May 10,Happy Mother’s Day, Covid 19, Lightening up

I was truly blessed to have the most incredible mother.  She was amazing.  She’d do so many special things for my brother and I.  We were always cared for, food, clothing, shelter. She was so loving to my father. The dog was another member of the family. She loved her boys, her man, her garden and the dog. She loved her mother and we cared for her in the last years of her life. She was a Christian woman, a Baptist and the church meant so much to her. She loved her sister, Sally and her other sister Hannah. She loved our cousin, Ruth Anne and the extended members of the family in Scotland  and the US. She loved my father’s northern relatives, especially, Annie. She made a point of keeping in touch and making sure we knew as children we were interconnected with a huge family and clan.

She fed the birds all winter at the feeder outside the kitchen.She knitted but loved to crochet. She played organ and sang hymns.  She loved to camp and helped butcher the game Dad brought home. I was tasked with plucking the ducks and cleaning the fish I caught but she cooked them all and accompanied my dad and us boys on all our fishing trips.  She spent hours untangling my fishing line when I was at a child. 

She cheered my brother and I at our games. She encouraged our school work and insisted we complete our homework. She was intimately aware of our lives and listened, taking a special interest in us whenever we were happy or sad. She laughed. She had the sweet laughter of an Irish schoolgirl and Dad and her kibbitzed all the time making the dog bark and us kids laugh.  When I came out of a trying adolescent I became close to my mom again admiring her love of God, her home and her garden and their motor home, the long trips they took to Good Sam RV sites and all the cruises they took in later years.  She and Dad were always busy, always working on some project, always there to help us kids.  She was amazing.  I love her.  I pray for her in heaven.

Now my sister in law Adell is the other greatest mother I know.My nephews are the most amazing men, so kind, intelligent and accomplished with great senses of humor. My brother was so loved by Adell and the two so loved their children. I’m so in awe of Adell’s love for her sons and now her grandson.  What an amazing woman. She is so thoughtful and caring, intelligent and talented.  Her voice is truly that of a nightingale and her mind is wonderful. She has the biggest heart and my brother loved her truly knowing the depth of her love and remarkable ness of her person. And now Tanya is the great mother of my great nephew who melts the heart of anyone who sees him. He is so special and so loved by his mother, grandmothers, and aunts and all of us.

My dearest friend and love Laura is a grand mother several times over and so cares for her children and their children.  She also loves her niece Robin.  She suffered through her husband ‘s terrible illness and continued to work and care for her children. Today they are still her true love.  My dog, Gilbert gets all the spoiling they would get if they were near. She works in the city and they all live in the country.  The families get together as often as permitted. I’ve seen her light up with good news of her son and daughters. She’s forever praying for them. Meanwhile Gilbert gets back massages and the best treats from her own plate of food. Gilbert, her fur baby, adores her. 

And thanks for Anna, the great mother of the god kids, she is so sweet and caring and with Kevin are another loving family.  I love that the mother and family are at the centre of the church. Creativity.  

Mother Mary.  In Christianity we celebrate the Mother of Jesus, lifting her up to the highest level of reverence.  The Church so admires women and motherhood. Even now I’m wearing a mother and child pendant from a St. Petersburg Orthodox Cathedral.  Hail Mary, Full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are Thou among all women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Lord Jesus.  

I have been blessed to work with the finest women in medicine, so many of them mothers as well as exceptional humans. I love my friends who care in all aspects of their lives. We grew up in the Game and Fish Clubs with wild game banquets and now I know mothers who shoot with their families and hunt with fathers and sons and daughters. I also know mother who sailed with their families and adventured across continents with their husband and children.  It’s a whole new era of accomplished women. 

When I was in Israel I was so impressed with all the Jewish mothers who’d served in defence of the country and were down to earth no nonsense women so atypical of New York stereotypes.  I loved all the European mothers I have known their pride in their family and heritage. The women so commonly kept the culture alive. The Filipino mothers and Thai mothers and Chamorro and Carolinian mothers I knew in the islands loved to cook and loved to dance. There love of their children was a wonder to behold.  In the north the aboriginal mothers all cared for and loved their children and grand children. The South American, African mothers, Asian mothers were all the same, immense love and pride in their children and great joy caring. 

