Anxiety

It’s a word for a feeling. A sort of empty even painful hollow sort of feeling Confusing really.  Uncertainty of death.  The opposite of envy. Hearing of people you may or may not know already in assisted living ,  The undermining insertion of mimetic viruses of fear and loathing,  Clinging to the tattered remnants of faith like a flag shot through and through

I believe. 

I love.

 

I am. 

The Creator is not me or if it is me it’s the Shadow side for I know not how to fly or know with any solace the future or even the myth of the past.

If is the season of the Christmas story. Jesus of Nazareth. I’m wholly unprepared.  The Postal Strike.  The Eras Tour of Taylor Swift. The money no longer sufficient in millions or billions now being described in trillions, Inflationn and secular security.  Thieves and capitalists and communist.  The politicians and other salesmen are toting the term ‘giving Tuesday’.  The shell game continues,

I understand gambling. The allure of the dandelion petals. She loves me she loved me not.

A beggar to pass his year of requisite learning must sit with a begging bowl believing that someone will give him food and drink. He must practically accept grace and known the synchronicity of his belly and the universe.

The lack of faith id the satanic.  

The oldest law of the world or so I learned is that Chinese teaching , there are big fish and little fish and the little fish must be fast and numerous.  Conditional and unconditional love,

Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.  Thank you Holy Spirit. Thank you Mother Mary.  Thank you grand fathers and grandmothers. Thank you ancestors. Thank you relatives and friends. Thank you today.

It is 4 am, I went to bed reading Tori Ames and now am awake remembering New York and Moscow.  

Leaches , parasites and symbiotes,

I am thinking more of death, transformation from this world to the next.  Passings, Preparation,  How vulnerable, The begging bowl.

Believing, 

I am not alone.  I only knew of one man crucified or three as a child, Now I’ve learned of millions, the Armenians.I visited an Armenian church,  The priest had no illusions,

My father described men as ‘hard’, meaning their hearts were hard as in scarred. He was anxious in the end about his pension. It ran out at 90 and he lived longer than 90. His children, especially my brother reassured him.

I am today without a child or a brother and thought earlier of the woman how aborted my child and the women who withheld children not interested in anything but themselves as princess and then that day in the room with the play boy and the white dressed nurse ourdfied the door and giving her the vial of white.  The sperm were viable. I’d made all the effort and given the millions and they’d made all the promises and the media blamed it all on men,  We were stupid gullible and Pierre Trudeau pushed abortion and now Justin Trudeau continues the family hatred of Catholics and Christians killing babies, burning their churches and inviting invasion and changing the language.

I am alone,

She once described the men and women she loathed who took care of pets but did not have children,  But false allegations and lies and libel flourish in Canada so where can one be Caesar’s wife within this world of empty begging bowls,

Dog eat dog.  Rule of the jungle, 

Or forgiveness and love.  

Where can one retreat - Cappidocea , Meterora,  A good book.  

I’m watching Star Trek again, the Empire and Rebels.  God the father, God the son,  The passage of earth as a lesson in humility.  

Patience,  

I want to know you Creator.  Maybe if I’m with you I’ll grasp the Hitchiker’s Guide to Religiodity.  The Idiots guide to enlightenment,  I was fervently disappointed to learn Alan Watts was quite the drunk. I’ve thought the same of the writing of prophets and the Church has definitely had it’s drunken propes,  The Imans lust and sneak opium and hashish,

Life on life’s terms,  I am here clear witted offered a daily reprieve from demon drink.  Another escape lost to me, No wonder i follow the Mars expedition story with such interest.  And the demented escape like the psychotic to the dreams in their heads,

God is good all the time,  Thank you Jesus,  

Sick

I enjoyed the conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre, seeing old friends, remembering nostalgically those not there, decades of such conferences until Covid.  This was my first and it really was good.  

Sunday morning I was at St. Barnabus.  My throat was sore .  It was hard to swallow.  I enjoyed the walk on the Quayside New Westminster.  Oysters and Clam Chowder.  The next day I felt like something was torn inside when I swallowed.  Tuesday I only made it through the morning asking staff to cancel. I had laryngitis for sure.  I simply can’t work with laryngitis.  The fever and chills came in the afternoon. I don’t like chills. For two days I didn’t think I’d ever get warm.

The nights were worse.  Up on the hour I couldn’t sleep, such fatigue, coughing and miserable.  My mind wasn’t working. I could hardly pray,  I tried watching tv.  I couldn’t focus. Reading a book was out.

I was still walking Madigan 3-4 times a day. He’d poop each day and I’d get back to bed. I relished the electric blanket.  I made a trip out for propane, keeping my place jungle hot while feeling chilled.

In the wee hours I was talking to Jesus. I hurt all over. I have chronic pain but this was such that I couldn’t find any position of relief and I’d taken a handful mix of acetaminophen, ibuprofen and ASA.  I was drinking all the fluid I could.  Feed a cold water a flu. I didn’t know what I had .  Food had no appeal but I shared roast chicken with Madigan and ordered in Chinese and PHO.  I couldn’t finish anything. I’d have no appetite.  No taste. I just did what I knew I must.  There was even a point there when I was dry heaving over the toilet.

In the wee hours of the night I talked to Jesus.  I thought of him on the cross and was humbled .  I’d have given up the names of family to torturers in very little time at all.  No judgement of tv and such but I really know I don’t have what it takes. Maybe when I was young. I’m old.  Pneumonia is the old man’s friend. I asked my god my god why hasn’t thou forsaken me.  I was weeping and it was just the fatigue and sadness and maybe some guilt and shame. I’ve had a good life , an adventure, I’ve served, but I’ve fallen fall short of what I could have been or could have done. I imagined I could have been a better man, especially to the wives, even my mother, or my father, or my mentors. I feel in the end I’ve let everyone down, not in great ways , nothing sinister, but like my report cards always said, “Billy could be so good if he put his mind to it.”  I didn’t feel my mind was helping then. I was in pain and feverish and chills and maybe a bit delirious.  I thought I was dying. I thought this is it. I was talking to Jesus.  Then Madigan would cuddle up beside me.  And somehow I’d wake in the morning and enjoy the s

I had some Zithromax and began that on Thursday.  I think it was all viral but the psychology of antibiotics gave me a break.  The razor sharp pain of swallowing stopped.  Green phlegm began and the cough now wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t sleep. No desire to sleep but no relief.  Fatigue. Utter fatigue.

I was up on Friday. Weak. I’d not slept much but 4x a day for a half hour I’d walked Madigan. I’d driven the car to get us food a couple of times. It seemed like weeks had passed in what was really only a couple of day.  Wednesday and Thursday were really bad but Friday I listened to an on line meeting. I drank more soup and believed  I was out of it though the cough persisted, a dry could, annoying.  I was past infectious.  You’re most infectious early not late.  

I was thankful that I slept that morning and showering made it to the chiropractor.  The pain in my pain which is a curse was relieved.  I met Laura because I felt guilty providing so little to madigan.  I’d taken him to the off leashe dog park but the minimum. He was a trooper. A good little nurse.  Observant. Caring. I liked watching Laura walking him. He loves her and she is fun for him. He smiles, I smiled.  I knew I was going to live that morning. Friday it was fairly certain. There was only a 12 hour stretch it was uncertain. I couldn’t get air in for a bit, like a scuba dive accident.  I hate not being able to breath.  The old TB. All the colds and respiratory infections.  Friends dying of Covid.  Letting the old die of flu and pneumonia.  I worked a country gp and did my share of hospice.  Breath is important.  Looking back I can’t believe I smoked that decade.  But then I drank back then too never knowing I’d live this long. People shooting at me.  Planes crashing,  Cars and motorcycles doing pirouette’s in the air.  I’m lucky to be alive. People always called me lucky,

I feel blessed.  I only saw one set of foot steps in the sand that night.  It’s often that way.  God was with me.  I am blessed.  God is good all of the time.  Today I’m thankful.  

My neighbour has just brought me hot soup. So I’ll stop and feel the grace.

Thank you.  I’m glad to be alive. 

Wee hour peanut butter and jam

I am having a peanut butter and marmalade open sandwich.  It’s 5 am.  I woke up at 330 am to pee and now have peed twice, said prayers, petted Madigan and read university on line course offerings.  I completed my winter adventure and the spring now waits. I have a course to complete on driving and driving training to do. I continue my studies in gender.  I’m attending church and AA.  I could play guitar and sing again now that I have hearing aids.  

I’ve a day of work tomorrow.  I’ve paperwork to gather for my accountant to complete my taxes. I’m been whittling away at such tasks. I’ve laundry to pick up and drop off. I’ve not yet returned to doing my own loads in my own washer and drier given the bags of laundry I’ve been doing.  The Merry Maids came yesterday and did a marvellous job of leaving the place clean and tidy. It’s uplifting to have that feeling of being cared for each time they come and go.  I slept from 10 to 330 in a well made bed with clean sheets and comforter. I have been using the electric blanket and enjoying the warmth of bed. It was snowing/sleeting yesterday.  The temperature has been very low and my propane heating costs very high.  

The 10 week 10 hour a week course on prehistoric ritual and religion appeals to me. I considered the history of medicine and history of art too but keep returning to archeology and anthropology in my on going training in spirituality.  

