Week 3: Lenten reflection

This Sunday that just passed was the First Scrutiny, a preparation ritual for the Easter catechumens. The gospel reading that accompanies this ritual is the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. (John 4)

Jesus meets a woman at the well, and asks her for a drink. Following the prejudices of the age, the woman responds that he is a Jew, and Samaritans and Jews do not share such things. Jesus begins to tell her about a new kind of water, one whose thirst will remain quenched. He tells her in passing that he knows she has had five husbands, and is living with a man who is not her husband.

The way Jesus acts with this woman at this well has always made a big impression on me. This woman has gone through husbands like Liz Taylor! And she is with a man to whom she is not even married. I know the modern Christian reaction to such things - this is a woman to be ostracized. Cartoon bunnies like Buster would do well to stay away.

But this is NOT what Jesus does. Instead, he engages this woman in one of the deepest philosophical dialogues in the New Testament. He acknowledges her situation, but he never reproaches her for it. Indeed, he may be speaking to her because of it, for this is likely someone in need of healing. In fact it is to this woman that the Jesus of John's gospel first expresses the coming sacramental relationship he intends to establish. He does not judge. He listens, and he brings hope.

This is the true, and the only genuine, Christian calling. Condemning people is easy and a cynic can do it better than any religious person.

I recently read a modern account of this hope in action. A Jesuit named Gary Smith wrote a powerful story about the power of listening, of hope, and of the grace that is availablein the darkest hour. In 'Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor' he pours out his diary entries concerning a middle aged man named Robert who describes himself to Smith as "manic-depressive, homosexual, drug-addicted, and HIV positive."

Smith can barely tolerate the man's infested apartment, but still forms the impression of a man with "off-the charts interior pain and an enormous reservoir of sensitivity."

Smith spends the next few months with this man, listening, and struggling to find a way to "communicate care," even though he and Robert are from very different worlds. He finds ways, however, such as taking Robert to the beach, which he is too sick to really see to on his own.

Eventually Robert confesses, "My resistance to God has always been rooted in my feelings of being dirty. Like I am always a leper. But I know that we are all lepers to some degree and that in spite of that God still loves us."

Robert would not live an awful lot longer. But through Robert, Smith drew closer to the model of service at the heart of Christianity, and Robert found meaning, hope, and even happiness in his last days.

Jesus could have rejected the woman at the well. His culture and her history would have given him ample grounds. But that was not his way. I cannot let it be my way, either, though both the cynic and the puritan are never far from the surface.

The beatitudes have something to tell me about my way. And yesterday, I heard that way lived, at a well near Sychar. Now - hopefully, I will do what I hear.

Ski daydreams

We did not go to the cottage this weekend. My brother in law has gone off to Mexico for a break, and we had a lot of things to attend to in town. But my heart is never far from the woods, and we are blessed to live near Ottawa's greenbelt, a ring of forest that was designed to prevent urban sprawl by locking the Ottawa area into a fixed space. The NCC spends a lot of effort ensuring that the Greenbelt also offers recreational possibilities to residents and visitors, so many ski and hiking trails run through these woods.

I decided, Saturday afternoon, the only time I had a break from the busy-ness, to go cross country skiing. It was a sunny and bright day, with a sky blue enough to make you want to cry. I haven't had the chance all year, so rather than impersonate Dagwood Bumstead with my free time, I got out there. It was a beautiful sunny day. I skied through Conroy pit, where all the dog walkers go, and tried to avoid skiing over the unscooped dog droppings along the way. My real quarry was a ski trail on the other side of the pit, one that goes for miles and miles, and finally I got there. In summer, this trail is a dank, hot, and swampy forest, with more mosquitoes per square inch than anywhere else I've been.

In winter, I can take the time to appreciate it, since I am not swatting bugs away. I can admire the tall pines, and all the swamps and bogs, frozen over with the stumps protruding through the snow. About two miles into the trail, I stopped, and skiied out onto a frozen bog. I ski fast and vigorously. I always have. So I was hot, sweaty, and in need of a break, since it was actually a total of about 6 km to where I was.

In October, when the temperature dips to 2-3 celsius, it feels like the coldest day of the year. But in late February, when the temperature goes up to that range, it feels like the sunniest, hottest day you'll ever know. I took my jacket off, and stood basking in the sun for about a half hour, although I can't really be sure - I lost track of time.

I suppose I can't feel at home without the woods. When I was a boy, my brother and I explored the miles and miles of greenbelt behind our house every day. In the summer, we would head out with walkie talkies my grandfather had given us and try to first get lost, and then use the walkie talkies to find our way home. Sometimes we brought a picnic bag with us, which my mother would pack for us. In the winter, my whole family would ski through the forest, using creek beds in ravines as ski trails.

So even today, when we don't go to the cottage, I get out into the woods on the weekends. Cities can be attractive in that they reflect the hopes, desires, and culture of the people who built them. And Ottawa is such a city, the product of an entire country's efforts to reflect itself.

But every forest is a reflection of its residents as well. Saplings cover the forest floor, and hopeful pine cones drop near their parents, whose unarticulated, unthinking hope is the same as our own. Chipmunks and squirrels scurry about, as birds sing lazy summer songs, or pierce the cold with a lonely cry. Waters run through the raveens and valleys, cutting deeper and deeper into the ground, as they flow without thought, following ripple upon ripple for a thousand years. Grasses and cattails line the banks, like condo owners, desperate for the sunlit opening overhead, as well as the cool waters rushing through.

Both the city and the forest echo God, the ultimate master architect who oversees the residents of both places. But it is easier for me to see the beauty of what God does in a forest, because he makes it so plainly visible there.

During Lent...

...one's discipline does not apply on Sundays. So here it is, 11:57 PM on a Saturday night, and I am waiting up so that I may have what I otherwise cannot!

Preserving life

Je m'exuse que j'écris cette piece en français, mais ma petite fille est en train d'insister qu'on parle en français, et je ne suis pas capable de penser dans les deux langues toute a la meme fois!

OK, she's reading in English again.

During Lent, we begin our Fridays by going to Mass. It makes Fridays about a little more than simply skipping meat. Two of the readings today were about how Jacob's sons planned to murder Joseph the dreamer, but motivated by something else, fear or guilt - or maybe something more, decide to throw him down a hole, and then sell him into slavery.

Of course, Joseph would have a hard-luck life for a time, pulling himself up to a certain dignity and then losing it again over false accusations by the wife of Potiphar (the captain of Pharaohs guard.)

But Joseph was a dreamer, and his skill with dreams saved him, for he was able to interpret the dreams of his fellow prisoners in jail. His prophetic skill would eventually be put to use saving the entire Kingdom of Egypt from famineand then his family as well.

He was angry with his brothers; there's no doubt. When they came to see him, not knowing who he was, he accused them of being spies and tossed Simon in jail, only to be released if they brought back Benjamin.

But he could not keep up the anger forever. Moved by the story of his father's suffering, he revealed himself to his brothers, saying "God sent me before you to preserve life."

There comes a time when genuine humanity transcends anger. Anger can be useful to us - it helps us understand when injustices are done, and gives us motivation to fix it. But it is too a kind of jealousy, a resentment that things are not what they should be for either ourselves or others who matter to us. And anger can often lead us down the wrong road for reasons that seem right enough.

Transcending anger means passing by injustice and confronting suffering directly. "God sent me before you to preserve life," Joseph tells his brothers.

How do we do that? The answer is different every time. But it is the most important question we can ask ourselves: how do we preserve life?

For Philip

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And a small white pillow for my big fat head.

When I was fifteen, my Dad began letting my brother and I take the motorboats out onto the Big Rideau on our own. The Big Rideau is a huge lake on the Rideau canal system, and there are three decent sized towns nestled on nearby shores, within boat range. My brother and I spent a lot of time exploring, and trying to meet other people, who were usually visitors from far away. The Rideau canal system connects the Ottawa river to the St. Lawrence, which leads either to the Great Lakes, or the ocean.

