise months ago. I’ve been working to get my 40 foot ship, SV GIRI, prepared so I could at least join him for part of that trip.
I left work on Thursday night at 6 pm and was on my sailboat with Gilbert, the cockapoo dog, by 7 pm. That night we drove through First Narrows and English Bay,against rain and wind and current, to anchor off Kits Beach for the night to get an early start the next morning. Up at dawn we still had grey skies but a beautiful view of Vancouver. We sailed the GIRI across the Strait of Georgia. I read Terror on the Alert, Robert Mackay’s submarine adventure. It was a leisurely lovely summer day sailing quietly across the Strait.
My friend Laura, Gilbert’s special special friend, was staying with her artist sister Carolyn at her Mayne Island home. She’d called to say she’d come by the Miner's Bay dock with Gilbert’s dog friend, Jack, to see us go by. It was an ebb tide with lots of whirlpools and current when I entered Active Pass but I was still able to get close to the Mayne Island dock. Gilbert was all excited being able to smell his friends and hear their voices from above but not able at first to see them. Laura took a lovely picture of the GIRI at that time then because of the currents I couldn't stop and continued on.
Dr. Ney called me on the cellphone just as I exitted Active Pass. He told me they’d left Sooke and were in Victoria and suggested we meet up next night in Genoa Bay. I drove on to Cowichan and anchored in Genoa Bay. The Saltspring Island AA Round Up was going on that weekend and I had my tickets for this annual lamb roast. I’d been tempted to go there for a night and then come back to meet in Genoa Bay. Too busy. Instead I simply went on to anchor. With the dinghy I took Gilbert ashore and had a walk in the evening and another in the morning. I love the reliable 20 hp Honda on the AB Profile dinghy. It slows me down to tow it but is such a simple pleasure to have along side whenever I want to go ashore.
Dr. Ney met up with us next night and we had a lovely evening on his very big ship. I wrote about the Horizon Unbound with lots of great pictures on the earlier blog, “Horizon Unbound Sailing Ship and Dr. Phillip Ney”. Here I just wanted to record the pictures I took with the SV GIRI and Gilbert mainly ,and include some notes about what happened this weekend as well as when we weren’t sailing in tandem with the Horizon Unbound. My sail with Gilbert back from Thormanby Island to Vancouver with Gilbert was quite idyllic.
In the morning at Genoa Bay., we had the most beautiful sunrise as we motored out into the channel leading up to Dodd’s Narrow. Motoring, SV GIRI and Horizon Unbound travel about the same speed. Under sail, the Horizon Unbound leaps ahead and I'm a very slow second to this grand 4 winged vessel.
Motoring in the fog with the sun rising, porpoises playing in the passes, I was able to get some great photos. Gilbert whined whenever he caught a whiff of the other dogs on the ship ahead of us. The dogs stared moon fully across at each other when our ships were abeam. When we were together the three of them played, running circles about the Horizon Unbound deck and having even more fun when we all went ashore on Gull beach.
After Nanaimo, where we lost Ken, our psychologist/cook, (he literally skipped ship claiming work obligations demanded he return to the city) . Meanwhile, leaving Newcastle Channel, we had a magnificent sail across the Strait of Georgia to Merry Island Light house. I lowered the sails there and motored to catch up with Horizon Unbound who’d gone on to anchor in Buccaneer Bay on the North side of Thormanby Island. I was fishing there last summer and truly love this area.
We rafted up and had another lovely meal thanks to Phillips wife and co researcher, Anna Marie provisioning. Then we all went ashore with the dogs who had to be hoisted into their dinghy. Conversations about God, God and Sin, Navigation and Survivalism, sailing and family. It was one of those wonderful times when being a Christian is so rewarding and meaningful. There’s a shared seriousness of life coupled with a joy of living. There’s depth without the shallow silliness that is so often celebrated by the secular. In the ships on this coast I felt apart of the unfolding of God’s plan the progression forward with all it’s convolutions. Jesus said we are to love each other as ourselves and that we should love God. What can be simpler, but what can be more difficult. Dr. Ney is a prophet and wiseman. I love to share with him and hear his Bible and life enlightened comments. He has achieved so much in his life and is loved by so many. Always he’s followed Christ’s teachings.
In the morning, after we’d travelled up the bay ,rafted together, the Horizon Unbound pulling the GIRI, we separated ships. It was fond farewells till another time. I loved Phillip’s wave as he headed north to the wilderness of Desolation Sound and I headed south back to the city of Vancouver.