WPATH is meeting in Lisbon.  I’d thought of attending. Portugal is appealing but what as far as I can tell my bucket list now is only Venice, Vienna and Berlin.  Southern Ireland and Scotland are forever calling now.  I always think a bridge too far and must reign in enthusiasm.  I enjoyed reading the philosophy of mind course addressing the mind-body issue andd yes I’d like to take that.  I enjoyed studying Biblical Hebrew from the University of Jerusalem but the problem then was poor broad band connection with the internet I received on the boat at dock.  Now my Starlink is really serving me well.  My home is back to normal with too much clutter.  All I need is available but I do need a run to the storage locker and I have that nagging feeling I have to seriously reduce the cost and collection.  I have too many old clothes.  Given how little I needed this 2 1/2 months in the south I really don’t need all of what I have here or especially what I have in storage.  I enjoyed putting bags of excess clothing in the diabetes clothing bin behind my Ford dealer.  

So here I am with my mind considering all that I have to do.  I did drink strong coffee at the meeting last night.  George told me he’ll be 82 next month and shared tales of his younger years travelling about partying with friends and losing jobs and changing jobs with his portable skills in waiting and bar tending.  I reflected back to those days when I enjoyed the freedom of having a ‘job’ compared to the ‘career’ I have today.

I enjoy my work on line.  I’ve been back in the clinics and will be back at docside next week.

I thought of doing a series of papers on psychopharmacology and doing a simple utube presentation of the studies.  

I also reflected on those folk who watch documentaries and learning channel, History and National Geographic.  I do that very little, my principle night television watching a recent movie, a thiller or war or spy, or detective.  Last night I watched another episode of NCIS and enjoyed Gibbs.  I’d earlier watched an episode of Star Trek.  I feel inspired not only to learn but to write and create but so far all it comes down to is I can’t sleep and I’ve now had a peanut butter and jam sandwich so should get back to sleep with the hope of another hour or two.

Maybe I’ll read in bed for a bit.  

I’ll fill out the university application tomorrow. I resisted doing it today. It’s the same course I contemplated a year ago.  The British Museum exhibit of early man excited me as did my archeology studies in undergrad of the Minoans and Mycenaeans.  I was blessed to visit Knossos.  

I was glad to get back in touch with Bob, his accepting a referral I made. I really ought to arrange for coffee and discussion .  I’d love to keep up with what he is doing and enjoyed our discussions in the past.  

I’m 72.  I was thankful for all the birthday wishes on Facebook. Otherwise it was a non event that is still dawning on my. 71 was a very good year.  I’m grateful for the blessings I’ve had .

I don’t struggle with Jesus as son of God.  I appreciate Yahvew as being and creator.  I understand Jesus as the human face and the Holy Ghost as a motherly force but the idea of Jesus ‘dying for our sins ‘and Paul’s Judaic ‘blood sacrifice’ though is lifted out of the primitive religions I wish to study. Like Golden Bough.  I find that interpretation of the Life of Jesus stilted.  I more easily relate to the mysticism of Jesus and Christianity.  Knowing God. Prayer and meditation.  Sin means to miss the mark, the imperfect.  I like Kurtz , the Spirituality of Imperfectin and Cohen’s the crack that lets the light in.  Our Brokeness but the ‘sacrificial’ no so much which is why I guess I am attracted to this course. In addiction the person is killing self and turning their back on life and God.  

We discussed faith and fear last night.  FEAR - Fuck everything and run or Face everything and Recovery.  George shared another I’d not known False Evidence Appearing Real.  

I have knee and back pain.  I have been careful because I need to be able to walk to serve my dog.  We had roast chicken tonight.  

Well, another try at bed.  

 

We are not alone ever

“I am in the middle of a pandemic.  A chimera virus, lab made in Wuhan, has escaped and the world is no longer safe,’  she spurted out her fear. There was a sense of softness and vulnerability about her. She wore an animal skin blouse with black pencil skirt.  She kidded herself being dressed like a big cat. She was mostly still a kitten. She walked strong, tough, really, mostly, but sometimes was afraid.

‘You weren’t safe yesterday,” he said, ‘You are not safe today. Security is always relative.” He was her friend. Strong, blond, handsome. Rugged in a way, like a man who hasn’t been to a gym but has been to the north.

“I felt safer yesterday,” she continued.”Today I feel like I’m under attack. I feel that Xi Linping has attacked me personally, my peace, my way of life.  I worried about the world ending with that shrill child screaming every time I turned on the news. But the world’s been ending as long as I can remember.  Acid rain, ozone layer, computer viruses, every promise of doom and constant demands for more and more money.  Meanwhile there was always disease but not this. Not his man made menace.” She sipped her coffee latte, her lips red with lipstick that matched her long nails.  She had said she’d found some waterproof red that didn’t smear when she drank coffee out. 

He laughed. “You didn’t mind being melted by chemical rain, or boiled by the planets loss of defences or betrayed by robot millennial computer, but admit it you’ve always been a bit of a germophobe. All that cleanliness, the cleanses, the alternative health stores, the regular check ups.  This particular threat of death has got to you.” He’d spoke between bites of his benny cut with the razored wood handled blade and lifted carefully to his mouth on the hefty silver fork.  She smiled looking at him.  

“Don’t try to mock me.  You’re not attending any of your meetings and conferences like you used to.”  She crossed her long legs and thought how she missed cigarettes after a meal though it had been at least a decade since she’d last had a smoke.

“I’m cautious. I’m a survivalist. I’m taking my zinc and vitamin D.  I’ve hydroxychloroquine and Zithromax in case I get a cold. I’ve worn a mask in doors.  I’m washing my hands and keeping social distance. I rather like the social distancing and I do like working more from home.  All that herding and group gathering hasn’t been that necessary for years since the technology made cities obsolete.  Cities are the real pollution. That’s the real evidence of fear. People unable to be alone.” There was traffic in the street.  People back to going to work. Cars. Trucks. Cyclists. Motorcyclists. They’d parked around the corner from their favourite morning cafe.  Yolks. He paid the bill despite her protest.

“Why aren’t you afraid then?’ She asked as they climbed down into his British racing green  mini Cooper. “I suppose you’re going to say, because you have Jesus.” She smiled as she said that. There was no rancour in her voice.  She was baiting him a bit.  She believed differently from him but they were both washed as the devout would say.

“That’s for sure.  I trust in God. Jesus is my friend. My God is transcendent and personal .  That latter counts. I don’t feel unsafe. Somehow there’s meaning to life even if it’s arbitrary for comfort.  I don’t feel alone.  At times I feel even more aware, almost enlightened and I remember that in times of despair.  Yes. There is Jesus. But mostly I’m just one person and I take care of my side of the street. ” He shifted gears as they pulled out of  the space into the light  traffic.  

“My greatest comfort,’ she said, ‘is not listening to the fear mongering.  The news is like a cacophony of hyenas baying at the moon as if their constant talking will keep it from falling.  I’m also working very hard at not thinking of the future or the past.  I listened to Father Lynn and really believe it helps to live in the day.” 

“Carpe diem’ he said, glancing at her beautiful face as he shifted lanes coming off the ramp onto the highway.

“I admit I don’t trust the government.  I don’t trust individual politicians.” He continued , “ I know they have made all manner of mistakes crucifying and genociding. Governments are not to be trusted. If the Communist Chinese government had been caring for anyone but themselves they wouldn’t have bribed the WHO to lie. They would have stopped the virus in Wuhan.  But governments never think they’re wrong.  They’ve caused the holocaust and the Armenian genocide. They’ve caused wars and starvation.  Men and women in groups maximize their positive’s or their negatives yet they always blame individuals.  Right now they’re trying to blame Trump but before that they blamed Obama.  Frazer’s  Golden Bough said it all.  We have our sacrificial kings who we ultimately blame if things go wrong while we enjoy the benefits when things go right.  The people always deserve the leaders they get.’

Just then,they were pulling into the dog groomers.  The bundle of fur was waiting.  His whole body wagging to see the two of them.  When he put the little guy in the back seat, he licked her neck and quickly climbed into the front to sit on her lap. He loved his mommy.  ‘My fur baby’ she called him.  She had adult children and grand children but this was the love of her life today. It was easy to see how she loved to spoil the little ones but limit setting was a whole other matter. The little guy, despite having the whole back seat, had wiggled his way into the front on her lap.

They next drove to the park, where the river ran into the lake. He’d brought his camera, the new Nikon P1000, he’d bought for birds.  She’d remembered to wear sandals as he’d said they would be walking.  Once he’d parked he came around to her side to help her out by taking the leash and letting the dog out first.  The blind dog was so excited, knowing by the smells, just where they were. Definitely a happy place of his.

Walking in the woods, she asked,”Do you really think there is a Satan?”

He was picking up dog poo when she surprised him with that. “Not in an anthropomorphic sense.” He said.   “I believe God is all but that humans have the capacity for free will and can choose to believe or not to believe .  Satan is the experience of the absence of God.  It’s a terrifying place to be with just one self alone.  Communism is the religion of aetheism. They believe in the State. Ironically democracy believes in the will of the people allowing God to act through the collective.  The difference is subtle.  The State is man made. Democracy is more natural than dictatorship.  I just prefer Pascal’s wager and his thinking, as a French mathetician about life and God and death. Ernest Becker was right about the Denial of Death. That’s what this virus is upsetting.  That whole climate change catastrophising about the arctic disappearing and endangered species and give me more and more money. It was a real issue of which industry was taking care of especially with Moore’s law. But this bug is a different thing. It’s not going to kill us tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow hundreds or thousands of years from now depending on which doomsayer makes the prediction.  This bug is here today and killing people even as we speak. Not many, mind you, but enough.   Of course the Climate Change Billionaires all lied over and over again, the Arctic is still there despite their false predictions. This bug like migration, corruption, regional war and the destruction of the middle class is happening now.  The Climate Change Crisis never was a crisis. The language is the thing. These people don’t believe in truth and words are what ever they make them. They’re all marketing students.  They sensationalize and frankly lie.  Goebbels was their prophet certainly not Marshal McLuhan.  Their ignorance and arrogance are almost palpable.  That’s what hubris was all about.  They make themselves God while denying God. They worship their ideas.  They say they love freedom of speech but only when it agrees with them.”

