Archive for October, 2007
October 31st, 2007
Credit PM Stephen Harper for officially welcoming the Dalai Lama, a first for Canadian politics. Leaders of the past Liberal government, hyper sensitive over Chinese opposition, met the Dalai Lama in the back of a Roman Catholic church. Also credit Jason Kenny (Multiculturalism) for speaking without reservation against Chinese oppression. And credit the Dalai Lama for acknowledging the Canadian overture.
But also credit the Dalai Lama for chastising Harper over the Afghanistan war, as he had done with Bush over Iraq.
The Dalai Lama, in his characteristic low-key charismatic way, cautioned Harper that violence begets violence, and said, “I always believe non-violence is the best way to solve problems.”
There’s little ambiguity about the Dalai Lama’s pacific stand regarding national conflict, and his non-violent message in general. So, as a Christian, I ask myself, who better represents and reflects the life and teachings of Christ, the Dalai Lama or our current (evangelical) Christian leaders?
October 25th, 2007
Perhaps it’s the time of year, perhaps it’s the dryness I feel, but this idea is again tracking me down: That life is full of folly. Full of heaping up and tearing down, full of “sound and fury” signifying mere sound and fury, an apoplectic race with no starting gun and no ribbon across any end line.
But still…in those cambium layers behind the bark, I, like you, look for the thing that turns water into sap, look for the juice of life.
We long, each day, for the greenness of life. And then in a thousand tiny ways we trade, settle for, get caught in, the rage for security, the race for self-preservation, the heaping up and tearing down and heaping up again, the preoccupation with permanence, the moments before and the moments ahead of this moment, the grasping after a certain je ne sais quoi. And the greenness fades. That’s the folly.
I’m thinking that the follies of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, those frivolous, fanciful, impractical, and misunderstood structures, were built by people who, after coming to the end of amassing too much of everything, took what remained of their years and built grand creative monuments to the folly of heaping up. Of course that’s the paradox of follies. The folly of follies. These artistically expressive edifices both exposed and flaunted; but it’s the exposing that’s interesting. They were in this sense a testament to the vanity of acquisition in all its guises. They were stone epitaphs to puffs of wind.
My father, a Saskatchewan dirt farmer with a feather-weight wallet, never immune to the desire of more, was nevertheless fully cognizant of life’s many follies. He read his Ecclesiastics. And he didn’t stop there. He built his own (affordable) follies, built them out of discarded water pressure tanks. Towers to nowhere. Three silver tanks high, welded together with a base stood 16 to 18 feet high. At the top he would spot-weld something like a hood ornament. The one that still stands has a weather-vein on it, a wink of practicality.
I’m thinking it’s time again to occupy a bit of Ecclesiastic-space. I’m thinking that without building a few follies, building them right into our lives, we forget, and slip into structuralism, analism, a pathological earnestness about everything. Without building a few follies out on the back of our mental-emotional 40 acres, any sonorousness we have turns to morbid solemnity.
So build your folly. Build one out of ditched hubcaps and abandoned shopping carts and set it up in your back yard. Build it out of popsicle sticks and hang it in your window. Weave one out of string and wear it on your wrist. And let the sap rise.
October 20th, 2007
You might consider
opening your heart to yourself.
You might consider lifting those clouds
you wrap around yourself
high enough to reflect that pink undergarment.
It’s the sun’s work if you let it.
Would this make you laugh?
Would you see the hope in this?
Or, like a daytime moon,
does the burden of the hour pale that possible mercy?
And what of your building, your labour, your investments,
your creations?
You say, only oily rags.
You say, you’ve lit them up
and dragged them across the dry straw of your thoughts.
You feel deeply for the groomed business man
sitting at the table in front of you.
You see his left hand
with which he holds his cell phone shake
and as he tries to steady it, it shakes some more.
You could have the same sympathy for your shaky-self,
but don’t. Why?
Why are you determined
to resurrect childhood punishments?
As if they weren’t enough.
You heap rebuke on your own head like coals.
It’s become a habit you can’t break.
Shame is your phantom companion,
as real as anything,
unbidden from a Calvin conscience,
busy calculating guilt, electing the bread of affliction,
and scolding for wanting everyone to love you.
Because wanting everyone to love you
is surly sin, surly filthy rags.
You recall.
October 18th, 2007
“When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.”
consolations like…
an early morning room that’s steeped in tea-coloured light
a day without pain or dark memories
a clear notion
a winding red-dirt road with blossoms
sleeping outside and being warm and tasting salt air
finding your way home
a friend with a casserole
red wine by a river
a friend without pain
a young woman’s eyes
the smell of fresh baked waffle cones
a shopping cart full of bottles
a park bench
a blanket
a child without pain
an old woman with stories and lots of time
consolations…
like dusk with lots of leftover lavender light
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Psalm 94
October 16th, 2007
Yesterday I helped plan a funeral with the person whose funeral it will be.
