A Christmas Story by Naomi Beth Wakan

A few words first, in order to give a setting to my small Christmas story. I, a non-observing Jew and a retired Toronto therapist, bought, with my husband Eli, a country school-house in the small village of Stirling, Ontario. We were totally alien to country life and, indeed, since we purchased the schoolhouse in late winter, did not even know whether the schoolyard, under deep snow at the time of purchase, was asphalt, or grass. We just saw the swings, the roundabout, the see-saw, the large schoolroom with a blackboard running down one wall and we were immediately seduced into buying a building totally inadequately insulated for an Ontario winter, and totally unsuited to residential life.

We also were uncertain as to what we might be doing in order to pay the schoolhouse’s ridiculously high-rate mortgage, but what we did know was that somehow we wanted to experience life in a village, and, for that, we were soon to discover, we would have to go to church. As recent Buddhist drop-outs and keen non-observers, we were reluctant to take this step, but the lure of singing in the small church choir overcame our resistance, and soon, each Sunday, we were to be seen donning black gowns with odd gold-drapery collars and belting out “Nearer my God to thee,” “Eternal Father strong to save” and other such oldies and goldies.

We had taken up residence in the schoolhouse in the summer and that Fall our little choir was busy practicing carols for the Christmas services. I was an amazingly keen participant in all this, perhaps because, as a young girl, I had been excluded from Christian assembly every day for six years at the girls’ high school that I attended. As one of a handful of Jewish students, I was only allowed into assembly after the Christian prayers had been sung, so that I might hear the notices of the day. In the line-up of girls slinking in belatedly (besides the Jewish ones) were the girls who had been given a detention or had been caught fraternizing in the local GI camp. Now, in my little village, at last I was being allowed to be party to the Christian mysteries.

I can barely remember, but think “Hark the Herald Angels”, “In the Bleak Mid-winter” and “Silent Night” were certainly among the carols the choir practiced.

Come the Sunday service before the holidays, a day selected for the choir to perform in all their black and gold glory, the snow descended as only the snow can descend in an Ontario winter. By the time Eli and I had donned, sweaters, trousers, boots, jackets, scarves and gloves, the snow was almost to our knees. The phone lines were down, of course, and our pump had ceased to function making us a little ashamed that we were going to church unwashed, but hoped we would be forgiven by he/she who forgives all.

The little church perched on the top of a hill from our schoolhouse, and it seemed to bob up and down as we dragged first one boot, then the other out of the deep snow. It was a good ten minutes of slogging that usually short climb, before we carefully pulled ourselves up the steps of the church.

It was surprisingly cozy inside. The farmer’s wife from the farm adjoining the church volunteered to come in and keep the place dusted, stoke the furnace, arrange seasonal flowers, play the organ and, in fact, do everything save give the sermon. She greeted us rather abruptly with the news that the service was cancelled as the minister couldn’t make it over from his lodgings in a nearby village, since the snow ploughs weren’t out yet. She doubted that any parishioners would turn up and seemed about to usher us out.

I, however, a new and devoted country woman, and almost as devoted choir member, was not about to be dismissed so abruptly. I had promised to perform and to perform I would, audience, or no audience. I should mention here that a few of my aunts had vague theatrical connections (one of them played piano to accompany silent movies) and my grandfather’s cousin had a gypsy orchestra so my showbiz roots weren’t too far away and “the show must go on” was somewhere engraved on my skeleton.

Persuasive as I can be when I want something to happen, I ushered her over to the organ to prepare, while Eli and I slipped into our gold and black horrors. She and I had a slightly heated un-Christian conversation about what we would sing to the non-existent congregation. For some reason, although the choir hadn’t chosen to include it in their program as it wasn’t Christmasy, I suddenly had a strong desire to sing “The Church in the Wildwood.” The farmer’s wife was taken aback and refused my earnest pleas, saying that it wasn’t in the United Church songbook. I turned aside, sulking a bit, and muttered the words to myself:

“Come to the church by the wildwood. Oh, come to the church in the vale. No spot is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the vale.”