Life was children to all the mothers I’ve known.  The world of creativity is definitely female.  Boys and girls destroy, men and women create.  I am so blessed to have known so many incredible mothers.  They are connected in a special way with the Creator God and all Creation. It shows in the sensuous confidence in the way they walk, life’s great dancers, hips swaying, 

Thank you God for mothers. Thank you God for my mother. Thank you Lord for all mothers. Hallelujah! 

Waking Up Sober

There’s no hang over. The room isn’t twirling.I’m not asking myself what I did last night.  Not so much what I did, but what did I say that I might regret.  I’m not wanting to die. I’m not hating work and the human race and wanting to curl up in my bed and never come out.
Instead, the soft light of dawn comes through the window panes.  I step out of bed softly.  The way the light falls on the bed is beautiful. I’m happy.  I look forward to the day.
Crossing the living room I enter the bathroom where I have an old beat up tattered and torn copy of Around the Year with Emmett Fox. It’s pleasant to sit on the toilet and read today’s passage.  Metaphysics is science and art. We learn by doing. And there’s a quote from James, “be ye doers of the word."
I’m thankful to be sitting on the toilet and not on my knees beside it with my head down the hole, retching. Retching beyond retching, dry heaving, like soiled seizures, without the comfort of coma.
I sit down to meditate. I pray to my Higher Power.  At the advice of my spiritual friend, Willie, I’ve been praying to the Holy Spirit.  My sponsor, Bernie, called his Higher Power, Holy Spirit too.  I talk to Jesus sometimes still. Then there’s a pantheon of names of God that blindfolded men have used to describe the elephant.  God is infinite, finite, omnipotent, omniscient.   Holy of holies.  I go on in my head detailing all I think I know.
Recently I’ve been riding my Harley Electraglide motorcycle to work listening to Steven Bell. Two refrains from his music  play over  again in my echoing brain:”We’re not alone” and “It’s always been about love”.  We're not alone. It's always been about love.
As I’m sitting quietly considering my breathing, repeating Psalm 23,  I hear the little guy get up.
Gilbert, the cockapoo is my room mate.  I saw him laying stretched out on my bed when I woke up. Now he makes his way over to the couch where I’m sitting cross legged. He jumps up to sit beside me. I feel his paw on my knee.   “It’s always been about love”
I open my eyes. The little guys big brown eyes are looking at me expectantly. One paw on my knee. He's made his morning greeting. It's my move.  I hug him, roll him over and rub his tummy and chest.    He squirms with joy.
I go back to meditation.  A little while later he’s sitting beside me, again,  with his paw on my knee, big brown eyes boring through my closed eye lids.   I know I shouldn’t reward this ‘behaviour’.  I should focus on my meditation. I should listen carefully for God. I should be focusing on my ‘quiet time’.   "It's always been about love".
 I look the happy fellow in the eye turn him over on his back and rub his chest for a longer while.  Then I go back to meditating, thinking too that he came over when my mind was wandering, wondering about the external manifestation and synchronicity and flow.  I’d begun thinking ahead too, to my day, worrying about the myriad of details that could overwhelm me, the recent crisis of betrayals, mutiny, disruptions, equipment failures,  physical threats, world war, zombies, alien invasion.
He next appears with a ball.  I get up then. We're not alone.
Years ago I remember kicking my dog, Shinto, hung over, him greeting me with wagging tail and me pushing him away and then kicking him as I staggered to the washroom to be sick on a country morning.  I wish I could take back that shuffling kick.  After he came back and licked my foot worried he'd hurt me. Shinto was a saint sent to be with me through the end days and early days.
After him, still early days though I didn't think so, came Stuart, the white Scotty.  The drug dealers who threatened me ,wanting me to pass their marijuana dirty urines so they could get high paid government jobs. When I wouldn’t, they poisoned Stuart.  They sent me a “message”.   Cowards.  I didn't pass their urines dirty urines but years later you could hear my voice at the biker rally when Steppenwolf sang out, Goddam the Pusherman.  And we all sang along remembering friends and family the slime had killed.    
I put the coffee on.   I like that I’ve fine coffee, my own stove and coffee maker.  It’s mine. It’s not rented. I own this. I pay taxes.  I’m a contributing citizen.  I put on the kettle for the instant porridge. Once hunting with my friend Luke, he brought these little packets of delicious.  I don’t know if I had encountered them before, but they tasted so good on that trip in the woods with all that camaraderie and humour, I just love having them now for breakfast.
