Tonight - Friday

I didn’t have anything to do today except pick up the Save On groceries I’d ordered on line. I slept in to 830, took Gilbert out for a pee, prayed meditated , did home exercise, then drank coffee, ate yoghurt and a protein bar while Madigan demolished the yoghurt containers.  It was raining most of the day.

The walk to the Mini was a big outing for Madigan.  We got in the car and I drove to Save On. What excitement for a little dog. He likes to curl up with his chin on my thigh. The only trouble with this is his fore paws frequently press the console switch. This triggers radio or phone calls. I think he phoned a friend today.  

The girl at Save on food was just so young and pleasant and helpful. She loaded my trunk and then the back seat.  Just a really nice person and simple interaction.  I thanked her. We drove back. Madigan very happy. Masks on the streets.  Masks outside. I only wore my mask when the girl was loading my car in the save on basement.  

Outside my home I unloaded the car.  I drove Madigan back to the parking lot.  Another walk to home.  I had ordered 3 dozen instead of one dozen eggs. I made a scrambled egg  sandwich and Madigan enjoyed some of that and licking and chewing out the frying pan, pushing it all over the kitchen floor. 

 I had roasts and pork chops, steaks, and salads, sandwich meats. And lots of drinks, Perrier and coke.  I find carrying all the drinks I drink tedious.  I have the filtered water and I have the various sweeteners and juices,but I really like the ginger ale.  It’s heavy to haul. Save on pick up is good for that. And canned goods, tuna, sardines, chilli.  I’m stocked for weeks. When Laura comes over I oven roast.  I’m always eating at home.  We did go for Macdonald’s yesterday and Laura and I had Me and Ed’s Pizza when we returned from camping.  I have a stew I froze in Tupperware.I’ve a grouse left over from fall hunt. Too often I just like sandwiches. I do like to barbecue. I had a run of oven fish and deep fried fries. I sympathize with mother’s and fathers  meal planning and feeding kids, 

I phoned people, did some work . A couple of hours. 

Then we walked about the park again, stopped and talked to Dave. We talked toilets. He told me living with five women made him knowledgeable about everything that can need fixing in a washroom. Having lived on a boat I grew weary of tearing toilets apart and clearing jams. I worry about jams and Dave was right they only occur with too little water and too much paper if there aren’t kids dropping toys in them. 

Last month my washer overflowed because the valve for that outlet was closed. I thought the back up was in the toilet as the water was up in the toilet bowl too.  I’d bought a couple of plumping tools and run the snake  through the toilet system only to find out from Kevin at Adventure RV Repairs , who I’d talked to on the phone, about this valve that needed to be open when the washer was hooked up. I opened it and all’s well. But it’s like plumbing ptsd.I worry what can I do to prevent a problem arising. I sometimes dream of shit but it’s foreign washrooms with the hole in the floor and shit all over the floor. How to drop your drawers without stepping in shit. So Dave tells me all his skookum toilet tricks . I realize I’ve got to flush more water through the system and use more toilet and pipe cleaner. I used to put bacon grease down the boat toilets to keep the valves oiled. That was salt water. I’ll use more water and find out if there is some similar oil to condition the valves.

 I did a load of laundry. It’s spin drying here right now. I like my in suite washer dryer combo. I’m now thinking of a micro wood stove. There’s no room.  But maybe when I get the smaller desk.  I miss the smell of wood burning. I burn incense but just loved my stove in the country. I’ve the electric furnace with dancing flames working again. Kevin put a new one in.   But a little wood burning stove a foot by a foot in my garage office would perk my day up.  Something to think about.  

I made the trip to the Post office with Madigan in his box over my shoulder. I had a little St. Francis statue to go with the St. Thomas, Angel Michael and little Ganesh. I still have my Celtic cross. I like religious art. One of the reasons I long to travel is to visit shrines, cathedrals, holy places.  I long to teturn to Ireland.  I’d like to go to Venice.  

We walked around the park again. With the stories of big dog attacks and cougar attacks I’ve just wanted to avoid the woods for today. Next week I’ll be back but for some reason I’m feeling cautious.  Madigan is prescious.  Coyotes are out now.  I’m always carrying flashlights and a knife. I’m happy to face cougars and coyotes with knives but unarmed not so.  I didn’t like the violent threatening young men either. I don’t feel the police or courts can be trusted to protect me. They’re afraid of the mob.   I’ve known too many victims.  Maybe I should work in the jails again to be reassured that criminals are being caught and stopped. But there’s so much crime in high places now and the unethical government is soul destroying.  

Conservatives and Christians are being persecuted.  The left loves censorship and hates freedom.  These are strange times.

I’m due for a second vaccine.  It’s the ritual. Psychosomatic uplifting belief.  I was glad to get Madigan’s vaccine. I told his vet, Dr Biernecki I thought the vaccine Madigan got was microchipped by Bill Gates. I actually am booked to have Madigan’s chip put in. When Shinto ran after a cute girl dog and showed up in the pound they were able to call me based on the chip.

 I remember my brother saying he couldn’t live through another Trudeau rule and he died.  Soon everyone in Canada may welcome death as they did in Cuba and Venezuela.  Communists kill half the populations. Depression and suicide and drug and alcohol addictions skyrocket in Communist countries. All the intelligent who are a potential threat are massacred, incarcerated or sent to gulags. It’s not a good time to be intelligent when low brow mobs like Antifida run amok. Marxist BLM doesn’t seem to have the funding it did. George Soros gloats. 

Prince Phillip died today. So sad for the Queen. She loved him dearly. 