I had no idea where this desire of mine to sing “Church in the Wildwood” had arisen from since I was brought up in the honky-tonk seaside town of Blackpool, nowhere near any vale, or dale come to that.

I halted my mumbling suddenly, remembering that this was supposed to be the season of goodwill, so I agreed with the farmer’s wife, and also with Eli (who had disloyally sided with her), in the decision that we would stay with “Hark the Herald Angels,” “In the Bleak Mid-winter”, and “Silent Night.” Eli and I proceeded to render them best as we could; although neither of us could get anywhere near the high note towards the end of “Silent Night.” The hollow church echoed our voices, bouncing them from stained-glass window to stained glass window.

As the word “peace” did its final echoing, I found myself moving towards the pulpit and, standing there, I started to give thanks. I thanked the empty pews for welcoming us to their village, and I thanked them again for allowing us to sing in their choir, and buy their farm milk and eggs, and shop for other basics at the little village store. And looking out over the ghostly empty church, I found myself thanking God for my sturdy body, imaginative brain and the good life I had been given. And I, a Jew, whose grandparents had never spoken English, at least not in a way that made any sense to me, and someone who had no idea what the word “God” meant, suddenly found the tears running down my cheeks at the joy of being able to share this moment with my dear husband and the farmer’s wife.

And looking over to my favourite stained-glass window, a window in which Jesus was carrying a new born lamb, it seemed to me as if he too nodded towards me in some kind of union.

Naomi Beth Wakan

She and her husband moved to Gabriola in 1996 and opened a studio, Drumbeg House Studio, where Elias makes wood sculpture and Naomi painted, wrote and did fabric art. During this period Naomi moved from writing books geared to children to books for an adult market. She did five books of poetry and essays for Wolsak and Wynn (Segues, Composition, Late Bloomer, Book Ends and A Roller-coaster Ride).

(first posted on this site December 27, 2018)

Broadbent Institute: The Deterioration of Education in Ontario.

"Premier Doug Ford marked his first year in government by cancelling the much needed update to the health and education curriculum, shirking on commitments to reconciliation, increasing class sizes, and mandating four (now two) credits of e-learning, all of which will trigger the loss of thousands of teaching jobs and the proximity of students to caring adults." Broadbent Institute.

Read more here: https://www.broadbentinstitute.ca

The Disease that Threatens the Survival of Our Planet

"I’ve never been a member of any political party, and have no party loyalties. I know the Labour Party is imperfect. But what I see is a group of people genuinely seeking to solve our massive problems – environmental, political, economic, medical and social – rather than appeasing press barons and queueing at the notorious revolving door between politics and money-making." Monbiot. Power Failure.


The problem with our planet, as I see it, is that species, so clever, manipulative, greedy and self-congratulating that it is willing to corrupt and destroy the fragile mind of all, for the sake of their own interest. 

What is Loving Kindness?

Buddhists teach that everyone suffers. Even those who appear to be cold behind their sense of wealth and superiority. Even those who work in offices where they are expected to police the law. Even those who are hired to torture prisoners.

Given power in civil society is an added stress and loving kindness makes it a kind of torture in itself.  For example, a surgeon or medical doctor learns what causes pain in his or her patients. A prison guard is expected to keep people in their cages. A drug dealer sells a different kind of prison to his customers. Strategists plan the destruction and killing of people they haven't met.

When you look at it deeply, politics and business demands a separation from emotion, sympathy, compassion — for the sake of profit. We call it rationality. Winning the profit margin means selfishly planning your days around meeting your goal, getting more, convincing others to give you what you want, paying attention to how you look, what you wear, how you sound and smell. 

According to brain development a crocodile doesn't have the capacity to feel pity towards the food it eats as it rips the flesh of its meal. But humans are born with the capacity to consider the pain of a fish with a hook through its face. 

Empathy comes early in the life of a human unless it is shut out — consciously or unconsciously. Any animal that gives birth must care for its young by caring what happens to it and is given the "gift of stress" along with brain development.

