Like Tim said,

As my friend, the late pastor Dr. Jerry Falwell told me personally, ‘Speaker Newt Gingrich is the most qualified man in America to run as president of the United States.’

You see, this is why USA politics is so darn entertaining, and so hard not to watch, even though later you feel a bit bloated, like you’ve had too many Krispy Kreme donuts.

Time, love, quarks, discrete math, other minds, healing touch, the efficacy of hugs;
that words, as Elie Wiesel says, in moments of grace can attain the quality of deeds;
that our deepest desire is to be each others joy;
that an inner void must not be leaped over but into;
that both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were necessary;
that you can love the earth and not love God, but you can’t love God without loving the earth;
that God with a cherry-bomb equals a big bang;
that mycelium will always remain mysterious;

 
that there is life on Gliese 581 C, and Harvey Pekar and Peter Popoff live there;
that the mind is not separate from the body, except perhaps for Benny Hinn, augurs and certain certified psychics;
that a sock prefers the single life;
that if scientists were mere sceptics we still wouldn’t know about the Copernican system of planetary movement;
that extraordinary claims do not immediately need extraordinary evidence;
that beauty is its own proof;
that if everything was verifiable life would cease to be;
that doubt is necessary and healthy but that the spirit of scepticism is a sickness;
that most things we hold as true are by way of other authorities;
that it was exalted certainty that sent the boxcars to Birkenau and not iffy disconsolate minds;
that to live without faith is impossible and to attempt it is a castration of life;
that there are more than a few fish swimming around with coins in their mouths;
that desire is triangular, and its nature is mimicry;
that a cultural obsession with sex is not a sign of social depravity but an indication of deep loneliness;
that if and when we humans become fully real we will no longer impose ourselves upon creation but see ourselves as one aspect;
that Gary Larson and Al Purdy are pure tellurians—and each in their own way;
that science is humble in theory but not so much in practise and that this is what it has in common with religion;
that faith needs a frame, and reason needs a trellis;
that we are not born with an existential void but develop it over time;
that the non-existence of God can be proven by symbolic logic;
that a formally valid argument can nevertheless be false; 
that the argument of infinite regression is absurd;
that the earth rests on the back of a turtle…and that there are turtles all the way down;
that positive universal claims and negative existential claims are not testable in all possible worlds;
that all ravens are black, except for one or two, maybe; 
that presuppositions are held viscerally and emotionally and half-consciously;
that God is a verb and not a noun and that existence is not a property;
that the word piffle can be appropriately applied to a plethora of propositions;
that when the Mayan Calendar is up, we’ll just switch to the Dan Brown Calendar;
that our deepest and dearest beliefs are not logically verifiable;
that miracle is still the best term to describe life’s origin;
that hope and mercy are stronger than hate and violence;
that Holderlin was shining in his wooden tower when he said, “But where danger is, grows the saving power also.”
That at the end, heralding a true beginning,
comes not the apocalypse but apocatastasis;
that instead of escalation toward extremes,
the possibility of universal hope, reconciliation and restoration.

Read Gary Snyder’s Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads,
for inspiration, for the music, for a lark.
Consider chipping sparrows, wonder to fall like one.
Grow a beard, discover the colour white,
See how it matches the pale ball around your iris.
Stop in Chicago at Jake’s Pub, visit your dream of seeing Muddy Waters.
Try very hard not to squirm
While admitting to yourself all your bluesy dreams of fame.
Stop in Cleveland and loom over Lake Erie,
At the Hall, lift your arms in homage to rock and roll.
Listen to skies full of thunder,
Download 182 bird songs, catalogued by John Neville.
Read 30 Canadian poets.
Fall in love with Bronwen Wallace.
Try to feel undaunted reading E.J. Pratt’s bio.
See your three Benedictine vows topple like dominoes.
Watch a fat moon rise through aspen, check its position again at 3 AM.
Conclude that there are far too many engines on earth.

