Humility as a Spiritual Law

"Neither fear of God, nor mercy, nor faith, nor self mastery, nor any other virtue can be achieved without humility. Moreover , humility destroys all the arrows of the enemy. All the saints followed the way of humility and laboured at it…Do you see the power of this virtue? Indeed there is nothing stronger than humility, for nothing can conquer it. If some affliction befalls a humble man, he immediately blames himself for deserving it and will not reproach or blame another. Thus he endures everything that may befall (him) untroubled, without grief, with perfect calm; and so he is angered by no one and angers none."
St. Dorotheos of Gaza
I have been obsessed like many with politics recently. It is not good for my peace of mind.  I see that there are those of my friends who feel towards Donald Trump the new president of the US the way I feel towards Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada. Indeed the failure of Justin Trudeau has no doubt caused major anger and displacement of that anger towards Trudeau onto Donald Trump since Liberals will blame anyone but themselves for their failures.  I like Donald Trump and I don’t like Justin Trudeau.  They despise Donald Trump and don't have any real feelings for Justin Trudeau To the doctor in me I’d say we both have allergic reactions to two different antigens.
Regardless of this both men and their influence is in the affairs of men.  Jesus said , “Give unto Cesar, Cesar’s due.”  He repeatedly said his focus was the “Kingdom of Heaven”.  When I allow my feelings and passions to be played with by the deceitful self serving media I become a victim of the propaganda.
The basis of anger is fear. I have resentment towards Justin Trudeau because of what I perceive as his terrifyingly incompetent leadership, his wasteful spending, his allegiance to the United Nations and Saudi Arabia, his giving billions of Canadian dollars away to cronies overseas under the guise of ‘foreign aid’ where repeated investigations of Canadian ‘foreign aid’ has showed its gone directly to arming criminals;his Globalist  Agenda, his sole allegiance to Quebec ruled by biker gangs and mafia, his arrogant disgust of English Speaking Canadians and Western Canada specifically,  his importation of thousands of angry migrant young men whose extreme religion is against all that Canadians like myself value;and his appearance of utter ignorance of the cost and despair his ‘aggressive’ policies involve along with all the broken promises of the election campaign. His utter deceitfulness is frightening when one looks back at history and sees that leaders who have got into power on one mandate have suddenly switched gears and proposed a personal agenda which is self serving but threatens to bring the majority of Canadians to poverty and war.  His economic polices are disastrous.
Obviously I could go on.
I have this recurrent image of myself on my Harley Davidson Electroglyde 1600 cc Motorcycle barrelling along life’s freeway at a 110 km/hr and there in the centre of the road is a huge steaming pile of human excrement, a bullshit pile of immense dimension.  Now like a rookie motorcyclist I’m studying that pile with fascination.
( “if some affliction befalls a humble man, he immediately blames himself for deserving it and will not reproach or blame another.")
Emmett Fox, the spiritual leader, teaches quite succinctly the fundamental spiritual  ‘law of attraction’, that that which I am attracted to I will go to and will find more of and indeed God, a loving parent, will give me more of.  I am seeing politics everywhere.  I am aiming my motorbike right at the pile of excrement. I am emotionally disturbed to hear Justin Trudeaus whining snivelling debutante voice, the voice of a high school acting student. I am irritated to see his fatuous face. I’m emotionally invested in his male imitation of Myla Cyress.  I have given him power.  It’s not at the rational thought level that the law of attraction works but rather at the ‘feeling level’.  The problem with Trudeau and with politics and the media is that I’m watching them and listening to them. It’s mostly Facebook with that weasel leftist little Lenin wannabe Zuckerberg and his advertising now on my once personal stream.  His propaganda is constantly bringing forward the radical leftist agenda he wants. He’s a lipstick liberal, just like Lenin, a rich lawyer boy who maintained his wealth and status manipulating brownshirt peasants just as the socialist Hitler did to put himself in power and Lord it over the masses.
Zuckerberg now is promoting poverty for all with the globalist agenda that guarantees a liberal elite unprecedented power. World Communism (often presented  under the guise of socialism, like a candy coated tourd)achieved finally through the Frankfurt school and work of Italian Gransci et al.  This isn’t ‘paranoia’ or ‘racism’ or any of the ‘propaganda’ ‘sloganeering’ that passes as intelligence to this incredibly stupid people whose principal communication is ‘name calling’.  At least their standard chanting war refrains have gone up a notch from their ‘running dog imperialist’ poor English translation of Chinese and Russian bullies.  They’ve refined their marketeering to the local but continue to wage war on society because only with global war can they topple those who are in charge and place themselves in charge.
The Left want a revolution and they want war.  The lipstick liberals and their limousine elite crowd want total war.  Only in WWIII will they be able to ‘win’ to the top. Lenin was as great a murdering leader as Mohammed.  Mohammed was as great a war  lord as Stalin and Hitler.  There is no surprise that communists and muslims have formed ranks today to create global jiahad, sharia communism, because they are both spawn of warlords, the genius of murdering mad men.
By contrast Jesus and Buddha are not war lords.  Constantine, a Roman emperor lead Christians as did eastern leaders lead Buddhists to war but the religion of Jesus and the Buddha were not war leaders. Islam is a religion of war. Buddhism and Christianity are religions love and peace.  Marx promoted war and claimed that war was necessary. Communism is a aetheist death religion given it's the only true political expression of aetheism.  Nazism, another socialism was neopagan, lead by the neo pagan Hitler.  The paid gangs of rioters who serve George Soros and his economy crashing ambulance chaser follow the actual play books of toppling nations created by  Mohammed and Marx/Lenin/Engels and Castro and Mao.  Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father, used the same agenda to bring tanks into Canada and declare national law before destroying the economy and overwhelming the health care system by bringing the sick families of immigrants into the country as paid voters.  It's called 'political science' and it's the science of 'soft war' which precedes 'hard war'.  These men aren't pacifists. They war mongers.  Stalin just continued the mass murdering Lennin began. Mohammed's family continued jihad right into Spain and almost took Venice were it not for the defensive Crusades that stopped their global war after the Muslims killed millions of non muslims , a practice they continue today.  Every day an Iman in a mosque in a western country calls for the death of non muslims. This is no religion of peace. Communism is equally a religion of death and destruction. Why Justin Trudeau is lying to Canadians is what terrifies us.
Intelligently I disagree with the Liberal position because Communism has destroyed country after country and the destruction of the once great Europe is occurring now because of the very policies that Justin Trudeau is putting forward.  Atheists have killed more people in a century than all the religions of the world killed in all the centuries before.
So I am afraid.  If I were calm about this matter I’d be like the great political writer JJ McCullough who always has a certain aloof wry humour to his commentary. He doesn’t have the hysteria that is so obviously insane that immediately indicates that a person isn’t there for a discussion but rather for an argument. JJ McCullough only tried to discuss the privilege and bullying of Canada by Quebec and Quebec parliamentarians wanted him silenced and censored. Today the left wants to silence anyone who doesn't promote Sharia Communism.
I don’t think I’m perfectly sane when I speak about that great asshole Justin Trudeau. There is the Big Kahuma and then there is the big Asshole.  I’m indelicate and this bothers me to.  I have been taught as a gentleman that I must respect the ‘rank’ even if I consider the ‘man or woman’ who holds the rank a ’turd’.  Yet here I am down at the low brow level of the leftist Trudeau calling him names like he and his followers did to Mr. Harper.  I have lost the high ground and am fighting in the sordid streets where the brown shirt gangsters of the liberals and their low brow followers congregate with niqab covered faces so the cameras don't pick up their looting jewelry stores.
Politics because it is about fear and aggression brings out the worst in us.  It's brought out the worst in me. It’s like the business meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous. I saw the most serene and loving of people who had shown no hostility go mad with rage over the discussion of how the chairs in the room were to be placed.  I’ve watched churches divide over the politics of who will be granted the contract for the repair of the roof. No greater hostility and violence of spirt was apparent to me than at the university where the vilest of human behaviour occurs because of the lust for power and grants in those not so hallowed halls of a great deal of business and a huge dollop of politics and just a little taste of learning.  Institutions are by nature the seats of politics and the place where humans best learn ’the sport of politics’.  There’s compromise and team playing. But they're commonly vicious and deceitful.  Canada is a toxic country.  It wasn't always such.
