Easter, Christ Church Cathedral

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easter Monday, Covid 19, Quarantine

Christ has risen. Christ has risen indeed.  Christ means messiah.  Christ will come again.  Each day of the year there is renewal and at this time of Easter, the rituals of his death and resurrection, the time in the tomb and his resurrection, it seems the world as a whole renews spiritually. I feel renewed.  When I walked Gilbert Easter morning, it was as if the air shimmered and sparkled. The sun and blue sky was simply stunning.

I wished I had a white dress and bright coloured bonnet, long white gloves and pretty sandals so I could join the ladies for Easter Sunday church service. As a boy I identified more with the frivolity and laughter of the ladies than the somber men accompanying them. We children then were still with the women. The rite of passage to being a man would come later. Often in my dreams I’ m in this afterlife with my mother and grandmother and all these lovely women, like exotic birds, having tea. I’m a child wandering through this endless world.  It was a happy time. A safe time.  I loved my father but my mother and the women of the church were so special.  The men were outside and we were inside. The fragrances and the colours were life itself.  I remember that this year.  Ive so many memories returning. Nostalgia. The heightened awareness of life under siege.  The partial isolation.  I’m even remembering and dreaming of the dogs in my life, Sunny, Shinto, Stuart and of course my present companion, Gilbert. Our walks are the best part of the day.

The Communist Chinese began this whole affair in a bio weapons lab. The bat story is the cover up. The article I’d read in Lancet had been a communist ‘alternative story’.  The bio weapon virus is not disclaimed, only blurred. The World Health Organization had been co-opted by the Chinese Communists. The UN has long been dominated by dictators, either communist or the ‘unalligned’ mostly ‘sharia’ dictators of the Middle East. It’s unconventional war.  The international community had sanctioned the Wuhan Stage 4 Lab for doing experiments of bat to human transfer of Coronavirus.  The Harvard Virologist and the Canadian Stage 4 Lab virologists had been arrested last year for complicity in assisting the Wuhan lab Caronvirus research. Now the bug had escaped, most likely. 

I laughed when my friend suggested a drunken scientist and a cocaine addicted luscious lady had, after one to many and in the passion of sex and ego left a door or window open.  SARS and Ebola had been contained. But this wasn’t contained because Xi Jinping and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party did not want the news leaked.  One account says it was to ‘save face.” But that’s old Confusian Chinese character.  The Communists don’t care about face, they care only for power and world domination. At the time of the ‘accident’, Hong Kong was in open rebellion. The Iranian ally, the Muslim Religious Police and Army, had just shot down a commercial airliner of Ukraine. The northern tribes were on the verge of open revolt with 3 million in camps equivalent to the nefarious gulag. The CCP had killed and imprisoned  a million or more Falun Gong and they just wouldn’t stay down. Taiwan would not be cowed by the build up of military across the strait which the US Navy had taken to patrolling. The jets and aircraft carriers they were turning out were having problems. They wanted world dominion but couldn’t fight a conventional war without likelihood of loss, like they had, when they tried to invade India. Even Tibet threatened to revolt despite all the CCP measures of total destruction.

The WHO had a corrupt Maoist politician Tedros Adhanom as head.  The whistleblowing doctors were silenced, arrested, imprisoned and killed. The Pandemic spread.  Communists don’t account individual lives like democracies do.  Mao murdered a hundred million of his own people. Stalin murdered sixty million.  The CCP controlled the reproductive life of their whole population with threat of sterilization if anyone broke the law of one child per couple. Marx and Engles wanted to destroy the family. Everyone was an informer.  It was certainly a time that needed distraction.

The west was standing up to the incursions in every area that had gone on for a decade.  Slave labour and cheap goods had appealed to the virtue signalling vanity of the west. China had expanded it’s influence everywhere.  They would dominate and control the Pacific Rim.  It didn’t matter what Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or Australia or New Zealand or Singapore had to say about it. They would rule.  That was their next goal in their eventual plan of world domination.  Politically allying with the Middle Eastern dictators.  Just as Japan and Italy and Germany had once allied, against  their common deomocratic enemy bringing these dictatorships  together. Agenda 21 and the UN continued to serve the Communist Chinese.