One day, I got the idea that I would try out the traditional communication medium of the desert island castaway. Since I was surrounded by pleasurecraft coming to and fro, if I put a message in a bottle and cast it out into the water, the odds were pretty good that someone would see it, open it, and read it. So I wrote a nice note, describing who I was, what I liked doing, where my cottage was situated, and asking whoever found the note to write me back and do the same. Mindful that in the real world, bottles sink (or damage hulls), I used the most airtight light plastic container I could think of, and sent my messsage off to whoever would find it. Months later, I got a nice note from some girl a couple of years younger than I who lived west of Toronto. I could have established a nice penpal exchange if I were less of a procrastinator, but sadly, I never wrote her back.

I read in the Ottawa Citizen today an article by a Misty Harris entitled, "I blog therefore I am: How technology inflates our egos." (The Citizen charges for access, so I can't link it.) But the title alone gives you the gist of it. She uses an aspect of the Paris Hilton phone incident to try and make a larger point. Harris notes that all of the photographs taken off Hilton's phone are pictures of Hilton herself. She parlays this into the assertion that academics hold that modern technology is turning us all into narcissists.

She quotes one W. Keith Campbell as saying, "When you're with your friends or family, typically your illusions of grandeur are constrained or minimized. But when you have a mechanism like the web, you can be anything. So all those restraints that keep our egos in check are removed."

Now that I should take this on as a topic to challenge, I could ask about myself, "Am I simply being defensive? Are these assertions valid?" After all, I've put an awful lot of myself on the Internet. I once posted incessantly in Usenet. I've blogged myself a decent sized novel in this space here. I've posted upwards of a dozen songs I've recorded at home to a public music site. What does this mean?

I suppose it helps to examine what the ego itself is. It is the self, and your awareness of it as distinct from other things. "Ego" is also used as a kind of measure, our sense of what our relative worth is, but I think that is a superfluous aspect. We all to some extent use our sense of relative worth to ensure our competitive position vis a vis others is where we want it to be - that may be instinctive. But I would submit that the Internet neither adds or takes away from the already present tendency of people to do that.

I truly think this inapplicable to blogs. Harris may assert that, "Similary, weblogs allow individuals to indulge grandiose fantasies of who they are, cataloguing the nuances of their lives - real or imagined - for all to see." To my mind, though, this is a complete red herring. People have always, since the dawn of time, constructed an inner narrative that says something to the effect of, This is the story of my life, this is what has happened to me. Weblogging is simply an additional way of setting that narrative down. I know this weblog is not "for all to see." I wrote it for the first two months with nobody reading it at all. And in all the time since, there have never been more than one or two people reading.

The simple reality is that the noise level is going up. People are not more able to "influence others" now than they have ever been. The voice of one blogger, in general, is no more important today than the voice of one frenchman shouting from the mob at Robespierre on the bascule two hundred and ten years ago.

People are compelled to express themselves. They have felt the need to say something since Cro Magnon began painting ibex and mammoth on the walls of caves in Spain and France, forty thousand years ago. Does this come from ego? Yes - absolutely. We could have nothing to say individually if were not aware of our apartness, our uniqueness. But there could be no common voice, no collective voice, if not for the individual voice. By definition that is so.

Blogging may be narcissism. But it is not by necessity narcissism, any more than we would accuse Dali of narcissim for daring to take a brush to canvas, or Emily Bronte for having the audacity to tell us about Heathcliff and Cathy. And no, I am not comparing blogs to these masterpieces, but simply pointing out that self-expression is valid, and should not be condemned simply for being easier to do than it used to be.

Misty Harris can be excused, I suppose, for thinking that having something to say is the sole purview of newspaper columnists. But my self-expression is no more, and no less a facet of my ego than hers. I want to do it. That does not give me an over-inflated sense of my importance. I am fully aware of (and OK with) how few will read what I write. And that awareness does not lessen my desire to do it. I have many things that I want to say about joy and suffering - but that does not mean I consider anything I say terribly important. I simply feel compelled to say it.

Buh-baaaah-b-bb-buh buuuh baaaah!!

That's the closest I can come to mimicking the theme to Star Wars. I am revved up, of course, because I am a nerd and the next Star Wars movie will soon be in theatres.

I still remember the way I felt when the first Star Wars came out. I desperately wanted to go. All my friends had seen this movie. I could not convince my father to take me. I had the book, I had the comic, so I knew the story well enough that I was not left out of conversations at school. But I had never felt the rumble of that Star Destroyer crossing the screen and taking forever to do it. I knew I had not really experienced Star Wars. Finally my Dad took me to see it at the old Somerset theatre, and while we waiting in line, some lady in the building across from the theatre barfed off the 10th floor. Then she lit up a cigarette and smoked some more. Funny the things you remember.

I remember how I felt when the second Star Wars film came out. I went to see it in Bismarck, North Dakota, if I remember right, as we had been traveling west to see my grandmother. I remember thinking how different it was from the first film. I also remember not being terribly surprised by the "I am your father" thing either for some reason.

I was, however, completely surprised by Return of the Jedi. I thought for sure that Star Wars would end with the triumphant defeat of Darth Vader, whose ignominous fate would be well deserved. I did not expect to discover that Luke would actually find a way to save his father.

Which leads me to Easter, which I am also revved up for. I'm conscious actually of two religious holidays that are on their way, as they always fall within days of each other, Easter and Passover. For despite the very different reasons for the two holidays, both have a very similar theme at their core - a people delivered, by divine grace, from slavery. And slavery comes in many forms. It can be external oppressors, akin to pharoah and the Egyptians. Or the slavery can be a wrongheaded devotion to screwing up one's own life.

What becomes clear with these latest iterations of Star Wars is that the latter, a banal problem we all face, is the entire reason for the existence of Darth Vader. Yes, he may personify evil, but evil for its own sake is not how he ended up there. It is the inability of Anakin Skywalker to accept the place set before him that results in his date with the ventilator. He is a slave to this inability. And yet even someone so far down the wrong road is saveable - Vader is saved by his own son, because of one thing - love.

Love is what saved the Israelites. Although the story tells of plagues visited on the Egyptians, really, all of these were quite gentle warnings. Frogs and locusts were severe enough to frighten a superstitious people, but could not unharden pharoah's hardened heart. That the plagues culminate in the death of Egypt's firstborn is his failure, not God's. God took pity on the weaker party, the slaves, remembering a favoured status he had once bestowed on a distant ancestor, Abraham. As I've heard the joke goes, "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat!" But the survival is due to God. Even today, Jews survive despite the concerted efforts of so many over the years to wipe them out. How can we not see the hand of God in this? He keeps his promises forever. There will always be descendants to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And love is what saves Christians. We are a communion who consider ourselves in need of saving from our own iniquity. We have been shown a "still better way" as St. Paul puts it. An act of love is at the heart of our soteriology, the passion and ressurection. And continuing acts of love in our lives - this is The Way, as our religion was called before it had a name.

I look forward to the night of the Easter vigil, when the candles light up the dark in the sanctuary. I look forward to the full moon in the sky, heralding the time when the lightness of day begins to outshine the dark.

And of course I look forward to Revenge of the Sith, coming May 19 to a theatre near you. ;-)

Life on Mars? It is possible

There is a good chance that there may be life on Mars, with the discovery of a frozen sea near the equator.

Frozen sea discovered near Martian equator | Science Blog

The interesting aspect of this discovery is that there is more pronounced methane over this area. Since atmospheric methane on Mars does not persist, that means the high concentration means it is being generated or released. Methane is one of the signature outputs of primitive life.

I hope this discovery is made in my lifetime. That would be really exciting!

The love that dare not show its face

You know what? I'm a big fan of traditional morality, but I mean that in its most positive sense.

That is to say that I think that, for example, marriage is a very feminism-compatible tradition. When a woman makes a man wait until there is a ring on the finger, she ensures that a compact is in place that any children resulting from this union are cared for together - the guy isn't free to disappear when baby comes along. By "traditional" love, I understand that a man must cherish a woman, and not treat her as a commodity, a consumer product to be used and disposed of along with the Burger King bag.

