Discerning Literature

On Denying the Church

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 13:57:40 -0700

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them… And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:27 & 31 (KJV)

I have been perpetually berated with the idea that human beings are bad, immoral nouns who steal, cheat and destroy. Humans are creatures created to be governed, ruled, dominated and taken down a peg or three because one day when we were formed by God, we ate from the wrong tree, learned things we shouldn’t have and became the bane of the earth. Better, saith the Religious, to remain in Edenic ignorance before God than to open one’s eyes and discover the ins and outs of why.

All because impressionable Eve was taken in by the swindler Satan, who was a hissing, talking serpent, by the way. Yes, Earth’s First Woman was bamboozled by a snake chatting her up, wrapped around the branches of a tree telling her eating its fruit would give knowledge of good and evil. That in knowing where the line was drawn, it would make Eve and her husband gods. Eve fell for it, being incapable of scepticism in her idyllic ignorant setting, and duly tempted realized that nudity was embarrassing and God might be angry that they went against the one thing he told them not to do. Rebellious humans! Oh, Adam blames Eve for feeding him the fruit, you know. In the Renaissance they went so far as to say women were the font of all evil, and along with Lilith’s brood of murdering succubi, unrestrained legions of women would be the downfall of civilization, dignity, purity and decent living. When most women weren’t able to read, I can believe their ignorance and education-less emotionalism would be more of a threat! How odd then, that in the height of the English successes came Queen Elizabeth I and her merry gang of female compatriots who proved to not only acquire intelligence, but feminine attributes which made them paragons of their gender, and carriers of brighter futures and cleaner worlds!

By now someone is probably wondering what my feminist flutterings have to do with the Church. Religion has been the greatest propitiate of ideas since Adam and Eve got their leaves on. The majority of my issue with organized religion is based on its reliance on constructed social dependence. As a social construction, it is posited religion was a basis for maintaining the sacred norms of a society. How a society functioned was itself a function on the clergy’s ability to maintain morals, ethics and ideal philosophies. Cosmology became hypothesized evidence for a certain frame of mind, a method of proving divine philosophy & social order in the heavens. Mythology or religious writ was built upon a collective of unexplainable phenomenon and history, given credence by its propensity to survive and control the populace. Drifting from the consistent representation of the cosmos was heresy; grounds for being executed, expelled from the tribe or dealt with severely until one returned contrite and begging forgiveness from the fold.

Where would we as a North American and European society be if everyone followed the religious maxims of their days? Would the Earth revolve around the sun? Would it be flat or round? Had we always engaged in utmost belief, demons would cause disease instead of bacteria and viruses. The mentally ill would be possessed, extricated in fear not brought forward in a spirit of healing. Had we no rebels, we would have no proper world, nor scientific progress. Yet, the most auspicious rebels were the ones who did not deny relevant truths from whence they came. Reform seems to be far better than revolution.

Now, the globe has come into an era where geographically it is incredibly small. Where a collection of centuries ago crossing continents took years and many lives, today it can take less than four hours and a plane ride full of dehydrated air. The global village has become a melange of cultural sensibilities, yet our abilities to discern similarities in each other hasn’t quite caught up with the curve. We state especially in North America that we are a melting pot of tolerance, when as of yet we cannot see the views and discernments of others. We live awe struck by phantom terrorists, religious fundamentalists of whom we have nothing but fear, ignorance and an inability to quantify. How can we truly call upon the spirit of the living God when we cannot rectify the differences in ourselves? What right do we have to knock on heaven’s door asking for God’s goodwill and bounty? Where’s the grace gone?

If God is a universal phenomenon, then God came not to one people group but all. If God is a global entity then there must be (unobscured by natural differences of terrain and physical condition, and the differently nurtured histories) common threads of truth evident on a global scale. By fighting past the socially constructed pieces of the divine and the sacred, I believe we can dig amongst the tatters that remain for what is truly God. Truly Divine. Spiritual experience has multiple avenues and similarities. Ask yourself how many things in other religions legitimately battle against the words of Christ? In my experience, pastors and philosophers are more than willing to dialogue with you as long as they consider you pliant to their unique or mass produced system of belief. Have a discussion for discussion’s sake and it’s a waste of time, a method of the Evil One to take good Christians away from their moral duties to follow what their pastors say. Once they discover you are on the fringe and unapologetically searching, most wash their hands of you, or attempt constantly to save you with their narrow noose-like views on Father God and saving grace.

