May 11, 2021

My first completed and printed book arrives today. How nice. I think I have just about enough copies to distribute amongst those who really would like one. I will keep one here to look at occasionally. I will keep one for the reason of vanity? No, I will keep one more to prove that I can finish something. There is a need to demonstrate to myself that I am real, I can write — however bad or beautifully. I am hopeful that seeing my work in a printed, bound and organized shape will help steer me into finishing other pieces. Poetry book number two is underway and can use a bit of coaxing to get it smoothed, finished. The so-called novel is in rough draft form and may stay that way until my heirs and assigns can deal with it. Ha. Today, I am a pen-man, waiting for a package of value. All of this excitement makes me feel like an honest writer. A real one. That is how I felt when I sat down yesterday to finish a part of a requested piece. I thought, “Yeah…I CAN do it!”

So, a finished book is part of the writing game I always wanted to be in. When I think of those who played piano from age 12 and now are very skilled, I am always amazed. I admire that sort of dedication. I think, “Well, that person has always been an artist!” That I started writing at 12 and continued to do so for the better part of the following 58 years is an experience I tend to disavow, discredit. I, of course, am not an artist? I have not always been an artist? What? did I never learn how? A strange circumstance, since I wholly believe that the doing of a thing is quite a bit more important than the learning how. Practice, they say, makes perfect.

Why the limits? Why deny what I am/have always been doing? For the big and famous folk was this so? This feeling of fraud? …and further, why do I choose writing poetry as a hobby (if that is all it amounts to)? I don’t see that I necessarily have any burning need to communicate and I don’t think I have anything new to say. Isn’t that curious? Why be a writer? At the core of it is, while I don’t think I have anything important to say, I do love to say..I do love to just talk. I talk out of my hind side mostly, but talk is what I do. Those around me, in my ‘inner circle’, might well agree. “Yeah, he’s a talker for sure…”
Cheers.

May 10, 2021

Joy

Each time I hear Beethoven’s musical setting of the Friedrich Schiller poem ‘Ode to Joy’, I think the same unlearned thoughts. I have the same unlearned feelings. I opine in the same unlearned way. I see the final movement, the 4th as a summation (I guess that would be correct). The other movements of the 9th symphony DO describe joy, imo. They describe what seems to me to be the ideal of joy, the illusury qualities of joy, the common view of joy. The rest of that symphony wanders about on the hillside or teases delicious harmonies, explores in joyous ways, discovers worlds. The music of the fourth movement is not about joy. It is about desperation. It is shouting into it’s lyric, “Damnit, Joy! Come to me! I feel you not!” That is my sense of it. I think I pretty much stand alone across nations and times but I stand by my opinion. That particular section of the ninth symphony of Ludwig Van Beethoven is not about joy. It does not feel joyful to me. I don’t get it.

The music referred to as Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is strident. It is purposeful. It is determined. It is a near march. It is defiant. It is argumentative. It casts away my accepted concepts of what joy is. It is anything but joyful to me. Since I feel that way, I begin to wonder about the nature of joy. It is possible that Beethoven’s idea of joy was quite different than the ordinary. It is possible that my idea of joy is quite different than the ordinary. It is quite possible that I have missed that boat of common experience. Maybe, it’s me…?

I know that it must have been more than difficult for Mr. Beet-o-wan to find anything in his experience of life that would describe or illustrate joy. I can easily imagine that, a person left with only music (your solitary soulmate/friend) and losing the tactile element of music by becoming deaf? would you – would any human being understand joy? How? How is it possible to step outside that sort of pain? Imagine: you had an abused childhood with little opportunity to explore and become, you are forced into a regimented and punishing schedule on the piano (a difficult instrument, folks), you are beaten, isolated, dehumanized. You are left alone with the tones and the intervals of tone, alone with rhythm, alone with caesura. Those things are at the outskirts of your daily existence, your survival. Perhaps they come to you in dreams or subliminal sensation but they are not a living part of your waking life. They are around the edges of everything but still away. Or, perhaps they remain, those elements, but they become something personal to you and foreign to the rest of the world.