Forgive yourself for skimming the last half of Homer’s Iliad.
Marvel at the contrast between size and song of the house wren.
Hold a limp slate-coloured junco in your hand,
And wonder at its fall.
Take pictures of a grain elevator named Dog River.
Watch the Souris River flood from Weyburn, Saskatchewan to Minot, North Dakota.
In Fargo, be asked what Providence you are from.
Hike along Eden Road, in the Lowell mountains,
Meet a young woman who does not slap at mosquitoes,
Simply brushes them away. Consider your lifetime of serial killing.
Ponder the immense idiocy of the inchworm.
Or is it the practice of courage
to launch out anew up every blade of grass encountered?
Listen to jazz in Burlington, Vermont,
While drinking Speeder and Earls coffee.
Get lost in the tangle of roads around Eau Claire, Wisconsin,
Later, on CBC radio, you discover her native son and Emma, Forever Ago.
Lock eyes with a cow moose, and her calf,
Did you feel the sudden compression of air in that triangle?
Downtown Toronto, in an elevator, descend 22 floors with a body-builder,
Whose pectorals have climbed thick around his neck to his very eyelids,
Whose blink could snap you like a sprig.
Did you feel what happened to the air between you?
And how you couldn’t take your eyes off the numbers, scrolling down,
Interminably.
Ride the streetcar to Kensington Market.
And try to take in the full measure of Holderlen’s 40-year silence.
With your partner, search for an ice cream shop in Niagara-on-the-Lake
Where twenty-five years ago,
Among all those flavours, she laughed that you still chose maple walnut.
Well, you got confused. Didn’t you?
Become intimate with death while considering choice.
Be grateful for the big mercy,
That’s built from all the small ones.
Every evening after supper walk the treed lane with your wife,
Close the gate, and consider the vesper sparrow;
Remember how out of the 182, it sang that soft-throated evening song.
Pitch your tent beside the Yellowstone River Inn in Glendive, Montana,
Listen to old rockers dance through the night.
Walk along a ridge of the Badlands, see bison sleep in the sun.
Stand on the glass floor on top the CN tower with your daughter,
Pretend you’re falling.
Sample Steam Whistle lager with your daughter,
Pretend she’s without pain.
Listen to the great great grand daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorn
Talk of poetry, then give her a hug.
Go birding in deep morning mist, in Craftsbury, with David,
And hear the olive-sided flycatcher demand, "quick; three beers!"
Late at night, fourteen writers,
Shots of Tequila between three minute speed writing exercises.
        Can poetry come of this?
        Can Dada, can Zaum?
        Can transrational Haiku?
Pick wild strawberries in a ditch and eat them,
Then remember that the ditch was sprayed by the county.
Consider, without animosity, the night flowering catchfly.
Spend time thinking about the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus.
Be told your writing contains cliché— 
        —truth be known, you were fit to be tied. 
Discover again, that you are a Christian, captive, unable to escape,
Held by the terrible beauty of the beatitudes;
Oh but see how we are unable to endure correction, or misunderstanding,
Or grasp that having a Christian position goes against the gospel.
Camp at Moses Lake, New York, find a walking stick
You’ll take back to the providence of Alberta.
Crouch by a stream running into a St. Laurence estuary,
Wait for the goslings to cross, should they make up their minds.
Watch author Craig Childs gently remove a caterpillar from his shirt collar.
Be suddenly ashamed of killing a rattle snake, cutting off its tail,
Carrying it for years in the glove compartment of your car—
As a talisman.
Think of your work, wonder the placements, the passing of years.
Do not plan on going back refreshed, simply hope it happens.
See how much you miss the people.
Greet friends from years ago.
Eat Amish ice-cream in an Amish Village.
Catch the excitement from Deb,
Of spotting two pileated woodpeckers outside our cabin.
Come to believe in your ability to love all people,
But know intimately the failure of your attempts.
Be a guest at a Japanese tea ceremony, with Don, and his wood-fired kiln cups.
In Minnesota, talk to an old monk at the Collegeville Bookshop
Who knows Kathleen Norris; remember your Cloister Walk.
Wait for the sun to strike your eyes through netted poplar
As you lie in a cabin bed. 
Consider the promiscuity of gods, wonder their fall.
Know your own gnawing in the absence of God.
But see how God’s nearness can kill.
Two elderly ladies wearing period dress:
You solicit them for a picture, now smiling, standing between them,
Grab them tight and hear them feign shock.
Observe, over the course of three days,
The rise and fall of a white mushroom.
Commit to flames the dying limbs of a box elder.
Taste the sap of a green ash,
Wear that life on your lips for as long as it lasts.
Sadness while driving through Flint, Michigan and Buffalo, New York.
Walk the Mississippi as it runs between St. Paul and Minneapolis,
And falls over a receding limestone ledge.
See the sacred space where Chippewa once camped,
Down the street from a bar where Jethro Tull will play Friday night.
The thespian woman in line beside you comments that what the world needs
Is more clean men. You have just showered and put on a fresh shirt.
A friend says about your outhouse in the bush, that it’s nicest he’s experienced;
You believe that his comment has landed not far from life’s essence.
Play disc golf in a gale with your brothers and nephews;
Come to believe, always and only, in the power of a next turn.
Take that perfect comedic shot of wapiti mooning a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.
In Canmore, sink to your waist in wet snow, climbing to Turkey Falls.
Discover the origin of its name: the necessity to hike after a turkey dinner.
In a small car, drive 10,000 kilometers in one month.
Walk the top of the Capilano dam with Deb.
Ride the Queen of New Westminster from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay,
Remember the sea and spray and when you could sail on three dollars.  
Watch coho and chinook breach the surface of a clear green river.
Drink NK’Mip Qwam Qwmt and smoke a Mamona Island Prince,
With your Sto:lo sister-in-law.
But remember you are not Che, with a Monte Cristo between your lips. 
Understand that the only thing thoroughly original about humans
Is our highly evolved mimetic abilities—what wonder, possibilities, what danger.
Worry, without much reason, about your children.
Know that this is only a form of deep love.
Tell the inquiring young barista at Kanata Coffee that you are writing poetry.
Now was that so hard?
Recognize that a poem, too, can be interminable.