That day I had a truly marvellous wing on wing sail along the Sunshine Coast. 90 degrees compass bearing. 10 knots wind from behind. The seas built up a little so it was a bit of a camel ride. I didn’t have a whisker pole, mine’s in the storage locker, so had to steer by hand wing on wing. This is too much work for my kind of sailing ,so after an hour or so, I headed up further wind and put the genoa over to the same side as the main. On the broad reach the autopilot worked just fine. I could get back to reading.
I love reading novels and drinking coffee in the cockpit lounging in my captains chair, interrupted regularly by Gilbert wanting me to throw his tennis ball down into the cabin. This results in a mad scramble, a frantic search and the joyful return of the ball. It could go on all day and isn’t that distracting but intermittently I take a break, which doesn’t make any sense to Gilbert. He sleeps on a pillow under my chair when he's not fetching ball.
I dropped the sails coming around Bowen Island. Passing under Lions Gate Bridge I drove on to the fuel dock and filled my tank. Altogether I’d used 125 litters of diesel, something like 30 gals. I figured out I do roughly an hour of engine running per gallon and get about 6 or 7 nautical miles per gallon. I sailed a whole lot more than I used the engine. When I get the new through hull speedometer to replace the old one whose hamsters grew too old, I’ll actually be able to keep track easily again of the actual trip length in miles. There’s always something to fix on a boat but mine has been doing so well this year with it finally restored to offshore readiness.
There’s a vibration on the shaft which occurred with heeling and sailing which the Stem to Stern folk will sort out now that I’ve got over 50 hours on the new engine. It was 65 engine hours at the end of this trip. They wanted to see the engine after the 50 hour break in. Now that the engine is broken in I can also go fishing, trolling speeds, no longer a concern for a broken in engine. I love the Volvo Penta D2 40.
The new motor gets a check up. Then the fall hunting season begins. I’ll not be out in the sailboat so often. I do expect to do a winter sail to probably to Salt Spring. I’ve done that often in years past, crossing the Strait in the cold and enjoying tying up at the marina when there’s not all the tourists. The restaurants in winter on the islands are still the best. I’ve fond memories of chills and stews I’ve had in winter on Bowen and Saltspring.
It was a great August weekend of sailing. BC Sailing is the finest. It was joyful to meet up with the Horizon Unbound and share time with it’s captain, Dr. Phillip Ney and it's impressive crew. Gilbert so enjoyed his two great dog friends, Star and Bosun. I am truly blessed. Thank you Jesus.
I left work on Thursday night at 6 pm and was on my sailboat with Gilbert, the cockapoo dog, by 7 pm. That night we drove through First Narrows and English Bay,against rain and wind and current, to anchor off Kits Beach for the night to get an early start the next morning. Up at dawn we still had grey skies but a beautiful view of Vancouver. We sailed the GIRI across the Strait of Georgia. I read Terror on the Alert, Robert Mackay’s submarine adventure. It was a leisurely lovely summer day sailing quietly across the Strait.
My friend Laura, Gilbert’s special special friend, was staying with her artist sister Carolyn at her Mayne Island home. She’d called to say she’d come by the Miner's Bay dock with Gilbert’s dog friend, Jack, to see us go by. It was an ebb tide with lots of whirlpools and current when I entered Active Pass but I was still able to get close to the Mayne Island dock. Gilbert was all excited being able to smell his friends and hear their voices from above but not able at first to see them. Laura took a lovely picture of the GIRI at that time then because of the currents I couldn't stop and continued on.
Dr. Ney called me on the cellphone just as I exitted Active Pass. He told me they’d left Sooke and were in Victoria and suggested we meet up next night in Genoa Bay. I drove on to Cowichan and anchored in Genoa Bay. The Saltspring Island AA Round Up was going on that weekend and I had my tickets for this annual lamb roast. I’d been tempted to go there for a night and then come back to meet in Genoa Bay. Too busy. Instead I simply went on to anchor. With the dinghy I took Gilbert ashore and had a walk in the evening and another in the morning. I love the reliable 20 hp Honda on the AB Profile dinghy. It slows me down to tow it but is such a simple pleasure to have along side whenever I want to go ashore.
Dr. Ney met up with us next night and we had a lovely evening on his very big ship. I wrote about the Horizon Unbound with lots of great pictures on the earlier blog, “Horizon Unbound Sailing Ship and Dr. Phillip Ney”. Here I just wanted to record the pictures I took with the SV GIRI and Gilbert mainly ,and include some notes about what happened this weekend as well as when we weren’t sailing in tandem with the Horizon Unbound. My sail with Gilbert back from Thormanby Island to Vancouver with Gilbert was quite idyllic.