Now there was this virus. Covid 19.  A pandemic that could have been stopped. A cover up. It’s by the cover up you know the psychopaths.  The evil deed is known by the lie.  So the pandemic unfolds.

The lock down is the response to the attack.  The economy of the west is hurt but it’s turning out now that the Communist plan like so many intellectualizations isn’t working as hoped. Turkey has sued China for a trillion damages.  Hundreds of countries are hurt by the pandemic which was correctly called the Chinese Flu or better still the Communist Disease.  Japan and other countries are pulling manufacturing out of China. The US has offered to pay companies  and corporations to relocate back to the the US.  

Trudeau and Quebec have alligned themselves with the Chinese and UN dictatorships.  The majority of Canadians are slow to react.  All the unethical economic waste that preceded this crisis has left the country in terrible debt.  Thousands spent on blow up dolls of the PM and paying out millions to terrorists and a useless expensive Liberal senate and the buying of the CBC have all cost Canadians as their pensions and welfare are eroded. We  live more and more like the third world in an old age dream of retirement. The lock down has hit everyone. 

The scientific medical phase of the siege assault is being won and now the economic war begins.  Slowly work resumes with face masks, social distancing and small congregations of people.  The year to come continues to be one of caution. A second wave of the Covid 19 could be like the second wave of Spanish Flu. That one was worse. But today we are light years ahead in science.  What took two years to learn in the Aids epidemic we’ve achieved in 2 months. There are already cures and the lethality of the virus is little compared to the previous epidemics.  Just as bacteria once decimated nations but was beat by Sulfa and Penicillin so to viruses are being cured and prevented with vaccines.  A vaccine will provide protection as will herd immunity.  Back to work in May and vaccines by fall or winter.

Thats the medical emergency. But there’s intrigue and mystery and world leaders like Mr. Trump and Mr. Johnson have advisors discussing the very big picture that involves banks, air craft carriers, trade, and so much more than the media and social media algorithms can disclose. The media still finds the Kardasian reality of Identity politics relative. The Health Minister of Canada calls the scientists and physicians who criticize her incompetence as racist. The media portrays that.  Media is made for the masses. It’s at best set to the level of high school or a year or two of college.  Writing for internet attention should never be more than a paragraph long because of the limited attention span of modern generations. No one reads a book. The meme is the message.  McLuhans was right.  It’s  entertainment and reality tv.

Behind the scenes there is so much more.  I get a glimpse of the depth when I read an article from Nature or Science and remember looking into the complex world of the electron microscope. Wheels within wheels.

It’s Easter Monday. There is hope.  Spring is here.  I see women have begun to wear sun dresses and bare legs. I’m hopeful that bikini season is coming soon. We may not be able to touch but we can still look.  Christ has risen. Hallelujah.  I woke this morning without a fever, sore throat, or cough. 

Spring Images, Easter and Gratitude

Thank you Lord for all your blessings. Thank you for healing. Thank you for Easter. Thank you for the spring. Thank you for family and friends. Thank you for Kevin and Anna and Laura and the God Children. Thank you for work. Help me to let go of the resentments for false witness.  Help me to live in this ‘post truth’ society. Help me to forgive the atheists and heathens who attack Christians. Help me to forgive the ignornant who flash pseudoscience to the masses to take advantage. Help me overcome jealousy and envy. Help me to maintain integrity in face of the rewards for terrorists and liars and their unsavoury supporters. Help me Lord be more at peace.Thank you for the resurrection. Thank you for NSRU.  Thank you for the inspiration. Help me to know which way to turn. Guide me in the coming weeks   Thank you for the healing that has helped me physically and emotionally these last weeks. Thank you for mobility. Thank you for my motorcycle and the joy in the open highway. Thank you for Gilbert and George. Thank you for my home. Thank you for friendships and family. thank you for Laura and Lorne this week. Thank you for Brian, Barbara, Vivian, Michel, Antonnio, George, Gayle, Peter, and all the others I saw this weekend.  Thank you for Christ Church Cathedral. Thank you for the organ and the brass. Thank you for the Vancouver Convention Centre. Thank you for Harley Davidson.  Thank you for spring flowers.  Thank you for all the blessings. Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the hopes in good weather and the promises.  Thank you Lord.

Trev Deely Cared for My HD all winter.

