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Poor Mad Peter's Journal
It will be a clear day, like yesterday. My ears still ring a bit from the lawn motor (gasoline powered) that I used to mulch the carpet of poplar leaves that, by next spring, would have been rendered a soggy thick mass that effectively killed the grass. Since there is a lot of grass and it provides the underpinning of the first thing we see on going out our front doors, preserving it is somewhat a priority.
God bless the grass.
Anyway, as I had put things temporarily aside to accompany Joyce and Em on a short shopping trip, I spied our elderly neighbour with her walker and a few plastic garbage bags, trying her best to bag the even thicker carpet of leaves on her small front patch. I offered to mulch that section for her later, as well as moving the full bags to where they couldbe trundled to our local compost, and she very happily and surprisedly agreed.
Now there is history and herstory here: she was our cluster rep, or the co-op's representative for our cluster of townhouses (there are about 16 clusters in our co-op) and she was, well, the pits as a cluster rep, frankly. Communicated only with a few of the families, used meetings to vent her own petty grievances about the co-op management (we are extremely blessed to have the management we do), let meetings be overlong gab sessions, and on and on. I was in constant tension myself between appreciating her as a good neighbour and an abysmal cluster rep, and was glad when she finally gave it over to another of us.
But, 2 1/2 hours later, her lawn section mulched and raked and the bags piled where they needed to be, I felt in her thanks and our conversation that an equilibirum had been established, lines of communication redrawn, and some past settled into the leaf mold.
The shopping trip? To an overpriced greenhouse complex that has a breathtakingly over the top yet beautiful Christmas display. Imagine a veritable forest of plastic Christmas trees of every description, decorated in their own corners a (that's the french "a", with the accent; imagine it) Martha Stewart, a sea of craft items made by children in China aimed at upscale art-smart homes, colour and sparkle of every conceivable description. And the shoals of poinsettas, whose spectrum of colour now excludes only black, and i imagine they're working on that...
Do I sound cynical about this (new entry on this topic soon)? Probably, but I also felt a sense of play that is all too rare in my life, and while I was aware of all of the above, I was also on another level delighted, almost a child again in the celebration.
And the black fox, some hours later.
It was a good day.
My shoulder hurts.
Today's service at church will include communion. I will remind myself of the Talmudic dictum that God will hold you responsible for every gift you refuse, and so I shall not refuse the bread and the juice.
And it will be a good day.
Em and I are on our way to Canadian Tire to purchase some LED Christmas lights, and it being 7 o'clock in November, it's dark on Water Street as we putz along.
Suddenly, we both see a rather shaggy looking dog-like critter with thin legs and a long tail flit across the highway between us and an oncoming car in the opposite lane: a fox. It's oddly dark, even in our headlights, as it vanishes over the verge and into a grassed gulley on the far side. No white facial hair, but a white tip on its tail confirms its foxiness.
A black fox.
Or if you prefer, a red fox in black phase. Em is thrilled and I'm delighted. A gift. We both love to spot wildlife making a go of things here, and just appreciate the sheer rarity of wildlife in our urban environment.
We finish our errand and drive home, elated.
I teach ESL as a substitute, and was called in for a morning with intermediate-level students this week. There were Chinese, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Central American, and Libyan among the 8 students.
Over the course of the morning, the discussion went on to families, and they asked about mine. When I explained that I have four children, all daughters, one of the Chinese students piped up:
"Teacher", she said. "In China, we say father who have all daughters live among flowers."
November 10, 2004
To: Whom it may concern
Greatest Canadian(s)
Hello,
I am writing this note to thank you for the Greatest Canadian series, which my family is enjoying greatly. We are learning a lot not only about these people, but their profound effects on our lives and identity--why we are who we are--and this is beyond price.
One thing bothers me, however, and to explain this, I have to reveal some of my own family history.
When my grandfather was a young man engaged to be married, he and his bride-to-be went for their compulsory (then) blood test. An unexpected result was his learning that he was a diabetic--he eventually died, in fact, from the effects of diabetes at age 59, in 1959. As a young man, he may well have died that much sooner, possibly before my mother was conceived. The cause and effect of this possibility here are inescapable in my life. Grandfather was an insulin diabetic for many years, his life prolonged and enhanced by the discovery by Frederick Banting, of a means to control diabetes.
