God's Subtlety...

Have you ever been in a place where Love and comfort is screaming at you and you can't hear it?...A place where it's sunny outside , but you can't feel it or see it? ...but then it begins. It is not an overwhelming moment to be sure, but simply a subtle move, a twinge perhaps that says; "It's going to be alright." There are waves that still occur, but something is moving in your heart and mind and the Almighty once again is saying;

"I will believe in you especially in those moments when you don't believe in yourself."
THAT is how He loves us...

Turning Points...

Life is full of turning points: marriage, babies, being a parent, death of our parents. Many of us carry on as if life will go on forever. It doesn't. 228 souls perished this week aboard a French airliner. They had hopes, dreams, families and they faded into the ether. A friend of mine, Gary, used to run with the rest of my hobbled middle aged team in the Haney To Harrison Relay. He died of esophagal cancer last year at 58 years of age. I remember running (badly) a 5 km. in honour of Gary's memory last year.
The message is this: We only have so much time on this terrestrial ball.
Many talk alot about sucking all the marrow out of life all that you can.
Yes, in one sense...
In that time and span though, who is being hurt, embittered, damaged
by the way we have lived our lives while we were "sucking the marrow"?
The God I know, sees all, knows all, and allows us to make mistakes, have accidents, love and be loved. Bad things happen to Good people.

I need to accept that fact and possibility in my life.I cannot look after everyone,
but I can take the life I have been given in the midst of possibility and prayer and do His will...

Life In a Box...

If we live our lives in a box, it will be easier. Don't get involved.
Don't bother with people who are street people, Trailer Trash families,
Gay youth, Marginalised poor, Alternative kids, Tourettes, Mentally Ill adults, kids, and the entretched Celtic poor of this community. Walk by , live our lives. There must be somebody out there who does the "care thing" with them or at least shows compassion on some level.
Sorry, I'm not talking about aboriginal communities because the programs, counsellors, youth care workers ,and money that is available is finally there in high frequency due to the saturation of guilt we feel as Canadians because of residential schools that is lacking for the other groups I've mentioned.

Here's a newsflash for everyone. There is a Celtic demographic cohort in my town that is replete with poor, academically disadvantaged kids that has no special funding, no targeted help and a sense that "they" will always be with us. If I begin to use Surnames , you would know the families of whom I speak.

Yet , in all of this they survive, just as their ancesters did so long ago in their homelands, despite the predation of Vikings, the English, famine (half the population decimated) and finally the reception in this gracious land:

" Irish beggars are to be met everywhere, and they are as ignorant and vicious as they are poor. They are lazy, improvident and unthankful; they fill our poorhouses and our prisons, and are as brutish in their superstition as Hindoos."

George Brown, Toronto Globe, 1851


There is a school yard in Toronto that has the graves of many irish men, women, and children under the asphalt that the children play on regardless of the families buried underneath. Sacred graveyard? Nope. Just more diseased Irish bastards best forgotten, just like my community, generations of Celtic welfare poor...remember, everyone matters , this is Canada.

The Little Boy Who Disappeared...

Once upon a time there lived a boy who was close to all of his people.
He often observed and watched the goings on in the village amongst his people.
He was a happy little boy and always felt that his people would always be there for him no matter what happened in his life. He knew that his people would always think the best of him, because they would look after him when the other tribes showed up and threatened the people. As time went on the boy grew and lived apart from his people in the village. He grew and changed. He was not the same boy who lived back then,any more than the people whom he left behind.

When he returned, he found himself at odds with some of his people. This was unusual for him because some of his people were acting strangely. These few were suspicious, angry, and began to ask questions that they already thought they had answers for... He went on a journey to the distant village of Hpleug, because in that village there was a learned man who explained to this grown up boy why his people were so angry. The boy didn't tell them where he was going because he knew that they would understand. He knew that they could entrust him to keep the sacred laws, no matter who he talked to. The learned man who studied the ways of all people, warned him about the "few". The boy listened and told the learned seer that he was wrong in his predictions and that even the one who had been left on the island of desolation with the little ones so many years ago would understand best of all...The learned man listened intently and looked sad for a moment and he nodded to the boy as he smiled weakly. "My boy, the very one who has seen the island of Desolation will not understand, but that one will be bringing the heaviest judgement upon you!"
The little boy was sad and protested again, saying, "I will explain, those few will understand!" The learned man shook his head and said, "No, my son, they will condemn you for this very day that you sit infront of me."