What I refuse to acknowledge as a traditional value is intolerance. Some bunny named Buster went to see a Lesbian couple in a PBS cartoon. Some fundamentalists are upset about this, and to me, this reaction is simple ugly heterosexism. Lesbian couples are real. They actually exist. What value is there in ensuring cartoon bunnies pretend they do not exist?

And Spongebob! I swear - these groups have decided to exceed the "outing" quotient of gossip columnists in The Advocate! Come on folks, we're talking about a talking sponge who has a wide-eyed infatuation for his job as a fry cook, and has a dopey friend who is a starfish. Setting aside that starfish and sponges diverged in the Precambrian (0.6 billion years ago) and have no reproductive possibilities at all, what kind of a loon factors sex into such childish innocence at all? Yes Spongebob sings "We are family." The point is... what exactly? That he'll migrate from "Village People" to hardcore stuff like "Frankie Goes to Hollywood?" The horror, the horror!

Latest word is that now Shrek 2 is gay (I'm assuming not the Shrek 1.0 iteration for some reason.)

Come on, already! We are talking about animated characters here folks! Even if we assume the worst and that Donkey is in possession of a three dollar bill and decorates the apartments of straight bachelors as a hobby, we are talking about animated characters! Even with the inclination, they all lack the anatomically correct characteristics to do anything about it!!

When people are starting to sound crazier than Monty Python's "She's a witch because she's a duck" formulation, you know it is time to grab a doubly-caffeinated cup full of sanity!

Believe it or not, I'm flyin' on air...

Have you ever blogged from a plane before? I haven't – before today! Right now, I am on a JetsGo jet somewhere Oshawa, east of Toronto.

I first woke up this morning about 3 AM. I don't need an alarm clock, you see. I a rather light sleeper. But I did turn over to face the clock, so that as I continued to wake up periodically (as I normally do) I would instantly see the time, so I could know whether to go right back to sleep. Or I would know that it was that time, time to throw myself into the shower and get ready to go.

As the magic time of 4:45 approached, the oddest thing began to happen – I would wake up, go to sleep for what felt like a fair little stretch, and wake up to discover that it was only a minute later. Time began to crawl for me.

Finally 4:45 AM came, and dutifully I arose, showered, and went downstairs to make myself a hearty breakfast. As I sat in the dark living room eating it, I started watching the tube. The television, you see, was already on because my wife and my older daughter fell asleep watching it. The show that happened to be on was a docudrama about JFK Jr, and I had started watching as they dramatized his last hours. It didn't occur to me until the plane I am on now was queuing up on the runway how ominous a thing that was - how I had watched his ill-fated takeoff simulated that very morning.

Of course, statistically, I'm safer right now than I was on the taxi ride to the airport. But as I look out the window I see two things – the right turbine is just behind me, and the clouds are far below me, even those wispy ones that always seem so high. I am not the master of my fate, not the captain of my soul. My life is to some extent in the hands of the captain and first officer, but there are limits even to their ability to keep me safe. Their competence and good judgment will improve my already good odds.

But ultimately I am in the hands of God. Fatalist? No – just a hopeful realist. I trust, and whatever result comes to pass will be the right outcome. :-)

Lenten reflection - Week II

"How are you?"

It is such an innocuous question, isn't it? And yet the possible answers are many. I asked somebody, "How are you?" the other day, and she asked me if I was just being polite. I was surprised to be asked this, but is it not a valid question?

The readings for the second Sunday of Lent (just past) culminate with the Matthew account of the transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9.) The response of the apostles to the transfiguration is the same basic reaction advocated by that popular bumper sticker "Jesus is coming. Look busy!"

Instead the scurrying about of the apostles to make tents and ingratiate themselves with their guests results in them being told in no uncertain terms, "Listen to Him!"

I find it amazing how difficult a skill listening actually is. During the priest's homily about the transfiguration on Sunday, I found myself starting to zone out and withdraw into my own thoughts, my own worries and musings. And then he would quote that line again, "Listen to him!" and I would realize anew that I was not listening at all. And then at the end of Mass, our choir leader wasn't paying attention and missed his cue. :

This is why when I ask people how they are, I am resolved to hear the actual answer, whatever it entails. It isn't easy getting anyone's attention. And it may be even harder to keep it. But it terrifies me to think what it might imply if none of us makes the effort.

For if we only hear, and do not listen, then we are being reached by no-one. And if our acquaintances too are off in their own little worlds, then that also means we are all alone, isolated in the impervious watch towers of our unbreachable defences.

So I ask, How are you? How are you really?

The fruit of love

The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

Vegan diets - bad for children?

Vegan diets may not be good for children, depriving them of proteins that build the brain and promote body growth, a study has found.

I cannot say that I am surprised. While I admire the desire of vegans to eke out what they perceive as an ethical form of eating, you cannot defeat evolution. Human beings have had a meat component in their diet since, well, since the common ancestry with the chimpanzee (chimps hunt.) Meat is directly responsible for our ability to form complex brains, our signature characteristic. Faking out your body with vitamins is only going to get you so far.

That of course doesn't mean those of us who are walking human carnosaurs get to smile smugly either. :-) Most people eat far too much meat. I've read that the maximum daily intake of meat should be about 6 oz., and most of us don't eat so little.

How I got into music, and why I'm still doing it.

For years I experimented with tape recorders. My parents used to use cassette tape recorders in the 1970s to send spoken letters to my grandparents. About 1974 they upgraded from one kind of cassette player to another, and my Dad gave the old one to me.

I would make something like the radio plays I heard on CBC Radio (our equivalent of NPR.) I got very good at figuring out how to make the sounds I wanted. I could simulate explosions and fires by blowing on the microphone. I could use doorknobs and door hinges to make mechanical sounds. My Dad had an old telegraph machine in the basement from his days in the signals corps. I used that to make computer beeps. And then I discovered that on shortwave radio there were all kinds of computer sounding beeps, so I used those as well. I got to be a near-expert at sound recording at a young age.

Still, other than sometimes incorporating singing into my radio plays, this wasn't music. There were two catalysts that made music such an important part of my life – the death of John Lennon in 1980 was one of them. I fell in love with the Double Fantasy album, and that led me to really get into the Beatles, whom I'd only listened to a handful of times before that.

The other catalyst was that my father bought my mother an organ for Valentine's Day that same year. One of the things that came with this organ was a “teach yourself to play” book, and so I did – I learned how to play the organ out of a book.

Within a few months of Lennon's death, I had started a band of sorts. I was a terrible singer. My voice was breaking because I was that age, and I had very little musical skill at this point. But I did do one interesting thing – I wrote a song for our first practice, and it was a blues song, a twelve bar. It was a dreadfully awful thing whose chorus was “Sue sue sue sue, I don't know why I fell for you.” But it was a blues number, and that was the musical genre that I would stick with from that point forward.

It did not take too long for me to realize that taking an organ to school was not practical. Other people played guitars, and make music out in the sun in the spring as the let-out of school approached. With what little money I had, I bought a wreck of a classical guitar at the Crosby flea market near the Big Rideau lake that summer. I tried to teach myself the guitar over the next year. My Dad and I actually took continuing ed classes on the guitar that fall together. My Dad dutifully paid attention. I was in my own little world, trying to advance beyond the teacher. I literally did the Bryan Adams thing and played until my fingers bled. A friend and I spent every weekend writing songs – some of them silly, some of them meant to be serious. We were awful but it was fun, and his Dad a great guitarist, showed us a lot of tricks. He and he and I are still friends.

Towards the end of this school year, my parents frowned on me getting an electric guitar. So I saved my allowance and bought one secretly. It was a cheap Les Paul clone, but it was beautiful looking.