He stopped.  She stopped. The dog stopped. His camera came up.  A Swanson’s thrush had chosen just that moment to make herself visible on the limb of a spruce tree.  He took her picture. She saw him smile. The bird had the sweetest song.  “They’re rare to see, you know’, he said.  It had flitted away as quickly as it came.  

She was holding the leash as again the dog walked ahead of them sniffing the trail and marking his scent.  

“I love their song,” she said. “I always love Christian environmental stewardship when it was life enriching not the doomsaying death cry of today’s environmentalism.  Christian environmental stewardship was good behaviour.  I always thought of it as good maintenance.  We learned as children to clean up our rooms and maintain the house and yards.  Hiking we didn’t leave our waste behind.  My father and mother didn’t pollute like they claimed .  People in the city did. But brought up on he farm we learned respect.”

“We did too. ‘ he added with passion.”We were in nature. This high rise city life is parking lots and raves. They rape the land, steal from the rural people and make a continual mess of consumerism and entertainment.  Then they point fingers. The governments still pouring the cities raw pollution into the waterways and we’re supposed to trust them to save the planet. It’s always like adolescents to know how to solve the world’s problems but refuse to clean up their room.” 

They’d arrived at the lake. The ducks and geese were out in the open water. Near the shore was the marsh and pussy willows.  She was thankful for the little wooden viewing deck. Otherwise her sandals wouldn’t be enough. The dog would have loved to have rolled in the muck as well and that would have made the drive home in the little car a mess.

He took pictures. The telephoto let him shoot the wood ducks close up. The Canada geese were big in the view finder. There were mallards and canvasbacks. He liked the wood duck plummage most.  Such wonderful colour.  

“I believe it could be random,” she said her hands on the wood railing, leaning forward, her long blond hair catching the light.  He loved looking at her.  She smiled.  “I just prefer to believe in God,  a great artist and there’s a great team upon team of creators and movie producers and set designers.  We’re the actors at just one level in one dimension. I think the atheists reduce things too much.  They minimize creation and their idea of the God is way to smalll. “

“They do love their straw dog arguments. Even Hutchens’.  It wasn’t always that way.  I loved reading the letters that C.S.Lewis in response to what were called the ‘new aetheists’ of his day. His Screwtape Letters were a masterpiece of irony with anthropomorphism of satanic intellectualism.’

“Would he be afraid of the Virus? Do you think?”  She asked,

“I’d think he’d be more afraid of the communists.  People in his days’ didn’t fear reality. American’s had William James and pragmatism.  Like most of the scientists today the learned have been mostly godly men.  They cared for the  world as much but they worried about their neighbour. The Nazis, the National Socialists, and the Communists, the international socialists, were always at war. As a Christian he didn’t fear the world as much as people who wanted to rule and persecute others.  Islam is called the religion of peace but it’s only that when everyone else is overpowered and Sharia law rules. Lewis lived through the great wars.  Biological weapons came in the form of gas and later atomic bombs and radiation.  Today it’s just viruses and fentanyl and economic collapse.  Jesus said, “do not be afraid’ . Lewis was the bravest man until he lost his wife.  Engles and Marx knew that. They set out to destroy families for their perfect state because people would rather protect the personal than the ideological. Marx and Engles were cold fish who lusted after women more than loving them like Lewis and Tolkien and that Inklings Group.”

“Do you love me,’ she asked.  

“Yes,” he said. 

“Thank you,” she said then followed on ahead pulled on by the dog while he stood watching her body move with the sensuous grace he’d come to know so well.  

June 9, 2020 The uncertainty continues

I awake to a new day. Rain is loud on the roof. The furnace kicks in.  I notice my back hurts still.  My faith is in the new chair. There were times I had to hang upside down to solve the sprain.  Everyday I do something different. The anti inflmatories work. Manipulation works.  Massage. Everything helps.

I’m here seeking God.  I know God in a variety of ways. Intellectually I accept that God is creator and he has created from himself. I live and breathe in God. I am God stuff myself.  God is all.  It’s intellectual. It’s intuitive. It’s emotional. God as mother, father,brother, and son.  I am co creator in creation. Does the butterfly think the philosopher or the philosopher think the butterfly.  Each day I ask to know God’s will and for the power to carry that out.  I want to do the next right thing. I want to love rather than fear. I want my faith to increase without crucifixion. I want to Grok God.  Holy Spirit come. I guess I want the orgasm of God. Hedonist God not the Stoic God.The rocketed into the fourth dimension God. NASA God. Being in the flow always.

Instead, I play hide and seek each day. I wake today and wish to know God more fully and do God’s will more fully. I make myself a cup of coffee and want to savour it more. I was to speak later this morning with wisdom. I want to channel the answers that people need. I want. I want. I want.  What does God want?

Like the Ladies who listen, I listen.  Meditation.  Listening to God.  

I want my back to be better and Gilberts heart to be better and Covid 19 to be cured. I want a manned space and sea, Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes galore, a space colony on the Moon, Mars and Europa. I want to meet with aliens from another galaxy and really be rocketed into the fourth dimension. I want to know puppy love. I want that nativity of childhood which became jaded with wear and tear to return with faith and maturity. I want. I want. I want.  What does God want?

For there in is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall live by faith.  Romans 1:17

Faith.  Faith to faith.  Every day, every moment I trust in God.  Jesus said that God cared for a sparrow, would he not care for me? I awake and know God.  God is omniscient. God is omnipotent. God is omnipotential.  God is all.  God is now. God is expanding time inwardly outwardly transcendentally . God is all.  Life is alive. This expericience is palpable, breathing ,tasting, creative not the reductionist dead thing my mind makes with small ideas.  God is transcendent.  God is history. God is myth. God is fact and fiction. God is perception.  God is John Malkovich.  God is Keith Richards. God is Omar Shariff. God is Peter O Toole. God is the Pink Panther.  God is Disney. God is radiant. God is the most beautiful sunset, sunrise and symphony. God is the new born baby.  God is Gilbert. God is.  

Be Still and Know that I am God.  Be still and know that I am. Be still and know that I. Be still and know that. Be still and know. Be still and. Be still. Be.

Round and round and round.

Hide and seek with God.  I see you. I see me.  I see you. I see me. Thou art great. I am small. I am great. Thou art small. Humility and pride. The dance.  

It’s all about faith. Trust. Love.  God is the writer and director.  Do I trust the Script. Or do I improvise and change the words and make myself the centre of attention or do I accept in this scene I’m the potted plant. All the world is a stage.  I’m the kazoo in the symphony. I’m waiting now on the bench for my time to play in the game. I’m resting. I ‘m watching. I’m reflecting. 

Faith. When I get on my motorcycle I have to have great faith.  

When I sail alone at sea I must have great faith.

When I go to sleep at night I must have great faith.  

Faith.  

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  Psalm 40:10

Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.  Thank you Mother Mary. Thank you Angel Michael. Thank you Mom and Dad. Grandmoms and grandads, Brother Ron. All my teachers and mentors. My family and friends. All my neighbours. Thank you all. Thank you .  When two or more are gathered together , there too, am I .  Thank you all the lovers I”ve known, the wives, and girlfriends and those I trusted in intimacy.  Thank you for the joys of youth and middle age and old age.  Thank you God for all.  Thank you most for this day and life, l’chaim!

Wednesday May 13, Covid 19 Another day

The days run together. I am looking forward to the weekend. Laura’s visit made the weekend a special time again. Gilbert and I were happy with the change. The days run together otherwise.  Work. Tiring.

 It’s good to work.  I feel and hope I’m contributing. Every day there seems at at least one life I touched but I feel so inadequate before the whole mystery of the thing. Anxiety is high.  I know anxiety is a harbinger of change and that band aids just delay and make things worse. So many have already tried to put their head in the sand and now they don’t know who kicked them. Drugs and alcohol and other addictions.

I’m praying and meditating. I’m feeling forced to ask what is essential. What do I want these days. I’m afraid.  I have faith to balance it. In the morning I meditate and like Bernie taught me, say ‘Holy Spirit Come”.  Today the prayer that comforted me began. “God I offer myself to you ....”.  I’m enjoying reading the Bundell Western. The young men are talking about the Bible as they adventure in the west. It’s historically true.  Not like so many revisionist writings that forget Christianity came before Hollywood. Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s tale has been usurped by comics.  

I’m walking the dog.  We enjoy going outside, seeing the green, the birds and spring flowers. I carry a camera.  I’ve had my second up of Ethiopian coffee. I roasted the beans last night. Granola and Cobs scones for breakfast.  I have to shower and dress.

Another day of virtual office. It’s still west coast cloudy and rained heavy. I like the sunny days with blue skies. My mood is influenced by the sun and the moon. I was irritable yesterday in the evening. .  Just weary.