Anyone like me who is happiest alone is normally no better than a critic because critics are a loud cacophony of idiocy that surrounds all human endeavour. It’s the boots on the ground people like Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump who are the leaders of the world.  Donald Trump goes every day to work and Justin Trudeau goes to work when he’s not vacationing with his large extended family.
 I honestly fear I couldn’t last a day in parliament because I think politics is downright stupid. It really scares me. They’re like a street gang in suits.  Tough boys and girls fighting for their personal gain and claiming that it’s for the good of all, all the while trying to please a myriad of rich and poor suitors.  It’s horrid.
In psychiatry we speak of projection and counter projection.  When I use the term ‘projection’ I mean that I’m putting emotionally on another what I am carrying over from my past.  Counter projection is the equal and opposite play of emotional baggage. No one is without it.  If a black man has been beat up by three white men he will be suspicious of the fourth. If a white man has been beat up by 3 black men he will be suspicious of the fourth.  Everyone uses tactics to get the other person to ‘disarm’ emotionally. The strategy favoured by psychopaths and sociopaths is to demand ‘unilateral disarmament’.  “Trust me”.  The naive youth are forever becoming the cannon fodder because they’re so stupid. I’m a crotchety old dog because I’ve survived this long only because I’ve been beat up and lied to by politicians and media and the rich and powerful and gangs and I’ve just barely survived with an inordinate number of scars. If people don’t have scars they weren’t in the fight.  The guy who lost his leg in war wasn’t stupid as the people back home think, he was where the action was.  Only the wounded know.  A whole lot of people live off the deaths of others and because they’re dishonest about their indebtedness come up with all manner of insanity to convince themselves they’re better.
When I first reported to the authorities a person who was killing and breaking the law I was savaged. I have been savaged every time I have reported killers, pedophiles and thieves.  Kill the messenger is the basic Canadian strategy of ‘preserving the status quo’.  The ‘bad man’ is part of a ‘bad nest’. If you just take out one as I learned early in my career the others who support that evil turd will come after you.
Justin Trudeau represents a third of Canadians, most of Quebec, a whole lot of Eastern urban girls and boys and a whole lot of bought votes like the refugees he brought in on condition they would vote for him.  Two thirds of Canadians don’t like him.  The vast majority of Germans did not like Hitler or his party initially.  It doesn’t take a ‘majority’ of people to take over a country. That’s the basic principle of communist revolution. They take over countries by infiltration of key organizations and undermine individuals.  The problems the Americans faced with North Vietnamese is the assassination teams that roamed the countryside of south Vietnamese killing any good leaders in the villages.
 In Canada ‘character assassination’ is the name of the game and anyone who stands up to the bullies in power will be subjected to attacks the likes of what we witnessed with Donald Trump. No one will ever know how many women Obama groped and how often he said he was going to get some pussy other than Michelle.  It didn’t matter that Bill Clinton was a rapist or at least Hillary paid a woman off so she would not have to face that slur in court.  Who cares if Hillary and Abedin had a lesbian relationship but Donald Trump was slurred in the most intimate way.  The prostitutes that Mao or Lenin had were never an issue politically because the left doesn’t care about their own leaderships ‘foibles’ or ‘humanity’.  The bullies don’t have a code or standards.  They exist to use those with a code or standards against them.
I always hear loner aetheists calling people who go to church hypocrites yet there is no greater group of hypocrites than an atheist philosophy department. My favourite hypocrite is an atheist philosopher. The greatest whiner of modern times was the great deconstructionist who had an emotional hissy fit when a brilliant philosopher subjected his pet deconstruction theory to deconstruction.  Critics are only good when they are pointing fingers.
I brought up PROJECTION because I know I’m “projecting’ when I am critical of Justin Trudeau. He and his wife Sophie absolutely remind me of my time professoring at the  university when I was married and I believed and spoke all that fatuous effete dilletante crap that gets a guy laid with stupid girls after drinking a little wine and smoking a few joints. We all ‘love’ and ‘love’ is good and the girls back then were so easy, like Sophie. Sexy, easy, adoring, sensual.  A regular white bra Kardasian.  You imagine they’ve got dildos and do anal and oral sex and it’s fun in the bedroom when Sophie isn’t manipulating and conniving and giving Trudeau shit, when Sophie and his mother, the drug addict sexsensationalist Maggie Trudeau aren’t ganging up on the poor guy.  He’s actually taken his "in laws" on vacation. Where are the comedians with such rich material.  Really. Where are they.  Cowards. The Justin Trudeau family with all the sex scandals and drugs and Maggie and Sophie and Trudeau and the nannies and the private helicopter rides to satanic islands of concubines and privacy is just hilarious material but no, the comedians don't dare. Canada is a police state. Comedians have been fined for 'speech'. Overnight with the throning of Justin Trudeau the Dark Ages settled into Canada and we reverted to a world where criticizing Mohammed or Allah meant death.  Now comedians don't laugh at the bizarre nest that is the dope smoking Trudeau family.
I was Justin Trudeau. I was a young man in a very bad place and I felt suicidal with the difficulty of the decisions I had to make when I was at the top in my University days professoring and lecturing and sounding like an arrogant idiot I was. I blamed anything and everything on everything and anything but me.
Justin Trudeau’s life is the shits. I had it. I was right there mouthing platitudes and arguing with the wife at home. I never had the monster children that required 2 nannies and the dozen army and navy seals surrounding them and talking to them and keeping them in line along with the crazy wife and crazy mother and all the manufacturers of weapons and marijuana wanting me to push their product. Then there’s  the nightmares of Daddy's  elephant and the mouse  causing him to be with out sleep and he’s just wanting everyone to love him. Then the fucking media who he's bought and paid for takes a picture of him eyeing Ivanka’s tits with raw lust , and only yesterday  he elbowed the tit of just about the best looking breasts in the opposition.  No one understands what it’s like to be a castrated man and he’s acting his very best trying to please the bike gangs and mafia in Quebec and when he met the head of China he wet himself if he wasn’t sodomized by that really barbaric scary dude.  Justin Trudeau keeps having to have dinner with guys who have literally killed thousands, many with their own hands. He's dining in Cuba with guys who have gone into jails where they've personally tortured peasants then killed these defenceless unarmed men with a shot to the back of head or a slash of a machete.  Muslim leaders   are chopping off the heads of people in public executions today and men chop of the heads of their wives without legal consequence.  Justin is meeting these people and he''s got to be in shock.  This is a vacuous part time drama teacher and pot head snow board who calls himself a 'feminist' to get laid by his really bitchy silly wife.  You really don’t think the Chinese leader hasn’t taken some personal pleasure in physically snuffing out the life of his enemy with his bare hands. Lenin got a real rush killing people personally . He loved being able to use his spy agency to hunt down Trotsky and snuff him in Mexico.
Justin Trudeau liked his bro Obama, he was slick like the other boys at school, a lawyer, who joked with him after dinner snorting a few lines of coke maybe . A couple of the boys laughing over cigars Obama told Trudeau what a rush to authorize a drone strike.  They probably laughed about how they'd like to drone strike Donald Trump and maybe Rona Ambrose. God, power is glorious.  Obama was Justin's friend and now this fucking Donald Trump is just as likely to poison Trudeau in Trudeau’s eyes as he is to whack a terrorist or drug cartel leader.  Donald Trump scares the shit out of Trudeau.   That explains why Trudeau always walks like he has a wet one in his white shorts.  He’s shitting himself.  Now where are the Canadian comedians with this stuff.  Charlie Head was murdered and the fact is no one in Canada not on government pay is pay enough to take any risks. Canadian comedians are cowards. I don't blame them. But really, the material here is priceless.
I was shitting myself when I was in my thirties and forties trying to sort out the lies from the lies and having all these idiots criticizing me and judging me.  .