I switched schools the next year, and ended up at a high school, Glebe Collegiate, with an incredibly vibrant music scene (one which would later produce Alanis Morissette.) In one of my classes, I met a guy named Dave who played the piano and guitar, had good equipment, and wrote songs. I went to his house frequently on weekends, and we'd listen to songs, write songs, and I'd record them. We started a band, and we named it Tresa (after a math teacher in my previous school I'm sorry to say I had much lampooned in class.)

We were terrible, but less terrible than my previous efforts. And as I participated in coffee houses and what not, I got introduced to some of the incredible musicians that hung around the school. Most of them played the blues, and in a much less inexpert way than I did. One of them was a fellow named Tortoise Blue. Another guy, named Chris, played the blues on his signature Gibson SG in a way I'd never heard before. He channeled all those old Chicago blues guys I listened to on the college radio station. I set to work learning how to play the blues in earnest. I listened, I watched. I bought a book and finally learned how to bend and vibrate notes properly.

When I left high school I became a professional musician, even as I attended university. I started a band called the Sugardaddys which became an A-list clubbing band – this was during the age that Ottawa's music scene was at its most vibrant, and churning out people like Tony D , Sue Foley, and The Phantoms. I thought of Tony particularly as a mentor, since he was always showing me guitar tips, and well he sold me a really good Twin Reverb amplifier I still own.

After the Sugardaddys split, I started a band with Tortoise called Evolutions and the Higher Primate Horns. We were really ambitious, playing Tower of Power stuff with a horn section. But we were all tiring of years of clubbing, and we only lasted a year. I bought myself a four track and a drum machine at this point, and started experimenting with multi-track recording, with Tortoise's help.

When Tortoise headed off to Toronto, I kept at it on my own. But I missed playing live. I met a fellow named Ron at a Blues Tues jam, and then we met a guy named Jack who is perhaps one of the coolest, unflappable people ever to live. We restarted the Evolutions name with a new lineup.

This band, for the first time, let me fuse my desire to record and perform live. We gigged about making money, and saved enough to partially hit the recording studio. It so happened I got laid off from work about this time. For the first time in my life, I was making my living solely by music.

In a sweltering barn my parents owned, Ron, Jack, and I recorded all the bed tracks we needed, and then we bought time in a studio and recorded piano and horns onto the barn recordings. We engineered the recordings mostly by ourselves, which was probably a mistake. We got a somewhat raw sounding record as a result, but it has a vibrancy and personality other local records of the day weren't capturing. Local radio stations gave us some airplay, and it was all very exciting.

That part of the story ends in 1993 – a lot has happened since, which I won't detail as I've probably already made everyone yawn. Evolutions still exists, but I don't really lead it anymore – our keyboard player, added in late 1993, has kind of moved to the forefront. I do most of my singing in church now, in the Blessed Sacrament Rock the Glebe folk group. I enjoy this the most of any of the singing things I've done, because I feel it brings me as near to God as I can get. As St. Augustine says, “He who sings, prays twice.”

I've continued to find new and better ways to record. My wife, my brother in law, and my sister in law built me a surprise recording studio in the basement for a birthday. I've fetched software tools (like Audacity, Hammerhead, and Quartz Studio) that help me make music. For me now, it is a little like building model railroads. I like to take ideas, and craft them like little miniatures, until they form a complete portrait of a little world. I will never be a rock star. I've long abandoned any idea that I even want to be.

But I am compelled to make music. That is all God has ever needed me to do with my gift, that and to use it to offer it back up to Him. It is something which gives me joy, which lets me give joy and comfort to others, and which I think helps God reach out to me as well. I sing, because I am.

I was going to work on a song tonight...

I had half contemplated re-recording "Were you There", a lovely African-American spiritual that I did around this time last year. But after a full day of work, ambition can turn quickly into fatigue. :-)

If I were actually capable of working on musical projects in stages, I'd be a lot better off. I've got this new song that I've had languishing for three months. I was experimenting with a synthesizer at the cottage one Saturday morning and came up with it. I like it, but because I didn't complete it right away I never will in all likelihood. I have another one I've had on the go since the 80s, never finished it.

No, when I write a new song I've got to get it all down right away - not just written, but even a demo of it recorded. And that is a real pain in the butt, because it takes hours to record a song to any level I am satisfied with. So if I went down and got at it right now, I'd be up all night. And since we're going to sunrise Mass tomorrow (a little Lenten tradition at my parish), I really don't want to be up all night.

If only I were a litle more ambitious...

The electronic commons

The electronic commons offered so much promise. Think of it - imagine the possibilities if Alexander the Great could have collaborated with Sun Tzu on the military arts without leaving their homes. Or think of the possibilities if Siddartha Gautama could have shared his philosophies with King Josiah of Judah.

There is no reason it shouldn't be happening today. Certainly there have to be people of great intellect, wisdom, and insight who have Internet access. But the kind of eclectic dialogue you would imagine to arrive with such a freeing collaborative technology never really happened.

I first got tentatively online in November, 1994. And I got on intensively in the summer of 1995. One of my routes online was the National Capital FreeNet. Yes, the email address in my profile is ten years old, and there aren't many who can boast of keeping the same addy that long. :-)

The NCF gave a significant primacy to Usenet in its interface, so discussion forums were something I was participating in before I got my first email at that address. What was so liberating about this new experience was that there were discussion forums for just about everything. There were even dedicated newsgroups for the television shows I watched. I just couldn't believe that any conversation I wanted to have on any topic was always just a few keystrokes away.

But I quickly learned, to my chagrin, that it was a savage and hostile environment. People did not just disagree with your opinions - they savaged you, your mother, and your little dog, too. More disappointing yet was my own conduct. For example, I was at the time very much a partisan of Windows 95. I had briefly used OS/2 at home, and thought that Workplace Shell (am I remembering that right?) was interesting, but not for me. Anyway, I got into a number of heated and pointless discussion threads and contributed worthless and grumpy drivel. Even though I was far from being a Usenet troll, I think it was years before I realized that my online manners were nothing I'd ever tolerate of myself in the real world. So why was I treating strangers like this in newsgroups?

As more and more of humanity's sharing moves onto the Internet, the worse it gets. I still find it really hard to resist being the grumpy contrarian at times, something I'd never do to anyone in person. And I think I know why.

On the Internet, we're reduced to words. There's no body language, and no instinct to either placate or ingratiate. In the typical poster's thoughts, the other people talking aren't even people. They're funny icons, strange nicknames, and anyway, it is all safe, right? We're insulting GrUfLorg993 not Joanne Smith, mother, paralegal, and dog owner.

But that safe facade, that veneer, is not what it seems to be. I've seen antagonists get so angry that they figure out who one another is (via headers and IP addresses) and start trying to ruin the other - and get them booted off the net, or even worse, fired. Once the Internet savage is released, some people have to go for the kill.

Now that people read a lot of their news online, I would imagine journalists experience much the same vitriol (at least ones who post their email addresses, and many do.) And many of the online pundits (I'm talking the paid ones, not even the bloggers) now pack a lot of the same rhetorical heat. My jaw drops when I read things that Ted Rall or Ann Coulter write. What surprises me most is how alike they are to the Usenet flames I first saw a decade ago. And this is now our public discourse!

Now that the world has gone online, are we doomed to become a culture where fewer personal interactions lead to less civility? Geez, I sure hope not!

Best. Headline. Ever.

Herald Sun: Photos confirm hot air from Buckingham Palace [17feb05]

Hear no evil

Hear no evil
Posted by: leavethelighton.

It burns! It burns! :-)

Lenten week 1, reflection

I must make it clear that I don't write this blog to proselytize. To tell you the truth, I don't even know how to proselytize. I don't even understand the mechanics of how you would talk someone into believing a different religion. Religious belief and faith are such an intricate combination of both heartfelt feeling and rationalizations that I can think of no way to do it, so I don't even try.