Today I’m rested and that’s usually the way it is. I enjoy my mornings.  But by the end of clinic I’m sometimes exhausted, hearing the pain and all the expectation and unfulfilled desire.  I am anxious about strangers now in virtual. Not knowing them as I do those I have met in person.  I worry too much.  I’m old. Never before have I had so much education and experience.  Perhaps that’s why I doubt. When I was young and inexperienced I thought I knew. Now I know more what I don’t know. The mystery invites.

Time to go.  Thank you God for  another day. Please help Gilbert to be healthy.  Watch over my family and keep them safe. Help my friends in this time of trouble.  Help my patients. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me. 

Sunday Morning Thoughts in a Pandemic

I woke this morning, took a deep breath and didn’t cough. I don’t have a fever and my throat isn’t that sore. My rational mind sayS I don’t have Covid 19. I’m a doctor.  This is my 4th epidemic in the front lines. I’ve treated hundreds if not thousands of infectious disease cases.  I’ve touched tens of thousands of strangers. I’ve peered and poked in every orifice. I’m immortal.

In medical school I wrote a poem published nationally called “Ickitis”.  We all got it.  Whatever we thought deep down was the ‘ickkiest’ disease we developed the symptons for it.  I actually thought my mild aches and pains which when focused on became all I could think of was a rare arthritis. I convinced my smiling rheumatologist specialists to do one of the earliest HLA B27 tests.  It came back negative.  Of course I didn’t believe it but somehow miraculous I continued to live.

We learned not to do unnecessary tests because eventually we’d find something positive. The rule of testing was always, would it change the course of therapy.  Today’s Covid 19 testing is being done rationally.  It’s limited value in the individual but at the public health level it has important value.  I know tests so I know that ‘false negatives’ occur. It’s just like pregnancy tests.  Sometimes they’re wrong and the person isn’t pregnant.  

 Even if I had a negative Covid 19 test I’d probably convince myself that the test was a ‘false negative.” I wouldn’t even consider the possibilities of false positive. Paranoid , I love anything that confirms my paranoia.  

Right now the germophobes are more anxious but less angry. ‘See I told you so,’ they say to previous disbelievers.  Freud, when the Nazis were out to get him and he was whisked away to Britain finally said, “Maybe the paranoids are right.”

The trouble with being a doctor is that when the chink in the armour of immortality (sometimes prosaically called ‘denial’) occurs the whole coping defence system breaks down. I’m already dead. I’m going to die. My insaniety let off the tight leash ,I normally hold it on , is off and running.  

I think it’s pretty good if I am getting through the day. I’m socially isolating. I don’t like people much either so it’s not particularly difficult. I like being alone with my dog but I don’t like my mind.  It’s often not helpful.  I have to pray a lot.  I get up each day and meditate as long as I can to lower the blood pressure, reduce the over all anxiety and try and train my mind to come to command. I keep focussing on my breathing. Breathing is good. No don’t think about email and face book and work and tomorrow and yesterday.  Focus on the now.  I repeat the name of Jesus.  Today I was androgynous and going on about Mother Mary. My superstitious mind has me trying out various names for God. I’m asking for help. It’s all bigger than me.  Life and death have always been above my pay grade. I am humbled by my position as a kazoo player in the symphony of life. There’s always been someone faster or slower than me. I’ve always looked up and now I just have to lower the bar. I’m alive. I’m sitting here breathing. It’s okay. All shall be well I say over and over again.  Be Still and Know that I am God I say as a round.  My monkey mind is well leashed after 15 minutes. I then have coffee.

I love my Ethiopian coffee.  I often think of Ethiopia and India, countries I was in last year.  I worry a bit about the people there. I have so much more options here.  I pray for the safety of my family and friends.

(I believe thaet God created the heavens and the earth. Everything is God stuff. I’m imagining in the imagination of God. There wasn’t God and building blocks. One good. Good. God is good. One mind. OM. E=MC2.  Energy = Matter. Matter is just slow energy. Energy is a metaphor of spirit. I am a spiritual being living in a physical world. I believe therefor I am.)

I left surgery and did general practice and community medicine (Public health) then Psychiatry. I was most interested in Immunology then. That and black holes, anti matter, paradigms and paradoxes. I was different back then.  A nerd and geek who danced.  I’ve always known the most beautiful and brilliant impatient women. I have had the most extraordinary friends and the greatest teachers. Straight A’s in Arts and Science at University. 

Psychiatry back then looked at what we today call psychosomatic medicine, how the mind caused and contributed to disease.  I studied hypnosis with the Eriksonian foundation and was doing minor surgery with patients. I’d later go on to do hypnotherapy and marvel in patients ‘curing’ or ‘self curing’ themselves of major physical illnesses.  I became fascinated by the power of placebo.  30% cure was the rule of thumb.  Mind over matter.  Rather often ignored by the mainstream but found in the odd places of research like “spontaneous rmisson ‘. The money though was in the physical. Money is material nad never to be discounted. Even Jesus said ‘Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s due.

Piaget’s studies showed that abstract thinking occured at early teen age development. A later study showed a third to a half of adults never progressed that far.  Surgery works universally but medicine and psychotherapy generally are more successful in the YAFFI.  An acronym for who can best benefit from non invasive techniques.  It’s poo pahed as ‘not serious’, ‘flakey’ paranormal’ but even studies of paranormal show that reductionism, the academic reality is not exclusive of inductive reasoning which is parallel.  It’s both and we do best when we utilize both. I do specific forms of psychotherapy in combination with psychopharmacology to get the highest results.. individually I proved mind over matter and that combined therapy was best and eventually moved along to the most difficult of diseases , addiction, with its entrenched stigma and problems of secondary gain by government, I often feel as silly as a war doctor trying to prevent and heal disease while the war machine just wants fresh bodies. I do like Pink Floyd and often must focus on the individual rather than get lost in the big people. Life is a sexually transmitted disease with 100% mortality.

I saw at the community medicine level or in public health that on the Indian Reserves ( for aboriginals) , those  that voted to allow drugs and alcohol, every illness and disease and psychopathic psychiatric morbidity was prevalent. Not so on the ‘dry reserves’ which often had better health and social success than ‘white 

‘ suburbs.  Of course this went against the profitable narratives. 

Alcohol and drugs reduces intellect and emotional development , encourages the monkey mind. It’s banal as opposed to spiritual. All large group studies define these thepopulation as ‘immature’.  In psychotherapy ‘insight’ therapies and ‘conventional counselling’ generally perpetuate the condition or made it worse.  Specifically 12 step facilitation therapy and motivation therapy work.   No YAFFI drunks or addicts.  Addiction is matter over mind.  

I loved the old language , Demon Drink.   In Milton, Satan is seen as turning his back on God and preferring to look at his shadow than be part of the light. Freud said there were two drives, Eros - life wish and Thanatos - death wish.

I’m doing all the things I’m told by my brilliant colleagues in Microbiology and Infectious Disease. If I say I want to live I must act that way. We say if you talk the talk walk , the walk.  So I’m self quartined this weekend. I’m washing my hands counting 20 seconds just like I did in my surgical years.  I’m taking higher dosage of Vitamin C and D and Zinc. I’m gargling a lot with Listerine and also with Apple Cider Vinegar. I’m sleeping 8 and 10 hours.  I’m avoiding being run down.  I’m staying positive.  Depression and negativity increases the risk and worsening of disease by 30%.  Psychosomatic medicine and psychiatry moved increasingly into ‘pills’.  Having entered it as a ‘mind over matter’ move , I found myself increasingly pressured back into ‘matter over mind’ and there is as the book title says ‘Gold in them their pills’.  But I know that in all the psychosomatic studies even with surgery outcome is improved with psychiatric involvement.  Pre surgery education and anxiety reducing therapy resulted in 30% improvement in recovery rates and speeds.  i believe in rituals and have seen first hand the benefits of pills and surgery. I believe in both.

When the Chinese Aetheist Communists materialist invaded Tibet and genocided the greatest spiritual leaders tried to shield the people from the wanton murderous machin gun fire bullets beat love. The Dalai Lama escaped. The Communist Chinese, no different than ISIS, continue to lie and murder, rape and enslave Tibetans. There’s an old saying of faith which says ‘trust in God but tether your camel. ‘ Don’t take a knife to a gun fight. I believe but I do good as well. I have faith and believe all is God but also believe that faith without works are nihilistic.

Be positive. Jesus repeatedly said Do Not Be Afraid.  

 I wash my hands. 

I am thankful that there is now a medication that treats the Covid 19 illnes: , Hydroxy chloroquine.  If you add Azithromycin, there are even better results.  The reduction in spread of the disease as was religiously done in Singapore resulting in no deaths in that country, ensured  hospital and respiratory services were not overwhelmed. The death rate increases 5x if there are no medical services.  All the advances in use of respirators and keeping people at home when sick and quarantine has made it unlikely that we will be overwhelmed here. The next two weeks is critical.  

My mind at times shouts out “We’re going to die!’ and I panic.” I think of John Mayers song where he sings “I want to run through the halls of the school’. That’s on a happy crazy note. I want to run naked through the downtown hugging ,  kissing, fucking everyone to just get this over with.  It’s a fleeting thought. Like suicide thoughts.  Suicide is a total dysfunction of the brain transmission. When the brain is supposed to be helping you go forward it jumps into reverse or gets stuck in reverse. I want to live. My mind short circuits when I panic. I have to breathe, focus, feel my feet on the ground, get grounded , relax. Streaking is not going to help. Prison is not a safe place right now.