Why then did Thomas Merton engage with Far Eastern thought? Why did one of the most significant Christian philosophers of the twentieth century deem it an imperative to dialogue with other religious traditions? Thomas Merton influenced the Dalai Lama. Dialogue has become part of our world, why can’t it be a deeper part of our religion? What’s wrong with cherry picking truth? Most churches let women speak, and don’t require women to wear head coverings, as per the Bible’s instructions. So, in that sense, every church is cherry picking already. Is the issue one of selfishness? Is the issue based around cherry picking truth to make one’s own needs met and thus include building an entirely new social convention of one? If that is the case, denying the self to search for the truth seems the most appropriate cause of action.

Denial of self is a global concept. If there is no ego, how can the ego continue to consciously strip meanings like deer in winter stripping bark off trees? Perhaps the metaphysicians, the fringe believers, the mystics, oracle readers, the new agers have something to teach all of us about the sanctity of belief and the search for clear, concise, unencombering truth?

How can one search for the meta-divinity if one is still steeped weekly in one of the socially created systems which preserve a singular view of the sacred? It is only by being outside of a specific faith community that one may investigate clearly, just as with terrain one may find a trail by hacking and pioneering through bushes and gullies, but only removed from the immediate and at a different perspective can one find a clearer path toward the common destination. My goal is not to abandon the Church and Christendom, but midwife it through the dross of social convention into the true freedom of a world consumed with the love and mercy of the divine. It’s about God and about Grace. It’s about the truth that God made us good. God formed and breathed us into being, looked at what God made and said it was good. Good meaning intrinsically on the yes side of plus. I cannot live in a world where everyone in it is a demon waiting to claw at effigies of Christ. Sin came. We caused it, but deep inside our souls, inside ourselves is the prevailing concept that God wouldn’t have sent Jesus Christ for a bunch of devils in disguise. We are, beyond sin, beautiful beings of God. Images of God, and being not evil, God would not have created pure evil as it’s outside the Godhead.

Far from being a testament to universalism, my search is one of purity. Clarity.

I abhor hypocrisy. I abhor the use of religion for personal or social gain. Like many humans, I grimace instinctively at the many evils committed by religious organizations in the name of God the Father, the Virgin Mary and the holy Jihad. Yet, although I abhor the misuse of the Divine, my faith in the divine power guiding the universe has not lessened. I believe firmly that this cosmos is a created entity, ordered by God and loved by God. Be that as it may, as a self-proclaimed loather of hypocrisy, I am fully aware that returning to an organization I have noted problems accepting in totum is itself a form of hypocrisy. How can one who vocally condemns pieces of a community then return to that community as if the act of returning is a form of acceptance? One does not continue to attend political rallies for a political party one no longer votes for. Likewise, one does not continue attending a school one already replaced with another or quit all together. Returning to the Church before these issues are resolved is a form of vocal, physical and social acceptance of the deeds and policies of the Church.

This is something I cannot in conscience do.

As a woman and a historian I have not reached a point in my research and personal journey where I can forgive the Church and members who call themselves Christians, who have marginalized gender-groups, people-groups, committed crimes in holy names, and poisoned the lives of millions in a “noble” attempt to follow the false word of sacred script. The social convention to place man above woman in the church, home and outer world is one which although is written about many times in the Bible and other holy teachings, I find to be a convention not of divine providence, but of paternal machination. I believe these scriptures to be methods of chaining women to a traditional role in order to maintain a social order, not in order to maintain a spiritual maxim.

If God is genderless, then the historical basis for many misogynous teaching is moot. God is called the Father not because God is a male entity, but because in the social perception of the Biblical cultures, the male dominated society was easier to interpret and understand. Both male and female allegories are used in Scripture to express God. God is limitless, expansive, creative. God is both male and female, and we having been created and deemed good in the eyes of God should be considered as physical, spiritual and social equals. Even in today’s North American society, male/female relations are not yet at an equilibrium. Add in the ever growing debate on traditional gender roles and the sexual revolution, and the gender of God has become a powder keg connected to a MOAB beside an atom bomb.