In civilization, social practices either nurture the awareness of empathy or cut it off. A society run by those who have no connection to caring for others, tends to design its business to separate us from our natural empathic brain signals. 

Big business (not small proprietor owned storefronts), including politics, is run mostly by those who have succeeded or who never developed the capacity to feel connection to another, to feel their pain, or to observe the face of grief.  They are called psychopaths or sociopaths. Their brains are wired to bypass concerns or feelings for others.

What pain does it cause a CEO to cut thousands of jobs in the country they live, in order to plan more profit, and to keep doing it because it's his or her job to do that? When does the signalling for success get turned off?

Examples of dead fascists like Stalin and Hitler reveal millions of deaths are not enough to satisfy. Slave owners willingly organized public displays of brutality to make their point.

Business demands that its practitioners cut off their senses if the only thing that registers, the only feedback, is a number on the bottom line. Pressure wipes out whatever your brain measures in order to take it back to the reptile. 

You cannot see or feel what you're doing to the planet, to your children, to your pets, or even your property — you must consistently keep your mind occupied on that fraction of who you are in order to play the game. Act faster, be more cruel, more alienated, lonely and ultimately swallow that learned contempt on yourself as you do to all life.

At what point would you feel the loving kindness you once possessed? How far back would you have to go to call on that? 

Loving kindness may be an ethic discussed in various religions or beliefs, but it's part of human capacity and could save our lives.

Here's one reason why psychopaths dominate positions of power

"The justification for early boarding (school) is based on a massive but common misconception. Because physical hardship in childhood makes you physically tough, the founders of the system believed that emotional hardship must make you emotionally tough. It does the opposite. It causes psychological damage that only years of love and therapy can later repair. But if there are two things that being sent to boarding school teach you, they are that love cannot be trusted, and that you should never admit to needing help." Monbiot. The Unlearning.

Imperialism and the ruling elite have created humans who can bully while smiling.  Children learn from an early age that they are responsible for anything bad that might happen to them and they see victims as weak and stupid.

Conversations around social justice, rather than being seriously discussed, elicit the "boohoo" from others who have not been given the means to analyze their own views, who are fixed on the notion that becoming a success is a material financial thing. 

Gabor Maté has spent his life dedicated to understanding the root causes of addiction which destroys so many lives.  His study has indicated that trauma is silenced, unacknowledged among families and support systems.  

“With rising inequality and all the other problems there are right now,” he says, “people are having to question how they live their lives.”

We all have brains wired for pleasure, for happiness, but trauma broke the narrative and so we look for simple explanations.  

Women and men are trying to be what they have been told is best. Women, soft pliable and sexy, and men tough, smart and unbreakable. Capitalism has done a thorough job of presenting fantasy "heroes" to emulate.  Those who rise to the top are still that little child crying in the corner afraid of what might happen next. 

Our larger society avoids serious discussion about what we need and how we can achieve it. Too afraid to change  we hurl ourselves towards a fate built on hate and fear. 

“Because it takes a lot of work to wake up as a human being, and it’s a lot easier to stay asleep than to wake up.”  

Remembrance Day 2019

The celebrity who accused nameless immigrants for not wearing a poppy is not just a  bigoted curmudgeon. He is a trope puppet to keep men in line through a generalized accusation.

I am an immigrant who came to Canada from England in the sixties, made it my home, got married, had children, became a Canadian citizen, and do not wear a poppy.  I make a donation to  the poppy box but do not take a poppy.

The reason is a practical one — if I put a poppy on my jacket it falls off and I would rather leave it in the tray.

When I think of Remembrance Day I think of my grandfather, John Jackson, my grandmother, Rachel, her first and only son who was killed in his pram while he slept, my mother's first husband, and my half sister who never met her father. I think of all the families I know who lost loved ones in WW1 and WW2.

I think of the courage of young military personnel who join the forces, who mount the discipline and carry through their duty.