…or maybe not. Maybe I have missed the point. I often do. I am often admonishing myself to sit down and be quiet, allow the adults to talk. “Be still, child.” I might, indeed be listening to music that is ‘above my raisin’. It may, indeed be that I should, “speak the way yo mouth was born”. When I hear ‘Ode to Joy’ and hear it’s defiance, perhaps I misunderstand. It is possible that the very defiance I witness, hear IS the nature of joy. Maybe sweetness and light has nothing to do with it. Maybe joy forces itself out of the limb, into the branch, along the branch, out into magnificent green! Maybe joy casts off the yearly cloak of frozen white with fervor, not sublimity. Maybe the forceful bulb squeezes the tulip out and upward. Ah…maybe joy is not as sublime, as peaceful, as quiet as is described by many. Maybe. Hmmm. Maybe, when Beethoven wrote his additional text to the poem, ‘Oh friends, not these sounds! Let us instead strike up more pleasing and more joyful ones!’ he meant it? Jeez, I feel dumb again. LOL

April 28, 2021

Unique. Being human is an odd state. Being alive is an odd state of affairs. Eating, breathing, drinking, reproducing, pooping… and talking, dreaming, thinking, planning, understanding, confusing things. Love. Hate. Anger. Disappointment. Impatience. Eagerness. Desire… I know a bit of being human (which I am), I do not know of, must equivocate on the state of being an animal or a plant. I am not the forest primeval. I wave not as grain. I swim no sea. I do not purr in the window or call out to a mate with a three tone chord from a secure tree limb. I am human. I think about things and suspect that the creatures, the flora do not.

Last week’s surprise snowfall did not seem to upset the little maple tree. Even though her branches were half-leaved with tender green, the maple shrugged off an unfortunate circumstance and soldiered on … soon as the snow melted. My cedars did not fare so well. There is a bit of sagginess to one branch, whose fate is not at all certain. Other green and newly growing things did escape the heavy whiteness…lucky souls. There are three Rhododendron plants near the door who chose not to flower ahead of the snow. Those gentle pink blooms chose today, instead and are quite happy, thank you. A very large bee is grateful. I saw him, humming about his work among the glories this morning. I was not nervous, he ignored me and I him. I was not stung and he was not smashed to the waiting, hungry clay by my hand.

I hear that man was born of clay and will return to such post-haste. Man was born by the miracle hand of some divine energy. Shaped and molded man stood up and walked across the Eden earth. The woman walked as well, it is said. Adam and Eve were the names of the two, handed down over centuries of tale-telling and inaccuracy. My suspicion is that the names were actually ‘Seven of Eight’ and ‘Eight of Eight’, there being mistakes made in the first versions. The last, most recent two were variations on a theme, one inny and one outy. They, also had mistakes in the wiring somewhere. This mistake caused an error that involved a snake and some fruit of a certain tree. The whole business was pretty sordid and had lasting repercussions. Poor snake has been unable to live the whole thing down.

Were these updated, yet flawed two – halves? like the queen bee and worker? Queen bee and drone? (I think of this, having recent witnessed the large bee at his tasks.) Are the fabled two of equal status? Our society puts one above the other in importance ranking because it (our society) stems mainly from the male (less labour intensive side) who wrote stuff down and made the rule book. (The male having time to do such things, while he was relaxing.) Still, who does the most work? The most important work? Does the worker bee rub the pollen off and provide the most needed essence to the colony? Does the queen rain down juices, elixirs that bind all and is therefore most essential? In the case of A and E, of whose body was the alleged rib truly drawn? The tale telling appears inaccurate. Our witness, in the here, in the now, in the human, is that what is called woman does all of the rib-sharing. Seems that could be called most important? In the known bee world, the queen does a vital, important work, the actual spraying of pheremones, the dancing hypnotically but the worker does the rest. So, in the buzzing world, it is She Bee who cooks the goose of additional metaphor and sets it on living’s table. It is She who endures and is Mother. Yet…without He Bee, where would She be?