Should I walk into the average traditional church and speak my intended views on scripture, faith, meditation and gender roles I would be considered a heretic and told to stay away from the children. I would be marginalized in an environment originally structured to be an all inclusive place of comfort and joy. Being raised in a home where Grandma’s form of religion was the only true form of religion (however narrow), my revulsion of traditionalism is clear.

There are still people in this world being marginalized, condemned, tortured, unfulfilled and killed for their views, differences of opinions or disobedience to a religious organization. This is unconscionable. Also unconscionable is modern day slavery, gender discrimination and traditionalist gender roles making it impossible in some areas of the world for women to have true equality and freedom. Until these issues too are resolved, how can I enter into a traditional female role? Even a traditional social role like monogamous marriage is being mistreated and lauded in its hypocrisies by many false prophets, false philosophies and false conventions. When little girls still wake up never knowing when their families will sell them as brides, when women enact constant demeaning labour simply because ‘she is a wife and this is what God said a wife must do’, when women are denied the right to personal safety, personal sexuality and personal choice of when and how to bear children, the world itself is off its kilter. This cannot be God’s will. How can one enter into a convention such as marriage with so many damaged women and damaged men remain in the wings, caused personal pain by the very convention which should be a sacred act of one-ness? One flesh? I do not deny the fact that there have been many excellent marriages in the world. I do not deny that the sanctity of marriage is a basic human right. What I refuse to accept is the misuse of such a holy function of human and sexual unity. Fully acknowledging that Christianity is by far not the only religion to have such issues, I close with this affirmation.

There is a divine guide in this world. This divine guide is a being of love, an entity who created the universe out of love, who is active in this universe. In our lives. Perhaps after a lifetime under the thumb of at times incredibly fundamentalist Christianity, I’ve rebelled by searching not for the pre-recorded voice, but the whisper after the thunderstorm. Until I find that whisper, no man made house, nor social practice, nor pre-ordained event will satisfy my yearning for the divine. For God, and God’s mercy, grace and abundant all encompassing love. Reform the Church. Open dialogue. Find similarities and do not condemn others for socially contrived causes. Reform the Church. Love God.

On Travelling South Vancouver

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:04:26 -0700

I hit the road on my day off and ended up in the South Vancouver neighbourhood in which I grew up. My mother mentioned the house where we both grew up had been demolished and in a ferrying swell of nostalgia I deemed it safe to take the sight and lock it from iris to retina, down optic nerves to the memory of my brain. Locking a chapter of early life away.

I was fifteen when we left Vancouver for Langley and I cannot say I was happy with the change. Although I adored my new private school, as I grew from teen to twenty-something the lack of viable wild fun in Walnut Grove grated at my skin. I have been feeling lately like a lime being zested. Raw and spent, my vitality being given to employment which for many is uncannily close to life’s pursuit of unified happiness. I live, eat, shop (but for forays into Coquitlam Centre) and work in Langley. As much as Vancouver has undergone a natural progressive shift in the twelve years I’ve been out of residence, driving its streets was a lesson in the security of the past. In so much of the world roads stay the same for centuries. Buildings stood and continue to stand for hundreds of years, and in this microcosm of North America’s Westcoast, change is an electric charge claiming the areas I once knew. Polarizing them. Shifting the lay lines of Vancouver Specials and cottages with gardens to monster houses with coach homes out back, neighbourhoods becoming specialized like European villages which had been separated by a day’s walk.

I love Vancouver. There’s a dispassionate ease to the streets and shops, which the people spark into whirlwinds and pillars of fire. Now I sit in a cafe sipping coffee and eating a vegan cookie watching the multicultural masses ebb and swell around me and I know despite the fear that my change will get eaten by the parking meter outside, I am home. I write and I breathe and I seep Vancouver in my veins. My only regret on this day of rejuvenation is the consuming loneliness of journeying alone. And the price of parking.