We talked. I was in a hospital chair wondering why hospital chairs, indistinguishable from a million other chairs, take on a hospital feel. My friend lay above and in front of me, tubed-up. One tube drained waste fluid through his nose into a glass jug on the floor and another piped clear liquid from three plastic bags into his arm. “Everything you need to live on,” he said. “You could live on that stuff for years.”
But years are not what he has. Yesterday it was hours, today things are looking up, days perhaps, maybe weeks and maybe strength enough for another gig he promised to play for. A Patsy Cline tribute.
I asked him what it was like to talk about his funeral. Was it hard? He said no, that in fact it was almost comforting. He felt he was somehow fortunate to have the chance. I asked him if he was afraid of dying. He said no and I wondered if he was being straight with me and then he said really if you think of it, if there’s nothing after this I will never know and if there is I’m sure it will be better than this. Looking at him, smaller now, distended stomach, all kinds of frozen cancerous blocks keeping him from finding any Northwest passage out of here, it was hard to refute the logic.
He said he had a faith. It was his own. He believed in Jesus but left the field open for other possibilities. Nothing wrong in trying to cover all the bases.
He expressed being amazed by all the love that was coming through door. He wanted me to say something about this in my eulogy.
He wanted me to talk about his music, his love, his accomplishments, he wanted to leave a footprint. I knew for example, that after a generation of playing rock, country, jazz, he took up classical guitar and on the Royal Conservatory grade five exam he received the highest marks in Alberta. Music mattered, was a force in his life. But he was also aware of what it cost him and we talked about regrets for a while.
He talked about the life lessons he learned and wondered why they only came at the end of life. We talked about that being as good an argument as any other, for something interesting ahead.
When I left he hung on to my hand for a long time.
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Music,
Love,
Death,
Funeral
October 14th, 2007
Listen, there was a woman who wore make-up everyday of her life. She would not entertain the idea of being outside without it. Even jogging, she wore make-up. One day as she ran her regular route an old man stood in her way, and, producing a digital camera, asked her to take his picture. With some impatience she took it and in bringing it to her eye she saw her image in the two-inch screen. Her face was blotchy and streaked black, ugly. Horrified, she ran home, washed all the cake off. Looking up from the sink she saw herself, as if for the first time, healthy and beautiful. She vowed never to wear make-up again, well, at least never while jogging. Then she sat down to her phone and reported the old man to Police.
Okay, my parable needs work. But I’m leading to a point about this sticky bit of scripture.
Then the disciples came and asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. The reason I speak to them in parables is that ’seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.
It sounds like Jesus plays the Gnostic here, revealing knowledge to a special few and hiding it within parabolic code from the vulgar. But here’s a gospel thought: What if Jesus has no interest in segregation, no desire for spiritual apartheid?
Why, years ago, did I think otherwise? Because I liked the idea of being on the inside? Liked the idea that Jesus spoke in parables to trip up, even take something away from those on the outside. After all, they were the pretentious blatherers and deserved being shut out.
But suppose Jesus spoke in parables to unstop all ears and brighten all our eyes.
Parables are not hard. They are truths told in storied ways so as to bring meaning to light and fullness to meaning. They are stories, curious enough for the ponderous, direct enough for the pragmatic and beautiful and open-ended enough for the artists.
And what of the perceived hardness of Jesus’ words? That’s only the hardness in me, and in every pastor’s sermon that alludes to Jesus as secret-keeper. And in that case, the even-what-they-have that is taken away from those of us with nothing, is really the offering of new lenses and new music.
October 11th, 2007
I’m wondering this evening about a scene in Adaptation. It’s near the end of the movie. Charlie and Donald are lying in a swamp, hiding from their would be killers.
Charlie: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.
Donald: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.
Charlie: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was really sweet to you.
Donald: I remember that.
Charlie: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. It was like they were making fun of “me”. You didn’t know at all. You seemed so happy.
Donald: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie: How come you looked so happy?
Donald: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn’t have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie: She thought you were pathetic.
Donald: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That’s what I decided a long time ago.
While I agree we are what we love, I’m wondering if it’s possible to sustain love without a returned response. Perhaps it is, (I’m thinking of some long-suffering parents and sons and daughters here) but I’m not sure if I ever want to find out.
What I do know is that if we’ve never known being loved we are incapable of loving. We learn love only by being loved. And our love of someone increases that persons capacity to love. And to love Love itself, like Donald, is, well, divinely humanizing. Amazing when you think of it.
(Above: Yes…my daughter and granddaughter on a Saskatchewan round bale)
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Love,
Adaptation
October 9th, 2007
I’m reminding myself of the day I stood in line at the High Street Starbucks, and thought, “I love this life, I love my life.”