All things have oddness of existence, somewhere and somehow. Life sprays from, is born of, seems most to be mother’s fault, mother’s production, mother’s baby. Yes. The busy he bee I see is not a complete, lazy innocent, however. In humans, the skinny neighbour who drinks in the backyard and simply drops the empty cans where they fall had no contributing role to play when the belly of missus swelled? The flower waits for Mother earth to turn her cheek toward the sun before it lives — even though the seed came from elsewhere. There is, amongst the stars and geese and birds and bees and humans and trees an odd balance. In the case of reproduction and fueling living, there are two sides. There is yin and there is yang. There is Mother Earth and Father Sun, there is Queen bee and Worker bee, there is yes and there is no, there is ‘Should I stay or Should I go?’ There is an even, or perfect, oddness.

I have a mother, today. It is the Mother of All Bad Attitudes. From this mother, all of today flows. Anger, resentment, fear, loathing… all flow from the Mother Of Bad Attitudes. Hmmm. Politics, being who I am, the little frustrations have all built up on a Covid Wave. There is also the other source/half of that wave, Father Time and his instigation. These two disparate folks contribute to the moment’s flow. Fortunately, once contributed to, the moment changes of it’s own. The moment moves. The moment is the child of Mother Earth and Father Time, of Queen and Worker Bee, of ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ but the moment is liquid. The moment is malleable. The moment is alive. If I step back from Mother Earth and Father Time, floating on moment…the whole picture is easier to understand, becomes perfect. I chillax, shrug off the late snowfall, buzz around the smart blooms and get on with it. There are two sides. A bad attitude wraps into a sixty-nine with a good attitude and the whole thing spins slow. Sometimes, sometimes not, then again.

Feathered creatures work the water,
while I watch.
I am eager to observe their day
and have left the busy street behind
to enjoy a moment’s stay.

At random, sometimes in pairs,
these (terns, I believe) sudden swoop and dive.
A colourful kite might do the same
when a tied on rag tail is
too short to control sway.

Watching the birds, I remember
a farm field fading from usefulness
where weeds rose victorious
and a fragile, stretched paper
kissed grey clouds, far away.

Who is it teases
out endless string, invisible,
from some tight wound ball (the way I did)
’til each of these birds I see seem
separate, unbound of earth, in free display?

My heart beats to a finite order,
riding ancient rhythm
that stretches now, thin and tight as string
but I choose to fly, choose to dream.
I am the sea-bird, doing what I do each day.

March 19, 2021

It is Monday and the things I wait for have not arrived. I will crank the rocking chair up to 5 on the scale and will wait again Tuesday. In the time between, there is much needs doing and this day is not proving productive yet. I have already sent the best part of a brilliant morning spinning down the pipe, flushed by a silver handle. I did have a lovely conversation, looked at someone’s art (very nice, I am envious of that ability), drove to get a tea and bagel then consumed said tea and bagel by the water’s edge…It’s been busy and I have been avoiding the writing that needs doing.

A therapist once mentioned to me that I am actually not ‘bad at everything’, not ‘less than everyone’. He said, “You are remarkably skilled at procrastination, you are an artist in the field of conflict avoidance…some people try to please everyone but you succeed at it most of the time.” Hm. Yes, I guess. I was just imagining a scene where I (with my arm dangling by a thread of skin) say, “Sure, I will reach the top shelf for you!” So. I suppose it is true.

The person I cannot please is typing in his kitchen at the moment. That guy is a real hard case. Grumpy as all get out, right from the first light of day! He avoids, yes. He criticizes, finds fault, measures, compares, always comes up short. Always. I suppose, on the day Mr. Grump let a smile crack open the inner countenance, there might be a movement. The escarpment would notice…Guelph would rise even higher…Niagara wouldn’t be ‘on the lake’, it would be ‘in the lake’. Haha So, for the benefit of our world…keep the status quo, Mr. Grump. Don’t change, who knows what might happen.

The interesting point about the unknown future result of change is, in my example: While fat is not necessarily an aim, or that sloppy poetry is not necessarily an aim, It is also possible that a person who is fat anyway or writes sloppy poems starts to change. It is possible to relax instead of tense up when the extra helping of pie rises to it’s final destination. Said fat, writer person may hear the ridicule, the clucking of tongues and in the moment – forget them. “Mmmmm….pie. Mmmmm…poem.” What would be the cost to fitness or the world of literature? What would happen? 1)a fat person would remain fat, 2) a bad poem would be written, 3)the judging world would judge, 4)the person at the centre of controversy would enjoy his pie, lick his lips, lick the fork, smile….and write more poems about it! It will be under-developed poems that blur the rules of English grammar in literature, written by a fat person who is smiling. A fat person who is smiling with traces of blueberry at the corners of his mouth. Ah, life….