When he returned the villagers greeted him with news of their lives and enquired after his life. The "few" held their tongues with him because they had been talking amongst themselves. They implored the others that this boy had broken the sacred laws. They announced to some that "He has a plan, this crafty boy!" "He seeks to break the sacred laws!" "He is like so many others!" Finally, the one who had seen the island of desolation so many years ago, spoke up. " He is no better than the one who sent me to the island of Desolation!" " Do not believe anything he tells you, he has been thrown over to madness!" "I will make those closest to you understand who you really are!"

He has no sadness about him, he has a plan! What say you boy?

The boy looked up, first at those closest to him, then at the "few", then finally at the victim of desolation who was staring intently at him. He said,
" I only have a plan to survive. You see me as one who is perhaps sick of mind and heart and so my words have become pointless for you as they leave my mouth."
Truely, the only thing that has made me sick of mind and heart is that you, the very victim of a desolation that I am coming to know, does not know me at all...perhaps you never did."
With that, the boy from the village he loved, turned around, and with a heavy heart, disappeared...

Alone...

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”

Mother Theresa



Being lonely has little to do with how many are in the same room or the number of friends we have.
We are living in a sea of lonely people. Due to social convention, and the need for some kind of conversational conformity that we all live by, these people are hard to spot.
They are quiet, they are outgoing, they are married, and they are not married, they are men and they are women.

You will not see it in the span of a day unless, you spend that day looking for it.
If you take that time and energy, you will see it in others.

It is someone who is part of a group listening to a joke or a story and if you watch them, you will see it. It is a quick looking away or a glance downward.
It might come across in a smile that is tinged with melancholy. It could be a call you receive from a friend that seems to be simply filling a gap of time, when in fact, it is really a search to open up or a search for something more.
It is a question in your mind about something that someone said that grips you later in the day and you wonder what they were really trying to say.

Those are lonely people. Some talk too little, some talk too much.
In time, if you wish, you will spot them. If you are a lonely person, it's much easier...

Time To Hope Again...


"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1968, evil was triumphant for the moment and the world's greatest civil rights leader and visionary was cut down on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis.

It was the darkest day and the darkest moment in the modern history of the civil rights movement in the United States. As a 12 year old boy , I remember the hopeless demeanor of the adults around me that day who gazed at the heavens as if to ask why. On the very day that Dr. King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy gave an impromptu speech and said these words:

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

Just two months later, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire with a .22 caliber revolver and shot Kennedy in the head at close range.The many hopes and dreams of people throughout the world concerning the United States was to be buried for a very long time.It was a very hopeless time indeed.

During that time, a skinny, inconsequential 7 year old black child
attended school at St. Francis of Assisi in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The darkness has faded and Dr. Kings words are prophetic...On Tuesday that little black child from 1968, Barack Obama, is being inaugurated as President of the United States. It is time to hope again...

The Stuff I Come From...

I sit here to night in the warmth of my apartment, food at my fingertips, shelter, despite my desire for more, I have all the money anyone should ever need. I have an education that led directly to the career and income that I have...but I must never forget where the motivation and spirit for all of this started...

It all goes back to that little Irish girl Mary Cooper. She grew up in the poor family led by her father, an unemployed shipworker in Belfast. At some point something inside of her pushed her as never before to win the ONLY scholarship in her school of Irish ragamuffins.

She married the Saskatchewan farm boy. He went through the depression, raised by a mother who's people came to this land from Tipperary in the belly of a ship for something better.He went through the war in the foreign jungles of Burma and vowed that if he survived that time of Evil, fear, and the stench of death, he would make something of himself.

We don't celebrate these people because they have always been here as ancestral claimants to this great land. We celebrate them because they left what they knew and drove blindly into a storm we can't imagine...No...I want their Faith...not the cautious old religion of this land.