Laura and I loved this movie on Shaw.

Palm Sunday at Good Shepherd Church with Kevin, Anna, Laura and the God Kids.

Laura and her fans.

Trev Deely Harley Davidson Museum

Picked up fleece on first ride of the season to Chilliwack

Starbucks

Lorne

Cherry Blossoms Strathcona

Coal Harbour from Vancouver Convention Centre

River Walk

Vancouver Convention Centre

Best Buds. Gilbert and George

NSRU

Christ Church Cathedral Easter Morning.

Maundy Thursday - Holy Week 2017

Maundy means the ‘washing of feet”.  Thursday was the day of the Last Supper.  Jesus washed the feet of his disciples then. “a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him” Jesus said.   This gave rise to the description of Jesus as the “Servant King’.  Humility is to be admired and not seen as a sign of weakness as it is by the cowardly braggart. The first should be last and the last should be first.  Suffer little children to come under to me. You must be like children to enter the Kingdom of heaven. All of what Jesus stood for was that it’s in the little and the great that God is found.  It was thought before that the Great were the venue to God.  The peasant did not know God but through the King or High Priest.  Now Jesus, son of God, son of man, said differently.  

I’m heavy with age and work and threats and betrayal.  I’m asking you God, I’m asking you Jesus, restore my childlike enthusiasm.  Give me the desire to carry on.  I see you as the one who told the truth.  At the Last Supper Jesus said that Judas would betray him.  It’s been said even God couldn’t pick 12 men who would not betray him.  I look at politics and I see the deceit and lies and betrayal. In my own life I meet everyone these days in fear that they will lie and attack me for their profit.  Judas betrayed God for 30 pieces of silver. But some say that Judas was the truest for he triggered humanity’s salvation.  These events unfolded later but at the supper Jesus spoke of the betrayal.  

The greatest harm comes from betrayal because betrayal is always the work of a friend, a loved one.  

It is the sense of betrayal we feel in terms of the institutions that we serve, the sense of betrayal of our government representatives.  But that is through the whole of the Jesus story.  it’s the leaders of society that blinded by their wealth and privilege kill God.  

Even today it is the government that promotes and protects abortion.  It’s is the government that now that favours suicide.  It’s the government that profits from tobacco and alcohol and would add cannibis to it’s source of income for increasingly nefarious hedonistic means.  

Jesus.  You a carpenter, teacher, healer. You lived under the local authority of Herod the Jew and under the representative of Rome's Pilate born during the reign of Caesar Octavian.  You taught the Kingdom of God and Love.  Christianity is the religion of Love.  Agape and Filios and yes even eros.  

I am crying for you daily. I see you in the beauty of nature, in moments with others, in the relationships we share, in the love of my dog even.  Everywhere the Holy Spirit comes. I pray, Holy Spirit Come. You are here now. The Resurrected Christ.  

I wash your feet and you wash mine.  You wash my feet and I wash your.

At the last supper you say that the bread is your body and the wine is your blood and we share in the celebration of eating and drinking God for God is all but this is you in death and life and resurrection. This is a reminder of the Last Supper.  In the days of Passover.  

Thank you Jesus.  