On Living Onward

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:21:43 -0800

The Blessed Season is upon us, whether Lutheran or Atheist, the Northern World needs the power of a celebration to keep the darkening nights at bay. Long strands of kaleidoscope baubles hang from houses and each one fills me with a different kind of cheer. A new spring comes to my swollen foot, a reminder of what in the martial arts world we like to call ‘good days of training’. My left arm has acted as shield and buckler in a combative exercise little more than controlled brawling. The ache in my bones fills me not with regret, but a potent happiness. My partner understood well the mystique behind battering each others’ shoulders and ribs, dekeing will come later, as will learning how to move just that bit faster than my opponent-partner.

God Bless Martial Arts.

A year ago life was dark, the downwards hill was all but insurmountable and my brakes had failed. Skidding forward, I felt no joy and had barely a glimmer of what would become the powerfulness of defeat.

Bruce Lee once called the Martial Arts a method of acquiring liberty, a discernment brought about by the mixture of battle (both artificial and real), and enduring art. Georges Saint Pierre seeks the Beautiful Victory, as we all in the arts know not all victories are beautiful, and not all beauty is safe. Since the wretched December last my body and mind are on the mend, I’ve failed in larger proportions than ever before and come out attempting at least to brush the cinders of my Power Suit and continue on in both business as in life. My arsenal grows, and on December 20th, I test for First Degree Black Belt Recommended. Strengthening my weak shoulder and gnarled near useless fingers are the great loves. The powerful affections, the security of knowing beyond all ills, evils and personal downfalls, I am intensely loved. Grief pours into my worthy throat alongside my gin and tonic as I finally allow myself to mourn the loss of the possible, the disappearance of my significant other. Is it time to let him go? One must wonder if one can have a relationship with someone who doesn’t bother to communicate at all.

Yet what have I learned from him? I have learned that love extends past boundaries of time and presence, I have learned that standing rightly, highly is a transcendent act of will. I affirm my increase, the fears of my failures are falling away to dross. I am above all, loved. I learned despite my nature I am a woman who does openly have a beating heart in her once-mangled ribcage.

In this age of affirmations, I look to the Aquarian moon and succor my creative soul on the tide-like fact that now is the perfect moment. I am fulfilled, birthed in my creativity and continue onward with the support of my uncannily unconditionally loving family and friends. Knowing my Mother is a rare jewel, my brother a decent hearted paragon and despite her failing health, my Grandmother can look back on a life with pride, and that all of these do give me the toughest support and love. We will succeed in all we do, for this family is full of wildfire.

This is an age of beauty. Today in my white marble-walled haunt I enjoy the beauty of catharsis and the therapeutic wisdom of words. May the winter’s chill play the perfect juxtaposition to the warmth in your lives. We are more than conquerers. We are the new wave of an ocean which shall be forever coming onward. We are expansive and created by infinite love, infinite mercy, infinite grace.

Celebrating Victory: My Two First Place Medals!!

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 21:17:14 -0800

Celebrating Victory: My Two First Place Medals!!

On Thanksgiving

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:10:14 -0700

The more I live, the more I experience an ever abundant spirit of love. First felt in the constant presence of the Creator, it calmly disseminated into my family, friends, and working experiences. Parents at the Academy wish me well and assure me in darkest places. Students give me High Fives and happy thanksgivings, and my boss has taken to encouraging successes and chiding the doubts which had lingered in my pessimist’s mind.

Death to the pessimist mind. Even my mother and I are beginning to talk earnestly, slowly, testing waters neither of us have swam in much, if at all. My brother is becoming a vast friend, and my small cluster of friends are invaluable, unique in each way and distinctly wonderful. Despite the distance, I feel cared for, distinctly pulled into a dear affection by my English beau and our daily chats.

I am unequivocally blessed.

My right shoulder tingles as I listen to healing music and breathe deeply for some of the first seriously deep breaths in over a year. Another moment of healing and love in this amazing day. In this quiet moment I can again weep at the experience that though boughs break over my path, it is well with my soul.