I repeat over and over again. All shall be well.

I drink lots and lots of fluids and keep my mouth wet in public.  I’m old and at risk but read about a cluster of millennials who have had the roughest cases short of death needing respirators longer than the old and appearing to have an as yet unexplained susceptibility. I worry most about the immuno compromised, patients with heart disease, lung disease, diabetes.

All are at risk but the good news is that given the undiagnosed cases which are carriers, they also increase the denominator so deaths by this technicality may be less frequent than presupposed but the ubiquity and stress on the health care services may be far worse. It remains that until we have a vaccine or ‘herd immunity’ we are all playing a Chinese Roulette lottery game.  Thankfully 70% are mild cases like the flu.

Contact occurs day 1. Infectiousness day 2 and day 3.  Day 3 and day 4 symptons appear.  Fever is the most common in 85%. Next cough and then short ness of breath.  We have an emergency phone number here 811 for people to call if they are symptomatic. The mild cases pass day 4 to 8 and by day 10 a person is not likely infectious with asymptomatic recovery in 2 weeks from contact.  If one goes out wear a mask after that for a few more days but quarantines have been for 2 to 3 weeks because of the nature of the disease.  So far it appears infection results in future immunity from the SARS -CoV-2. 

All the great sports teams hire a psychotherapist for hundreds of thousands.  His job is purely to psych the team ‘up’. It’s long been known that if you believe you are going to lose you are more likely to.  If you believe you are going to win, even if you are the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team, you are more likely to win.  You have to open the door to hope to have a miracle come in.  

I hope you do well. I’m rather excited that I’m alive today.  I’m not feeling well because all my internai sensors are focusing on every little blip my active happy self would normally ignore.  i Feel a bit dissociated and a little PTSD given my personal history, The world seems a bit surreal. I’m experiencing moments of derealization an depersonalization. This too will pass.

My blind dog sits at the door since he became blind and barks at noises that never bothered him. That’s the way I am, waiting for sicknesss to strike, watching for death.  I’m being silly. I recognize it as ‘medical student disease’ but know that ‘this too will pass’.  I’m trying to have an ‘attitude of gratitude’  Thank you God. Thank you Jesus. Thank you saints of all religions. 

Now I’m going to shower. I know Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine. I know I have books to write and I could clean my place. I could learn a new language. But I think a shower and more coffee is good enough for me.  Instead of high standards I’m focusing on ‘good enough’.  Doing the next ‘right thing’.  I’m going to get through this.  One day at a time.  

God bless.

I call to you God

I call to you God. Hear me Lord Jesus. Holy Spirit Come. Lord of lords. Divine and sacred. Wee small voice within. Sound of heaven without. All that is. Here and then and tomorrow. I call to you. Still my fear. Touch me with your love.  I love you Lord. I love you Jesus. Holy Spirit Come.  Forgive me for my double mindedness, my worry and negativity. Help me Lord to go forward. Be thou my rear guard. Be though my flanking force. Be thou the wedge of light I follow. Be with me in all I do to day.  Help me to follow you Lord. Let me be gentle and caring and focussed and kind. Help me to solve the myriad puzzles that come to me each day. Fill me with energy to do thy will.

Thank you Lord for this life. Thank you for the rest of night. Thank you for Gilbert and George my furry companions. Thank you for this home, this roof that kept the down pouring rain ootside, the furnace that gave me heat, the toilet that takes waste from inside to outside, the water system that brings fresh water in. Thank you for the clean air. Thank you for this body with it’s mostly working parts.  Thank you for the exercises and the couch. Thank you for my fingers. Please keep them safe. Thank you for my eyes and ears and mouth and hands and feet and heart and lungs and abdomen. Thank you for family with their good cheer and momentous events transpiring. 

Thank you for expresso. Thank you for Ipad and Kindle and books of history and writers and story tellers. Thank you for science and chemistry and neurotransmitters and synapses. Thank you for the amygdala and hippocampus, the frontal lobe and pituitary. Thank you for serotonin, gabba, norepinephrine, dopamine, threonine, ATP, nerves, bundles, ion pumps, hormones and messengers. Thank you for the moments of eureka, the great and small insights. 

Thank you for love Lord. Thank you for the glue of the universe. May I know it more deeply. May I show it more surely. Help me Lord. Be with me. May I walk with you and lie with you and sit and stand with you.  Please Lord use me as a vehicle for your love. Let me be your hands your mouth, your eyes and ears and servant.  Please Lord quiet my mind, still the fears within me. Lessen the pain.

Help me in all I do to guide others to see the possibilities and potentialities. Help me to refuse to join them in their self condemnation and restriction of possibilities. Help me magnify placebo and nullify nocebo. Help me restore hope. Help me help the healing process.  Help me weed out the interfering variables. Show m how I can best serve the stranger who comes to me in pain and sorrow.

Help me avoid the anger, hate and shame that hurt people throw around them indiscriminately randomly like feces hoping it will stick to some wall. Too long have they not known or not accepted where their faults lie and blamed others and demanded that others change when only their changing can still the pain that is grating on them. Help me help them to take their hands out of the flames.  Help me help others. HElp me help myself Lord.

Thank you Lord for the gifts of healing and training that you have bestowed on me. I have served you faithfully mostly and ask that I continue to do so as best I can.  Take my méager offerings and transform them. Mould me.  Lift me up.

Please Lord I beg of you. Be with me as I try my hardest with every tactic and strategy, with every means I have to steer people from danger, death and disease. Protect them from the poseurs who would claim to serve them serving themselves and using them for their weapons.  I know there were promises galore and that the wounded person is bleeding without the beds, the medicine, the doctors or the nurses they paid for and were promised. Help them to direct their anger where it belongs and not at me who is one of the last left in the field . The rich and powerful and aloof stay furthers from the front lines and take all the resources that were promised the troops and the injured. We have none of what was promised bu their are infinite committee and police and generals and chiefs and back room deals.  Help me make up for what is lost. Help me despite the soul destroying weariness of standing with the lsst survivors facing the disease hand in hand at very least when there are rooms so very far from the front with all manner of great ideas and smugness and back slapping and award giving each other. Let me forget that Lord. Let me focus on my role. Let me focus on the person I am with. Let me focus on the here and now and try whatever I can to help them this day.  Help me help them to change and help me to change.  Together we are burdened by the graft and corruption.  Help me see the light. Help me walk through the darkness. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death Thou art with me.  Let me feel your presence. Let me see your path. Hold me up Lord. Stil my fear.  

Thank you Lord. 

Jesus Baptism: Christian Theology , Materialism and Faith

Evolution says we developed from the ape.  We are as humans very similar to chimpanzees.  One of the important differences from animals that man appears at times is the ability to ‘self reflect’ or ‘internalize’.  Tool making was once a distinguishing feature but we now know that not only do monkeys make and use tools, birds, which evolved directly from dinosaurs and even fish and insects use tools.  We don’t know if they have imaginations or they think so called intellectual questions. Indeed in the matter of quantum physics, string theory and different dimensions cats may as we have presumed be only present in this dimension utilizing the teeniest fraction of their intelligence.

The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy posited that mice were running the earth as an experiment.  The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas suggests that our present state of awareness is a reflection of our general anxiety and depression.  The enlightened mind is capable by contrast of God like insight and capacity. Certainly neurologists have long noted we don’t appear to use much of our tremedous brain power, something most brilliant students have heard from their teachers or parents.  

Aetheism whose principle social expression to date is communist socialism  a pure fantasy that the world is solely materialistic and man’s principle goal is power.  The world according to aetheists is divided into the oppressor and the oppressed. Later cultural Marxism following on the Frankfurt school and the fall of the International Marxist Socialism  of the USSR and the National Socialism of Nazism.  China continues with it’s totalitarianism for now with  the consequent increasing murder of those who are different. Communism has recently killed millions.   One considers this devolution of aetheism into the tribalism and law of the jungle of so called primitive man to date perhaps to be the most primitive and reductionist analysis of humans to date.

Even the superstitious primitives and tribal humans posited an unseen world. Local Aboriginals fore fathers claimed there was a Creator and that humans had a relationship with the creator and all of creation.  Creation gods abound in history.  

Aetheists claim at best a Big Bang.  Dr. Mario de Beuregaard, neuroscientist author of Spiritual Brain gives the best description of the PSEUDOSCIENCE that dominates the politics of today.  

The question of the Big Bang is tied to Marcus Aurelius and St. Augustine. We simply don’t know that yesterday exists any more than we know tomorrow exists. We even must ask others about our supposed birth and must rely on ‘memory’ to conclude the history of our own existence.  An elegant analysis of time and intelligence simply showed it was impossible for a monkey to learn to play piano like Bach in the time given from the proposed Big Bang To now.  Owen Barfied described the fundamental function of the brain was to ‘save the appearances’.  We fill in the gaps and we make up things.  We are a fanciful creature. 

Indeed the argument has been made that the big brain of the human is an evolutionary development that was for deceit. That a wholly honest animal would signal to a lion it wanted to eat it and get eaten.  The Book of Tells, How to Read People’s Minds by their Actions is a classic text for gamblers by Peter Collett.  It shows that man has attempt to succeed with the development of a ‘poker face’ and various other deceits which are apparent as incongruences between what is said and what is shown.  Actions apparently speak louder than words. Trojan Horse is one of the children’s classic tales of enlightenment. Today we have journalists, fake news and Wikipedia. 