Then I think of the rulers who plan the strategies and the rulers who plan the social systems that lead to conflict.

As much as I would like to think with clarity about the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' I come away feeling uncertain and unsure.  War demands that we all become loyal to our tribe regardless of whether our 'leaders' have the common good at heart or not.

I am remembering without wearing a poppy. A poppy does not make you loyal. It is a symbol of remembering which is an emotional state of our species. 

I am also remembering the history that celebrates killing and being killed. And most of all I am remembering the propaganda that keeps us all divided. I am remembering my life in England where we were well trained by our culture to judge others. For their gender, their class, their good manners, the colour of their skin, their nationality and their language. I was part of that spitfire 'we' spouting beliefs as though they were laws, and also part of that group who wanted desperately to be accepted by others. I tried hard to do, say and think 'the right thing'.

So I would suggest that you don't have to wear a poppy or make a public display of remembering. You have to decide how you will remember war, those who were sent to war and those who create war. There are no rewards or outward signs that you are doing this, but it would help to save your world from unthinking violence caused by unreasonable manipulation.

What does it mean?

What does it mean to be marginalized

 illegal, homeless, a blight on the landscape?

What does it mean when we risk polluting 

our water and food source for the economy?

What does it mean to destroy the air

we need to breathe?

What will our future be if we are willing

to sacrifice our home for quick solutions?

What if this planet is ruled by extortionists 

who silenced these questions

so that our taxes can pay even more tomorrow 

and the next day until there is nothing left

but solid rock glowing in a distant universe?

What does it mean when we are offended 

by people who have nowhere to wash

yet welcome those who hold all life as ransom

for the glory of their personal ego?

13 years of brain pickings by Maria Popova

13 Life Lessons - a healing thought for those of us who were born idealists who have been criticized, lambasted and dismissed.  This is a very helpful post. Thank you to Daily Good for posting it. My favourite lesson is this: 

"Don’t be afraid to be an idealist. There is much to be said for our responsibility as creators and consumers of that constant dynamic interaction we call culture — which side of the fault line between catering and creating are we to stand on? The commercial enterprise is conditioning us to believe that the road to success is paved with catering to existing demands — give the people cat GIFs, the narrative goes, because cat GIFs are what the people want. But E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted half a century ago that the role of the writer is “to lift people up, not lower them down” — a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society."

Thank you Maria Popova.

13 years of brain pickings by Maria Popova

Happy Hundredth Birthday Dad

Victor Arthur Leonard Mead


November 2nd, 1919
Dad: you were born in London, England.
You died suddenly before your 60th birthday.
Wherever your spirit rests I hope there are grassy hills, still lakes and an audience for your humour.

With love, your daughter, Janet

New Goddesses

Brene Brown talked of the power of vulnerability. She is a researcher-storyteller and I really appreciate the walk back to my humanity as I listen to her TED-talk. 

Jody Wilson Raybould, the truth-teller publicly scolded for not obeying the SNC Lavallin directive (I know it was neo-liberal capitalism, if not Trudeau who was to blame, but the elephant in all the rooms are special relationships between political parties and big business).  She recently got elected as an independent after being tossed from the Liberal Party.  This is no small feat and indicates her power of focus and dedication to her beliefs.

Christine Blasey Ford who is in hiding since accusing Kavanaugh and his friend of rape when she was 17, has illustrated what happens to women if they report sexual assault against a powerful man. She is a hero because her story illustrates powerfully what happens when power is centralized and victims have no recourse to justice, regardless of how educated they are.

They are not so new but one day we will see these women for the heroes they are. Either that or our society will silence women forever in a world such as The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood - another candidate for Goddess status.

We the people are very ready for the sacred servant who challenges our habits and belief, as we always have been just before fascism marches over the land with its contempt for integrity.

Victims of Climate Breakdown

"The victims of climate breakdown have so far been mostly voiceless and invisible to us. But we know that, even with just 1°C of global heating, climate chaos is already a bigger cause of forced migration than either poverty or political oppression. Large numbers of people in Somalia, Mozambique, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, Central Americaand many other parts of the world are already losing their homes and livelihoods." George Monbiot, Arresting Destruction.