Yes. No need for agonization, regret, recrimination. Just do, just get it done, just enjoy. Sure, try harder sometimes but be a pussycat about it, snooze when the mood strikes you…the world goes on, it struggles through without your agony, without your perfection. You are happier, you spread more happiness. Sigh. Gosh darnnit, you little ol’ pie-smeared fool!

Feathered creatures work the water,
while I, patient, watch.
I am eager to observe their day
and have left the busy street behind
to sit for a moment’s education.

At random, sometimes in pairs
these (terns, I believe) sudden swoop and dive.
A colourful kite might do the same
when a tied on rag tail is
either too long or too short.

Watching the birds, I remember
a farm field fading from usefulness
where weeds, victorious
bent to a wild March day
and Papa, with his children, went to play.

He was, then, a young and pied piper
who teased with an endless ball
of string that played out
until a bright, white kite
kissed grey clouds, ominous in every way.

Each thumping heart swooped,
in kite unison,
and dove easy toward depth,
rose again aloft until the string
broke.

“I will bet she’s over Jackson by now!”
He said to soothe.
Not every dive is successful.
Not every smiling beak rises,
full of silver wriggling fish.

April 13, 2021

It seems, most months, that the month is half gone before I even find a chance to get all of the bills paid! Sometimes, the month is half gone before I get out of bed! Wow, time sure moves quickly. Time moves so quickly now that I am able to witness the maple tree out front as it makes it’s usual, seasonal change. It is not a slow, imperceptible change the way getting older can be. The Maple is unfolding itself before the eye and she is not alone. Stunning transformations are all around us at this time of year. Sure happens quickly! Lots happens quickly. The young neighbours down the lane drive quickly! Too quickly! The heart quickens, from time to time. The occasional quickenings are what make life, life.

I like the word ‘quick’ because of it’s other, more poetic connotations. The bringing to life by use of a defibrilator is to ‘quicken’ someone or, even more accurately, to plant a seed in fertile ground and surround it with the fuel of life is to quicken the flower. The breath of God quickens the spirit. I say that, knowing in my heart that God is not an entity in the way we know reality. God is not a ‘being’, a ‘beast’, an ‘aura’, a thing. God is but God is not and both statements are true at the same time. I don’t feel phony or a liar to say such things. I don’t believe as in the ordinary sense but I can say things like the spirit quickens to God’s touch and mean it…sincerely. To quicken a thing is to bring it to life. Simple. The awareness of God is the touch of God and that quickens the spirit, brings it to life.

The quick are the living. The dead are the dead. I am no longer as quick as I once was though I am alive. This does not mean that I am dying slower or (quicker) than I was after the moment of birth. Dead IS the direction this whole business is taking but I am not, yet, near dead. I am in-between, the way living is, the way life is, the way this mid-April morning and it’s weather is. No, I am not dead and yes, I am not as fully alive as I was only a little more than one year ago.
It is very trite, very much a platitude to say that not singing is to not live fully. It is, in particular, an odd statement, maybe presumptious “I am not fully alive when not singing,” when I say it. That is true because I am not a deeply trained or highly skilled singer. I don’t work as hard at singing as the claim might indicate I would but it is still a valid self-assessment. “I don’t fully live without singing.” That is all. I am not as fully alive today as I was more than a year ago, when I vibrated the rafters and quickened the still air of a concert hall.

Time is quick. Time is quickening. Time is not dead. Time is moving so quickly that I have lost more than a year to still and masked air. I am in-between. I am living but sort of leaning in the direction of not being as quick as I once was. I am losing time like an old clock. This wearying clock lost more than a year of quickening. Hahahaha. The chimes, the singing can’t be revived or restored to it’s last backup point. Ah well. That I am still quick enough to look forward to the not-so-far-off resumption of down-pitch or up-pitch singing is a wonderful thing.