The older group joke of administrative bungles and discuss lawn care. The young practice street banter and circumspection. Staid faces with wan smiles and seen-it-all brows show that they have not yet seen it all.

For the young—and the old that wish for youth—the game is for keeps. For the old, the game is up.

When I was very young I wanted to be a detective because detectives could break the law and follow suspects into strip clubs and drink bourbon and still be righteous and sit knowingly silent in Sunday School. They didn’t have to answer teachers and explain themselves to their parents. And they could wear secrets under their clothes and carry x-ray glasses with lenses that perpetually spiralled in a hidden pocket.

And they could take time off from all the troubles in a small town and disappear for days on end without worrying anyone. They could wander down to the river after breakfast before the mist was off the waist-high bromegrass, and at the water’s edge lift rocks to find crayfish. Maybe ride all the way to Good Spirit Lake and settle in the dunes and watch the tiger beetles shoulder their way under the sand.

Few would guess a solitary detective playing in sand dunes. Unless they spotted the decoder watch; and metal-detector and pistol and infrared-scanner in the bicycle’s wire basket; and underneath, the black case with paper work that would never get done—that the chief always overlooked because of the genius of the boy-detective who could make himself look older so to follow suspects wherever their nefarious and always lascivious deeds took them.

And perhaps that’s the way it happened: All those years ago, while reclining against a red and white beach ball, a juvenile would-be-detective day-dreamed in technicolour behind his x-ray glasses—lenses spinning in some infinitely exotic world. Today, puffy-eyed and paunched with thinning hair he believes is his fault, he analyses procedures for young narcs fresh from Taser training and meets his squad for morning coffee and makes plans for next year’s hockey playoff tickets.

I said, "Well, we call them Provinces, but if you wish, I can be from the Providence of Alberta." She smiled, mildly embarrassed, slightly apologetic.

And why would I want more? I quite like the promise of being from a Providence. Provinces are, well, so provincial. Providence on the other hand has the basic appeal of provision. It also has the connotation of future prospects, and the fundamental attraction of security and sanctuary. The founders of the capital of Rhode Island recalled this and called their haven for religious dissenters, Providence. And don’t we all see ourselves as religious dissenters of some form?

A Canada Day thought: Let us encourage more providence in our provinces. Providentially caring and creating a haven for those with small voices, those who are too often wind-rowed under by expedience and trade, those who are actively dissenting from the race for history.

In the end, I suppose (appropriate Canadian equivocation), I’d rather be from any Providence in Canada, than from any Statuary of the USA.

So what ever Providence you’re from, Happy Canada Day, or as we used to say before our collective (morning) constitutional, Happy Dominion Day!

It’s churchifying in a rocky-bluesy sort of way. But then again, I could be duped by the devil. Rock and Roll, after all, has been a contributing factor to delinquency of delinquents and the reason why women started wearing pants.

This clip from Pastor Jimmie Snow (son of Hank Snow) was part of the exhibit.

"Some of the biggest names in couture, such as Christian Dior, are racing to produce Islamic-inspired attire that will tap into the spending power of Muslim women globally."

Aside from the accidental irony of Christian Dior making Muslim garb, and the not so accidental design of the western fashion industry rushing to offer Arab women the finery of the moment, I for one am on board.

Are we not all in thrall to fashion? Check. So here, perhaps, is were our faiths can draw together. Not in the mosques and cathedrals, temples and mega-churches, and God help us, not in the Sufi deserts or the Benedictine caves, no, instead…upon the great Runways of the world!

We will keep a few of our Theo-demarcations, but just beneath our spaghetti straps and silky folds we will be one: One in our devotion to impression, and our abrogation of, well, all that other religious stuff. And on these pillories we can build our new unity. The ecumenism of dress.

For small group discussion: How can one work through the tension of being couture-culture while not having the resources for a triannual trip to Milan or Lakewood Church?