Christians believe in Jesus Christ.  He is an unseen god, also the son of an unseen god, who promised to send his believers an unseen god to serve them.  The Trinity, is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Gospel which translates as the Good News says that Jesus was born as a human child and did miracles. He was baptized by John, preached in the temples of the day, taught and interpreted the scriptures of the day for ordinary men and women, then  healed people with sickness by asking his father for healing.  He said he served his father and he was an advocate for man. His father was in heaven.

Heaven is not of this earth. It may be inside.  The detractors of faith always put heaven in the sky when it’s clear that Christians have described heaven as connected to the nous or spiritual heart centred in the chest.  

The powerful men of the day faked being spiritual for profit. The soldiers and police of the day lorded over the physical world taxing and stealing the work and profits of others. They saw Jesus as a threat.  His own people’s leaders betrayed him to the conquering army’s leadership and he was crucified.  

The Good News is he resurrected from the grave and rose to heaven. This rising was described in a sense into a different dimension however it’s hard to describe with certainty for the knowledge of the galaxy as we know it today was unknown to the followers of Jesus perhaps.  Whose to say he wasn’t beamed up by God. Alien intelligence just begs the question.  There is little doubt  that he taught his followers, walked their world and that they too gained the ability to heal and enlighten. If we believe in a linear yesterday as opposed to a stellate now.  We awake each day and sleep only to awak with a new set of memories and priorities.  Fragmented hard drives etc.   Even the notion of infinity in in doubt to an agricultural people who viewed time only so far as a ‘long time’.  Greek philosophers, all of which were religious and spiritual, not at all aetheistic, like some philosophers today, have to a large extent conceptualized and described modern ideas thousands of years ago.  That Jesus resurrected was not a  ‘idea’ before him.  Reincarnation was an old idea. It was not only a Jewish idea which is evoked in the book Evolution of God by Princeton University’s Robert Wright. He addresses some of the early ‘rewritings of the bible’.  The earliest text of the Jewish Torah is definitely abridged by a later priestly writer much like the editing of Christian writings by the Council of Nicaea. Ideally there would be a prime text with a ‘commentary’ but some ideas are expunged especially by the STATE which is never truly in favour of FREEDOM of SPEECH as seen today with the latest hydra of Censorship under the guise of protecting people from Hate Speech despite history’s lesson that the Government is the most hateful creation of all time.   Christianity’s fundamental message is that Government Kills God.  Beware of Government.  In the  case of Jesus there were ‘witnesses’to his resurrection. .  The most important of the  skeptics was ‘doubting Thomas’.

Jesus taught Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself. This is not something we’ve seen our state leaders and politicians doing now nor apparently in 2000 years since Jesus was killed by the Government of his day for this Revolutionary Idea.  Christians remain the most persecuted people in the world.  .  

Neitze by contrast posited a Superman God and argued that Christianity was a poor man’s God. Jesus was seen as the ‘servant god’ , a vulnerable human baby who was eventually killed on a tree.  The early God’s of empire had been God Kings.  The Magna Carta of England had placed restrictions on the political figures of the day.  Even today the political figures insist they are intrinsically superior.  Locally the ‘hereditary chiefs’ of the aboriginals lord it over others of the band in the classic tribal hierarchy that had the ancient ‘nobility’ of Medievalism arguing that greatness was in the blood and breeding.  

God king leaders are still common in the world today though not as overtly as such in the west as they remain in the east.  Pride goest before the fall the Greeks taught. Hubris remains an issue today.  Most nations are lead by Committee, a central gang with a particularly physical world clever man who once was called the ‘big man’.  Some argue a small group of families rules.  Niall Ferguson’s The Square and Tower study of networks undermines most conspiracy theories as the world is a complex and interconnected as the neutrons and synapses of an individual brain which is said to have as many connections as stars in the galaxy.  We may well be looking at our own thoughts when we look at the sky. Apparently the Chinese put a rover on the dark side of the moon. Trust the communist to be ultra secretive.  If luck has it a new generation of spy novels will develop with Bruce Jenner playing an East Indian James Bond seeking an Oriental communist spymaster made by the Turkish film industry with Oprah as the new spy girl. Strange is the new reality.

The Hindu religions having no difficulty with reincarnation long argued that the ‘illusion’ or Moksha of this wis that the world is the ‘material’. The world is spiritual like the Gnostic movie, the Matrix.   Einstein argued that Energy and Mass were related solely by time and speed. Mass being slow energy.  

Christians believe in general that God created the world and that his Son Jesus elucidated the plan and purpose of creation.  We would be wise to follow his plan.  The scriptures give a glimpse of this.  The law of attraction as developed by Emmett Fox and other later Christians popular in California suggests what Pascal premised was true. Aetheists not wanting God die and that’s it. So it’s really best if they get all the toys and conquer and have baby temper fits and arrogantly spout nonsense because a loving God wouldn’t force an afterlife on such trolls.  Or are they baby souls who just refuse their soul food.

Christianity was  derived from the teachings of Jesus as observed and recorded by Luke,Mathew and Mark and later John.  St. Paul wasn’t an actual witness or confidant of physical Jesus and took his theological background from Judaism which had fundamental difficulty with the idea of a ‘servant king’ or a man who preached ‘love’.  St. Paul stoned the first Christian he could and only stopped stoning Christians when he was told by God not to.  He then spread churches and helped develop the Christian teachings into a sect that became a religion.  Jesus, by the way, did not say, spread churches.  The institutions and real estate and money and land are all interpretative. Jesus did say carry the message.  Theoretically this could have meant solely word of mouth or because Christians lived a certain way this way would spread. Indeed the Way remains the most threatening thing to the Secular Authorities. 

Constantine in 300 ad made Christianity the State Church of the Empire.  He wed the Christian teachings to the Greek and Roman Empire of the day.  He called the Council of Nicaea to begin the process of ‘orthodoxy’.  Prior to  c . 300 there was a lot more Christianity.  Even Paul and Peter disagree in the existing gospels.  Further when Jesus is questioned about people performing miracles in his name he doesn’t really get into splitting hairs but says if they are healing and doing good so be it. He does have his objections to the rich.  He says you “cannot serve both God and money”. That’s a direct quote. Ironically Jesus doesn’t talk about same sex marriages but he does talk about money and fear which are often not the topic of church sermons especially when there are insurance agents and bankers attending..

Do not be afraid was a principle ‘command’ of Jesus.  When I told a friend I was a Christian psychiatrist he said that was an oxymoron. Certainly Christian psychologists were not a necessity when Christianity was a more encompassing religion than a Sunday affair. Robert Graves in the Golden Bough discussed the purpose of all the religions of the world to the common man.  The superstitious role of the Christian pastor is as scapegoat. Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong showed clearly that the spiritual leader of the day in all religions, not just Christianity,  must support the material leader of the day or he was likely go the way of Thomas Beckett.

The  Council of Nicaea  rejected fundamental ideas about matter and god and spirit and human.  To be a state church orthodoxy the interpretations had to be made into law to give work for lawyers and beurocrats and ensure that religion followed the state power of the God Kings of the Day.  Constantine never stopped being a God King. Roman Emperor, he himself was a Sun Worshiper , not that original as God Kings go. Egyptian God Kings were always  the  party favourites.  Constantine’s Sun Worship was the reason for the Sabbath becoming Sun Day rather than traditional Hebrew Saturday. Jesus was liked by the Centurions. Aetheists aren’t particularly common in foxholes. Constantine was a warrior and he saw the soldiers of the Way were superior to pagan soldiers.  The Milvian Bridge clash won him the Roman Empire.

The question for the enlightened was if there was anything beyond the gospels in the first three hundred years of Christianity which might well have been what Jesus said but didn’t appeal to Constantine or church leaders or an empire builder like the wealthy Rabbi  Paul. The Gnostic Gospels were found and these suggested secret teachings but had a cloak and dagger feeling which is too much based on the political ways of the world, inclusive and exclusive.  Jesus said ‘if you have ears you will hear, not a secret society.  

The Good News was fairly inviting. Jesus said, “Follow Me’.  He also said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  See here, ‘deny themselves’ and ‘pick up their cross’.  That’s the rub.

The God of the Psalms who Jesus taught said  “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me I will answer. I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them with long life and give them my salvation.”

Aetheist materialism has a number of arcane beliefs which scientifically are seen as ‘hypothesis’, not ‘facts’ but ‘assumptions’.  No one except perhaps Justin Trudeau has been more scientifically illiterate than Lawyer Obama.  Merkel who trained as a scientist should be ashamed of herself but as an East German Stasi she really knows the power of deceit and fear. 

 In contrast Christian spirituality says historically this man and these men said this about reality and God and how can we reconcile what is seen and unseen. We seem to do just fine with WiFi but have more difficulty today with idea of Prayer.  

Physics with it’s string theory has no difficult with religion.  The vast majority of scientists and philosophers of all time had no difficulty with God.  Aetheists are a very tiny minority of very loud and often very angry depressed anxious people.  

Jesus said ,” Do not be afraid’.  Jesus said.”Pray”.  He actually taught prayer specifically.  

Good news.  The real world goes beyond death. The real world has greater depth and breadth than this ‘known’ world. The  male age of rationalism was followed by the female age of emotionalism and we are already in the  the most advanced age of intuition. Migration serves to dilute the age of Aquarius which was as terrifying to the war machine today as Christianity has always been.  