…and God? Why did that come into my conversation? Well, I can tell you this much: Whatever God is, is what you can see. If I look out the window and notice my Maple tree mostly open already…um..God? Yeah, it’s in the quickness of spring, the quick unfolding of the Maple tree, the neighbours in their darn quick black car (somebody’s gonna get hurt!) God is hardly an invisibility. Just change your glasses and you can see. Personally, I have drifted over into the ‘cheaters’ section at Shoppers…a higher number of magnification. I had to change. A little change like a change in point of view and voila!

Now, I can see that God isn’t Uncle Carl, Uncle Carl is not longer quick. I can’t see Uncle Carl anymore except in memory. God is what you and I do see, even when not looking for anything and not finding anything. It is a mystery and a further mystery to find a proper sort of pronoun. God is transitional. They are in-between. None can deny the mystery…therefore a proof …and time? Yeah. Time is quick, always will be. Best get to it and hasten the singing, make it quick. I am slowing down, just like the neighbours had better do!

I have been away from my kitchen desk for three weeks. Today, I cleaned it up a little and sat down to start again. I have been spending my time over-indulging in food and drink but I haven’t been baking. I haven’t been cooking. I haven’t engaged in the myriad daily things I usually do. I haven’t been creative. The recording equipment sits idle. My daily habit of one thousand words went by the way side and I, lately, haven’t written or improved a poem either. What is that all about? Where is my Muse? Did Covid get her down? Ah…yes, I truly think so.

It hasn’t been a totally dull few weeks of either relaxed or stressed emptiness. I have had some excitement, here on the ranch. A little floppy heartbeat and an hours-long visit to the emergency room a few weeks back kept me busy. The lubs and dubs got mixed in with assorted other piled up, used laundry and my tub over-filled. It was a brief and I think harmless bit of messing around with health care that hardly cost a thing. There were meds that I ended up paying in full for but I am hoping that, with my new pills and some determination, I might be able to get back in the laundro-mat of life and start hanging out the dirty clothes again. Isn’t that exciting?

I am always too honest when I write. I have had friends say things like, “..is that ME?” or, “…I’d be careful what I said if I were you, folks won’t understand.” Yeah, I should be thinking ahead to what folks want to hear and not just gabbing to hear a voice of some kind. I might do better to consider the tale and who is going to hear it. I used to be good at saying what a given person might want to hear. Isolation has changed my sensors, some don’t work as well anymore. That I have lost an ability to discern means I have to pay better attention to what I am doing. Words sent out onto paper often miss my intended mark. It is much easier to tell a tale that I think someone wants to hear when I am with them, in person. I can witness the flinch that indicates a wrong direction, a stepped on toe. On paper, it is just me and the truth of the situation. I get lazy enough to just forget the rules and I type for the heck of typing, dream for the heck of dreaming, imagine for the heck of imagining. That the familiar and true, my over-emotional self leaks in is somehow inevitable I fear. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing?

You can’t undo the past. You can’t fix much of what you screwed up but it’s best not to dwell. Regret is a green fur-covered dish best thrown out. You will get sick when you eat of regret. Still, I do have my writing experience regrets. I have been foolish on Facebook more often than I want to remember. One unforgettable series of comments meant that my whole ‘end of church’ scene was orchestrated with the very public dips and snaps, hearts and likes, angry faces and teary faces of Facebook ’emojis’. My anger, my upset, my confusion lashed out in the worst ways. I remember calling the old church ‘ST. Mark’s by the Cess-pool’. That wasn’t kind, wasn’t intended to be but it was accurate. On it’s surface as well as the undertow meanings, that was an honest name. The church was, after all, located on the shores of Lake St. Clair…an industrial cess-pool of sorts. Of course, my comments didn’t go over well with the properly concerned parties. Things turned into a rout of mud and other effluent slinging. The sorry story cost me people I believed to be friends. Ours was a battle indeed that might have done well as a FaceTime event. We could have sold tickets, I bet. Juicy to the last drop of quasi-sacred blood.