Love is infinite and kind. It guides us to true points of reflection and sincerity. Love created the universe in fulness, an act of supreme affection and joy. Utter, compete, though-there-be-pain joy. What force greater than omni-encompassing love could have done it without splintering and wiping clean the slate? What guarantee do we have that love didnt? We have as a cosmos experienced our own Baby Cry resounding through the vibrational distinctions of love, endless, enduring, entropy-defying love. My heart swells, I feel connection, fear and security in my own reflection of the Sound. The only sound. The every sound. The sound of God declaring with a word there would be light.

One ineffable, increasing, unwavering word and we on its crest as we settle into our lives entrenched and enfolded in the word which begets all things. Love. Undeniable, unthinkable, immutable. Days recede to longer nights and yet the hope of yuletide lights, of days which bring closer a repast into more spheres come closer within the residing sound of the eternal wave of love.

Happy Thanksgiving.

My first online radio show, a discussion on The Hero Within by...

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 15:44:00 -0700

My first online radio show, a discussion on The Hero Within by Carol S. Pearson, using the stages of the Quest as a guide for personal enlightenment & development. Discussion, the overview of the book, and an excellent mini-lecture.

Thanks to the Resistance for the opportunity to speak! What a blast, you guys are great. Wholeness!

inhabitat.com

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:15:16 -0700

inhabitat.com:

Fabulous idea for the future of housing from my fellow Scandinavians.

What do you think is the future of housing?

Henna Rose (Taken with Instagram)

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 01:03:28 -0700

Henna Rose (Taken with Instagram)

"Literature gives us an internal compass, a way to negotiate all life’s rough and tumble. It gives us..."

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 10:07:17 -0700

“Literature gives us an internal compass, a way to negotiate all life’s rough and tumble. It gives us insight, empathy, direction and warning. It is a concordance for the physical world, a magnificent prism through which reality is refracted. Much loved passages whisper in our ears. Long-dead authors hold us by the hand. Half-forgotten poems fill our mouths. Literature is present at the birth of our first child and the ordering of our morning coffee. It fills us.”

- Why Books Provide Ballast (via bookriot)

Red Belt. #WTTU (Taken with Instagram)

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 16:32:40 -0700

Red Belt. #WTTU (Taken with Instagram)

On Leadership Part I

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:57:26 -0700

Another in a series of leadership conferences is over for Vraeyda Film, and another in a long line of editing projects unfolds before my eyes. Three keynotes, three shorter speakers and a host of Q & A has blended into a synthesis of Servant-Leadership discussion for the business & educational leaders of the current and future ages. What a perfect sense of timing these projects have come to for my personal growth as an infant CEO of my own fledgeling multimedia company. It seems not long ago I was praying & meditating on what leadership means outside of martial arts and the despondent work force.

Gran would say I was always a stubborn child, bossy and quick to overbear. Perhaps her lens of events is one build by her time, where children were seen and not heard, and women certainly didn’t go on owning their own businesses. That’s what husbands were for. Far from becoming a diatribe on my personal family life, this post is a defining moment in the paradigm shift, which has taken Leadership from a military affair of Follow The Leader & Simon Says (or Sir Says, if you’re a Carnagisticalist) to a servant approach.

Servant-Leadership is about holistic understanding, about innerstanding and the ability to see to one’s company’s growth in the financial, spiritual, emotional and physical. Far from just a 9-5, it is a way of life which derives from listening, healing, conceptualizing and discovering the talents of people. It is a much more humane way of doing business, and for the creative minefield of Multimedia today, I think something sorely necessary.

How far of a bend should I look for in my own CEO experience? One who leads cannot be a push over, but instead being built of honest loyalty, must inspire one’s minions and troops.

My VP of Sound and I were chatting yesterday about our impending Studio, and aside from office space and client care, our chats naturally went to the feminine “how shall we approach coffee and tea? Essential food items?” We quested over espresso machines, french presses and tea sets. Discussion on what staple foods to have available to staff came naturally, as well as a stipend billed per month from the staff wages (and our own) to pay for our gastronomical needs. If there is one important point I learned from the Film Industry it’s this:

One must always feed well one’s workforce.

A simple affair it seems, to offer snacks and potables, but in a simple way it tells each member of the Vrae Family that they are loved, valued and that their ideas are safe here. If giving them vegan muffins and a latte every morning helps do that, then so be it, I say!