Trudeau is my younger self. I’ve not forgiven myself. I’ve not forgiven my gullibility. I continue to hold resentments to the leaders who punished me for reporting their killing drunken drug addicted cronies. I”m still angry that the women protected the deadly drug addicted women even more than the old boys club.  I hated the double standards.  Racism is all about letting a minority kill because they’re a minority and I watched that happened and reported that but they got a free pass but the white guy got it then I got it for ‘not being a team player’.  I was supposed to watch the killing and stealing go on and wait my turn.  I was supposed to be a support to organization and never never never never be a ‘whistle blower’.  Being a ‘whistle blower’ in my case just served to hurt the good leader who had the weak secondary so that the really evil dirty killing competitor got in power.  It was a lesson in what Winston Churchill called "real politic".  His mother slept around too but she was discrete about it. My mother didn't.  My mother and father were salt of the earth.
That’s what I like about Melania. I don’t think she sleeps around. Her son is most important to her.  My mother didn’t sleep around because her children were most important to her.  Naturally having been a son I like that trait in a woman. It’s otherwise dubious especially to a group into orgies.  They would naturally not like that trait in a woman. I didn’t like non drinkers when I drank.  I really like that Donald Trump doesn’t drink. I keep wanting Trudeau drug tested but that’s just my past talking. I was punished with years of drug testing because being the least important youngest member of a drunken orgying  drug doing important crowd who were competing with the resentful fearful political non drinking non drugging monogamous crowd.  I was the sacrifice.  Nothing changed in the bigger picture. I lost millions in potential income.  Some would say I saved my soul.  I somedays think I'd rather of saved my ass.  I took the road less travelled. Now all that history is dying around me. The players are 5 and 10 years older and dying of cancer and sexually transmitted diseases and alcohol and drug abuse and dementing early.
I don’t think Justin Trudeau has the character I had.  I probably sell him short. Politicians are such whores. I was like that. I turned down a gig as a naked pole dancer and refused to do major crime. I was invited. I was there at the gate. I turned away. I don’t know if Trudeau would.  He's always seemed so weak.  Power crazed liked his father in that way and addicted like his mother.
I’m old today. I really believe I’d take a gig as a naked pole dancer today.  If someone offered me the kind of money they offered me at 20.  I just turned down a couple of thousand dollars a day pushing marijuana. I turned down the easiest job of doing abortions with a couple of months vacation, half million a year and 30 hour work week.  God there’s really money to be made on the dark side, that grey area that the Liberal government celebrates.  I personally have moved more into public health than the personal health arena simply because I’m so tired of being beat up defending the underdogs. I’m tired of constantly paying big money out of my own pocket to stop people being killed and for what.
The fact is we get the leaders we deserve.  Isaiah said that of Israel.  Trudeau is a puppet. He’s a silly little boy with a bitch wife and a crazy mother and a flakey fatuous life and low brow take on reality, experiencing a kind of drug addicted party with all the trappings of a gang fest and he’s probably dying in side.  He's mostly likely sold his soul and his ass.
When I was in that world it was horrible. Sitting next to a guy talking about maiming someone for profit with a whole lot of shakers and makers of society around me and the wife kicking me under the table to shut up.  I remember the dinner parties of bores and all those UN type egos and the utter stupidity. I just haven’t been able to do that without pot and wine. When I was smoking pot and drinking wine I could sit at such a function and get through the night ogling the girls tits. I could even listen to my second mother in law, the greatest nut bar of womanhood mother in laws whose insanity competed with the third mother in laws whose existence was the basis of all the worlds’ jokes about mother in laws. I simply couldn’t do that today. I sometimes think that the only way a sane person could accept Canadian politics today or listen to a CBC news cast is with a shit load of LSD on board.
Some one has to do that job which is probably worse than public sanitation.  I never liked tuxedos and having my picture taken and the sycophants saying how great I was.  I look at poor Justin and see that he’s really struggling.  The mentally retarded don’t have an easy life.  I’ve known Downs syndrome trisomy 21 adults and they laugh a lot and like eating and sex but they’re befuddled by life.
I’m clearer visioned today. That they had to do that old style communist political play with Justin in front of the blackboard equation prop massacring a description of a quantum computer he'd been coach all night on and prompted by the paid sycophant reporter was just too tragic.  Seeing that and the millions that went into that little play really showed just how stupid Justin must be and how many people really know it that they have to do that kind of political marketing. It was like when the Kennedy's were boinking Marilyn Munroes their handlers couldn't get enough of them backdropped by churches and talking to mother child functions.  It's politics.  But not for the good guys. They don't stoop need to stoop so low.   And I don't have to follow them there.  I'm the one watching this World Wrestling rigged massive theft fest.
I just have to follow the spiritual laws. The spiritual law of motorcycling is to focus on where you want to go.  If you see a big pile of human excrement on the highway of life you don’t watch it. You aim away from it. You go around around it.  When you were a kid you loved to scream ‘wee’ and go right through that shit but you’re not 20 30 or 40 anymore and you don’t drink and you don’t smoke so forget it. Keep your eyes on the road and enjoy the ride.
Go to the light.
Politics in general is a cluster fuck and a shit storm. CBC is the worst of news sources.  You know listening to it is like sticking a curling iron in your ear or up your ass. You’ve never done that, thank God so why do you ever turn on CBC and see how your tax payer money is being wasted and hear the worst sharia communist propaganda. They’re not going to give you the real news. They’re not going to show Justin Trudeau hugging the porcelain and upchucking his wine and guts into  the gilded toilet. CBC is not going to let you hear that Sophie is still telling him what an asshole he is after the media showed him ogling Ivanka’s tits.  It was maybe okay for Obama and Michelle and Sophie and Justin to do a little coke and have a little group sex in the White House but despite what the media say about Donald Trump he’s not going to like a foreign dignitary lusting after his brilliant beautiful and married daughter.  It doesn’t matter that he was a young cad, a father doesn’t take that shit.  So there’s Justin with a hangover and a headache and Sophie is giving him  her "I’ve got a feminist head ache for another lifetime routine " and Myla Cyress has a sexually transmitted disease and that fat ass Kardasian that Trudeau can’t get enough of watching when he’s not having to go to those boring boring meetings, has obviously got really bad hemorrhoids.  The Kardashians have hemorrhoids. Really. I thought everyone knew.
And I’m here with my dog.  I’m an egomaniac with a inferiority complex. I’m envious and afraid. And it’s got nothing to do with what’s happening today. I’ve got to get my head in the same room as my ass is and I’ve got to get my one foot out of the future and one foot out of the past and I’ve got to count my blessings.  I've got to accept God's in charge and the world is unfolding as it should.
I’ve got to accept that if I had never smoked dope then maybe Trudeau would not have become prime minister. That's the multiverse, at that node where I chose smoking and drinking to prayer and fasting,  I took chose the path that lead to this reality. I personally by my behaviour contributed to the cluster fuck I see us facing now.  This is my part of the group karma. In an alternate reality Justin Trudeau is still snowboarding and teaching kids drama. He has the fish mongers wife and the overbearing in laws and the nannies and all that shit but Canada has a real worthy prime minister who is a statesman and doesn't do drugs.   If I had been a good man and kept my nose to the grindstone instead of ogling girls tits when I was his age I would have perhaps stayed married to those darling women I married who make Sophie look like something hit by a truck . I”m reminded of my wive’s when I see Melania with Trump and her son Barron.  My first wife really looked like Melania. My second wife looked like Nicole Kidman. My third wife when she wasn't doing drugs was great.  I really was a loser like Trudeau when I was young sounding just as god awful stupid, singing ‘we shall overcome ‘ and smoking joints and fucking outdoors after the peace rallies. God it was great to be young and stupid.  At least I knew more about science,  physics,  computers on my worst day back then than he did on his best with all the best acting and science tutors and he still got it wrong.  I also taught drama back then so I really can see how incredibly bad he is in what he's supposed to be best at.  Whenever I see him and hear him in public it's like seeing Peewee singing opera. Such a bad performance. Maybe he snowboards better. I never snowboarded so maybe I'd not know what a farce he is.