Nonetheless, I do write from my religious perspective - not in the hope of prompting conversion to my brand of religion, but because it is the very air that I breathe in and out. So have no fear as I exhale that I am trying to make an incense-wielding, fish-eating, St.-Patrick's-day-marching papist out of you, my dear readers. :-) Nonetheless, if the deep inner love song of a Christian for his saviour is something that makes you uncomfortable, you should read no further.

I recently read someone's assertion that Christians are not given any reason to consider Jesus a friend. The reasoning goes something like this: the New Testament offers no phsyical description of him, tells us little about his upbringing, and the history of Christian iconography is a history of trying to close the gap on this mystery.

Well there is certainly no shortage of mystery regarding Jesus. Even with the narrative we do have, there are many things Jesus says and does in the gospels that are inscrutable and hard to fathom. But that is the beauty of every friendship people form - the delightful wonder of discovery as you learn new, surprising, and interesting things about someone whose depths seem unlimited.

St. Paul acknowledges the limits of our knowledge - "now, I know in part, but someday I will know fully, even as I am fully known." But does that mean we cannot consider Jesus a friend? Of course not. For salvation - saving someone - is the act of a friend. To me, he has already proven his friendship, many times over. I remember when I was 14, and waterskiing for the second time, a boat crossed my towline, between myself and the boat pulling me. I had no experience, but I let go the line. When I was 16, I flipped a three-wheeled ATV into the air, and fell to the ground. The vehicle landed on top of me, bounced, and fell into the ditch, an accident that should have killed me. I had nothing more than scratches and a bloody nose.

Were these things luck? Yes, dumb luck. But the day of my confirmation I had a vision of all these things, and I saw the friendship of Jesus and his saving hand in every one of these little incidents. That does not (and should not) prove it to you. But that is the nature of friendship - it is personal, private, and it does prove it to me.

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father." (John 15:12-15)

Altruism II

I'm always amazed that one of the most insightful commentaries on Genesis was made by an atheist. Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden seems to understand the concept of the Fall better than many theologians.

Human beings were designed for a natural role in the natural world, just like every other creeping and crawling thing on the Earth. Genesis so perfectly reflects this reality when it asserts "and the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed."

Of course the primary abstraction that separates us from nature is not clothing, nor is it even technology. Archaeology shows that war began when sedentary life began - civilization (ironic, no?) Modern nomadic peoples like the !Kung who are completely nomadic don't have a territory they feel a need to defend. But ten thousand years ago, when people began to put down roots in fixed unmoving communities, and began to concentrate in larger and more noticeable numbers, human beings first began to think in terms of possession, and kindred and strangers.

And there, another Genesis metaphor comes into play:

In the course of time, Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering (Genesis 4:4-5)

One of the brothers, Abel, could be said to represent the nomads (the sheperd, for humans domesticated animals millenia before settling), and Cain the first agricultural settlers. Does perhaps God look with favour on Abel because he lives a life closer to the one we are designed by nature to live? The allegorical richness of Genesis is nearly without end, but I will cease my rambling with that thought.

Altruism

I have always been interested in paleo-anthropology. While we can learn a lot about human nature over the years by studying changes in societies throughout recorded history, the inescapable truth is that the human essence entered the world long before history began to be recorded.

Many of the popular ideas about the origins of human behaviour tend to fit with a stereotype we have of ourselves: the idea that we are barely restrained savages, crazy beasts who sheath their rabid nature beneath the thinnest veil of civilization. Famous seminal writers on the topic of primitive man (such as Desmond Morris of The Naked Ape fame) helped popularize the notion.

I subscribe to the opposite idea, popularized in Origins by Richard Leakey, of the famous Leakey family that made most of the early discoveries of fossil hominids. Leakey suggests that in fact the fundamental inward dispositions of human beings are cooperation and altruism.

Leakey points out that in the modern Earth's most primitive societies, we can see this altruism in full bloom. Of the !Kung , he says, "Youngsters do not contribute to the food economy until they are married, at around the age of twenty three in men and eighteen in women.... Childhood is carefree, adulthood is easygoing, and old age is relatively secure." (The old are venerated for their wisdom and do not work either.)

Like all good things, however, even altruism is capable of being used not only as a virtue, but as a vice. Leakey writes about this that "Unfortunately, it is our deeply rooted urge for group cooperation that makes large scale wars not only possible, but unique in their destructiveness. Animals that are essentially self-centered and untutored in coordinated activity could neither hunt large prey nor make war."

He argues that it is not our nature that makes us brutal towards other people, but the cultures and ideologies we develop. Most of us, in a one on one encounter with a stranger, will take a cautious, but altruistic stance. We willingly make small talk with a stranger if we can be reasonably assured of our safety (i.e. by being in a public setting.) We'll help a stranger in distress, without thinking twice about it.

Unfortunately, it is as societies that we often develop poisonous collective identities. A legitimate interest in collective self-preservation often becomes something uglier - a sense of uniqueness at the exclusion of others, or even a sense of manifest destiny. A pride in the achievements of a collective can become a chauvinism that dehumanizes the "others." The worst and most obvious example (I risk invoking Godwin) is obviously the Third Reich.

So perhaps it is best to remember when we form our collectives, that our collectives are groups of individuals. And the individual human is an altruistic being generally - a person disposed to putting him or herself in the shoes of another, and then acting accordingly. By exalting the dignity of the individual human being, we give our collectives the best example of who to emulate - the person.

The Seattle Times: Gates announces early release of more-secure browser

So, there actually will be a new version of Internet Explorer before the next version of Windows.

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Gates announces early release of more-secure browser

I've switched to Firefox myself.

Valentine's day

We gave my daughter a rather amusing card, telling her to "beware of Cupid... no actually, beware of any naked person in a diaper with a bow and arrow."

Valentine's day wasn't always just an excuse to hock chocolates and candies. It used to be a day for red vestments in church. But nobody does that anymore, since it isn't actually certain there even was a St. Valentine. :-)

It is definitely a hard day for some people. It is a day some are reminded that they have no one. And, perhaps even harder, it is a day that some are reminded that they have lost someone. Maybe the best way to mark the day is to make sure that such people are not left out. I'm about to make that phone call right now.

A worrying Middle Eastern development

An explosion in Lebanon has taken the life of a former prime minister, one credited with ably rebuilding Lebanon in the wake of the civil war.

As if there wasn't enough to worry about in the Middle East! You'll remember that Lebanon in the 1980s was plunged into an awful civil war that sent refugees scrambling and ruined the social cohesion that Lebanon was once reknowned for.

We live in interesting times, to quote that ancient Chinese curse.

Can someone explain to me the Social Security "crisis"?

I'm not too familiar with Social Security. We have something I think is like it, the Canada Pension Plan, but as far as I know, that thing is rolling in the black, and won't run out of funds, like, ever. But while I was down in the US, it made the paper just about every day. Some people painted the proposed changes as frightening, others saw them as necessary. Personally the proposals to go to private accounts seem odd to me - if the system is user funded, with one generation doing the paying for the prior's funding... would not going to private accounts now exacerbate the problem by pulling today's funding of current beneficiaries?

But aside from the merits of either side's argument, I notice that everyone on all sides seems agreed on this point - they say that the program won't leave the black for a decade, and at current rates, will not be unsustainable until sometime halfway through the century. Now, obviously they'll have to fix it if they can predict it will go broke. But how can something such a long way off be a crisis?

Am I wrong in kind of seeing it like the henchman in Austin Powers hollering "Nooo!!" as a steamroller approaches him slowly from a hundred metres away? :-) Someone please explain to me why this issue has become so prevalent. :-)

Lenten disciplines

I can't really share with you what my Lenten discipline is, mindful of what is always read from Matthew every Ash Wednesday about how those who manifest public piety have already received their reward.

But if you're a Christian casting about for meaningful ways to eke out a Lenten discipline, here's a way that can help - something called the Liturgy of the Hours. It is an ancient practice of selecting differing prayers and psalms from the Bible, and reading them at appointed hours during the day. The Anglicans/Episcopalians even have a delightful tradition of singing the evening prayers, which they call Evensong.