In the morning at Genoa Bay., we had the most beautiful sunrise as we motored out into the channel leading up to Dodd’s Narrow. Motoring, SV GIRI and Horizon Unbound travel about the same speed. Under sail, the Horizon Unbound leaps ahead and I'm a very slow second to this grand 4 winged vessel.
Motoring in the fog with the sun rising, porpoises playing in the passes, I was able to get some great photos. Gilbert whined whenever he caught a whiff of the other dogs on the ship ahead of us. The dogs stared moon fully across at each other when our ships were abeam. When we were together the three of them played, running circles about the Horizon Unbound deck and having even more fun when we all went ashore on Gull beach.
After Nanaimo, where we lost Ken, our psychologist/cook, (he literally skipped ship claiming work obligations demanded he return to the city) . Meanwhile, leaving Newcastle Channel, we had a magnificent sail across the Strait of Georgia to Merry Island Light house. I lowered the sails there and motored to catch up with Horizon Unbound who’d gone on to anchor in Buccaneer Bay on the North side of Thormanby Island. I was fishing there last summer and truly love this area.
We rafted up and had another lovely meal thanks to Phillips wife and co researcher, Anna Marie provisioning. Then we all went ashore with the dogs who had to be hoisted into their dinghy. Conversations about God, God and Sin, Navigation and Survivalism, sailing and family. It was one of those wonderful times when being a Christian is so rewarding and meaningful. There’s a shared seriousness of life coupled with a joy of living. There’s depth without the shallow silliness that is so often celebrated by the secular. In the ships on this coast I felt apart of the unfolding of God’s plan the progression forward with all it’s convolutions. Jesus said we are to love each other as ourselves and that we should love God. What can be simpler, but what can be more difficult. Dr. Ney is a prophet and wiseman. I love to share with him and hear his Bible and life enlightened comments. He has achieved so much in his life and is loved by so many. Always he’s followed Christ’s teachings.
In the morning, after we’d travelled up the bay ,rafted together, the Horizon Unbound pulling the GIRI, we separated ships. It was fond farewells till another time. I loved Phillip’s wave as he headed north to the wilderness of Desolation Sound and I headed south back to the city of Vancouver.
That day I had a truly marvellous wing on wing sail along the Sunshine Coast. 90 degrees compass bearing. 10 knots wind from behind. The seas built up a little so it was a bit of a camel ride. I didn’t have a whisker pole, mine’s in the storage locker, so had to steer by hand wing on wing. This is too much work for my kind of sailing ,so after an hour or so, I headed up further wind and put the genoa over to the same side as the main. On the broad reach the autopilot worked just fine. I could get back to reading.
I love reading novels and drinking coffee in the cockpit lounging in my captains chair, interrupted regularly by Gilbert wanting me to throw his tennis ball down into the cabin. This results in a mad scramble, a frantic search and the joyful return of the ball. It could go on all day and isn’t that distracting but intermittently I take a break, which doesn’t make any sense to Gilbert. He sleeps on a pillow under my chair when he's not fetching ball.
I dropped the sails coming around Bowen Island. Passing under Lions Gate Bridge I drove on to the fuel dock and filled my tank. Altogether I’d used 125 litters of diesel, something like 30 gals. I figured out I do roughly an hour of engine running per gallon and get about 6 or 7 nautical miles per gallon. I sailed a whole lot more than I used the engine. When I get the new through hull speedometer to replace the old one whose hamsters grew too old, I’ll actually be able to keep track easily again of the actual trip length in miles. There’s always something to fix on a boat but mine has been doing so well this year with it finally restored to offshore readiness.
There’s a vibration on the shaft which occurred with heeling and sailing which the Stem to Stern folk will sort out now that I’ve got over 50 hours on the new engine. It was 65 engine hours at the end of this trip. They wanted to see the engine after the 50 hour break in. Now that the engine is broken in I can also go fishing, trolling speeds, no longer a concern for a broken in engine. I love the Volvo Penta D2 40.
The new motor gets a check up. Then the fall hunting season begins. I’ll not be out in the sailboat so often. I do expect to do a winter sail to probably to Salt Spring. I’ve done that often in years past, crossing the Strait in the cold and enjoying tying up at the marina when there’s not all the tourists. The restaurants in winter on the islands are still the best. I’ve fond memories of chills and stews I’ve had in winter on Bowen and Saltspring.
It was a great August weekend of sailing. BC Sailing is the finest. It was joyful to meet up with the Horizon Unbound and share time with it’s captain, Dr. Phillip Ney and it's impressive crew. Gilbert so enjoyed his two great dog friends, Star and Bosun. I am truly blessed. Thank you Jesus.
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