Inspiration, determination, loyalty and honest opinion. If I encourage each one of my people to give me their best, to come upon naturally their own brilliance, am I not helping the company’s own self-interest?

On Personal Power

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 12:00:13 -0700

The paradigm shift from Modernity to Post-Modernity is both coming and concluding and as a person I have never been happier or more well adjusted in my life. I am struck with the love and devotion of my friends and family. The love reverberates like sound from a singing bowl filling the musician and air with a complex, incredible resound. Is this grace? Is this the mercy and love of God? I bathe in divine protection and feel the devout desire of the Creator to know me and I through the Creator to know myself.

Still there are blocks in myself. Often powerless in my mind, I feel disconnected, afraid of rejection and failure. Even people continents away can feel the block in my personal power center. The quest for powerfulness starts, I think, with a question of how. How shall I feel powerful? Is power so readily equated with success in my mind? The block seems to be one of definition and determinate frustration.

All I am confident of is this: I am weighted by the love of my friends, as a child is weighted under handmade quilts layered against the frosty chill of winter. I am content. Panic still surges with the winds of supposed failure, I jitter and quake, thinking a near impoverished path lies forever before me, despite hearing my mother and brother’s pride. The emotion is as close to the surface as refracted light bathing the ocean waters. The more I am loved the more I love, open to the all consuming energy and power of our Creator.

Many people weep in sacred spaces. The sacred space for me is increasingly becoming planet-wide. Sacred space is anywhere one feels the divine, anywhere we claim spiritual jurisdiction. It can be a room, forest, street corner, a seat at a cafe where philosophy proclaims Sophia is far from dead. The landscape of our mindspace can also be claimed, weighted and measured. We are Temples, our bodies are the Temples of the spirit, and thus we are a synthesis of the two.

So why in a post about power do I wander off into the mountainous trails of duality’s damnation? How can we be powerful when our individual selves are out of balance? A martial artist can’t break a board if first he is not centered both on the target and on his own two solid feet! Unbalanced, any success is closer to a fluke, a stroke of luck, a hail mary pass at the end of the game. As I write I look forward at a fridge full of pictures and drawings. I feel the warmth of the space I house-sit in, delighted in the elegant homely calm. I drink coffee from a french press and flavour it with raw honey. My breakfast is a grapefruit, and the sun in its trek across the surface of the world pours in to the South Facing window. Even here I am blessed. The quietness of my housesitting retreat I hope to fill with the benefits of work and healing as I continue to discover beyond my ego’s doubt, the center of my personal power.

On A Week

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:51:33 -0700

My editing work has taken a pause for a distraction to loosen my mind from a cascade of interviews take after take, and I sit as I usually do in the wing chair of my bedroom reading skype conversations which have long since gone by. Amused and intrigued to see the passage of time, I clicked the 1 Week button and a flood sliced across my screen with all the power of ones, zeroes, and electrons bumping along the trundling path of an LCD computer screen.

In one week curiosity of a person became discovery. We shared, and experienced mutual conversation, talked on our own for the very first time, and joined in on a group conversation. I met many in the group, quickly being adopted into it by the eccentric outsiders, listening as I was to glean what truths I could and enlighten where I was allowed by my own ego to contribute.

A week is but a passage of time, and time being relative it may seem incomplete. Unmanageably vague. I wonder how much your paradigms can shift in a week? Is it possible to become a new creation in seven days? Become an ultra-self?

I don’t think I’m qualified to answer, but I am qualified to sweep my eyes across the room and consider how long ago last Saturday was in my eyes. Even the space I live in has chased a merry way toward another incarnation, as has the presence of plant life inside it. Perhaps the real quest is to make changes stick. We can, as a race, have monumental leaps and bounds into the real and enlightened only to fall backward through the mud into that cave-like structure we had once been encased. Screaming “I’ll never go back! I’m here forever!” we stumble on a pebble, or find the sun too bright and before our eyes adjust off we go into the backwards place, the nether world, the hidden apathy of aging souls who more and more wish they could bypass reincarnation and move off to heavenly realms.