At this point, St. Mark’s and any other church are again closed to my heart. I am, at 70, very uncomfortable just to walk through the doors, virtual or otherwise. I can’t see past what I’ve known as treachery, cliques and power struggles. I can’t let go of pre-judgement. I know I would carry my over-size baggage right along with me into the crowded sanctuary.

Since my ideas of God and what The Bible is run counter to what appears as the prevailing view, I was always a tenuous churchmouse at best. I laughed out loud, I created a noisome prescence. Had the church not been a bit leaky, a bit drafty, I’d not have found myself in. Now the old and hole-y baseboard has been replaced with a new piece. I don’t think I have the sharpness of tooth to chew my way in again. I may have lost that community for good. I don’t know that I could ever sing there in future.

Something I have come to know is that singing is one of the main things for me. It’s the biggest draw for church. When I sing, since I am not very good on my own, I need a choir to back me up. I suppose it is a selfish thing but singing on Sunday kept me going. Being in the choir at church and being in the choruses outside church were groups I felt a part of, akin to. I had community. Not having community is a disaster for me. Without the net of community, the more natural solitary things, like writing don’t work their best. Not singing, not talking with folks, not drinking with folks, not eating with folks delivers a blow to my ambitions, creative. I get lost too easily. I think this is true for many. The lockdowns are freezing us all.

I sincerely hope we will thaw, re-start at some time, near future. There is a warming spring on our vast horizon. There have been enough re-starts, enough greening springs in my life that I can at least recognize that. Whether Spring comes quite soon enough is the question. I am struggling but I am still alive. You are still alive. World has not disintegrated, even though it does appear that way. I just sat down and wrote something. It is a good day. Perhaps one good day leads to another. Perhaps we sing again before the laundry cycle finishes? Yeah. I hope so. As far as church goes? Well…best not to predict, eh?

March 30, 2021

While yet another of my close cousins has passed on, there has been no evidence of earth slowing it’s rotation or speed through universe. Nor has earth shown a visible lightening of it’s load. Argument, desire, life and laughter still resounds the hills. My cousin was a complex man but earth has no lesser burden with him gone. He will be missed by many and there will be no spring in earth’s step, though there is Spring in the air.

My time with cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents is slowing down to a memory of each -one-by-one. Many are no longer quick, though not all are dead, yet. That is still a future thing. A near future or nearer future, a certainty. A sooner than later. Our old world is winding down, disappearing more every spring. Winter has frozen off the elder branches, made room for the new shoots. Someone cut the bejesus out of the lilac, in preparation. The process continues however much slower for me. To the slowing of my time? no trees witness or celebrate such an event. They dance but they dance not for the slowing. They are dancing on the March-clean atmosphere of re-awakening as I write this.

I am just now thinking that a spring breeze must feel a bit like massage to a tree. Mmmmm. A stretching of the winter stilled limbs. A rejuvenation. A little exercise of tightened things, causing their canopies to blush with the hint of life. It is a light colour that suddenly appears one warm-ish day when the sun is just so. It is so funny that the vast number of emerging buds has the power to shut down a north wind. Fragility, en masse, takes down the captor.

I can’t see much serious change, year to year on this little laneway where I live. The major events to remark upon are all hum-de-dum ordinaryness. There is a very pregnant neighbour lady on one side of the laneway and a recently vacated womb on the other side, behind me, in the other row of houses. The neighbour who has junk piled everywhere is still smiling and cheerful, still picking his way around the stacks. The new couple speed rapidly in and out, trying to hit something but haven’t been successful yet. Not even the thousand squirrels have surrendered a life to the tire. The mayor still grumbles her way in and grumbles her way out. There is still the little boy who calls me Uncle whenever he sees me. I shout back, pleased. The struggling grass is… still… Skinny, Shirtless Guy is… still…

I have one less living cousin, one more dead one. We can pack up a few more things, get them out of the way. Clear a bit of space. When my time has slowed to a stop, or your time has, maybe, it’s possible to pass some stuff of value along to be used again. If we are lucky. If we are smart. If we learned a thing or two, there will be some useful stuff to pass on. I know there will be stories to tell for a while, before the tale-tellers lose their command of speech or their ready, listening ears. When spring hits us each year, I shall tell the tales, ribald or otherwise, with abandon. That is all I can do. Drink deep of the day, dark or otherwise, friends.