Face it .  You’re jealous of Trudeau not because of his position but because of his age. You wish you could be young again and say no to dope and save yourself that wasted time when you took so many knocks in life because when you’re not fully aware you become a target. Poor Justin probably dreams of snowboarding and smoking a joint and wonders what the fuck happened to his life. And if he hadn’t smoked dope maybe he could still be a part time drama teacher snowboarding and not having to listen to the awful little kids, the in laws and the bitch wife Sophie a real fishmonger wife if ever there was one.
Here you’ve survived. You’ve got through the age of stupidity and there’s really no need to go through it.  Fast from face book. If you can give up beaujolais you can give up Face book or at least politics. Not JJ McCullough. You can read JJ but stay away from CBC and all those other main stream media marketing war mongering lie telling smooth sounding talking dick head programs.
Remember last week how good you felt listening to neurosciences driving to and from work. And don’t you see how much better you feel reading the writings of saints.  You read what Trudeau said about something and had to clean up the shit because your bowels didn’t know wether to vomit or have diarrhea. it was so unappealing. Go to the light.  Aim the motorcycle where you want to go.  Go around the shit and the shit heads.
You want to go to the light.
Forgive yourself.  Forgive Justin Trudeau. Forgive Donald Trump. Forgive all the politicians. Forgive the institution of politics. Forgive that little weasel Zuckerberg. Forgive Merkel. Forgive Mohahmmed even if he’s dead centuries and his killing still goes on.  Forgive Jesus and even Buddha because they left you and are probably in heaven watching the world and laughing at the entertainment that all this people wandering about in shit brings those who’ve gone before and get to look back from a place of grace.
And humility.
Always remember the mantra you created in your yogi days, “I am insignificantly significant and significantly insignificant’.  Get some humility happening. It’s all outside your pay grade.  You’re just another silly critic and poor Justin Trudeau gets enough shit from his mother and his wife and those Quebec biker gangs and all his other handlers.  He’s got the stupid downtown girl groupies but he can’t even look at Ivanka’s tits  Remember the trouble that porn dog Bill Clinton had.  He must have had Hillary blasting him every night. It's amazing they had a daughter with how angry that woman is all of the time.  He just wanted to get blow jobs from every young women and whatever success he had in life he’ll always be remembered as not knowing a blow job was a ‘sexual relationship’ and being an even greater liar than Nixon.
Why focus on these guys. There’s amazing guys doing amazing science and you listen to the stupid news when you can be listening to neurosciences like you did last week, hearing about the latest researcher on synapses say.
I know you hardly ever listen to this shit. You really do spend most of your time studying science and history and theology.  You've read dozens of texts on ethics and morality.  You practiced yoga and Tai Chi and pray and meditate.  I know  You try to avoid CBC like the plague turning it off but you still turn it on.  You're like a porn addict who can't resist a peek.  Everytime you listen to CBC propaganda it makes you sick.  Still you listen a bit.  5 minutes of kiddie porn.  That's all it takes to get the addiction to depravity raved up. And here you are indulging in just a taste of CBC like a crack addict who thinks he can just have a little taste then wonders why his whole attitude goes to shit.
Then yo go to Facebook despite the bullshit it’s become with more advertising and Zuckerberg filling your screen with his left wing propaganda pieces and saying 'we thought you'd like that'. And you screaming you Zuckerberg might like crack and kiddie porn but I don't want you shit lies in my home on my computer.
I liked the  dogs and humour. It’s like you keep opening the door to strangers and wondering why you can’t even block the intrusion of psychopaths and sociopaths because you won’t accept your mind is valuable. You love when you read the Bible. You felt so good last week reading Kierkegaars that your friend John Christiensen gave you. I know you don’t seek out this bullshit but you sure spend a long time looking at this piles of human excerment on the road before your swerve your motorcycle to safety. You're like a guy whose sober standing outside a liquor store window reading labels on the bottles and complaining about the display.   Go to the light.  Stay focused on the journey.
The journey is you become more humble, more virtuous, more honest, more learned, more wise, more relatable, and more spiritual.  You want to be a good person. You want to be of service to your fellow man. You want to make money so you can direct it to where you think it serves the most good. You want to do a whole lot of good things and instead you are distracted by all the shit.  You really have to get your act together and stop letting people get into your home and keep you from doing what you were doing.  They have child locks on computers to keep the criminals away from children. You need a Facebook without Zuckerberg's propaganda. You need a radio with the CBC news deleted from the dial. You got Sirius to listen to hymns and symphony but no you still, tired, at the end, of a very long day, driving home, turn on the radio to get the CBC news and what do you get, a headache.  And it’s okay to eat ice cream and watch Star Trek. It’s not like you don’t deserve it. You’ve served for decades so doing some things for yourself is okay. But why don't you really look on the bright side of life. Let someone else take care of Trudeau and Sharia Communism. You've spent your life fighting evil and getting beat up saving lives and doing the right thing.  For nearly 20 years now you've been clean and sober and you only binge drank and smoked dope a few years of your life.  You quit drinking because of your wife's drug problem.  It was great to get the help to stay sober and it was great to make all the friends who left that Justin Trudeau Sophie Obama Michelle Ottawa Washington Swamp life.  You have a good life. You're supposed to be preparing for a good death.  Prayer and fasting. Leave this world of Trudeaus and lies and CBC propaganda and globalist communism to the next generation. They may have to have a World War III and maybe they will not make it. I worry for my nephews who are so trusting and good and my god children who are so young.  But mostly I worry for my old age.  I see the government killing us old people off and having taken from us all our lives now when we are too old killing us like the Communists always do.  Firing squads or physician assisted suicides.  It's fear of aging that makes me cranky. It's my brother dying young.  It's the patients dying daily because of Trudeau's underfunding health care and encouraging addiction and drug abuse.  It's the insanity of greedy public policy.  It's aging. I'm afraid. I'm not doing well at humility. I'm not trusting God enough. God is good all of the time and God has been good to me despite myself. I must practice the presence of God and follow the light. I have allowed myself to be pulled down into the swamp and am choking on my own choice to swim in this muck.  My job is to do my work humbly thankful for what I have and focussing on the good I can do.  I must celebrate the good and avoid the piles of shit in the road.  I need to sing praises and celebrate the journey.  It's been glorious at times.  I love my little dog though his blindness in one eye has been so demoralizing.  I am upset with the forced move and the failure of administration.  I am utterly tired of the constant demands and no resources.  I am thankful for what we are doing. I must pray more for my friends with cancer and my friends who are older and feeling as afraid as I am about the destruction of the health care system, the lack of pain management and the abuse of pain medication. But my job isn't in politics.  I have to focus on healing.  Healing at the microcosm level.  I must heal myself. Recovery and my relationship with God and learning to be more humble.  It's all going to be okay. This too shall pass. Just keep cleaning up the wreckage of your past.  Thank god you quit drinking wine and smoking dope and smoking tobacco as soon as you did and that you didn't continue along that dead end.  Take the right way around the shit in the road. See the clear open high way.
Love God and Love your neighbour as your self. Your problem is that you haven’t loved God enough. You haven’t meditated enough, prayed enough, read uplifting literature enough, laughed enough, exercised enough, walked the dog enough.  That’s where you need to focus. That’s humility. You’re a student of life. Focus on the clear path. Pay attention to the Way.
Humility is a spiritual law. If you want to feel good look to what you yourself are doing or not doing that is making you feel bad.  And if you are doing something that is off then make sure there’s more balance. Remember Gandhi and Martin Luther King both made essentially the same statement, “It’s a tough day, so I must spend more time on my knees”.