Time, love, touch, the efficacy of hugs;
the necessity of a Kierkegaardian leap;
that the big bang was engineered;
that there may be life on Gliese 581 C, and if so Harvey Pekar now lives there;
the existence of discrete math, quarks, other minds, certified psychics, Peter Popoff, and evil soccer-angels;
that the mind is not separate from the body;
that a sock prefers the single life;
that if scientists were mere sceptics we still wouldn’t know about the Copernican system of planetary movement;
that extraordinary claims do not immediately need extraordinary evidence;
that beauty is its own proof;
that if everything was verifiable life would cease to be;
that doubt is necessary and healthy but that the spirit of scepticism is a sickness;
that most things we hold as true are by way of other authorities;
that it was exalted certainty that sent the boxcars to Birkenau and not iffy disconsolate minds;
that to live without faith is impossible and to attempt it is a castration of life;
that there are more than a few fish swimming around with coins in their mouths;
that desire is three-sided, and its nature is mimicry;
that if and when we humans become fully real we will no longer impose ourselves upon creation but see ourselves as one aspect;
that Gary Larson is not an earthling;
that science is humble in theory but not so much in practise and that this is what it has in common with religion;
that faith needs a frame, and reason needs a trellis;
that we are not born with an existential void but develop it over time;
that the non-existence of God can be proven by symbolic logic;
that a formally valid argument can nevertheless be false; 
that the argument of infinite regression is absurd;
that the earth rests on the back of a turtle…and that there are turtles all the way down;
that positive universal claims and negative existential claims are not testable in all possible worlds;
that all crows are black, except for one or two, maybe; 
that presuppositions are held viscerally and emotionally and half-consciously;
that God is a verb and not a noun and that existence is not a property;
that the word piffle can be appropriately applied to a plethora of propositions;
that our deepest and dearest beliefs are not logically verifiable;
that miracle is still the best term to describe the origin of life;
that hope and mercy are stronger than hate and violence.

We had planned to walk the circumference of this square tract in late afternoon, but the white-meat and shortbread lethargy was still too strong, and the company too welcoming…and the afternoon passed. I did manage to rise and wander to an east-facing window as the western sky was pulling back its quilt of chinook cloud; I watched, and when the sun slipped down into this space it lit up the half-mile line of leafless aspen on the opposite horizon, creating a tangle of illuminate, each crotch, branch, twig and sprig an optic fibre radiating yellow-light.

Still, I sat back down among the pack. But the time came when our wills strengthened on their own and we jacketed up and stepped out of doors, breathed in some tepid air and walked. We walked, my wife, Deb, Rose, our sister-in-law, and me — we three, wise as magi, into the gloaming of a Christmas night.

No moon gave us light this night. Only distant and dampened city light reflecting off an elongated priapic band of silver cloud, in relief of a silk-thin high weave of haze.

As we hiked we remembered the single coyote that purviews this barren white expanse. Earlier in the day we had watched him pounce on field mice. And quite naturally as we moved toward the looming trees we told stories of freakish coyote attacks—clothes torn away from running flesh…

Entering the tree-lined trail along the back stretch the dark crowded in and we needed to use the small flashlight I had received as a gift. I flipped the switch and white light blitzed the dark. Following the bobbing beam we picked our way along the rutted snow-pack: but then, at the edge of the shaft of light, just above eye level, we noticed patches of white hanging in the low branches. What strange fruit was this? Swinging the LED ray directly at the phenomena revealed a dozen, perhaps more, pairs of panties.

They had not been tossed to the trees in wontoness. They had been hung with care—unfurled—so as to display curve, curl, fabric, or its lack, frill, kind and colour. None alike, yet not one would Renee Zellweger have diaried as granny-panties. All were scanty. But given the setting, the time, the light, not quite provocative. And I for one, was unmoved.

And so we pondered, we wise ones, what the message of the dozen panties might be. A pattern was not immediately apparent. But then neither did we think it would be. The thong array and arrangement would not give up its clue or code that easy. And of course knicker mysteries do not abound in Red Deer and so gumshoe consultation would be a wash.

But then, we considered, were we limiting our enquiry? Perhaps we fell upon the clandestine muster point for lingerie on the lam. Were these panties taking control of their destiny, escaping those dreary department and drug stores with their licentious picture-packaging, and liberating themselves? Maybe, refusing a purchased fate, they were not going gently into that good night where the sun shineth not.

And what of the coyote, was he innocent of trophy hunting? What, after all, goes on behind yellow eyes? Did we stumble through some false panel into the den of a socio-path Canis latrans? And what of these trees themselves? Innocuous bystanders or light fingered Ents? Concupiscent cottonwood’s? Perverse poplars? Trembling aspen indeed!

We pondered these things as we traversed the remaining mile back to the house. We did not however store them in our hearts as proper magi may have. We were conscious only of the adolescent bubbles breaking in the back of our throats. These we contained as we shared our story with all the seriousness our discovery warranted—receiving not a few expected responses. For none of us fully out grow our adolescence.

Happy New Year, embrace the juvenile within.