I wonder what the Emperor and Church Father’s and the Orthodoxy proponents suppressed of the teaching of the first three hundred years. It is clear that their ideas were rapidly challenged as the church proceeded to divide and grow almost imediately following the Council of Nicaea. The Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Catholic and the Coptic Christians were early divisions. The umbrella of the Church as a whole existed because each of the subsequent divisions were maintained as monasteries.  These divisions within the Christian world were seen in the Buddhist and Hindu Religions as with the Muslim political religion. The divisions are predictable in the orthodoxies. Each line of each Creed speaks to the divisions of early years.  Luther is a Johnny Come Lately.   

The history of spirituality argues that spirituality is like genius. It has a pure ness about it. There is a light which attracts insects.  This light can be either for earthly benefit or may be destroyed as potential risk to earthly power.   The Library of Alexandria might have been arson. Certainly the Vatican library long argued the place of ultimate censorship has everything about it that we ascribe to Roswell. 

The story of Jesus is a powerful teaching story what is claimed by the unenlightened as ‘merely’ ‘myth’ yet those who know might argue that as all is ‘myth’ the most powerful of ‘myths’ and indeed the most practical.  

Jesus Christ. 

I was in church today. Today was the Baptism of Jesus Day.  As a congregation we were asked to repeat our baptism vows.  We all qualified.  We’re in. We’re saved.  We need not be afraid.

I pray. The mystics teach that prayer and breath go together. The Dessert Fathers and St. Augustine taught the same.  Breathe. Pray.  Do not be afraid.  

Jesus Christ.  I am a spiritual being living in a material dream.  I am indeed a dreamer in God’s dream. I am made in the ‘image’ or ‘imagination of God’.  I am a spiritual being living in a spiritual world.  

St. John who baptized people in water was asked if he was the Christ. He said he wasn’t but that he was coming. He said the Christ would baptize in the Holy Spirit.  When St. John baptised Jesus in water he saw that God had baptised Jesus in the Holy Spirit.  There is a sense that such Love can be seen like a lightning which allows the visualization of the energy we call electricity.  Imagine seeing love. Perhaps only the blind do.

Do not be afraid. Pray. Jesus Christ.  Holy Spirit Come. 

Ottawa, Kanata, Andrew and Tanya’s Place

Love their new home. Andrew and Tanya are expecting. Young professionals.  The new generation. With all the crap on FB and main stream media these are the young people I know I’ve been hanging out with my nephews. The world is in good hands. The future is bright.  They are really exceptional people. I’m covered up in shame and guilt and struggling with injuries and scars and failure.  An old soldier in a struggle against myself and the house always wins. They’re young and full of hope.

The greatest evidence of faith and hope is the ‘bump’ .  Tanya’s showing and last night showed me the US picture of the new baby to come. But their new home is so organized. None of the clutter and waste that I seem plagued with. There’s no bodies in the corners of rooms. No skeleton. No carcasses. No carion smells. Vultures aren’t circling.  

A couple of squirrels ran across the deck outside. Last night a rabbit visited.  There’s a beautiful Christmas tree in the living room. It’s a smaller version of the one my sister in law Adell cut down  in their yard and decorated with her cousin Melvine.  I’m amazed at people whose lives are sufficiently together to be in the season. I’m still storing hunting gear in storage lockers, have to get the cammo gear back to storage. 

Outside it’s snowing.  Big fluffy flakes. The stuff of Its a wonderful life. 

My nephew was making robots and talking with NASA. Now he’s working government computer programs.  I discussed the merits of plasma, nuclear and chemical solutions with my other nephew driving here. His engineering degree was chemical engineering but he’s more interested in plasma and back at University of Toronto studying plasma application and doing research.  

 They’re really good bright people.  Like Adell, Andrew and Tanya are cleaning up as they go.  

My nephew Allan, with his fiancé Meagan,  are heading back to England where they live. I wanted to visit them and go north to Aberdeen.  I told Laura we needed to return to Ireland and explore the south coast.  I want to sail there. Liked the harbours I saw when I was there. Imagined my sailboat in the harbour and me dingying ashore to an Irish coffee shop which served Irish stew.  I’ve looking into jobs. There are so many jobs for psychiatrists around the world, hundred and our government hates psychiatrists. Since we’ve got the stoner PM it seems all the government has gone low brow. Maybe it’s just everyone in power smoking dope now. They used to drink. Now cocaine is coming in. The problem is the sprinkling of fentanyl that’s killing the innoscents. .

Gilbert has been well cared for by everyone without me ever asking.  Tanya fed him and Graeme walked him and Andrew slipped him a bit of ham this morning  under the table. He feels as welcome as I do. Everyone has been caring for me. I’m the white hair. 

The two brothers are discussing light waves and audio systems.  Earlier Tanya was commenting on the sun damage on the hard wood floor versus wear and tear.  She’d mapped out the area of discolouration and was sure it was a chemical reaction with the wax.  I was amused at how many people would simply not know or take wear and tear for granted.  Really curious minds.  Andrew is talking about the varnish on the floor and the dining room table. He’s been installing lights in the bathroom.  Thanks to my father all the Hay boys are handy.  The brothers are talking about building a deck together this summer.  There’s all this incredibly advanced cooperative behaviour and sharing and discussing that others take for granted.

I work with drug addicts.  Every one of these natural flowing human relationship transitions and communications happening around me here  would have been ratcheted with attitude.  Conversations would be derailed. Everyone would be on guard.  There’d been that forever sense of walking on broken glass.  People in glass houses would be throwing stones at everyone. The rageaholics and the always offended looking for a peg to hang their anger on would be preying on your every word.  The bullies would be looking for respect. Did you respect me. All the inferiority complexes would be marching and demanding attention.  I’m going back to the war this coming week.  Being in this rest area back from the lines I’m relaxing.  The men had walked in and shown me their knives and revolvers.  The women have their complaints in quick draw holders on their chests.  The blood levels of drugs fluctuated personalities week to week. The professional police are like the Mexican city police. If you report a theft they arrive to take what wasn’t taken by the perpetrator and blame you for working with the dangerously insane. They have locks on their doors and guards in their high rises.  I’m on the street.  I sometimes dream of the jar of bed bugs thrown at me by the person who couldn’t get the government to address his infestation problem. The government isn’t ever near. So they hit us. We’re near. The government blames us for riling up the natives. They don’t even know the language and are too afraid themselves to be of any help to anyone.  That’s why they got their jobs. Bunker duty.

It’s not emotionally loud here though. I can shake off the work.  I can forget for a while the bullies and the toxicity.   I loved being with Adell and watching the family Christmas repeat like all those childhood Christmases with my father and mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts.  I loved when my grandfather and uncle came down from up north and Dad visibly changed to more himself. When we rode horses together with his cowboy and cowgirl friends he was like he was with his rancher logger brothers. Then my mother’s sisters would come and she’d relax safe in the uptown Toronto feeling. I love still sharing on FB with the friends in Fort Garry. Recently we all reminisced about climbing out of windows to shovel the snow from the doors to get them open after the snowstorm. I loved the pictures shared. I remembered snowmobiling through the city streets to man the emergency.  It wasn’t the only time I snow mobiles to work. I remember the 50 miles tundra ride and going throug the ice and walking frozen the last half hour to the nursing station where the aboriginal man had had a stroke and there was question of dates on the late stage pregnant lady.  I like snowmobiles but have no real justification for one in Vancouver where the snow is at most a sprinkling.  I just like vehicles. Have been missing my Mini Cooper here..

I’m relaxed. Family have certain traits. Here it’s assumed that you don’t hurt others.  Here people don’t lie. It’s just a Hay thing. I never knew that telling the truth and not hurting others were ‘optional’ family traits many but they are. I’ve spent too much time on the edge.  It’s comforting to be among this ‘normality’ despite the eccentric set of the lot. 

Last night they all watched a cooking show , the worst chefs, where the people were given a recipe and judged on their product. It was a variation of the singing one but really much more earthy and bad. Graeme and Andrew laughed hysterically at the misshapen baked goods guys and girls made who’d never baked before.  Just for the record, I’ve never watched such a show before.  Peculiar people.  Each with his or her own traits but all kind. All sensitive to each other.  All thoughtful.  

Tanya is like the elf princess in Lord of the Rings.  Sensitive in a gentle way.  Great sense of humor.  Now pregnant, a part of her tuned inward. Preparing for the child.

Gilbert feels at home here. He’s sleeping now.  

All week people have been doing their individual things, gathering to cook a meal together, making a puzzle together, then going off alone or in pairs to read or talk.  I’ve watched tv and joined in or read.

I was reading about Ethiopia, planning a trip,  and learning of all the bugs, malaria, rats, cobra, then dreaming of slow death by bugs eating one.  It was a Stephen King things but lucid dreaming so I was trying to escape.  I must be careful what I read before falling asleep. Most nights I’ve been dreaming of deceased family,visiting those who have passed, walking with my brother, talking with my aunt, eating a meal with my parents.  I keep seeing my father’s face and my grandfather’s face.  They’re happy and quizzical. They’ve all go so much wiser the older I’ve got.   