Psalm 32

From Psalm 32, NIV Bible,
“You are my hiding place;
You will protect me from trouble
And surround me with songs of deliverance.'
++++
“Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous,
sing, all you who are upright in heart."

I love the psalms. When people have been threatening to kill me, kill my dog, or kill my family, I have turned to the psalms for comfort. They were written by David facing all the armies of his enemies and those who were supposedly friends who betrayed him. I am amused that House of Thrones is so popular but it’s really just historic deviance and divide and conquer.
I just read a history of Armenia and that poor kingdom was under attack from either the Greek Christians or Muslems every few years all the while there was internal strife.
 Israel was an attractive e nation along the trade routes.  Armies passed through going each way.  Empires one after another attempted and succeeded in subjugate it.
Canada is a young country that has not known invasions but increasingly our immigrants come from regions where war was a constant.  Of Scottish/Irish  heritage we’d known peace within the British empire for hundreds of years with minor conflicts compared to the later great war.
In Moscow a few years ago I met with a uniform supplier for the Russian army. He said war was big business  and that Europeans had wars every 50 years on average.  All of the nations of the ‘Security Council’ are principal arms dealers and major war concerns. The purpose of the United Nations was to cement the gains and ensure the Allied Empire would remain in charge thereafter.  The “cold war’, was really not so much a war but an ‘arms race’ that culminated in Detente and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The competition between ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’ was won with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The American model was a model of decentralization, freedom and meritocracy.  The communist model was central control, totalitarian and fear based. It resulted in the ‘mediocrity’ that haunts all socialist countries.  Stalin said that socialism was communism. Marxist socialism was a dyadic (beugeoisie/proletariat, with the aim of continual warfare till the lowest common denominator , the proletariat ruled.  By contrast there was a Scottish socialist model based on triadic principles of three class society which gave rise to the Union movement.  All economies are a mixture of capitalism and socialism.  Historically the collective agreed to serve in those areas where profit was least likely immediate so less attractive to the capitalist investor.  NAZI was socialism and called itself the National Socialist Party.  Ironically today given the propaganda and disinformation the average person does not recognize ‘central’ control as the hallmark of socialism and dictatorship. Yet Lenin, revered socialist, insisted on ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
Even in the church there is the central control of the Catholic contrasted with the regional control of presbytery.  The pendulum swings. In Canada we are facing more dictatorship.  Pierre Trudeau threatened the country’s citizens collectively bringing on martial law against all for the action of an few individuals.  The French have historically swung from their love of monarchy or Napoleonic Empire dictatorship to their bloody French Revolution and radicalism.  In almost all the colonies of the French there have been persistent war left for generations while British colonies by comparison have been relatively stable.  As Canada has become ruled by Quebec dictatorship following the increasing reduction in ‘eligible’ political candidacy, first ‘fluent french speakers’ and now pro abortionist only we have become a centralized oligarchy.
The natural appeal of dictatorship is the ‘benign dictator’ is the most appealing efficient government yet ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ with Canada increasingly corrupt as a nation, perhaps more corrupt than ever. The Charbonneau Enquiry essentially showed that the Eastern Mafia and Biker Gangs controlled the building of Quebec and naturally as Quebec dominates Canada    the influence of corruption spreads through the nation. Not that western Canada is still “Canada the good’ , once the ‘bread basket of the world’, it’s agricultural achievement today is it’s production of marijuana.
The legal/political byzantine squabbling at the top which each corporation trying to get special deals and own the law makers who are themselves seeking special retirement havens like the world renown Canadian Senate, the best of all Old Age Pension deals for the ‘good friend’ of the wheeling dealing central socialist government, it all seems to the common man like a brawl going on in the sky between gods and goddesses of ancient greece and rome.  These Gods and Goddessess aren’t called Mars and Venus but rather Walmart, Pfizer, de Havilland, Nike, etc.  Meanwhile the Hillary Clinton debate wages to the south and Brexit has escaped from the centralized authority and cancerous bureaucracy of Brussels.  It remains to be seen if England will survive this encounter with the Germans.  The Communist experiment in Babylon fell as has the Islamic Babylon tumbled before Desert Spring.  The struggle remains in the West and China.  Always the Borg meets Captain Picard.
In the midst of all this apparent deceit, corruption and greed, divisiveness and empire, it’s good to turn to the Lord.  The psalms are a comfort.
“You are my hiding place,
You will protect me from trouble.
And surround me with songs of deliverance."
When I attended Regent College Dr. James Houston taught courses on spirituality which we were truly blessed to attend year after year.  He taught that reading all the psalms day after day till they are finished would help one to feel ‘anointed’.  There’s a recurrent theme being lost and found over and over again.  It’s the story of David.
David’s heir was Jesus.
Hallelujah.

Non-violence and Religion

The Islamic claim to being a ‘religion of peace’  seems outright a bald faced lie. However like Communism , the idea is that ‘if you let us rule, we will provide world peace’.  This is a tyrants promise.  Like the Mexican standoff, one asks oneself if it is right to lay down one’s arms first.  In the Nuclear Disarmament agreements there was always the chant of ‘lay down arms first’ but this chant is usually the voice of the enemy.  Mutual disarmament and mutual retreat from violence as anyone who has been there knows isn’t a matter of one side laying down arms as an example to the other side but rather a mutual process of combined withdrawal from the precipitous of mutually destructive violence.
In the East the Jains were perhaps the first to promote non violence to all creatures.  Not just ‘peace’ but true non violence.  Vardhamana Jnatraputra (597-527), son of a Kshatriyas chieftain renounced all war and all violence. Jains even concerned themselves with stepping on insects and blades of grass.
I found it interesting that the famous Christian missionary physician Albert Schweitzer struggled with the idea of going to the violent of continent of Africa because he himself was focused on peace and non violence and couldn’t see how this would be possible in Africa. He was walking on a path when he realized because of the modern study of microbiology afforded by microscopes than no breath or step could occur without death of life.  With this realization he was then freed to go to Africa to serve.
The Jains had retreated from society in the efforts to achieve purity of non violence but the Buddha following in this idea encouraged disciples to participate in society but to the best of their ability be non violent.  Hence warriors could be buddhist and indeed the great emperor Ashoka who struggled most with the idea of non violence and violence in civilization had Buddhist and Jain teaching but concluded that the very instrument of civilization, warfare, must in turn maintain the peace. It was recognized that without so called leisure class there could not be research, science, study and advancement, all the benefits of civilization and so Ashoka concluded that for their to be civilization there would be war but war would maintain the peace otherwise there would be anarchy.  Experiments in anarchy time and again lead to gang warfare and chaos and internecine killing.  It was with these reflections in mind that the Beattles famous for John and Yoko Lennon’s song, Give Peace a Chance were equally famous for their song “We don’t want a revolution”. That said, it’s difficult for all who make it to the top of these hierarchies to renounce the profit and reward of what is usually effort and war, actual or symbolic.  Carnegie gave his wealth to libraries the world over and increasingly there’s an ‘altruism’ among the wealthy today. But unfortunately so much of this public behaviour is later realized today to be done to avoid taxation and to gain even greater profit through influence.
Later Christian Quakers and Mennonites would eschew war but it would seem the Jains were not only the first major non violent sect but ones who did it with true gusto.
I have yet to find the Muslim equivalents, not that I don’t expect to find them, their being Suffi’s for enlightenment but it still seems a bit far fetched to call this religion the ‘religion of peace’.  It would be as spurious to call Russia, China or the US nations of peace.  Unfortunately especially for the stupid and the devolving idiocy of modern media, peace and war are not so much as opposites but indeed very much entwined.
Now the Muslims I know personally, and I’ve honoured to be friends of many, are themselves very peaceful educated sophisticated lovely people. However they are like me physicians or academics, middle class folk, not part of the upper 1 or 2 % of society that rules. They are further not in a Muslim country, Canada quite notorious for it’s homeland peacefulness and general politeness.  I have argued that politeness is greatest among the thoroughly subjugated so Canadians good manners may reflect more the extent to which they have been beaten down and lied to.
Since the first violence of the state is the elite and the rest the question of whether a religion is ‘peaceful’ is secondary to it’s initial value to the leadership who adopt it.  As Christianity and Islam are today the most competitive religions with Atheist Communism in third place perhaps the elite who have imposed violence and subjugation on the many, for good or evil, or expediency, must see in these three competing religions support for their regimes. It goes without saying that any state, government, monarchy can only have a religion that supports the population in general being punished and contained.
All three religions, Christianity, Islam, and Atheist Communism have ‘world dominion’ designs.  So none is ‘inherently peaceful’.  Each has allowed violence to be done to the population within and each in various ways has an expansionist theology.
This needs to be looked at further as it’s most unlikely that President Obama, Prime Minister Trudeau, Communist China’s Central Committee, Putin or the House of Said are today or any time soon likely to embrace the most peaceful of religions, Jainism, Quaker, or Mennonite Christianity.  I don’t even think they’re about to dance with the Suffis though a good dance is always better than a good fight.  