Normally, figuring out which prayers to find and recite is a complicated task. But thanks, to the Internet it is now as simple as can be. Universalis can show you what prayers and psalms to say for the liturgy of the hours. You just go to the site, click on the time of day, and it just shows them. It is very handy, and I find it an excellent way to insert some solemnity into a day, Lent or not.

Letting Lent in

I began my return to Lent in Ottawa in a Presbyterian Church this morning. (Don't worry, Catholic readers I will be doing my Sunday obligation at the usual time tonight.) My friend and the drummer in my band, plays in a gospel choir. They've gotten popular around town, even playing their upbeat gospel in nightclubs. And every once in a while, they sing in a church, too. They were guests at the Presbyterian church near where I live, so I thought it an opportune time to check things out, and hear them sing.

As always seems to happen with me, I find myself at the right place, at the right time, hearing the things I need to hear. These Presbyterians were big on Lent, emphasizing it as much as we do. This church does not have a pastor of its own and has not for some time. So a laywoman directed the liturgy, and preached a wonderful homily (they called it a message, but I call it a homily as she tied it into both readings.)

She said something about Lent that jives very much with what I posted about earlier this week. Lent symbolizes something even more basic than the forty days in the desert that Jesus spent - it also symbolizes choice.

Who do we choose to be? Lent is not just "giving stuff up." It is about making our choices. We are defined by our choices. When we choose to sate appetites we become those appetites. When we act in fear, we become that fear. And should I choose to dedicate myself to God and place my trust that he is the potter, and I the clay, then and only then do I become his child, his companion, his friend - the destiny I believe everyone to be designed for.

I know a woman who is angry with God. She is not an atheist - she is too convinced by the anthropic principle to actually disbelieve. But she does not understand people who praise God for the good things in their lives, and yet who don't condemn him when bad things happen to us. And I can't explain it to her, I can only try to understand her perspective and pray for her.

I choose - yes I choose - to trust God. Even in suffering and sickness.I don't understand why everything happens to me. I don't understand myself fully, yet, although I also choose to deepen that scrutiny as well. But someday all that will be made clear. In the meantime, I take the joy I experience for what I see it as - a gift. I take the strength that seems to come to me in the dark, and I use it to stand. And I take the hopeful signs that tend to approach with the dawn, and with them I open the curtains to the possibilities.

Adam and Eve in the mythology of Genesis didn't trust God, when he said not to eat of the tree of knowledge. A snake told them they could bypass trust and go straight to knowledge. They chose, in fact, not to trust. When Jesus faces the tempter in Luke and Matthew, he makes a different choice.

The devil says to him, "If you are the Son of God..." Can we know that Jesus never wondered at this? Fasting for forty days, is it not possible Jesus thought that maybe his whole plan and mission were nothing but a madman's concoction? The devil offers him the opportunity to know for sure: "throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you." In essence, he's saying to Jesus, "want to purge those doubts? Jump - if he comes, those doubts will be gone."

Jesus chose trust - trust that his commission was a real one. Because only trust matters. Now I have to choose the same - trust that, if I try and he helps, I can become who he truly wants me to be.

And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' (Matthew 12:19-20)

Last day

It is the last day, our last full day here. I've gotten a bit more time on the Internet today. The computer, you see, is in my parents' room, so it always felt a little invasive going in while they were here.

But this won't be a long entry. My fingers are cold, and I'm having trouble typing right. Yes, you heard that correctly. The Canadian is cold in Florida! If I've acclimatized that quickly, then surely I am I in for it when I get back. It is only about 48-50 degrees out there right now, and the humidity of the ocean adds to the effect.

Beginning the observation of Lent while on vacation has not been easy, or rather, perhaps it has been too easy. It has been for me in the past the beginning of a period of deep reflection into myself: my choices in life, my choices for the rest of my life, and the question of what sacrifice really means. What does "ashes to ashes" really mean for me?

Hard to wander out into the proverbial desert when there are waves pounding the sand. Perhaps I will be of the right mind on my return. :-)

Wakulla Springs

We stayed at Wakulla Springs lodge yesterday, a delightfully appointed hotel that has been held to its early 20th century furnishings. The springs that the lodge is located near has the highest concentrations of alligators anywhere in the world. The reason may be that the water temperate is constant at 69 degrees - all year round, guaranteeing their comfort. When we took the boat tour, we certainly saw a dozen or two, but the population is actually about 400-600 gators.

My daughter and I went swimming in the spring's designated swimming area. When we got out, a gator cruised by about 40 feet out from the swimming area's ropes. We're both pretty fearless, but even that was a bit unnerving.

I will write more extensively when I get back. I am writing all this sitting on an uncomfortable exercise ball. :-)

Dumb and dumberer

Years ago, I remember reading in the paper that some scientist had been able to determine from the results of a study that people on vacation get dumber. So I suppose in my mentally reduced state, I should not comment on Irina's musings (and paper) on Aristotle.

My daughter woke up with a horrible migraine today, which is too bad, because she really wanted to watch the dolphin show at Gulf World. Perhaps she can still go if she feels better. The weather for the rest of the week does not look promising, but compared to what it will be at home, I'll take what's on offer. I did manage to take a walk on the beach this morning when it was sunny. Apparently, seashell collectors scour the beach before the sun rises, looking for prize shells. I could see their footprints the entire length of my walk, but it does not seem as though they found much. The beach was washed clean.

Except for a small chunk of beach a mile or so down. That I found, and I returned to my parents', gratefully laden with an armful of undamaged pretty conches and shells. Perhaps there is a virtue in the easy pleasures of a vacation-addled mind. :-)

Went to the zoo today...

I've been to a few zoos, and the one here in Panama City beach is probably the one that lets you closest to the animals. A foolish person probably could reach the lions and tigers, and then lose an arm to the effort. My father and I went swimming this morning, into the 58 degree ocean. My folks' neighbours spent the entire time staring at us from their patio, and laughing at us. Eventually they came out to the beach to gawk, as it was an unbelievable sight. One of them joked, "You probably drill a hole in the ice to do that."

And we're here! (Panama City Beach)

Well our trip here was interesting. Our plane was seven hours late leaving the ground, so we got here very late last night. I’ll have to tell that story in more detail when I get back, I’m sure it is mildly amusing (to me at least.)

I’m already red like a lobster. You can’t come back to a place like Canada without a tan. It is the vacationer’s necessary badge of honour. To come without is a disgrace. I’ve gone one better and done my best to attract skin cancer!

Soon to be off!

Well, the blog may go silent for a week. Probably not entirely, I'm sure my folks will let me on the Internet down there. But we have so much to do! We're going to Gulfworld, Wakalla springs, walks on the beach, there'll be a lot of Mardi Gras stuff happening Tuesday night. So I will surely be less, ehrm, prolific. Philip will be happy about that. :-)

We've always driven down before, and I've quite enjoyed that. I anticipate the weather changing as we go, and it usually does quite suddenly in North Carolina. The scenery is fascinating - if you ever get the chance, drive through the town of Eufala in Alabama. The French colonial mansions there are exactly how you picture such mansions - white, elegant, old, and quite large! The mountains in Tennessee were very interesting when we went through there, and finding small towns nestled up near the top of a mountain is a delight. The first one we found had a Food Lion and an Arby's and we just had to go into both. It was just too much of a novelty finding a town nestled between the peaks of a mountain.

The runaway truck ramps in Tennessee are a hoot - in the Rockies they usually blast roads through the mountains, but at least in some places in the Blue Ridge and Appalachians they just run the roads up and down 'em!

This time we're flying. At least flying gets you there quickly. By this time tomorrow, we'll likely already be finished dinner, and relaxing. A road trip is much more draining.

So, I'll 'see' you in a week or so, and have a good one. I know I will! :-)

Conscience, zealotry, or...

