I Will Wear my Trousers Rolled

 Endings

Beginnings

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--

(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--

(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")

I’ve had occasion recently to revisit T.S. Eliot’s masterful stream-of-consciousness poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and since several of the lines are currently impressed like skipping tracks of a vinyl disc in my head, I decided to ease the repetition by writing a bit about that whole subject—aging and the reflection on the meaning of what we have been.

In my case, the “with a bald spot in the middle of my hair” would be understatement—by quite a bit—and “how his arms and legs are thin” could be replaced with “how his midriff is preceding him,” but I recall how my father’s clothes were all too big on him when he reached three score and ten, and I can empathize with Prufrock.  Besides his hypersensitivity about his changing appearance, Prufrock is plagued by world-weariness, the “why bother” syndrome; why keep up the rituals of coffee times and repetitive, mundane, silly conversations:

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

Being “elderly” grants permission to be honest, frank, impolite if necessary when faced with the same-old, same-old of conversation for conversations sake, but will one have the courage?

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

But knowing finally that we have settled for “shallow” in a universe that cries for “depth” may not be of much use when the truth of the matter finally comes home to roost:

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worthwhile,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question . . .?

There must be a word for that; I think it’s part regret, part too late and part would it have made any difference. Perhaps the right word is ennui.

            Whereas old age used to be an arm’s-length, somewhat mythical phenomenon belonging to a culture that was not mine, I now live in its midst. I have come to appreciate what has been called the wisdom of age in, for instance, my 98-year old neighbour who recently bought herself a new house and asked me a few days ago to help her locate the biography of Mahatma Gandhi’s wife because she’s interested in the life of that forgotten woman. And I’ve seen its opposite, the interminable assembly of jigsaw puzzles in seniors’ centre foyers, the tedious search for tiny pieces of the universe that will fit, and the exultation when a picture that was scattered has been made whole. What a metaphor!

            And yet, it’s hard to assign blame to whatever sadness accompanies old age for many people. My mother-in-law lamented as she approached 90 that all her bosom friends were dead. That recognition alone must be daunting to even the strongest among us. I’ve seen the powerful need to grasp whatever intimacy is left in the world in people in nursing homes and seniors’ centres. I’ve seen how their eyes light up with the hope that my entrance will mean someone to talk to, someone to attend to their existence.

Our institutions for the elderly are wrong, somehow. Like our prisons and hospitals, they group people with similar needs together and isolate them from the population. The reason for this might be obvious; we are so afraid of being old, sick and/or terrified of deviance that we can’t stand to be reminded of our fragility by seeing aging, by seeing illness, by seeing the variety of hurts and angers that combined to make criminals. (I’m exaggerating for effect, here.) Or else we just couldn’t possibly find the manpower to service their needs except we house them close together.

Resignation is the ubiquitous option, isn’t it? I find the penultimate lines in Prufrock as compelling as any in modern poetry:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Perhaps that’s the inevitable finale: I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be . . .. Resignation? Acceptance? Feeble excuse?

Take your pick.

Eat a peach.

You go, girl! . . . or maybe . . . I think . . .

You go, girl! . . . or maybe . . . I think . . .

I’m sure most of you saw the video clip of the House of Commons page with the “STOP HARPER” sign, soiling the pageantry and decorum of the speech from the throne. In an interview after she was fired and turfed out of uniform and job, she said (this is not a direct quote): “I felt I had to . . . like . . . do something. I don’t think his policies are . . . like . . . good for Canadians.” 

               I thought: if she was my daughter and had got this plum job as a parliamentary page, what would I have said to her when she walked in the door? Would I have said, “What’s the matter with you girl? You may not like Harper or his policies (as if you were old enough to understand them), but whatever made you think that this spectacle was justified?” Or would I have said: “Way to go, girl. That took massive courage.”