Islam, Judaism, Christianity - God, Books, and Peace

A Muslim is a person who follows the religion of Islam. The book of Islam is the QURAN.(Koran).  It was said to be written by the prophet Muhammad but it's more likely that he dictated it as there is question of whether he himself could write.  It is nonetheless considered the Word of God 'revealed' to Muhammed.

To be a Muslim one must publicly pronounce the Shahadah (declaration of faith):

"There is no god but the God and Muhammed is the last messenger of the God."

Muhammed was born c 570 and died 632 CE in Mecca, Hejaz, Arabia.  He is the founder of the religion of Islam and known as it's Prophet. He was considered the Last Prophet of the line beginning with Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets.  The Hadith are secondary teachings and writings which coupled with the Koran form the basis of the Islamic religion The collected 'laws' of Islam are called the Sharia.

Judaism also began with Adam (and Eve).  Abraham  was born 1948 BCE in Sumer and went to Canaan and made the first covenant with God. This was the basis of the "Chosen People".   Abraham is considered the Patriarch of Judaism. The Lord spoke to Abraham.  Abraham and Sarah gave birth to Moses.  Moses met Yahweh ("I am that is who I am").   In Deuteronomy,  to Moses was given the Shema:

"Hear. O Israel! The Lord is our God, the lord is one." 

The "Book" of Judaism is the TORAH. Secondary writings of Judaism are the Mishnaw, most of which are subsequent interpretations and discussions of the Torah by later scholars.  The most famous 'laws' of Judaism are the "Ten Commandments' but there are various 'laws' which are found in the Judaism and these have been the basis of western laws.

Islam and Judaism are monotheistic religions who share the patriarch Abraham.

Christianity began with the birth of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, son of God and Son of the Trinity, (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).  Muslims and Jews consider the Trinitarian God of Christianity, "three gods in one" as  polytheism. Christians believe in the one God Yahweh with three 'persons in relationship". 

The Book of Christianity is the GOSPELS (4 separate stories of the birth, teaching and death  of Jesus, as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).  Subsequent writings of the Apostles and Paul's letters make up what is called the "New Testament" of the Holy Bible.  The Old Testament is essentially the Judaic Bible.  The Judiac Book is the Old Covenant with God whereas the Christian Book is the New Covenant with God. 

Jesus said, "I and the Father are One", "I am the way, the truth , and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Jesus taught, ""Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your strength and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself."

The Muslims and the Jews consider Jesus a prophet.

They are wrong.

Both the Quran and the Torah are historic "tribal" texts.  Tribalism is the organization and advocacy for a particular tribe. 

To be a Jew is to have a Jewish mother despite the option of conversion. Circumcision is central to the conversion.  To be a Muslem however is an act of public conversion.  Because God told Muhammed to follow the religion of "ibrahim' (Abraham), circumcision is also central to Islam.

Both Judaism and Islam practice 'genital mutilation'.

Thanks to the Apostle Paul, who was lead by God to make Christianity 'inclusive' or conversion 'easy' as some might say,  Circumcision and hence Genital Mutilation are not necessary to the religion of Christianity. 

The book "Evolution of God" by Robert Wright discusses brilliantly the development of our present concept today of one god and the Trinitarian God.  The idea that the 'nature' and 'meaning' and 'relationshnip' to God is dynamic not static is exciting.  Such a consideration must be made for Islamic God which no doubt has been subject to evolution and the effects of history.  Here is the issue of 'historic' and 'exclusivity/inclusivity'. 

The other central consideration of religion and indeed culture is who is considered a 'person'.  Who is the readership. Who is the writing for. And finally what is the language. Obviously, neither the Quran, Torah or Gospels were written in English yet I am writing in English. Recent study of Hebrew taught me amazingly late in life that "interpretations" or religious texts are fundamentally flawed and much affected by scholarship and language as the dyanamic or static nature of language.

While the Quran and Torah are tribal texts with much history of war with others, the Christian text is not a war history but one of spreading ideas.

However in 300 ad , at Nicea,  Emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, making it the Holy Roman Empire, the basis of Catholicism.  Thereafter Christianity is very much associated with war. 

I believe that spirituality is the basis of all true religion. Spirituality and Mysticism are sometimes used alternatively because both refer to individual direct experience of God.  Religion by contrast is the groups experience with God.  Religion is the combination of 'politics and spirituality'. 

When people say Islam is the Religion of Peace they are wrong.  Muhammed was a merchant who became a great warrior.

Judaism is neither a Religion of Peace. Abraham and Moses were both great warrior leaders.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace. He was a carpenter and never killed a soul. He was a healer. 

Muslims, Jews and Christians have all been great killers. Muslims have killed Muslims.  Jews have killed Jews. Christians have killed Christians. Muslims and Jews have killed each other and still do. Christians and Muslims have killed each other still do.   Christians and Jews have killed each other but frown on this today. In this political trinity, Christians and Jews have allied against Muslims. Muslims and Christians have allied against Muslims.  Muslims and Jews have Allied against Muslims. Christians and Jews aren't killing each other now. 

(Not apart of this discussion, but worthy of mention is that  eastern religions including Buddhists and Hindus have all been great killers. The greatest killers of all, though,  have been Aetheists.  Pagans were killing with gusto long before Christians. The various aboriginal pagan religions especially those of the Aztec and some Polynesian tribes have been killing well too.   Humans individually and collectively have always been great killers.)

Each religion has it's spiritual or mystical sects.  The Suffis are the most spiritual and mystical of Islam. I was priviledged and honored to meet with them in Cappadocea, Turkey.   The Jews have their Kabbalistic sects and Hasidic sects. I was honoured to meet and share Sabat with deeply mystical spiritual Jews in Safed, Israel.

Catholics have their mystical monastic orders, the Carmelites with St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross being their most famous.

Absolute non violence is not a requirement of Judaism.

The Ahmadiyya sect of Islam is a most outspoken about the message of peace and Islam but violence is not rejected. Indeed the message of Jihad is far more deeply entrenched in Islam than that of non violence.

Franciscan monasteries might well be the most pacific of Catholic Christians. However, the catholic monastic tradition has generally been non violent.

The most peaceful of all religious sects are the Christian Quakers and the Mennonites. They were as pacific as the Tibetan Buddhists who the Aetheist Chinese killed en mass.  Quakers are wholly non violent and the Mennonites are alike in their unwillingness to kill.