After the Election

Us Versus Them

Every year 

new enemies are trotted out 

like livestock at an auction

while the auctioneer

spits out bids so fast 

buyers must lift their hands

at the right millisecond to win the deal.

No empathy for sheep or cow

harnessed to display

the buttock, hind leg and neck

—terror sedated with hay.

Well trained salesmen

smell fear from east to west 

predicting mood

finding the right words

to steer the captured away 

from an exit that leads to freedom

and back to the holding pen.

If we must stay in this battered barn

let’s identify the one who really is to blame

the designer of our game

who lays awake at night

designing the ultimate holding pen

to trap, cook and eat our children.

When Cruelty is the Point

The Atlantic published an essay by Adam Serwer October 3, 2018, which is most disturbing yet salient.  "The Cruelty Is the Point: President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear."

This essay lists incidents that I find very difficult to read. In the 30's black men chained to poles—whipped to death while white men grin proudly as though this was an accomplishment. "Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another."

A Mississippi crowd of Trump supporters cheered as the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford for reporting the attempted rape by Kavanaugh when she was a teenager. "Lock her up!" they shouted. The trial or at least a part of it was taped for mainstream viewing.

Ford, a psychology professor, reported the laughter of Kavanaugh and his friend Mark judge as "Indelible in the hippocampus ... that part of the brain that processes emotion and memory".

Adolescent male cruelty "is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt." White men in lynching photos bonding through cruelty. These examples say—the white man has evolved to be part of the global family of cruelty and torture.  

You may be thinking that white women and black men are as capable of cruelty as white men. But what I find so chilling in the history of World War I and II is the branding of men's psyche in the camaraderie of violence and cruelty.  That something in the healthy brain has been erased so that men can serve the ruling elite through bonding by traumatizing rituals to "toughen him up" rendering him unable to interrogate his feelings without falling back into the trauma.

When we question this behaviour men may get defensive or applaud it by further abuse. Should women learn how to do this? I have seen women who are willing to display cruelty and violence for the sake of maintaining power over a group.

I have even felt that hardening in my own heart when it appeared it was required "to do the job." To lose that intelligence of empathy and sensitivity which informs my place in the group. 

What makes me most fearful for the future is how easily we can become monsters through unidentified trauma and fear. This is like a setting in the mind which makes me do something I thought I was incapable of doing.

This is why election day is not the only opportunity I have to protest against injustice, cruelty and stupidity. I am a member of the human family and have an obligation to take care of us by caring what happens to them. This is my political task between elections.

Requiem for a miracle planet

"Who are those who would sacrifice us on the altar of global capitalism? How did they amass the power to deny us a voice, to insist that the earth is an inert commodity they have a right to exploit until the ecosystem that sustains life collapses and the human species, along with most other species, becomes extinct?" Chris Hedges, The Age of Radical Evil, Truthdig

By some miracle this planet is made of more than rock. We have oceans, soil, trees, sun and rain. We take this for granted but without this climate our ancestors would not have survived. However, we did. It was never without pain or conflict—now we are ruled by values that seem to have transcended life altogether. Money and inequality is about to make us all redundant.

White men and women have been complicit in the colonization of this planet from the beginning of radicalized evil:  to conquer other nations for the purpose of capturing resources, including slaves, then building a global structure of rape. Raping humanity, raping the oceans, raping the land, the air — of all dignity while creating a new god.

The very least we can do is to admit the full purpose of racism is to dehumanize us all so we can dismiss the violence and carry on playing.

Unfortunately racism is not enough to keep the oligarchs unfettered by social justice and common decency, so hate groups must be whipped up by fake news paid for by "anonymous" sources.

The earth is pretty much a dump for the system drunk on greed. Factories of ideology from farms to cities, economics to education, philosophy to politics, progress as technology and weapons, presenting "the real world" of healing as naive.