The passion of youth can be so firmly and abjectly forgotten in as many moments as it takes to batt one’s eyelashes at the next scoundrel’s face. To the task! My fingers say as I rabbit hole through this diatribe on compliant will, yet perhaps that is the secret lesson.

Two weeks later, the changes have stuck and a lifelong friend is speaking to me still. One week. What happens in two? Three? How many changes can we make to ourselves and the globe given enough time? When we use our time wisely, the world is benefit.

On Cleansing

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:11:15 -0700

My breakfast is organic sourdough boule with a bread dip made from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, fresh cracked pepper and Himalayan rock salt. I sip Ginseng tea from Korea and survey the shifting eddies of damage and recuperation I have purposefully thrust upon my bedroom.

It was time for a cleanse. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was bored with the idea of cleaning my room, finding spots for the collective of possessions claimed in the four walls of the place I’ve laid my head for twelve years. The bed is in vastly the same place, the shelves have never moved from when they were deposited those years ago, yet for all the permanency other furnishings have shifted and changed with my mood and the times.

My psyche and persona has grown and shifted over the past two years in radical jerks and sovereign motivations. I am a different person than the one who clung to books read while still in a school kilt and jumper, a more complete individual since the days of university where I learned much and kept everything just in case. The stalwart survivors are art supplies, a travel easel, electric fireplace, tables, chinese carved cedar hope chest, sewing machine, chess set, buffet and books. With bits of floor now visible from the lack of stacked things, I smile to myself as I see one cabinet and bookshelf remade, stored differently to better use the space and simplify the outward examples of my id while leaving the rest of the books to slip carefully below into the door-covered cabinet of my subconscious. The task is far from accomplished, but even this simplification has been a boon to my weary, hectic, spastic soul.

To what or whom do I owe the debt of gratitude for giving me the urge to do such a paring down? To my friend, who cleaned her room while I kept her company singing rock music at the top of my comedic capacity. To those of whom I have never met, but correspond nearly daily on skype. Disembodied voices with stories of their own seeking above all the cosmological significance of a vegan diet, or the better ways to quiet one’s mind in meditation. Most of all a person I have never met, whose voice came before the others, and opened the channels of understanding to re-visit thoughts I folded like old clothing and placed in the bottom drawer of my subconscious. I already feel better in this space. I already feel like some of the negativity is clearing up. As my Mom says “I can’t work in an untidy home.”. Still there is more to be done, and perhaps it is the constant state of rejuvenation, the constant need to heal and breathe and eat and correspond, to learn and experience which makes something like the cleanse of a room all the more important with time.

Eventually I see my life taking a more exotic turn. There will be travels and travails, trials, team-buildings and projects. The planet shall be open to my artist’s eye as culture becomes my playground of choice. I know much of my next few years will be lived out of a suitcase or backpack and that got me thinking of how much a person needs.

We are both supremely lucky and marred by the technology of our times, yet accomplishing goals is swift and easier on a laptop, one can bring a library with them on their Tablet PC, Kindle, or iPhone. Media itself is more accessible, and as that is my business I am encouraged that although I will leave behind the familiar bed, furniture and physical pages, I will not be without those things I find the most comfort in holding in my hands.

A purge of the physical can sometimes become a purge of the mind. I started with the obvious: garbage, recycling, old papers, clothes. My vast collection of books has condensed much like a balsamic reduction which garners the right sweetness and consistency of simple and elegant joy. As for the physical, that’s next. One step, and then another.

Given to me by my dear, wonderful friend, who is so wise....

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:22:00 -0700

Given to me by my dear, wonderful friend, who is so wise.

junoinlove:

A woman’s highest calling is to lead a man to his soul; so as to unite with Source, her lowest calling is to seduce; separate man from soul,and leave him aimlessly wandering.

A man’s highest calling is to protect woman; so she is free to walk the earth unharmed, man’s lowest calling is to ambush and force way into life of woman.

