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?