Radical evil has turned our species into zombies ready to lap up the latest novelty to keep us from getting depressed by the state of our world.

The question is — will you keep investing in, "isolated units competing for the most of what each of us wants?" Are you ready to see society as a means to support the dignity of your life?

Rich in stuff yet homeless

"We are guided by an ideology so familiar and pervasive that we do not even recognise it as an ideology. It is called consumerism. " George Monbiot, Oil Strike.

The ideology is so effective because the poor believe the rich are happier and the rich believe their happiness depends on what they can buy next.

I know this because I have been poor and now I am rich. It is a generalization of course and generalizations are essential in consumer societies.  First we consume ideas and then generalize them for convenience.

Convenience is another ideology built on and for capitalism. I am surrounded by stuff to the extent it oppresses me. My cupboards and closets and garage are crammed with so much stuff that needs to be sorted, thrown out but can't be given away.  We live in a convenient consumer society where this stuff is everywhere.

We can't give it to the poor because they have nowhere to live. Nine years ago we downsized our house so our stuff was squeezed into any available space. 

Homes could be built and it would cost less in the long run to house the homeless, but we are addicted to consumerism and we would rather see people starving, cold and addicted on the street than see our "property values" go down. (That's another generalization of course).

We are also addicted to blaming the powerless. Rather than see the humanity in inequality we make them an enemy. In fact in our consumer society, every living thing is a threat to our imaginations if we build our worth on stuff.

A hundred years ago would your ancestors be okay with prices based on slave labour overseas while many are without jobs? Would they have slept well knowing that human rights have been replaced with a new religion called neo-liberal capitalism? Would they also feel so oppressed that destroying the planet and the future of our offspring is the only option?

We have become homeless in our own imaginations.

Don't work for the demagogue

George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian  about how to respond to the fascist divide and rule tactics then offers suggestions of how we might deflect that.

"Use humour to deflect aggression, distribute leaflets explaining the action and apologizing for the disruption, train activists to resist provocation, run de-escalation workshops, teach people to translate potential confrontations into reasoned conversation, respect actively all people including police"

People's assemblies like the recent Gabriola Talks on Climate Crisis, bring people of different positions together and focus on the issue. Part of that is the reality that we have different interests and different histories. Civic spaces allow for other voices to be heard.

Stephen Porges points out -- compassion for others is difficult to see if we don't feel safe. Calm spaces are essential to rebuilding democratic life.

Monbiot writes "All this might sound like common sense. It is. But understanding how our minds function helps us to see when they are unconsciously working for the demagogues. Breaking the spiral means restoring the mental state that allows us to think."

Activate your compassion on days that don't require too much energy in rehearsal for the days where it might become your default.

•

The Mind and Heart Speaks (for Greta Thunberg)

Greta

You have said the right things

made the right, bold, fearless accusations 

clearly.

We are moved by shame and guilt

years of vanity and dreams

small crumbs of hope

even though we know better.

As you say — the science speaks

and I fear your success

like any success

makes it difficult to step back

into the torch bearing crowd

for the next scene.

You must not carry the cross alone

no matter how they implore you.

Rage has a mind of its own

and once released may turn on you

make demands.

Let them go, find a brief peace.

Now we need the choir to sing what is known, 

over and over, until our parts are clear to us.

You are the shofar at sunset

now the rest of us must find

our instruments before the dawn.

Articulated Power: the power we have to affect our world

Agency: power given to a group based on a mandated role, for example a police force having the power to arrest others under certain circumstances.

Analytic: ability to peer through issues to understand meaning and intention.

Artistic: ability to create something of beauty or integrity.

Bully: power taken by effectively intimidating or threatening harm to others.

Causal: opportunity to gain power through preceding events that may or may not be related.

Civic: power obtained and shared within a civil society.

Compassion: ability to identify with the suffering of another.

Covenantal: power structured from and within a group based on group agreements.

Cultural: power given to people who possess a knowledge of their history and heritage. The sharing of power through cultural practices.