When I was an 8-year-old boy, the son of a veteran of the Second World War, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Neither I nor the millions of the world’s children understood all that went on in the Suez Crisis, but as adults, it isn’t hard for us to see what could have happened to all of us if the Suez Crisis had not been defused by the diplomacy of Lester B. Pearson. Paul Gross elucidated Mike Pearson’s further contributions to the world on Canada’s behalf, but I have more to add on a personal note: as young parents years ago, my wife and I learned that our toddler daughter probably had a serious heart condition, and we must get her to Toronto Sick Children’s Hospital (from Sudbury, Ontario) as soon as possible. Although the condition turned out to be a misdiagnosis, the trip and the hospital stay may well have impoverished us if the universal health care instituted by the Pearson government were not in place.
In middle age, with a young teenaged daughter, I am often preoccupied with what the future holds, what kind of a world our daughter will inherit. Very little environmental news is encouraging these days, but we find Dr. David Suzuki’s ongoing struggles to raise awareness and stem the tide of environmental destruction to be inspiring, to raise hope in us that a future for our daughter and millions of other people of her generation is actually possible.
Your “contest” has brought me to thinking. Leaving aside (with all due respect) “joke” candidates such as Don Cherry, and the symbolic, nice but otherwise rather inconsequential Wayne Gretzky, the top ten Greatest Canadian list has people in it who have made the world a better place for their having been alive. Even Charlotte Gray’s unfortunate descent into Whig historiography regarding Louis Riel did not sink the tremendous historical importance of Sir John A. McDonald to our nation.
What bothers me is the notion of there having to be one “greatest”. If I am asked to name a single “greatest” Canadian, I can’t, as you can imagine from my brief life history: I’m personally in debt to at least three of the top ten candidates, and indirectly to most of the others. I am sure that others share this dilemma. So I ask, why not a collective greatest? Why not room at the top, as it were, for a clutch of people who mattered and who continue to matter? That there are no women (and very few ethnics) in the top ten is problematic, but maybe we can rectify that oversight next time round. And I hope there is a “next time round” for something like this. Its value is tremendous, and I give CBC full credit for this, groundbreaking fine series.
Sincerely,
Peter Fergus-Moore
Our minister Susan handed this book to me as a reading suggestion with the warning that "it's very powerful, gut-wrenching stuff", and well she might.
Renne Altson's "stumbling toward faith: my longing to heal from the evil that God allowed" (NB: I use quotation marks Only because the title is all in lowercase and I had no other way to set it apart from my own text) is her ongoing spiritual autobiography, a life-in-progress of growing after decades of sexual abuse (incest) and systemic psychological and spiritual abuse in both her family of origin and her wider church communities.
And it's rough. Once you get past the incest (and you never really do, because in a very real way, Renee hasn't, either, but her trying is heroism itself), you get into the complicity and horrific mind control attempts masquerading as authentic expressions of faith in Renee's "home" congregations. I was reminded of Craig Thompson's beautiful and poignant graphic novel Blankets in many ways: both are accounts of difficult, abusive childhoods and growing through and out of them, and both are stinging indictments of the way many American conservative literalist protestant movements act out their faith stances.
I can't judge the responses of either Renee or Craig. That is to say, Craig eventually left Chistianity altogether, while Renee struggled mightily to embrace a different Chistianity from the one which so cruelly abused and betrayed her. I'm tempted to say that hers is the greater heroism, but to be fair to all concerned, survival itself is nothing short of heroic, here.
While Blankets is optional (though well worth) reading, Renee's "stumbling toward faith" is a must-read, because we who adhere to what is known as liberal Christianity, in relatively accepting churches and congregations need to be reminded of some of the less savoury realities out there in wider Christendom--and right in our own back yards. And, whether we embrace a faith or not (though I think in Renee's case it helps immeasurably to have a faith stance, because I would say it's crucial to understanding her story), we need to be very aware of the existence of incestuous abuse and its effects on its victims.
Much of Renee's story details her emotional and physicial fallout, her tears and depressions, her fragility that was stigmatized (I use that word advisedly) by her church communities of the time as being a "turning away from God" and "lack of faith". The stigmatizing was horrendously damaging to Renee. This should remind us that those in our midst who are fragile, who weep easily, who seem to be unusually fearful of "everyday" situations need to be accepted in their reactions, and not dissed. We also need to be sensitive to their view of God--especially in light of Renee's experience, it's glib to assume that everyone's idea of God is of a kind, loving entity. Renee's theology was earned in blood, sweat, tears, and incredible tenacity.
The face of God is their face. How do we mirror their divinity to them?
Renee's website is http://www.stumblingtowardfaith.com/blog.shtml
Support her.