March 25, 2021

Good news for some, is disappointment for others. I am not going to die…LOL. (at least not today). I am back to feeling normal, as far as the heart palpitations go. There are only mild symptoms, the kind I have had as long as I can remember. A little extra hard lub mixed in with the dubs. Whew! So, it went away again, just like it always does. My bad to complain — so, I won’t. I will complain about the vertigo, instead…hahahahahahahah. No kidding, it’s bad today. I can hardly move without dizziness and I have almost fallen twice. Ooooops. I almost fell last night, too. I should be careful…no one is likely to find the body for at least a few days. or….

“Erase, erase, erase.” That’s what my sister used to say after she said something that didn’t go down well or that she had regrets about. She was a smart cookie. I didn’t erase my comments above and I didn’t erase my comments on Facebook when the church was firing me or edging me out. Now, they are sworn enough as enemies that the priest pretends not to see me when we bump into each other at public events. He would rather pretend that I not exist. He would rather pretend that I am like Santa Claus? I am currently convinced that the priest would rather pretend a lot of things. That is his problem and none of my business but it leads me to certain other ponderings.

I am disappointed. There is no Santa Claus, no matter the pretense. No matter the hype. Santa Claus was Uncle Carl, then and someone else’s Uncle Carl now. I am shocked at the truth. I don’t understand the willingness of people to engage in the charade. I am aware how foolish that is of me to be still shocked and bothered at 70 years age. I should have given up any emotional response to the truth long ago. It follows, though: I haven’t given up an emotional response to the truth of the tall tales and pretenses of the bible, either. I guess that I am disappointed in the Jesus and God story not being wholly credible. Or… maybe I am more disappointed that the church (in my experience) has twisted the tales of the bible, altered the meanings to suit an interpretation and called that truth, pretended that was fact. Just as it bothers me that my former priest will pretend I don’t exist, it bothers me that he pretends Jesus has super power. Jesus is dead and gone…no stone rolled away and revealed anything other than an old tomb, dead body and possible (some say) mark on a shroud. End of story.

I have a Facebook friend who writes a column/page called Snarky Bible. His writing is a synopsis of the books of the bible, it is entertaining, cynical, irreverant and spot on. He paraphrases the books in modern terms and condenses the meandering to concise paragraphs that read the way an action video game plays. It is, essentially, exactly what the books contain. This one rapes that one and throws the other one down a well. Somebody climbs up a mountain to get away from all the noise and sees a bush on fire and some other stuff. He comes back down the mountain with a book and gets mad that the kids had a party while he was gone so he breaks the book and has to go to get another one. All the while, redemption and eternity await like a champion score.

The stories of the bible are a historical record, inaccurate and prone to relate belief more than fact. A reasonable person, I think, would see that. If we, in our modern, developed age cannot agree on an accurate count of the dead bodies after a mass shooting — how can we expect a hand-me-down, millenia old poetic history to be truth? Literal truth? Come on. By the time I step up to the bible, even it’s words have been changed (for clarity? or to promote an agenda?) The big three of the west and near-west and near-east all have their own idea what the same books mean, who wrote them and why. This fact disturbs me, since each of those religions claims to be telling the one truth, the one story. Each insists they know what is so. Each swears these books to be telling a somewhat different absolute truth. (Even the books themselves admit to two truths or more–witness the two ways the earth and man were created in Genesis.) They are just books, folks…just books.

What is true and is wonderful about the bible/torah/qu’ran is: It gets folks thinking about things that matter. Who we are, where we are, why we are, where we are going. Those questions have not been solved by science and not by religion. Science is closing in on what we can understand but it doesn’t have the answer. Religion is less precise than science but has a more colourful and human sort of incomplete answer. I like both ways of looking at the things we cannot and will not ever understand or know…not until the end. That end is coming for all creatures, all growing and living things. That much IS true, verifiable, undenied. My bet is on something halfway between Science and Religion on life’s other side…but we will see, won’t we? I won’t see yet. Not today. It certainly felt as though I were about to get my wings or horns on Saturday. I didn’t. Ah well. More discussion, then? Cuppa tea?