Democratic: power based on a system of shared governance.

Empathy: the power to feel what another may be feeling.

Environmental: power given to those living within a supportive environment, either a natural environment that allows agriculture and clean water for survival, or a supportive family/educational environment.

Familial: power given according to the place within a family.

Gall: power taken, often temporarily, through risk and confidence.

Holographic: power seized by layers of conditions and events that inspire awakening, change and mass movements.

Infinite: divinity, god, goddess, creator - the power that belongs to the universe beyond the interests of particular species. Posterity, chaos, impermanence.

Influence: power to persuade others based on knowledge, rhetoric, through the skilled use of communication devices.

Integral: power earned through knowledge, authority, wisdom and justice.

Judgement: power of forming an opinion based on evidence, sometimes from perception which can lead to errors in judgement.

Kindness: helping another or others, without expected gain for the self.

Love: in its true unsentimental form is an elemental energy that binds all beings to relationship, which cannot be owned or controlled by any other power.

Matriarchal: power given to a female head of family.

Misappropriated: power unjustly taken from some to give to interests above and beyond their due.

Music: the power of subliminal tones to soothe, inspire and connect sentient beings regardless of nationality and language.

Natural: the power given to all beings based on the natural traits of their species. Every living thing from weeds to humans have natural powers.

Personality: influence gained through force of personality, such as charisma, confidence and sense of entitlement.

Patriarchal: although this may be thought of as power given to a male head of the family, it is today a set of beliefs and practices based on notions around the nature of masculinity.

Political: means to affect change, influence opinion within government, business, the military and media.

Position: specific and hidden powers given to those who hold a professional or honorary position.

Propaganda: power to organize information to elicit a particular response.

Prophecy:  a wide angle view of present trends as they influence our perceptions and choices, along with possible dangers for the future, and advice on how to overcome the most harm.

Observatory: power of seeing, not just with the eyes, but with the full capacity of mind and body.

Reflection: bending back to consider a thought, an action, to re-think, to re-examine a position.

Sexual: ability to affect or manipulate based on sexual attractiveness.

Spiritual: power that transcends geography and time that enlightens and informs individual and collective interests towards insight.

Socio-economic: power allocated to those within certain classes based on wealth, family lines and education.

Telepathy: communication between minds, thought transference, capacity to understand a meaning which has not been spoken or written.

Understand: to grasp an idea, to comprehend the meaning of words.

Verify: to ascertain the truth of something through evidence or research

Writing: putting thoughts and feelings on paper, using words and sentence structure that readers can understand.

Will: determination to do something, go somewhere, say something.

Xenophobic: isolating minorities with prejudice to create fear, hate, to divide and conquer. As a political tool this usually results in all parties being harmed, including eventually, the ruling elite.

Yes: to affirm, agree to, approve, or contradict a negative.

Zoetic: living, vital energy, anima and animus - the seat of our power and its mortality.

Admittedly we cannot control the future which has been arrested by blinkered interests who really believe we have no defence against money so we might as well worship the power it purchases, but neither can we live in denial that something very beautiful is being raped to death.

Don't be impressed by those who claim to know who to blame and who is the cause, you are an individual living within a broken society and must have some response, so it might as well be the best you can do.

The War

The war is not about conflict between different beliefs, different religions, or races. Neither is it about the roles of gender.

The war is about maintaining a narrative of supremacy over the diversity of life. The war is about making the masses miserable, anxious and mute. The war is about maintaining the grip of exploitation and oppression on the world by sowing and nurturing hate and fear as endless systems.

When opinionated people believe the "real world" is this one of greed, hate and violence, it is because the tools of oppression have convinced them there can be no other way. Our choices and creative imagination have been sucked out of the sphere of neoliberal capitalism.

Education, nature, curiosity, justice and reason are continually battered by a superimposed doctrine often called "common sense" or "normal" that strangles our own thoughts before they mark the blank page, leaving the system of fear and oppression to govern society.