I started feeling irritation about this crisis at work that has been thrown at me.    Enough time in the day for that later.
I moved my mind instead to remembering the wonderful woman who stepped forward to assist. She makes me wonder about genetics and pedigree.  Her family overseas is royal blood.  She has that fundamental understanding of ethics and morality along with a joie de vivre, immense talent,  skill and training.  She's been a blessing.
Rather than thinking about the negatives I focus carefully on the positives.  It takes effort. It doesnt come naturally any more.
In passing, sipping my hot delicious coffee, of the the group I was with yesterday. I find myself dwelling more on  the one person who I think wrongly or rightly doesn’t like me.  Then thought I see the ridiculousness of my thinking.     I let this person go and conjure up the smiling wise faces of those compassionate understanding old souled people that I hung out with.
In my head  realize I'd began writing a poem for the negative one, about their emotional land mines, their judgementalness and insecurity but stopped myself. I thought about the soft spoken worker, that Brother Lawrence in our midst.  I could so easily be distracted by the drama queen desperate approval and miss Brother Lawrence.
I see myself about to campaign, to run  Napoleonic war, with the emotional maturity of  5 year old or at most a 13 year old girl. This person likes me, this person, that person doesn't. She loves me , she loves me not.   Here I'm Napoleon again and I’ve taken Germany and Italy, but I still have to assault Russia with my charm,  good grace and diplomacy.  I caught myself almost taking her bait. She's erected walls and moats and hurled down flickering eye lids of burning oil glances and I'd stood 'bewitched'.  Meanwhile Mother Mary, Magdalene and St. Theresa of Avilla are all glad to talk to me.  I just wasn't giving them my attention. Meanwhile Russia isn't all about me, either.  
I conjure up my personal Mother Mary. She’s always true and curious. I love her curiosity and good will.  I envy her too.  Still,I want to think her life was ‘easier’ than mine, ‘more privileged’, ‘richer’. I want to dismiss her radiance and goodness.  I want to make unfair comparisons. I want to chop off the heads of others to make myself taller. But I can’t. I think of her and it’s just ‘all about love’. “I like Steve Bell,” she told me once.  Agape is what C.S. Lewis called it.
After being sick I used to have coffee and run through my mind all my enemies.   I never even thought about ‘winning them over’. I just imagined hunting them down and doing abhorrent things with their exposed intestines.  Mostly I scowled.  I’d take a couple of cups of coffee and fifteen minutes or so to ‘compose myself’. Then I’d " force myself" to do what I had to do blaming everyone else for my ‘having’ to go to ‘work’ , "having to put up with idiots’, "having to be diplomatic’.  I wanted my personal army, my personal rocket launcher and I wanted to nuke all the silly little girls with their ‘wrecking balls’ and their insufferable prissy little begging boys.  I felt sore that I was born out of time, fully equipped for a western but deprived of a Mexican cantina, some easy wrench and an obvious bad guy.  I always wore the white hat in my own drama. I even wanted my own spaceship with lasers. I couldn't be satisfied with a sunny day in the summer when I wanted a spaceship with quantum generators and planet killers.
Today I tell myself I have to be nice to those not nice to me, if only to reduce the blow back. I think Karma isn’t some intellectual thing but rather a spiritual law. The golden rule, is just that. Be unto others as you would have them be unto you.  I’m still trying to be more forgiving.  We talked about my ex wives yesterday.  I can list my own faults ad infinitum today and even think about theirs. Mostly I remember their infinitely smooth skin, the sweet smell of their hot sweat and the warmth of their exquisite miraculous bodies. We were all so young, yesterday.
I hope I do better today.  Today is my new canvas.  It’s time to shower.  Dress.  It’s a new day.  The wreckage of the past is lying out there somewhere. I don't expect to encounter it today. Mostly it's all new.  Only I'm projecting the past onto the present. .  And I know, “We’re not alone’.
“It’s me against the world,” I used to think.  I was an angry Bruce Lee.  After a days war I could settle down for a drink.
Today I’m really happy with the peace.  Especially the peace of mind.  Nothing tastes better than a tall glass of sparkling spring water too.