               The fact is that for the next four years, the Opposition won’t have the ability to “Stop Harper” on anything; the public will have to do it when necessary. A recent poll reported on Yahoo News showed that on some of the more contentious policies—the long gun registry, ending of public funding of political parties, the purchase of billions of dollars’ worth of jet fighters—the majority of Canadians are not on side. I would add the unwarranted and unconditional support of the state of Israel to that list.

If Harper is to be stopped on particular, unpopular policies, it will have to be by Canadian citizens mustering the courage to state their opposition to some of these policies vocally and loudly. We can’t all get onto the floor of the Commons like pages, but maybe we could pick up the STOP HARPER logo, put it on T-shirts that we all wear at crucial times of parliamentary debate. And if that would be too undignified for us, petitions and letter writing do have considerable effect if the numbers are there. Let’s write our MPs . . . copy to the PM and the relevant ministers . . . and say what we favour and what we don’t. That’s not too “out there,” is it?

               Or would that still be making too much of a spectacle of ourselves? Here’s an old saying I just made up: I’d rather be dead than embarrassed. (Actually, I think I read it in some novel a long time ago.) This following one is genuinely mine (I think): Timid citizenries are inevitably rewarded with regressive policies. People can find themselves meekly following political ideologues.

   The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them. (Isaiah 11:6)

You go, girl! You may be dead wrong . . . or you may be the only really courageous person to set foot in the Commons for a long time. I really hope it wasn't just a stunt to get your face into the media. Lots of people will write it off as just that. Perhaps—whatever the final judgment on your action—you shamed some of us out of our silence, and that can’t be all bad. 

   

A Longing to Move Stars

One who doesn't read has no advantage over the one who can't

A long-time friend, AR-F, confided the other day that a series of articles he wrote for our church bi-monthly elicited very little reader response. I admitted that this blog doesn’t produce a landslide of reaction either, although enough to make of it a gratifying avocation, if not a reasonable vocation.

               I’m reminded of a passage in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary:  

. . . since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. 

               That, probably, sums up the core reality for anyone who picks up a pen to write anything for public consumption: it includes a longing to move the stars along with the disappointment that all one has really accomplished is setting in motion the feet of a few dancing bears, and that briefly. How many preachers have delivered sermon after sermon without experiencing reaction or response, let alone genuine dialogue? How many newspaper columnists have ground their teeth in frustration, realizing that only their missteps will be noted—responded to?

               In a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville—author of Moby Dick—lamented the writer’s frustration by blaming it all on the ignorance of the public: 

. . . for not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory—the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity.^[i] 

Has anyone ever understood “the meaning of [Jove’s] great allegory—the world?” I wonder. The quote alerts us to Melville’s intention that his writing be recognized as illuminating allegory, and that’s been how Moby Dick has typically been reviewed and analyzed. His self-deprecation may be typical of artists of every stripe (“we pygmies;” “our paper allegories”): part low self-esteem; part, a fishing-for-compliments.

               That’s one side of the coin.

               On the other side lies the observation that great writing and great speeches have shaped history from time to time. Once in a while, writers hit some sweet spot that resonates, and what they have written or said, painted or sung ‘goes viral’, as they say in this digital age. Will Shakespeare, Rembrandt van Rijn, Caruso, Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, Karl Marx, St. John, The Beatles, Pete Seeger, all artists who managed to hit the sweet spot; you could name a hundred others, no doubt.

The pen may well be mightier than the sword, but knowing where to point it—and when, and how—remains the elusive goal. There will most certainly always be a thousand misses for every hit.

Not long ago, we staged a great concert at the Station Arts Centre . . . and drew all of thirty people. We planned another concert of Mozart’s life and music and cancelled after only fourteen tickets had sold. More misses than hits. A musician in the former group said that there are now so many bands clambering for stage time that it’s hard to draw an audience and I think he’s right; we constantly get phone calls from artists and performers looking for a venue, longing to be heard, and writers wanting us to sell their books.