Given that thousands, if not millions, of people will render their commentaries on the US election, I won't venture into that territory save to lament that our American friends have effectively re-elected the Anti-Christ, and let it go at that.
Got to thinking more about the "self selecting' posting when I was reading Image Journal this morning. Great periodical, Image Journal: it is Christian in orientation and fearlessly explores the world of the arts, boldly going where Christendom has until recently refused to go since the arts and institutional Christianity parted company centuries ago.
It's always a somewhat tribulational (tribulative?) process, reading Image, because it seems to me that the Christians who contribute to it are of the conservative ilk, and their complaints--often snidely presented--about modern neo-pagan culture begin to grate on my nerves after awhile. I can't help but think that there is a nostalgia for days gone by, when Christian themes were presented in the arts from a believers, that is to say, a partisan, point of view. Put another way, the arts as propaganda for the Cross, so to speak. I am tired of seeing Flannery O'Connor's blatant misanthropy drsssed up in the garments of deep faith, excellent as her writing was--and is. And so on...
All that said, and none of the foregoing is written in stone, I am nourished by the existence of Image, because if the arts and Christianity were completelt separted from one another, as in no room in Christendom for the arts (other than paraments and hymn writing, God forbid), I'd be out in the cold in every spiritual way possible. There's gold in these pages, and it is especially valuable because I don't often agree with the faith stances of the authors.
But I do miss a "tribe", so to speak. Some low-Christology, faith-oriented artsies with whom i can hang out. There's a few people at the local Church of Christ. And The Springs Family, a small group of people with whom i correspond, are the nearest thing to this and with all our busy lives, it gets hard to share as much as we'd like--and as much as I, for one, need. I've been through several faith-based blogs and am beginning to wonder where, if there is one, my tribe is.
Maybe nowhere.
That doesn't stop me from feeling the deep need for one. Maybe the wandering is what i'm called to do.
Lousy title, but I was trying to convey something that emerged from an online experience yesterday afternoon: bear with me, here.
An e-mail arrived from Imago, a faith-based (well, Christian, anyway) arts group in Toronto, inviting submissions to an annual contest run by a group called Word Guild. Despite numerous experiences teling me it's a bit of a waste of time (why, may be made clear in the ensuing), I sought out the website with every intention of submitting perhaps some of my Heart of the Matter pieces.
Until I hit the eligibility page: Entrants must be able to affirm (sic) the Apostle's Creed. In case anyone had any uncertainties about this the Creed itself was posted for reference, with a footnote that the word 'catholic" was not pertaining to any one denomination.
Trouble with the Creed (for me) is, it quite clearly is an affirmation of "Jesus is Lord", an affirmation I cannot make. Call me a legalist, but I wasn't going to submitt stuff then pretend to affirm the contents of this Creed just to be eligible for the couple hundred bucks' prize for a winning entry (those who object that, you couldn't win if you don't enter, and besides, the odds are pretty steep, anyway, so why not try, etc, are right. Nonetheless...).
So I self-selected me out of the contest. And found myself pondering yet again what makes a Christian christian and am i one anyway, or not, and if not, then what?
Still wondering.
Lunch with a colleague, and I arrive early: it’s at Arby’s, one of millions of plastic fast food venues throughout the world and especially here in North America. But as I sit down, I notice something not plastic--in its petroleum-based sense--at all: a graceful, kite-like bird with long black tail feathers. As it swwops down from a nearby tree in the middle urban Lakehead wasteland, it alights on the flushed-fuschia-leaved branch of a berry bush and helps itself. The tail feathers spread into a graceful inverted Vee, giving the bird, which is no larger than, say, a slim robin, twice its expected length.
A Scissortailed Flycatcher. A small group of us in the restaurant watch in awe as the bird flits back, its tailfeathers flexing in the strong breeze, to the tree to keep watch while it rests. Such a change from the ravens, jays, gulls and chickadees of our boreal forest landscape, and the obnoxious English house sparrows of our urban one.
The miracle is, these birds are native to western Colorado, New Mexico, and points southwest US, though some have been spotted locally in the Mississippi Valley. A later phone call to a naturalist friend revealed that several have been spotted in Slate River valley here on the western North Shore of Lake Superior for the past 3 weeks, and that both it and its near relative, the fork-tailed flycatcher, were spotted--and banded--at Thunder Cape (near southern tip of Sleeping Giant peninsula) on Labour Day’s Bird Count.
“It was blown in,” she said matter-of-factly.
Like a piece of good fortune.