Christ Church Cathedral - Easter Sunday

Christ Church Cathedral is directly across the street from the Hyatt.  The North Shore Round Up didn’t used to overlap with Easter Weekend but the Hyatt offered the North Shore Round Up an incredible deal on the weekend so thereafter Christians like me had to juggle our Holy Week with Round up or choose one over the other.  The Gay AA round up occurs on this weekend too making it a very packed time for some.
If one attends Easter Sunday service at Christ Church you can get away just in time to hear the last Spiritual Speaker of the Round Up at Sunday noon.
My church today is St James Anglican.  I was a member of Christ Church Cathedral for about 12 years until  Gilbert at the age of 2 was suddenly accosted by one of the members of Christ Church Cathedral and told in the middle of the service that he could not be there.  He was as usual sitting quietly at our feet but we were asked to leave and it was embarrassing though not humiliating as I suspected was the intent.  Alternatively the overzealous young man might have thought he’d get in trouble with God or the deacon if he allowed an animal in the church.  Jesus, by contrast, loved animals, starting his life in a manger.   Zoroastrians considered dogs especially to be divine which occasioned Moslems to call them dirty until a particular dog saved the Brotherhood.
The irony indeed was that Gilbert specifically, a therapy dog, had been blessed by our Bishop.  Laura, Gilbert and I left church that Sunday  and drove  to nearby St. James Church where Father Mark greeted us. He even said that while Gilbert was truly welcomed he wasn’t yet sure about me.
I’m thankful each year for the North Shore Round Up to bring me back to Christ Church.  I’ve always loved this oldest Anglican church in Vancouver with all the ages of devotion seeping from the hundreds of thousands of Christians who’ve worshipped here through wars and peace. We stand on the shoulders of those who go before us.  I’ve loved to be able to travel to Jerusalem, Rome, Moscow and Istabul to pray and worship in the churches which began over fifteen hundred years ago.  I am heartened by the stewardship of Dean Elliot that this last decade has seen the restoration of the organ, the renovation of the basement and now the roof of Christ Church being restored.
Rupert Lang the conductor and choir leader has made sure that Christ Church has won countless awards for their incredible music.  Easter Sunday, with the horns and resurrection hymns is the best.  Laura and I arrived early and were joined by our friends George and Jane.  It was a lovely service.
Christ is risen. Christ is Risen Indeed. Hallelujah!
And yes, right after communion, we rushed to the Hyatt to catch the last of the North Shore Round Up Speakers.  A marvellously full and spiritual community weekend.
 

Easter Sunday at St. James Anglican Church

Gilbert loves St. James Anglican Church and all the people there who love him. Like Christmas, Easter Sunday, is always an uplifting ‘fun’ time of the church year.  Jesus is Risen!  Hallelujah!.  Death is conquered.
It’s always good to go early to church on Easter Sunday because the seats fill up.
Gilbert and I had to check out the flowers outside the church as well. I just bought the new Nikon Coolpix S9700 so I don’t have to take my big nikon camera on my upcoming travels.  So while Gilbert was sniffing the dog walk beside the church, meeting with the pastors dogs, I was taking pictures of the church and flowers in the outside garden.
Easter Sunday is always white lilies.  I remember going to church as a child with my mom and her sisters, Hannah and Sadie.  Easter Sunday was  the time for the church Ladies to don their favourite spring easter hats.  My mother and her sisters loved their flowered 'bonnets'.  There was some fashion in the church today but mostly people were Vancouver drab. Only some of the folk got into the festivities. The clergy were very well attired in the golden robes. I actually wore a tie myself but know if Mom and her sisters were about, poor Gilbert would have been bathed,  likely sporting a colourful easter ribbon.  
I love the horns.  Lots of trumpets and trombones and horns are brought out to accompany Easter music.  Our choir was particularly inspiring.
All round the service was moving beginning as it did with the Rite of Sprinkling of Holy Water.   Father Mark Greenaway Robbins preached on the cross and taught me that the big life sized cross hanging from the ceiling is called the Rood Cross.  Rood is an old English word meaning cross.  Father Mark has been preaching all week on meditations of the 17th century Anglican priest, Thomas Traherne who saw the Cross as the centre of desire.  Today Father Mark, preached on Traherne’s description of the cross as the “place of sorrow; it is the root of happiness, and the gate of Heaven". What a joyous gate it is too.   It was particularly inspiring for this remarkable day.
After the Lord’s Prayer,the Nicene Creed, Confession and the actual mass of shared body and blood of Jesus, we sang together that great hymn, Jesus Christ is Risen Today.
Then it was over.  In a way another new year had begun.
I had coffee with Karen until someone took her chair while she was up.  I didn’t think to confront them with sword or pistols in the Bishops room.  She took that as a cue to gather up her awesome son and depart leaving me talk cats with one of the clergy. Gilbert was mostly interested in he pastor's dogs and the cake nearby on the table. Talk of cats doesn't much interest him.
When Gilbert and I left there was  down pouring rain.  As usual Father Mathew, without any thought of the rain, was listening on the street..  Father Matthew is distinguished by his total absorption in the person he is listening to.  Today that was so evident as the rain was the size of cats but he was not to be distracted.   Meanwhile,  I was rushing to my car and trying to get Gilbert inside out of the rain as quick as possible.