I talked with Laura today.  I tempt her with puppies and steak.

I wrote a blog of gratitude.  The night is coming .  Evcning shadows.  I’ll read this detective novel and watch tv.  Friday a day of errands.  And laundry.  Saturday is supposed to be sunny , Laura says.  Shorts and sandals.  

Thank you Jesus for this day.  All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.  

Free Will ,Determinism, Synchronicity, St. Barnabus and Gilbert

Since moving to Burnaby I’ve been a church tourist. I’ve attended all the ones close to me and yesterday I saw St. Barnabus Church in my travels. My friend named his fine son Barnabus so I appreciate the Biblical significance of this less common reference.  Today the rain from inside was kind of depressing as a harbinger of Vancouver Eastern Rain Forest deluge that often goes on months.  We don’t have the snow of the east but there there’s sunshine and endless sky.  Here is mountains and clouds so it’s somewhat closed in, at times claustrophobic..  Church is an antidote with it’s inspiration and uplifting community association. To quote Third Day, we can ‘soar like eagles’.

So today I looked at the website and saw the St. Barnabus Church is holding the blessing of the pets, a St. Francis of Assisi tradition.  Gilbert my cockapoo, the best dog ever, was blessed by the Bishop of the Anglican Church here. We’re not sure it took since his interest in dogs genitals of either sex and his interest in their butts and the butts of cats and butts generally,  hasn’t changed.  We insist that this is perhaps the genetics of the French poodle as it certainly can’t come from the English cocker spaniel lineage.  

Gilbert comes to church with me as he comes to work . I’ve always picked places of work and church on their welcoming him.  I’m only modestly more upright in behaviour so he’s my ‘canary’ so to speak socially.  If people object to a little dog they’re soon object to me. 

Now these points, passing the church yesterday and it’s welcoming dog’s today, two ‘coincidences’ in my life seem to me to be synchronistic.  Dr. Carl Jung described the synchronistic as subjective experiences which to an outside observer would appear as coincidences.  The ‘objective’ observer sees events as ‘disconnected’ ,as was common in the ‘age of rationalism’ and the idea of disconnected objects in space. That was the now defunct ‘scientific materialism’ that still plagues those who ‘want the facts and nothing but the facts’.  The courts are still full of them but the science labs simply moved onto multi dimensional universes and quantum physics and the observer and observed interacting. 

If a butterfly flaps its wings in China there is a breeze here in North America.  Everything is ‘interconnected’.  Just because we don’t see the wind doesn’t mean that it’s not there. Like the proverbial 7 points of ‘connection’ in societies.  

I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s latest book, The Square and the Tower, (Networks and power, from Freemasons to Facebook) all about human interconnectedness.   Up to the. Magic Number of 150 about men and women can function as a society with limited structure because they mostly know and have contact with each other. (Sapiens, A brief history of humankind by Yuval Harari)  Beyond 150 there has historically been a need for formal governmental and organizational structures, each of which competes with others through commerce and war.   As Dr. Jordan Peterson speaks eloquently about there’s always this balance between chaos and order.

I love the Gospel of St. John, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God.....’

The Hindus might say that sound was ‘om’ while the scientists might call it ‘bang’.   The mathematics of music is as exciting as the harmonics and how the arrangements of sound affect our mood and health. Music Therapy is just one application but for me there is the issue of vibration and the String Theory. The uniqueness of an individual elements by it’s ‘sound’.  All of these are interconnected in the ‘ONE ‘.  I love the music in church the reciting together and singing together in community. It’s not about performance but rather about community. 

So in church we gather as a community for prayer , praise and thanksgiving.  Prayer is simply talking to the One and Thanksgiving and Praise are simply positive celebration. Politics by contrast to religion seems predominantly to be negative and critical and I have never had much truck with the judgemental, God as scornful angry condemning.  I rather think of God as ‘HOME’.  The tides of my life go out and in like breathing.

So believing the world to be sacred and that the energy that is between all is best called ‘love’ and that which separates us is ‘fear’ I love to ‘meditate’ in church, ‘listening in community’ for guidance and presence. It’s a mystical place touched by hundreds of thousands minds and hearts and souls over often hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. I love the ‘choice’ of place for a church and the changed atmosphere of that place by so many worshiping there. I feel the difference between the places of war and the places of worship.  

Now because there are billions of people and trillions of beings consciousness, a decision, results in ripples and flows and conflict because we’re all not standing miles apart in an open field but rather huddled together on a subway. If I want to change my position or direction there’s all those around me.  We can do it of course with huffing and puffing and pushing and such.  Then a new flow is created.  But it’s not just ‘me’ doing things.

In 12 step programs they say G.O.D. Is  ‘Good Orderly Direction’ because the alienating effect of the zombism of drugs and alcohol in excess results in aberrant behaviour that the adults about must accommodate to adjust to. As people mature they feel the community and need for community and realize they are simply not alone as adolescents feel they are especially with the heady experience of first drunk on lust, fame, booze, or drugs. 

So I’m ‘called’ to church in my mind. Gilbert is welcome and we’re having the feeling that St. Barnabus might well be the answer for a prayer for now.  I’m inspired to get off the couch and go out in the rain, today,  on a Sunday to participate with my fellow humans in a transcendent ritual and feel the communion.  This is sharing bread and grape juice or wine with others as Jesus, our Lord and Savior, did at the Last Supper which beget the endless communion of God and Man in a cosmic consciousness and an unconscious dance made conscious in the shared experience. 

Hallelujah!