So what does it all mean?

The argument that it’s all been said a thousand times before in a thousand different ways may be relevant here. But as a final explanation, that would deny that every age, every generation needs fresh poets and artists to illuminate its world, if simply in response to cultural and material evolution. In the 21^st Century, unfortunately, the shifts are so sweeping and broad that anyone aspiring to be an artist is scrambling to find the relevant voice. This scramble is not pretty; there’s enough bad art, bad music and bad writing out there to discourage even the most liberal tastes. Maybe the 22^nd Century will have to pick from our plethora what actually qualifies as art.

It doesn’t help that most of the artists, writers, musicians currently at work were trained in the middle to late 19^th Century and are scratching their heads over life outside their windows. I’m told we’re witnessing the birth of a “post-modern” age; an age that sees the universe more subjectively following a long period of clinging to the virtues of objectivity. Included in this change of perspective is the rejection of many modernist and pre-modernist categories: male vs. female, hetero vs. homo, black vs. white, planning vs. spontaneity, etc., etc. Can our aging artists convert, or does one have to be born into an age to be a genuine part of it? That’s the burning question. I favour the former but suspect the latter.

The futility in trying to save the silverware when the ship is sinking.

So what if writers, artists and musicians can’t move the stars? At least they can take some satisfaction in the fact that their efforts have set a few dancing bears’ toes a-tapping.

30 at a concert may not be many, but it’s not zero either.

And AR-F, I read your columns and appreciated them; I’m sorry I didn’t say so at the time.

              

---

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Moby_Dick, retrieved April 18, 2011.

Long live the Democratic State of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim

Parliament of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim

Imagine this:

In southern Manitoba a portion of land bordered on the north by Highway #1, on the east by Highway # 12, on the west by Highways 240 & 31 and on the south by the US border is separated from the Province of Manitoba by UN declaration and declared a “Mennonite Homeland.” They are a people who have, after all, been hounded around the world – Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine, Bolivia, Mexico; they are a people who have been martyred for their faith, persecuted relentlessly by both mainline Catholic and Protestant rulers of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. They deserve an ethnic homeland, don’t they? Their holy city, Winnipeg, will be shared because it is also a holy city to Grain Exchange stockholders, the ethnics of North Winnipeg, Ukrainians etc. North Kildonan will be the ethnic Mennonite allotment in the city and a corridor will be fenced off to the South Perimeter.

               Over time, Mennonites from Mexico, Uruguay, Saskatchewan and other faraway places begin trickling in to embrace the future of life with “their people,” and land becomes a factor and non-Mennonites “squatting” in this new country are irritants to the goal of homeland. They are bought out if possible, gangs of Mennonites less convinced of the efficacy of non-violence harass them until life becomes too dangerous and unpleasant for them and they leave. Their farms are handed over to the migrants and ethnic solidarity gradually builds.

               But it’s not enough. The country of Canada has always seen this ethnic cleansing as unreasonable and illegal, and launches an attack on the temporary capital of the new country— Steinbach—but the Canadian Army is easily defeated by thousands of men in overalls who know how to use pitchforks. They occupy the battleground—Sandilands Provincial Forest—and begin building settlements for Mennonites from Thompson, The Pas, Glenbush and Peace River who are partial to trees. This, of course, also requires harassing the people already living there until they leave and become refugees in North Dakota, which really doesn’t want them.

               Mennonites in Germany, Netherlands, the USA, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta continue to pour funds into this new country—Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim—in the interest of the existence and prosperity of an ethnic homeland where Low German is spoken and churches don’t have steeples. Security will, of course, always be an issue because Canada, Manitoba and the thousands of refugees who have been driven out will always continue to challenge the sovereignty of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim, and exiles who abandoned farms that had been in the family for ten or more generations will continue to press for a right of return.