Roughly, the number of Muslims in the world is about 1.6 billion or 23%. The number of Christians is 2.2 billion or 32%, with only 14 million or .2% Jews.  (PEW Research).

There are definitely radical groups within each of the religions. 

Jihadists are best described as Radical Muslims.  The You Tube Video "By the Numbers' hosted by Raz, is a conversation about Radical Islam. It states that there are 3 spheres of Radicalization, the Violent Jihadists, the Violent Muslims and the Fundamentalists.  The world number of Violent Jihadists is anywhere from 500,000 to a million.  This are ISIS and other muslim terrorist groups.   
Islamists are radical muslim who want to change the other systems of government around the world working within those systems.  Examples are Hammas and Moslem Brotherhood and CAIR.  ( In the cold war the communists called their 'invaders' of this ilk, the fourth column)  The final sphere is the Fundamentalists. Fundamentalists believe other countries  should have Sharia Law.  Sharia Law includes killing of women who have premarital or extramarital sex, suicide bombing is justified, chopping off the hands of thieves etc.   Radical Muslims therefore may make up roughly a half billion muslims.  Not all believe in all the radical tenets of radical Islam but hundreds of millions do.  (www.ClarionProject.org/Numbers)

Of the 13 million Jews in the world 10 % might be ultra orthodox and/or Zionists. That means there's maybe a million 'radical' Jews.  The highest figure I could find scanning the internet was 3 million.  This is roughly one hundredth the number of radical muslims and despite Jewish penchant for genital mutilation of men, Jewish laws are overall modern and the Zionist position is solely in defence of Israel.  By that token , I might well be considered a radical Canadian as I would, despite being a healer physician, take up arms in defence of my own country. If the displaced Aboriginals attacked me like the displaced Palestinians attack individual Jews I'd use lethal force in defence of my person and family too.  In contrast to the Offensive Jihadists with a doctrine of violence Jews, and certainly Canadians aren't likely to invade and colonize other lands. 

Christians have their radicals.  Evangelical Christians account for 25% of Christians. Christians account for  2.2 billions so like radical Muslim there are millions of radical Christians.  They're not particularly violent, not nearly as offensive as the aetheists but nonetheless they condone violence. It was the Crusaders indeed who blocked the Offensive Muslim explansion that had Muslims invading Spain and Italy and only being stopped at Vienna.  A similar invasion of India with hundreds of thousands of Sikh's killed was only barely stopped.  Christians collectively don't have what in Canada have been called 'barbaric cultural' practices and the Modern World is really an evolution of the Christian European World with the laws we generally know today deriving from this religion. We did burn witches at the stake 5 hundred years ago but Jews and Muslims were doing worse things to women back then. These days even burning Feminists at the stake  would be seriously frowned upon and likely lead to the man being killed by the state if such provision was allowed in that Christian land. 

I will continue. 

Battle of the Boyne, Ireland

After visiting Drogheda, Laura and I drove on to the nearby Battle of Boyne site.  It was a busy place with archery  and knights competing in the green.  We walked through  the main exhibits which were the very best. I was reminded of other high quality war representations I’ve seen, the best of which were the Crimean War in  Istanbul Military Museum , Stalingrad in the Moscow War Museum and Custer’s Last Stand. The map here with audio explanation and flashing lights showing troop movements was perfect.  It was an amazingly matched encounter of calvary and infantry of  Protestant King William of Orange and Catholic King James II.  So much depended on this war and the Division of Ireland and the Troubles all stem from this.
I loved the animated manekins in the tents in the room showing the night before the battle. Each of leaders spoke with his advisors about the planning of the upcoming battle.  Then there was the actual cannons and stables.  What was really funny was a wall that showed common phrases which we use today, that were used in that day. Big Wig, Hold Your Horses, Lock, Stock and Barrell.
I have to remember my grandfather was an Orange Man with his Orange Sash belonging to the Orange Lodge and celebrating Protestantism as he marched in the annual Orange Parade in Toronto. While we were in Ireland the annual Orange Man Parade was being confronted.  IRA had planted a bomb under a constable's car. We saw the Shankhill Belfast Orange Lodge and learned about the King William of Orange and King James II at the Apprentice Boys of Londonberry exhibit.  It all seemed to sink in looking out on the actual Battle of Boyne battle field.


I love God and Jesus and feel that religious divisions are man made.  As God is one, so we are one together when we know God within, One God.  The recognition of this Battle of Boyne site as important historically to all of Ireland went along way to quieting the tensions that existed in Northern Ireland.
Growing up and living in Canada we take for granted our life of relative peace under the protection of nearby America. Sure there was the violence of Quebec but that was short lived. There’s been aboriginal roadblocks and violence but nothing compares to the violence that has split Ireland.  Nothing we have known compares in any way to the strife people have seen in Serbia, Vietnam,  Africa and South America.  It’s hard to comprehend that the Ukraine is presently experiencing civil war with Russian backed fighters. Israel has been under repeated attacks from its neighbours. ISIS wrecks havoc in the middle east beheading anyone and everyone.  When I was in Azerbaijan I heard about their war with Armenia.
Somehow because of the chronic navel gazing  of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and their addiction to political correctness I don’t think I was very well informed about what was happening when the USSR was splitting up. Maybe I wasn’t listening but more often than not the media seems to focus on irrelevancies such as their own partisanship about pay checks.  There’s obviously too much to know in this internet connected global world.  The media has a few ‘pet’ propaganda pieces and whole bits of the world go unacknowledged.
I remember fondly the American in Colorado who looking at the plates on my Harley Davidson asked me where I was from.  “Canada”, I replied.  “That’s north and Mexico is south,” he said with uncertainty.  I answered ‘yes’.  Roman’s in the Roman Empire wouldn’t have known more.  I didn’t judge him, since his country is the centre of the universe and mine though near is not nearly as significant as we might think. World travel has reminded me that not only are we insignificant as a single blue planet in amazing galaxies of planets, we’re not even that significant as a country. And personally I’m not really significant. Though I may be all I think about.  I don’t know the names or locations of all the African nations.  Geography is it’s own speciality and the maps are always changing. That’s what we forget in Canada.  Elsewhere the maps are changing.
Working with refugees as I have, their harrowing experiences have been wholly alien to my own Canadian peaceful privilege and blessing.
Given our innocence as Canadians it’s so easy to be naive.  I’d say Canadians in general are Polly Anna about world affairs.   Revenge and forgiveness are still very much at war.  This trip to Ireland was an eye opener for me.  I can only pray that peace will prevail.
Laura and I loved having tea in the elegant tea pavilion. The fragrance from the flowers was divine.