In about 70 AD, a group of Jewish rebels fighting against a Roman siege of their mountain fortress, an old palace of King Herod, committed group suicide. History remembers these people as having heroic virtue, unwilling to become Roman trophies, prepared to die for their dignity. On the other hand, if it happened today, they might be dismissed as crazies or cultists, like those "ride a comet weirdos", or Jim Jones' acolytes.

The place was called Masada. And what they really were was human. Fully human.

"For the husbands tenderly embraced their wives and took their children into their arms, and gave the longest parting kisses to them, with tears in their eyes. Yet at the same time did they complete what they had resolved on, as if they had been executed by the hands of strangers, and they had nothing else for their comfort but the necessity they were in of doing this execution, to avoid the prospect they had of the misery they were to suffer from their enemies." (Josephus, Antiquities.)

We are all human. Most of us are motivated by the same desires, hopes, and fears as these ancient people who were both too proud to be paraded captives, and too desperate to hope in any alternative. It should be easy to see how we could be these people, and we should also see how easy it is to become their oppressors. May we always take care, collectively, to avoid becoming either.

Spiritual poetry

There's this one fellow I know who has an enthusiasm for his faith that I can't help but admire - a gung-ho guy who feels the impact of things that happen to him that every once in a while, poetry slips out of him. And while I admire his faith, the poetry is perhaps a little bit more down to Earth, shall we say.

He may not lack talent; I think poetry concering faith is just very hard to do. Good poetry uses imagery, metaphor, constructs a picture in the mind of the person hearing it. You can write a poem about a flea market quite easily, as there is so much to see, and you can easily convey your impressions. A good poem never comes out and tells you what the author is thinking, it simply exposes what the author thinks.

It is not impossible, of course. Just look at the Song of Solomon. Even translated into English it is a very great work. Primarily about a human, sensual love, it also hints at being a representation of that more abstract love between human and God.

I know how hard it is to hold back, and use image and metaphor alone. It is easier in suffering to do this, for there is much imagery, spiritual imagery for that. How do you convey imagery for joy? Mostly with wordless things, like exuberant music. Makes poetry difficult!

One fellow who in my opinion wrote wonderful spiritual poetry was St. John of the Cross. He figures out an imagery that is lush, sensual, and yet unquestionably spiritual. You can tell, in fact, he has paid careful attention to the Song of Solomon, there are many echoes of it. Here is part of the "Song of the Soul And the Bridegroom."

Where have You hidden Yourself,
And abandoned me in my groaning, O my Beloved?
You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me.
I ran after You, crying; but You were gone.

O shepherds, you who go
Through the sheepcots up the hill,
If you shall see Him
Whom I love the most,
Tell Him I languish, suffer, and die.

In search of my Love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.

O groves and thickets
Planted by the hand of the Beloved;
O verdant meads
Enameled with flowers,
Tell me, has He passed by you?
SONG OF THE SOUL AND THE BRIDEGROOM

I think maybe I am starting to get excited about Florida

Mostly this week I have been worrying about the work to get done. But now, I'm starting to become aware that I will be on vacation shortly. Sunny beaches, warm climes, relaxation, actual sunlight... you know that sounds pretty damn good! Ottawa has been warm by Ottawa standards, but those standards are not very high in early February. It always warms up for Winterlude! (Winterlude is a winter festival where people skate on the 6 km rink, carve ice sculptures, and celebrate cold, wintery things - so of course the weather warms up for that. ;-)

Of course, worrier that I am, I'm also jittery. There are three different flights, and I'd hate to think about what will happen with us if the connecting flights go awry somehow.

No. I can worry about that Saturday. Right now, I'll simply stick with anticipation!

They found the rest of the universe, film at 11.

Wired News: Scientists Find Missing Matter

Black Dog

I sit in the green chair
On the porch.
I turn my face as your black muzzle
Slides into my cheek, as it always did.
Standing four-legged next to me, I ask you,
"How are you here? You're gone!"

For a few minutes longer, silently,
You simply keep your beak in my face,
And then just as silently
You are gone.

I know I am not yet awake,
But it was so nice to see you again.

Where to find a place in the world...

I find it disheartening to read the newspaper. Like anyone, I have an idea of how the world should be, and the newspaper makes clear how different a world the actual one is. It astonishes me that centuries, millenia after diplomats invented international relations in order to mitigate the need for war, we still resort to it. It astonishes me that within countries, such as the Sudan, the rival ethnic groups think taking life in unimaginable quantity is preferable to some sort of accomodation of one another.

As a Christian, I should not be disheartened. Jesus told his disciples that there would be wars and rumours of wars - clearly my faith's own eschatology makes it obvious that I can't expect the world to improve much. So does that leave me with a faith that consigns the world I live in to whatever fate awaits it?

I can't take that attitude. Because after all the apocalyptic talk of Matthew 24 comes the last lesson Jesus' gives his disciples, the parable of the King in Matthew 25. Who are the blessed, at the right hand of the king? Those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the parched, housed the foreigners, clothed the naked, helped the sick, and visited the prisoners. "Keep awake," Matthew 24 asserts after the doom and gloom because the world may never change much. But what we're left with in Matthew 25 is the prescription for the doom and gloom - change what you can.

My father will soon be a published author...

When my Dad was little, he wrote stories, and his older brother illustrated them. When his brother died, he became determined someday he would be an author, to honour him. In some respects, he was already a writer - he was the editor of a science and engineering magazine at that point in time. But he wanted to write a novel.

Now that he has retired, he has. He has actually written two books, but one of them was a political humour novel, and something like that just doesn't have the shelf life a new author needs - the material grew stale. I am kind of sad about that, as he wanted me to illustrate that book, and I have the same name as his brother. I think he would have seen that kind of a joint project as the completion of his mission.

But there is his other book - a story about a government project to test the ability of older people to serve in the military, who then by accidental circumstances get caught up in a real conflict. It is quite good, and he was a finalist in a book chain's authoring contest when the book chain got bought up and the contest folded. It is so good, in fact, that a reknowned military leader wrote the foreward. He was not able to get the thing published the traditional way, as the czars of Canadian culture are far too timid to try out new authors. The book languished as his efforts to get published bore no fruit.

For Christmas, 2003, I snuck the book out of the house electronically. I got a set of sunset photos from my Mom that she figured he would like as the cover, and I typeset the book myself, and designed the cover. I had once worked at a publisher as a typesetter, and was even listed as co-editor of a poetry book, so I knew this was a gift I could give. A friend of mine had an idea for using gauze to perfect-bind the book without using the expensive equipment, and we did it. I sent him his own book for Christmas. He was stunned when he opened it - I don't think he ever imagined he would see it in print. I wanted to motivate him to ensure he would.

So he got at it again, and arranged to publish the book himself. It will come out in a month or so, if things work out. I am glad. It is a wonderful gift to be able to help someone make their dreams come true.

Is there life on Titan?

I was reading an article the other day that suggested that our bias in favour of water is why scientists seem to preclude the possibility of water. However water is not even a particularly good host for life; liquid hydrocarbons and ammonia might be much more suitable. The best scientific journal there is has speculated on just that possibility in fact.

Imagine - extra-terrestrial life based on something not unlike crude oil! Agent Mulder would have a field day (x-philes will get the inside joke.)

Family cantor

Being a church musician and cantor, I have one thing in common with priests, reverends, and rabbis. If you're the only such minister in the family, you get to do everyone's weddings and funerals. If you're a singer, you get to sing at them.

The weddings are the more happy occasions, by far! My cousin, who lives on Vancouver Island, is getting married this summer. She's asked me to sing for their wedding. Oh, how thrilling a thing that is! It is one of the real blessings of being gifted with this ability. There is nothing more magical than singing love songs at a celebration of love. And, well, it sure beats the funerals!

My daughter...

...has a little hand drawn calendar on the bulletin board. It says, "Monday, five days to Florida, Tuesday, four days to Florida..." :-)

Cosmic force, personal God

There are many different ways of looking at God, and many of these ways cross religious boundaries. There is an old Sufi parable that tells of blind men feeling the parts of an elephant saying, "God is like a snake," (the trunk) or "God is a large flappy ear," or "God is like a tree trunk." (a foot.) None sees the elephant.