This is why people like Greta Thunberg still have the ability to follow their own instincts. But it comes with extraordinary courage and we see their brilliance clearly.

There was a time when entering the adult world we had to choose between our own understanding of how the world works in order to fit. Our precious freshness and innocence is given up to avoid the label "naive".

Now we are in a time when the world is trapped in sophistry, the game of thrones. As a civilization we have lost our way. Our institutions are broken or silenced.

But the war will not be won until we re-learn the value of our own imagination, our own contributions to the mysteries and sciences of relationship.

Read and Vote October 21

Some reliable media outlets for your election coverage:

Rabble. Climate Crisis Presents Urgent Existential Threat Election  

National Observer 

Globe and Mail, Canada, World, Politics, News 

Chris Bowers, Fire Safety and Good Leadership

Hi Folks,

I would have preferred to put this in the Sounder, but they ‘don’t typically publish letters about specific individuals, especially as it pertains to how well, or not well, they have done their job’, so here we go.

On honouring the shoulders upon which one is about to stand

I’m responding to comments made both publically and through a whispering campaign about Fire Chief Rick Jackson.

The latter, centered around the “Vulcan mind-meld” theory (a belief that someone who stands for something you don’t is under the influence of – apparently posthumous – hypnotisation), is a canard originating from the Weldwood era.

It’s nonsense. Suggesting that someone disagrees with you because they are brain-washed is, at best, hubris.

More public are suggestions that the power structure at the fire department is inverted, and insinuations that the department is therefore not well run.

I’ve worked in organisations with volunteer boards and have observed many more in action. The best of them have always been led by strong, capable executive directors with a clear understanding of the organisation’s history and how to achieve its mandate.

In a true “dream team”, such EDs are supported by board members who recognise and respect that leadership, and contribute their individual talents and abilities to help realise the organisation’s potential.

This is the kind of leadership I’ve observed from Jackson, and it would be both a shame, and shameful, not to recognise his service to the community. So here’s a list of some of his accomplishments:

• Started using the Gabriola Volunteer Fire Department’s (GVFD) team of officers as duty officers who could respond quickly to the public when he was not on duty.

• Expanded use of the International Fire Service Training Association system originally instituted by former Fire Chief Jared Hooper. This system was later adopted by the Province.

• Invited Albert Reed, a retired electrical engineer to run for election for the board of trustees. At his own expense, Reed went back to UBC and completed his fire protection engineering degree, subsequently writing a long-term fire plan for the GVFD.

That plan laid out the path to achieving the Fire Underwriters Survey (FUS) insurance rating, which included: purchasing equipment; building a new fire hall; and establishing fire-fighting water sources (hydrants) – currently located at the ferry turn-around, Camp Miriam, Shaw Road, Island’s View Road, and Lockwood Road.

• Led the GVFD to attain Superior Shuttle Tanker Status, and become the first Canadian volunteer fire department west of Ontario to receive the FUS residential and commercial insurance rating – without the support of neighbouring fire depts.

As this rating is the equivalent of having fire hydrants located every 300m around the island, it saves property owners hundreds of dollars more in insurance costs than fire dept. taxes cost us.

• Pushed for the connection between Hess and Coats Rd., and the soon to be completed Church/Spruce connector, as well as secondary exits from all the other existing subdivisions.

• Brought the Lions, HAM radio, Emergency Social Services, Pets and Livestock Services, and other pertinent groups into the new fire hall so that all the emergency and support services would be in one spot, and have a place to meet.

Gabriola has been blessed with a skilled and forward-looking fire chief for many years – one who has done a superb job of keeping the island safe, and of helping the community focus on actions rather than on anxiety during tense fire seasons.

So it’s hardly surprising that, with Jackson leaving, the anxiety in the community has risen – especially around who will be in control in the future.

If the next administration has the competence to manage the job and the anxiety – both the community’s and its own – hopefully that sense of discombobulation can be truncated.

If Jackson has a sense of who those folks might be, given his track record I, personally, will trust it.

For Peace, Truth, and Justice,

Chris Bowers