American Sniper - the movie

American Sniper, the movie, is incredible.  I expected as much when I saw that Clint Eastwood was the director. His Gran Turino movie is one of my all time favourites.  Bradley Cooper stars as  Chris Kyle in this movie which is based on Chris Kyle's life.  Chris Kyle was the American Navy Seal credited as the deadliest sniper, with 255 kills of which 160 were officially confirmed,  in the Iraq War.  Chris Kyle did 4 tours and returned home to be killed by another Veteran who he was helping.  His wife Taya Renae Kyle is played by the extraordinary Sienna Miller.
The amazing story and direction breaks the movie up into matching frames with Chris Kyle in Iraq and Taya his wife at home.  In one poignant scene he comes under attack while talking on a satellite phone to Tayal.  Sienna Miller's acting in this part of the movie is deeply beautiful.  Chris Kyle did 4 tours. By the fourth he's experiencing symptons associated with PTSD.  It's his last tour.  His bravery and the extraordinary dangers and threats he and his team faced in Iraq are so alien to the world at home.  The movie shows this well.  There's an amazing juxtaposition of Chris Kyle fighting against the Olympic athlete sniper who serves the Iraqui's.  Two pees in a pod who each sees themselves as protecting their fellow soldiers.  Each amazingly disciplined and skilled.  The fanaticism of the enemy is captured well.  Chris Kyle's simple service and explanation for his work is that he's there to protect his comrades.  He's a hero.  A man's man. A soldier's soldier. He's a big brother and his little brother joins the marines.  Chris Kyle is the big brother one wants.  He's a devoted husband but his work makes family life difficult.  The movie captures this so well.  All in all it's a great movie of a great man.
Chris Kyle is to the work of a sniper what Einstein was to the work of physicists.  He's like a Muhammed Ali with a rifle.  An amazing superhuman disciplined force of nature.  A genius like Billy Bishop who shot down the Red Baron. He's an American Hero.
The movie is great.  Clint Eastwood is amazing. The writer Jason Hall is amazing too.
That said I was appalled to read some of the critics of the movie, arm chair critics mind you, some who'd not even seen it, some who criticized Chris Kyle, and they themselves had achieved nothing significant in their lives except maybe got drunk and smoked some pot. It was a sad reflection on Facebook and Social Media to see the negativity and 'haters' and those whose envy of greatness had them spouting all manner of nonsense.
Yes, war is horrible.  Yes America is an empire like the British before them and the Roman's before them and the Russians and the Turks and the Azteks and the Moghuls and all the world's empires. And yes there are soldiers.  And yes soldier fight and compete with other soldiers who would have what the people inside empire's have.  So the Nazi's fought all of Europe to establish the Nazi empire and the Communists of Mao tse Tung fought all the Chinese to get their empire. Now all the military's of the world stand ready to fight each other.
Of course like John Lennon, I  say  "Give Peace a Chance."
Every adolescent boy and protected girl knows what everyone should do. Of course we should stop fighting and ISIS should stop chopping peoples heads off.
Everyone has great ideas and they pass a bottle of wine and a bong and talk big talk.  Tibet and Nepal are wonderful places where the very spiritual meditate but then the Chinese Communists, one of lowest forms of humanoid uncivilized bullies arrogant psychopathic sorts not even toilet trained no better than the raping Russian peasant soldiers who destroyed warsaw, while these Chinese thugs killed the monks.  The Buddhists fight Buddhists, Moslems fight Moslems and Christians Christians and Jews Jews and sometimes they fight each other.
War is a basic.
Soldiers have served to protect the rest of us who don't want to face bullets and bombs up close and real.  Van Gogh was a great painter. Chis Kyle was a great sniper.  The world is full of talkers.  I'm personally still impressed with great orators but not the stuff that was written like spewed garbage by the critics of Chris Kyle.  He's an American Hero and lots  of people today make a 'troll' life for themselves 'chopping off the heads of others in an attempt to make themselves taller.'
I accept the need for law and order and military actions if only because as I've got older I've seen that 'polyannaism' leads to the Chamberlain like silliness that starts wars.  Animals attack when they think they have an advantage.  That's the way of predators.
I'm as much an idealist as the next guy but I'm not smoking marijuana and not on crack so I can ask the simple question who would have saved the lives that Chris Kyle saved better than the best like he was.  Who would you as a soldier want having oversight on your walking through the valley of the shadow of death where women and children are used as combatants.  Personally I'd always want Chris Kyle on my side in a war.  He embodied excellence.
So thank you Chris Kyle for your bravery, discipline, service and sacrifice. Thank you the wife and children of Chris Kyle for your sacrifice.
Thank you Jason Hall and Clint Eastwood this incredible story.  And thank you Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller for such great acting that I feel I got a glympse into the reality of the sacrifices that soldiers and their families make so that we can be safe.  

 

Blue Mosque - Istanbul, Turkey

The Blue Mosque was completed in 1616.  It is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque but known as the Blue Mosque because of the blue tiles that adorn the interior.  The Mosque has 6 minarets.  Not wanting to offend Mecca who at the time had only as many minarets, Sultan Ahmed donated a minaret to Mecca.  Sudefkar Mehmed Aga, the architect was the student of the great architect Sinan.
My guide Mehmet Tetik showed me the model of Mecca in the Blue Mosque which shows the green tomb of Mohammed.  Mehmet  explained that after his death in 632 was succeeded by four Caliphs.  The names of the four Caliphs are often seen in the mosques along with the names of Mohammed and  of Allah.   These Caliphs were ‘elected’ .  The first was Abu Bakr.  Division in the Muslim community occurred with the successions. Umar and Uthman and Ali followed were accepted by the  dominant Sunni but the real controversy that lead to the division of Shia and Sunni occurred with the 5th Caliph.  Caliph is short for Khalifah meaning “messenger of God’. Mehmet explained that at any one time there was only one Caliph.  (There were occasionally two caliphs one in Egypt and one in Bhagdad).
Mehmet explained that the Caliph was like the Pope is in the west, predominantly the religious leader however the most politically powerful empire such as the Ottoman Empire claimed the Ottoman Caliphate.  They claimed the caliphate after Mehmed II’s conquest of Constantinople in 1453.  With Mustafa Kemil (Ataturk) reforms, the caliph position was abolished.
The Four Rashidum (rightfully guided) caliphs expanded Islam beyond Arabia conquering Persia, Syria, Armenia, Egypt, much of North Africa, Spain and Portugal
The fifth Caliph Muawiya appointed his son Caliph and changed the election process to dynastic.   This has been the beginning of the dispute between the Sunni and Shiites.  Turkey is mostly Sunni as Iran is mostly Shiite.
The Ottoman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, at it’s peak covered Anatolia, most of the middle east, North Africa, the Caucasus, and extended deep into Eastern Europe.  The Ottoman Empire lasted over 600 years.  In contrast the British Empire last only a few hundred years though with it’s navy base was far more global.
ISIS or Islamic State (acronym - Islamic State in Iraq and Syria)  has claimed the Caliph self appointing themselves and claiming to represent the Mahdi.  The Mahdi meaning ‘guidedone’ was a prophecy that a descendent of Mohammed would work in concert with Jesus Christ to convert the entire world to Islam. There have been hundreds of splinter groups and Jihadi groups which are naturally as much of a concern to the existing Muslim states as they are to the west since they kill anyone who they believe is not a true moslem by there peculiar fundamentalist and idiosyncratic emotional standards.  They’re principally Sunni and kill Shiites as easily as Christians and Jews.
Mehmet explained that Turkey which was secularized by Ataturk and while the present leadership is more conservative religiously the country of Turkey is very broad based religiously from those who believers but only participate in part of the religious process to those who are adamant and fundamentalist.
 “We have C&E Christians in the West and it sounds like you have the same in Turkey”.
What is a C&E Christian? “ Mehmet asked.
“Christmas and Easter, that’s the only time you see them in church.”
Mehmet laughed , "yes, that is true.”
He said that mostly Muslims were concerned about ISIS and didn’t accept their violence.  From the sounds of ISIS they’re as likely to kill their neighbours as their enemies and it’s no surprise that the Muslim nations themselves are leading the recent attacks against them.
When a pope came to the Blue Mosque with the leader of the Turkish Muslims he prayed for the ‘brotherhood of man’.  Peace seems more at the deepest nature of God.   Being in the Blue Mosque I enjoyed the peacefulness of the place, the sense of serenity and imagined that together all praying the love of God for all could radiate in such a place of beauty.  The Blue Mosque is truly beautiful, an extraordinary work of architecture.  I think Mehmet told me there were more than a million Iztek tiles used to make the mosque.
I believe that God is love and that love joins whereas fear resides within man and fear separates.  That said I tell Mehmet that if I was threatened or my family and friends I would quickly revert to the animal within and defend myself.  Mehmet says, “that’s man’s nature”.  We laugh at this.  It is good to enjoy conversation in good company at peace and yet how difficult it must be for the leaders of the world to find ways to get along with so many competing aims and fractions.

No likeness could appear in a mosque but a scroll in the mosque with fine calligraphy describes the personal likeness of Mohammed. There was also a picture of Mecca and a model of the  tomb of Mohammed. 

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.