I recall that what set up the warmth were two lovers, on the patio, starring across the table at each other. The woman was plain but beautiful and her face shone as she talked to her beloved.
Just before, I had stopped at a Husky gas station. The East Indian lady behind the counter had handed back my credit card and glancing at its face said, “Thank you Stephen.” I replied, “Only my mother calls me Stephen.” She laughed and said, “Maybe it’s because I’m feeling like an old mother these days.” She went on in her lilting accent, “I have two older son’s, 21 and 22 and now out of nowhere I find myself with a year old baby. I told my husband that he still had it in him.” I said, “You obviously still had it in you as well.” She laughed again. When I went to leave a trucker who had just finished refueling held the door open for me. I thanked him as I stepped through the doorway and he said, “Age before beauty.” We both laughed.
Back at High Street I had found a table and sat down with my coffee. Just outside the large window beside the entrance I saw a man in a light coloured coat. His face was wrinkled by a long life. He had two deep creases that began under his cheek bones and formed parentheses around his mouth . He was wearing an old Tilly hat and while leaning on his cane he flirted with one of the Starbuck’s barista’s. She had gone out to fill the dog dish with water–a canine kindness at High Street–I couldn’t hear them but he had a bright little light in his eyes and the waitress was feigning annoyance.
And then Jane Sibery sang, ”Bound by the Beauty” and I became emotional because of all these simple gifts. That afternoon the whole world was so amazingly inviting and life so livable. I forgot the stresses and the wars and the rumours of war, and the rumours of stresses. I felt in that short moment ready to erupt with thanksgiving.
I was being graced and embraced by moments of beauty, one after another, a Divine conspiracy.
That day I questioned, “Tomorrow, am I going to forget these moments like I’ve forgotten so many sunsets or am I going to remember and through the remembering make it part of who I am? Can I fall in love with loving? Can I be this strong? Will I make room for this experience? I decide to at least share it with you to reinforce whatever can be reinforced. I’m remembering to remember.
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Thanksgiving
October 5th, 2007
The week has taken a toll. Someplace on the walls of my stomach, things are not well. But the week is ending and I will begin shedding it by reading poetry.
I have the idea that reading poetry shores up our souls. And Lord knows we need the shoring.
Reading poetry in the fall is like pushing up dirt in front of our holes in preparation for winter. It’s like stashing pine cones in trees, like making preserves, like harvesting, getting the crops in.
A few choice perceivingings in the root cellar of our heart and the larder of our souls can keep us from starving in a cold, calculating, and indifferent world. That’s what I think.
October 1st, 2007
Yesterday we celebrated Bob’s 60th Birthday.
He was given a few hours leave from the hospital–complications from established cancer.
But we remembered to celebrate.
And Bob, couldn’t help but play. He had an audience at the Clyde Drop-In Centre. As Ken (drummer) said, “He’s in gig-mode.”
More of life’s certain pain and enchantment.
I gave him a poem:
Dear Bob,
I remember,
the day a low harvest sun came streaming into your garage,
its rays refracted by stirred up dust,
stirred by moving feet, light feet,
all motion behind microphones and drum skins,
pulsed by bass and bass pedal,
and voices, and harmony almost like falling water,
and you, Bob,
standing behind your intimate one,
a red three-thirty-five Gibson, holding her,
casual, familiar, like a long time lover,
that day, I thought I might die with delight.
Later—on that week’s end,
up under the lights,
you vibrate,
your eyes alive, full of cherry light and mischief and the ghost of Elvis.
You scream Nadine,
and you’re off like a flying fox on your fret board,
and I wonder, with this bubble in my throat,
wonder how it is on that side,
and I wish I could be there with you.
Your home on stage.
On a dime you joked our hearts into springtime,
until we groaned for you to stop.
But you kept laughing just the way we wanted you to.
You bragged once, to someone I don’t recall,
how I could bend two strings with my ring finger,
and so I followed you, married to a new possibility,
and new music.
When our lives fell apart you patched yours with music,
always music to staunch the bleeding,
shoring yourself up,
with your red guitar.
Well, you understood her moods.
She would lie like a scarlet sunset in your hands.
Or like a crimson dawn,
she anticipated your moves and played for you,
even in the still-dark.
Wrapped in her six strings you gave her your nine lives,
give her still, and she gives back,
and in that giving you gave us a part of our own lives,
a part that’s bright and still burning.
You my friend,
always adding more melody to this need-filled world,
and to this lonely-hearted world, more music.
September 30, 2007
But also credit the Dalai Lama for chastising Harper over the Afghanistan war, as he had done with Bush over Iraq. 
Front Porch Pictures