~ Cherokee

Orange Kusherie: Vegan Lentil Stew (Taken with Instagram)

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:44:53 -0700

Orange Kusherie: Vegan Lentil Stew (Taken with Instagram)

On Meta-Narrative

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 15:09:46 -0700

There are few forces of natural literature which bring a literary theorist and mythologist to skipping joyfully around research like the search for the prime meta-narrative. Anthropological sociologists have concentrated in the last few decades of reminding us as a race that our origins are in the same locations. We are interconnected with several mothers. So why then are there so many dialectical stories? They boil down into component parts which merge and connect with earlier and earlier narratives, signs and images around the world.

Jungian archetypes, where we join together in a collective unconscious matching with indo-european myths of Wodin, Zeus, Gilgamesh, Innan, further and further and further back.

I suppose the importance of a global narrative becomes so huge due to the integration it represents in our global family. If all our origin stories, all our myths all our archetypes come from original sources, we have a commonality that although shifted due to the nature and nurture of the different spreading tribes of humanity becomes a mode of integration. By discerning the differences between the cultural narratives, we can then examine the contrast of our unique cultural experiences, and come to a more beneficial understanding of common traits and open dialogues.

Our world is in a state of chaos. Natural disasters, increasing lack of resources, political struggles and religious differences shatter what global entity we could have and create situations where our top scientists proclaim the demise of the human race, lest we colonize the stars. Colonization of outer planets is akin to a scientific band aid on the gross gutteral bleeding wound of dis-unity, of chaos, hate and the disease which shatters our abilities to comprehend our fellow man & woman with honest integrity and grace. Mercy may be in a conglomerate on the moon, yet ultimately even that colonization won’t preserve the integrity of what’s beautiful about the human race as a whole.

The issues are systemic. They are bold and harrowing, yet so pervasive that most of us don’t realize the problems exist. Traditionalism reigns back potential peace-bringers, and the polarization of yes/no viewpoints damage our potential global calm. Perhaps then, the power of the meta-narrative, the power of an encompassing story is the medium of a life-course shift in the planet. Paradigm shifts through paragraphs moulded into pages, into chapter and verse. It is in fiction that I find the beneficial shift of humankind. Fiction and story are the keenest elements of our conscious and subconscious mind. Every culture has stories. Every profession on the planet has the capacity for story, every person interacts through story and learns from and leaves impressions with, it is the unique quality of the human condition to be one of fantasy and dialect. To be both in the global story and of the global story is to be dependably human.

To be completely human is to discover and dream and depend on worldviews, on the zeitgeist, in so being, the meta-narrative is an expression of the idyllic archetype and is our key code to the mindset of the world.

On Time: A Poem

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 01:04:46 -0700

If fate be such a fickle mistress
she waits upon the edge of time’s bed,
For Time is the overseer of experience
Writ upon substance wrought with decay
Until we meet another day

Oh Time, you scourge insurmountable
by all but worthy ones
You threaten us with your ticking clocks
Yet lay prostrate on relativity’s bed.
I seek your patterns to plan my day
I fret at the passing of sleep-less night
Until the succour of experiences tames
My discontent with delight.
Without time, there would be no words
Without conversation we would reside
Nameless, aimless, brainless.
Gratitude reigns on her monarch throne
For the time we take and share.

Interviewee Matched his Wardrobe to the Colour Palette (Taken...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:56:18 -0700

Interviewee Matched his Wardrobe to the Colour Palette (Taken with Instagram)

Death of A President: An Obituary to President Atta-Mills

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:42:26 -0700

Ghana’s President John Atta-Mills died today, after battling throat cancer. He was a leader who desired the best for his country, who had international experience, and a solemn duty.

I first met President Atta-Mills while he was in Vancouver teaching at the University of British Columbia. My mother’s charity was organizing a container of medical supplies to Ghana’s Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, and Dr. Atta-Mills came to see the work. He was a kind, intelligent man who rode the transit system to discover Vancouver, and enjoyed choir concerts at church. It was with an intense conviction he returned to Ghana to continue a political career with one firm ideal: to enrich, and enable his homeland.

When he was elected, I wrote and delivered a poem to honour his rise to the presidential seat. Since then, KBNF members had been to Ghana several times and seen President Atta-Mills, who has supported infrastructure development. Ghana lost a visionary today, and a sincere friend.

My condolences to the country of Ghana, and President Atta-Mills’ family.