A new year is dawning. I’m not sure what I’m going to do differently.  This trip immediately and a medical conference late fall next year are the only destinations fixed in the journey of another year. I’ll motorcycle and drive and work and walk the dog. I’ll read and watch Netflix and enjoy my couch and swim and lie in the hot tub. I think that’s likely I’ve tickets to a Canucks game , the ballet, and a couple of concerts . I look forward to camping.  I really want to unload the excess in the storage locker and reduce the files.  Surely I can get rid of business files to begin and scan some clinical ones.  I’ve boxes of books that can go and old furniture and clothing that really needs to move along.  I’m heavy with stuff. I want so much to lighten up.

I’ve been in this place before. Never could sustain it.  Relationships wrecked by my restlessness.  I have to remember expectations are ‘preformed resentments’.  Another person my age I knew in college years died.  

It’s strange this dying bit. I remember when the divorces were infectious. I remember when the going to college was infectious. I remember when certain sports took hold in the yuppie world. I remember the standard travel plans and me being outside out of the norm and not fitting as my interests deviated so far from the safe and narrow of the politically correct, that place of utter mediocrity.

When I meet other solo sailors we’re in sync. When I meet other psychiatrists who have devoted their life to clinical practice we agree. I relate to people my age usually more than those of a different generation.  I’m always feeling adolescent with respect to the ‘fit’.  There’s a collection of traits which are supposed to go as a group, my dancing ballet and big game hunting are ‘abnormal’ .  I can relate to my nephews interest in virtual reality and my other nephews interest in energy production.  My sister in law loves education. She’s a gifted interior designer in retirement.   She’s so appreciative of music that took centuries to develop.  

I like to write. Steinbeck used to write letters to his editor before writing a passage in his books to come. I ‘blog’. It’s it’s own end. I like to write. My work is channeling the tales of people’s lives by the highlights of their successes and failures.  I’m wearying of typing all day. I’m having memories of when I was an executive copy typist.  Channeling. I like this nonsense better. The squeezing the puss out of my head journaling.  Superficial thoughts.  Now I’ll go back to reading Evelyn Waugh.  Amazing writing. Truly gifted for the use of English.  1930’s writer. Conversation with the dog or with God. It doesn’t seem to matter much.  

I’m flying west later today. I remember my father always starting an argument with me or my brother the last day of our visit. Ron and I discussed it. Only when we were older did we realize how sad he was to see us leave. It’s was nails on a chalk board to his heart.  He was such a strong man that he couldn’t cry easily.  Only my mother’s death brought torrential tears.  It was easier for him to get angry.  It took us years to understand. My brother and I in his last years talked a lot about our parents and our childhood.  

Adell gave me pictures of the grandparents this visit. She’s been going through old boxes.  

The Irish is turning up.

I remember my drunken Irish friend insisting only Catholics were Irish.  We’re the protestants and Fay for sure. 

Today the FB controversy was whether First generation Somalis should be Canadian Cabinet ministers.  Meanwhile Trudeau has set out to destroy Canada and is allied to the communist globalist rule by beurocratic elite. Brussels a  snake pit.  Somali was communist.  It attacked Ethiopia over Ogaden.  Communist Canada is devolving.  Death by tax. 

It concerns me.  Aetheist communists killed hundreds of millions in a matter of decades and most Canadians are ignorant of this history. I feel politically like an outsider.  It’s been so often like I’m walking about on an Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake  set. 

Enough.  I’m going to go back to reading Evelyn Waugh. 

Dentistry, St. George and Salvation

Dr. Doug Lovely extracted my molar on an emergency basis. He’s a kind and caring man, a gifted dentist and my personal Mensch.  He commented about the suddenness of the white van jihadi attack in Toronto this week, “Life is fragile. I doubt any of those people who got up that morning thought they’d be mowed down and killed on the street.”

As he was extracting my tooth he commented on the copious pus escaping.  “It must be 200 cc. No wonder your jaw and cheek were all swollen. Most people respond to antibiotics but you didn’t."
He went on to say, "Before antibiotics people died all the time from these abscesses.  When I read history I'm always  amazed at how many people died of infections, consumption, TB, pneumonia.  Then there were the flu epidemics. We take it for granted but antibiotics changed the course of history.” 

I listened as the suction took the pus. Then there was intense tugging and a cracking sound.  “It’s a boy!” Doug laughingly exclaimed.  His bright and beautiful assistant laughed too. There was obvious relief.  Anyone who lives in the real world, especially that of surgery, knows things can take very scary turns.  That moment though it was as if the war had paused.  The  words ‘cease fire’ were being shouted down the battlefield.

I laughed too, a little, as best one can, in a dental chair, another's fists in your mouth. My eyes teared with the relief.  God , the relief.  In the night I'd felt I couldn't go on.    I am so ashamed at how weak I am alone. I so don't like to be dependent, to ask for help, to need help.
The evil was now gone.  The thought of the pus though left me feeling dirty. The sickly smell of anaerobes in the room. The scent of contagion.  The shame. I'd been defiled and not even known it. I felt apologetic for kissing her days before.  I felt betrayed by my body. Smaller. Human.
The nightmare was all but over now.  I felt I was no longer on the down elevator, not moving up yet, but no longer descending.
There followed  a tense moment as Doug moved along to get out the back root. He heaved and pulled, a muscular activity, with steady gentle persuasion.  

 “You don’t want to break the root off in the socket.” He said.
I thought of thousands of years and millions of toothaches.  The sheer misery in the world untold, before the advent of modern dentistry, precision tools, anitibiotics,  anesthesia, guild and professional training.   A toothache can be so humbling.   We are an ungrateful species. I'm the worst, so utterly self absorbed till life literally slaps me in the face. 

When that second root came out it was a bit of an aftermath.  A last tug and more relief.  Both Doug and his assistant relaxed. The tension left the room. Almost immediately it was like the Post Modern Jukebox began playing a coccabana song.   Tropical breezes wafted through the room.  Water lapping on beach in the distance.  Sunrise over sand.  Sweet relief.
The offending tooth and all it’s parts were gone. The whole body strained.  Doug had been asking me how I was doing through out the procedure.  I'd only grunted.  Now I felt good. It's  been a long time since  I felt good.  

I’d not been breathing there for a bit. My chest  felt heavy. Bacteremia. Septicemia.  The whole process was a work out, a physical ordeal.  I’m not as young and athletic as I once was. I felt tired,  worn, battered.  The Travelling Willbury Song, “Handle me with care.”comes to mind too often these days.

The briefest exquisite pain occurred then, like an electric shock.   Doug pulled out the last of the abscess sack.   A tiny price to pay.  “I added more freezing but it leaks out so quickly at the end when everything is so inflamed.” he said.   It gave me a glimpse of what dental and surgical care had been like before the advent of anaesthesia.   What else do we take for granted, I thought. 

 Every second that passed from the removal of that offending tooth,  gospel band Third Day's song, "There's a Light at the End the Tunnel" now  played in my mind. Hillsong, Mercy,  Grace and Salvation all came to mind. Timeless themes.

I’d been crying in the night in pain and despair, waiting till 6 am to email Doug that morning. Sleeplessness makes everything worse. I remember  being alone at sea, at night, at the end of a hurricane , waiting for either my boat to break up, pitchpole in the high seas, or dawn to come. Dawn had come with all it's glory that day.  Dawn came this day.  Again.  "Ye of little faith."
I'd just read that Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to her royal baby boy, serendipitously, on St. George's Day.   A great time of celebration.
I had a fleeting thought of  Dr. Doug Lovely as St. George, white shining dental armour, great dental lance,  the evil dragon tooth putrid tooth stabbed dead through the middle.  

I don’t know how long the pustulence had been there.  Abscesses are sneaky that way.  Like liars and false allegations. I’ve not felt well for some time.  Low grade fever. Lethargy. Disappointment with putrid politics.  Negativity.  I just couldn’t shake the foreboding. Too many family and friends dying. Patients dying.  Another great one died last week. He'd turned his life around and was a veritable success story in so many ways before his cirrhotic liver dragged him home.  Maybe only the good die young. I'm around for a long time.
My own mortality has been ever present. It’s been a  bad winter of sad blues tinged with poor rockabilly. The tooth flaring last week moved the whole universe symphonically.  It became a regular Tchaikovsky then crescendoed seriously Richard Straus at the end.  Now there’s hope again. I'd loved a little Bach, maybe some Handel's, Water Music.  I’d give anything for Strauss but that’s reaching in these shallow godless bureaucratic times.

I slept last night. I’m still on antibiotics. My mind is clearer. I woke to  sunshine and spring. I feel like Steven Segal punched me in the jaw in my sleep.  Otherwise the swelling is down.  I actually feel hope.  I’d lost it there. I'm pretty much a wimp.
Hope's like peace of mind.  And faith. They’re so utterly precious.  They colour the universe. Without them life would be just black and white and grey. I didn't  quite see them slip away.  Somewhere in the night. That 19th version of Dark Night of the Soul,the comic strip despair.
We'd  watched Monty Python last week,  the  Crucifixion Scene,  the men hanging from nails,  whistling and singing, "Always look on the bright side of life."  It's hard not to be cynical.
All those people who survived the jihadi van attack.  A new born baby boy..  A Royal couple pleased as any commoner.  The cycles of life. The blessing of spring.
There's a certain absurdity to a molar abscess. The dentist as St. George. I take life too much for granted these days.  I need to be more thankful for small mercies. The cracks that Leonard Cohen  described are the places where the Light shone in.  The gentle touch of the sacred can still be felt beneath the burden of the mundane.  
I heard the  bird songs today.  The scent of cherry blossoms was in the breeze.   Salvation  and Modern Dentistry.  Hooray for St. George.