I am a Catholic, and so by definition I have a very personal concept of God. We treat God as family, and we look at our forebearers as extended members of that family - "the communion of saints." That said, we treat the Godhead with a certain majesty as well, inscrutable and infinite in unfathomable ways. This is so apparent in St. Augustine's "Confessions" Book 11, where he struggles to understand what time is, whether the past and future can be said to exist, and comes to the conclusion that time is a finite property of the universe, and does not predate it. He writes to God:

Furthermore, although you are before time, it is not in time that you precede it. If this were so, you would not be before all time. It is in eternity, which is supreme over time because it is a never-ending present, that you were at once before all past time and after all future time.

It is as such that St. Augustine says that people who ask what came before creation are asking the wrong question - there is no before creation because before is a temporal concept.

However in Christianity and many other religions, we do use temporal language, as well as three dimensional language in describing God. Phrases such as the "right hand of God," "ascending," and "God's footstool" are an important part of religious language. Mystical language, like the Tetragrammaton, the Logos, is part of religious language too, but the faithful are generally more comfortable with the anthropic terminology. Even the Buddhists can do this at times - I remember reading about how Buddha "came back" from Nirvana for Ananda, language that inevitably makes Nirvana seem like a physical place.

Is it so bad? We're physical beings, and our struggle for our place in eternity is by necessity a physical struggle. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob wrestles with a man at Peniel, demanding a blessing, refusing to give up until he gets it. For this, he is given the name Israel - "He who strives with God," as though he was wrestling with God Himself. The human mind, the most complex object known in the universe, has become aware enough to realize that it may be the product of an intelligent force, and strives to reach out and meet that force, to know that it is not alone. But as complex as our minds are, they are products of our physicality. We can't reach out past the cosmos for God without thinking the way finite beings with arms, legs, and a metabolism would think.

In short, we need the angel of Peniel, or in my faith, Jesus himself - human avatars for something cosmic in scope. We can't get there without them.

Supersize me!

My youngest daughter and I are watching "Supersize me!" Man, this is more frightening than when I saw "Jaws" in the theatre!

Thank God Lent is coming!

Euthanasia

I was very hesitant to touch this topic. I've noted in the past that I'm not a big fan of the culture wars. Today's approach to grave moral issues is often somewhat too laden with sensationalism, slogans, emotionalism, marches, righteous indignation, copious amounts of hot air, and advertizing boycotts. As a result, I only feel comfortable writing about the issues that make up part of the usual "moral values" repertoire if I can do so in a more comprehensive way, and one sensitive to the arguments that both sides tend to use. It isn't that I lack opinions, of course. But most of the views I have are ones I have tortuously arrived at, using all the ways we have of evaluating such things - emotion, reason, and experience.

But I do have opinions, ultimately. Hopefully you take them for what they are - not the last statement possible on the issues I raise, but my own personal expression. I hope you are not alienated by my stand.

This last weekend, a man here who had publicly announced his impending suicide a few weeks ago killed himself after having what he called a "living wake." For twenty years he had been a member of a lobby group called "Dying with Dignity" that advocates the legalization of doctor-assisted suicide for patients with terminal illnesses. He'd publicized his choice widely, and even arranged for a reporter and a photographer to be on hand. He had been criticized by many for the public spectacle he was about to create, but said about doing the deed quietly, "that wouldn't have accomplished anything."

After moving from a larger gathering at the Holiday Inn to a smaller gathering at his home (which they had trouble getting into because an opponent had damaged his lock), the family spent an hour reminiscing, until he announced it was time to carry out his plan. His son replied, "You don't have to rush, Dad."

I've seen death, three times. Even a natural death is an awful thing in that it has a kind of finality that is brutal and raw. It is the very opposite of birth, which I've also seen - birth hits you like a shock, as the tremendous power of new life is so plainly apparent. With death, the shock is the clear and obvious absence of the person you once knew - they are gone, just gone, and the body that remains there really is not the one you loved, even if it looks a lot like that person. Still, despite the fact that two of these deaths I speak of were withering, lingering deaths, there very much was a kind of dignity about these ends.

My mother in law loved camping. She was the most ardent and insistent family camper in our lot, and looked forward to that every year. So it somehow seemed fitting that, when her daughters arrived to sit at her bedside, that I go and get all of our camping chairs from the car. And in her last days, we sat around her bed in those camping chairs we had every year, telling the same jokes we told at the campfire (if somewhat sadly), and just being with her. Our love, and the love we knew she had for us, gave her departure more dignity that I can convey in this writing.

I know I am reading too much in to specific events, but the description in the newspaper suggested this death did not go well. I won't go into the gory details, but his death took longer than he expected. His family sat at his side in a kind of horrified shock as he went from a state of some remaining vigour to finally dead. And it did not end there, as paramedics came and tried to revive him, as the "Do not revive" note from his doctor was improperly offered without the doctor present - it appeared for a time they might be able to actually revive the man. In the end, his haggard family didn't know how to react - his wife said, "I don't know how we'll view this day." The account read to me not unlike those of a prison execution, even in the detail of how the relatives in the viewing booth feel.

One could argue that the problem here was not the idea, just the way it was carried out. If doctor assisted suicide were allowed, you could say, then the procedure might have been more expertly carried out, and a more peaceful departure might have taken place. But I think this is more facsimile than reality. Lethal injections in prison are meant to convey the same illusion - the prisoner is simply put to sleep. But even that is not always what it seems.

A natural and slow death is very difficult, I've seen it. I really would not wish it on anyone, and I fear it for myself. But one thing it does have is dignity. You can not only see the dignity so apparent in a person who is fighting to resist the effects of a terminal illness, but there is real dignity in the way a person lets go, and lets God.

For myself, while I would not like my life artificially prolonged, I am mindful of my faith's teaching that we are not owners of our own lives; we are stewards, custodians only. I'm not the "Captain of my soul," as per Henley's Invictus. My life is in the hands of God, and I know nothing about either the moment I came or the moment I will go.

I can't judge this fellow for how he chose to go, and the very public manner of his exit. It really is not my place. However, I do know that the living wake that was supposed to be about his life ended up being about his death, a spectacle that made the intersection of fate and choice the stage for his fifteen minutes. While it is what he wanted, I cannot help but be made somewhat sad. I am sure he amounted to more than his death, but I will never know.

My mother in law's life remained about her life. A month later, at family camp, we pulled out a camping chair, and plonked her box down on it, and put her sun hat upon it. Her box got a tent, and on the last day, we left her ashes on the island she loved so much. She is steward of her life no more, but I do not imagine she is disappointed at the new caretaker.

15 Miles to Mexico

Funny story, it just popped into my head on the bus in to work.

Many Americans think of going north to Canada as a trip into the hinterland. But at least in Eastern Canada, that isn't so. We love to be on the water, and so we crowd the waterways that are just north of you. On the St. Lawrence, Ottawa River, and the lower Great Lakes, more than 2/3 of Canadians have crowded in. It is a small strip of land full of Wal-Marts, superhighways, roadside McDonald's, Wendy's and Tim Horton's, filled with large crowded cities and suburbs. Travel a hundred miles north of the border and yes, then Canada gets empty (except for a few cottages) and stays that way up to the arctic circle.

Ironically, though, travelling south of Canada takes you into the hinterland as well. For other than where Buffalo and Detroit are, the southern borders of Quebec and Ontario are met by relatively unpopulated areas of Upstate New York. Anyway, I'm taking too long to get to my story.

Last time we headed to Florida, we drove. We took the International Bridge at Gananoque, which crosses one of the Thousand Islands (Kettle Island, I think.) Anyway, we cross the border, and drove about 15 miles through forest and scrub, with nary a sign of civilization. Then a road sign came up on the right, with a right arrow, saying "Mexico 2 miles." I looked at my wife and said, "See, that wasn't so bad, 15 minutes, and we've already passed it!"