There is truth in the saw "issues in the tissues", in that our bodies react physically when we have had too much. And thus did mine so react. After two straight high-pressure days teaching, plus a very nice dinner date our minister Susan and her husband Peter and their two delightful cats (who eyed the dinner but did not otherwise participate in it), I woke up a bit muddled-headed Saturday morning (nothing unusual) and prepared breakfast and walked the woofer more or less as usual. The only thing different was my eating one of Em's cinnamon buns with way too much sugar/cream cheese icing on it.
Rehearsal of the sermon/play for the following morning, and I'm back home to make lunch. My first clue was--not much appetite. (What? Me? Not much appetite?) My second was, feeling like lying down before the meal was over. Within an hour, I had brought everything I'd had since morning and was flat on my back in bed, where I stayed, guts aching, head woggly, for the rest of the day. Supper was a can of chicken noodle soup. Water. Some juice for the dehydration. Early to bed, where I slept very fitfully, but was prone for maybe 13 hours all told.
Strangely, in the night, an idea for a series of children's books based on our friends Susan and Peter's cats comes to me, in considerable detail.
Next morning, I would really have preferred to stay in bed, despite the ache in my hips from lying down for too long, and a still-muddly head. But I had given my word to Susan, who would have had a next-to-impossible scramble to find a replacement at the last moment, and failing that, would have had 10-15 minutes of dead air to fill. So, with a tentative breakfast of toast and jelly and some tea, I set off with Joyce and Em for church.
The sermon/play was put together as a dialogue, sometimes direct, sometimes not, between God (Susan as offstage voice) and a despairing human who has just wakened from a nightmare(me). We had rehearsed it one way, but we played it a bit differently, and the stagecraft isn't important here.
Rather, as we got into the play, something happened: it became real.
I hadn't realized how raw my emotions had been scraped by the events of the previous day, and I began to weep as I did my lines. The sanctuary was pin-drop quiet except for our voices. It was not a struggle to get through the rest of the sermon/play so much as it was a matter of living it--every line. At the end, I was to get up and walk to the door beside the pulpit, while removing the lapel mike system and getting it back to Susan so she could complete the service with it. I did, in a bit of a daze.
Oddly enough, the few minutes spent downstairs were all I needed to get back on an even keel. I returned to the service. Afterward, a number of people were saying some very nice things to me about the "powerful" presentation. One, whom I like and respect very much as both perceptive and warm, told me that he had wondered if I was all right afterward, and did he need to go downstairs to make sure.
Indeed.
As it turns out, the rest of day went very well, though i found myself failing every hour or so and needing to lay down. Even this morning, my body felt as though I had been kicked, and this supper was my first full protein/carbohydrate meal in over 48 hours.
I am unexpectedly on the radio: well, there is a chain of occurence here, but the fact of being broadcast in character for compensation is still a bit unreal to me.
The local CBC radio outlet is small and understaffed and one of the afternoon announcers is our neighour, whom we got to know as a fellow gardener (potato wrangler). She mentionned gardening on the show one day, calling for stories from listeners on their gardening experiences, and a little lightbulb went on inside. Why not do a fake piece as a practical joke in my Tony character? So I did--wrote the thing, then phoned it in to their robot. Took two takes because lesson #1--make everything under 2 minutes. Script revision!
Later that day, I phoned my neighbour at her work and left a message spilling the beans. She phoned back later, telling me it was the talk of the station, and they had wondered who it was. Now that they knew, they would run it on air. Somewhere in that conversation, it came up that maybe Tony could be a regular. She very obligingly gave me the contact name and number, and i phoned and left a message. The eventual conversation went well, but when I pitched it as a regular segment, I really did not hold much hope that they'd buy it.
A return phone call, and they did buy it--provisionally. In the this post-Mulroney political climate, CBC has to essentially raise its own money for creative ventures, so while they would pay me some dollars for two pilot segments, they'd have to peddle it nationally in their network to go beyond that, a regular series. Nationally? I had thought only of locally! They agreed to tape two segments for pay and see what happened after that.
Another surprise, though it probably ought not to have been, was my neighbour's knowledge, expertise and talent. She was assigned to be my technician and she certainly knows her way around the control room/recording studio. I learned more about recording and broadcasting from her in one hour than I knew in a lifetime, and if nothing else happens with this, the experience is invaluable nonetheless.
So, two segments of Tony, our Thunder Bay "legitimate businessman", are in the bag. The first one runs this Tuesday at around 5:50 PM. The next, two weeks later. After that, who knows?