               A few days ago, the current Prime Minister of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim, the Rt. Honourable Tchnalz Freezen met with President Obama, who urged him to stop building settlements in the Sandilands Provincial Forest and to return the area to Manitoba. Prime Minister Freezen scoffed and declared that “the reality on the ground” made that option unthinkable. President Obama also pointed out that the land the exiles had vacated had never been relinquished legally and that they should be given the right to return to live in Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim if they so desired. This proposal met with similar disdain and Freezen declared that no settlement with Manitoba would ever include the right of return. Freezen then reiterated that the Mennonites have a right to an ethnic homeland and that their existence is fragile because of the unreasonable hostility surrounding their borders and the occupation of the Sandilands Forest was vital to these interests.

               Many said Obama came out of the dialogue looking like an unreasonable idiot.

               Score one for Tchnalz. Long live the Mennonite Kingdom Democratic State of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim!

              

I'm off to Sunday school

Valley Mennonite Church near Rosthern

It’s Sunday morning. So let’s think about Sunday school for a minute or two.

Here’s the short form: In many churches, there’s an hour before the worship service in which people are gathered into age-appropriate groups and a leader guides them through a theme focused on a Biblical passage or concept, a current issue from a moral/ethical standpoint or historical stories that reinforce the theology of the particular denomination in question. A simplified definition (and somewhat cynical, to boot) is that for children, it’s indoctrination time and for adults, it’s something to do while volunteers are busy with the children.

Sunday school arose as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant rise of a way of thinking we call “modernism” for lack of a better word. Begun by a socially-conscious Anglican minister in England in the mid-18th Century, it was an attempt to provide some literacy education for children working in factories and mines on their only day off. Churches picked up the idea and it grew, particularly in North America.

Child labour legislation eventually cut the children free from the factory floor and to prevent their running wild, compulsory public education was invented. Instead of dropping Sunday school because the need had passed, churches saw in it an opportunity to teach the faith to their children and to proselytize neighbourhood children at the same time. Prizes, parades and picnics were introduced and American children trooped to Sunday school, even if their parents didn’t.

All of this was too much change for conservative branches of Mennonite churches, and both Sunday school and public day school were seen as modernistic, worldly encroachments on the faith while other, more liberal branches saw in these developments a golden opportunity for a better faith in a better world.

But time always overruns even good ideas, and like the Sunday bulletin, the Christmas concert, the mass, a style of baptism, innovations like Sunday school eventually fossilize and become routine.

There’s been a steady decline in church and Sunday school attendance since the 1960’s. The word post-modernism could be applied but it might not explain much. If you don’t attend Sunday school anymore—or never have—you can possibly provide us with some good reasons for the decline. For my part, it seems obvious that failure has been built in from the start. Where the rubber hits the road—in that little classroom off the gym, in some cases—a lay-teacher is passing on to children whatever she or he has gathered up in concepts, preconceptions, prejudices, priorities, etc. picked up who knows where, possibly through radio and TV religio-babble. The next year’s teacher may present an entirely different message, and so on, and so on.

It’s always been an institution built on a foundation of sand. All you had to have to become a mentor and teacher to children (and to adults, for that matter) was a pulse and a church membership. Far too little screening or training has ever been done to allow it to be taken seriously as school.

Educationally, the Sunday school has faltered. In its community-building function, it’s shown itself to be a poor pastiche of the public school system. As a proselytizing mechanism, its age has all but passed. What’s left?

The post-modern age we live in allows us independent thinking, and so I’m sceptical about agreement on what should replace it, what it’s focus should be and who should have the right and the responsibility to make it happen. Robert Raikes saw a social need and a church obligation to address that need, and so he started a Sunday school in 1780. Could something similar happen again? Could there be someone who would so succinctly name the relevant needs of 2011 and initiate a workable response that would address them?

Or would we independent-thinking, post-modernists bury that someone under reasons why it could never work, etc., etc., etc. Or would we squelch the attempt under a mountain of indifference?

I’m leading an adult Sunday school discussion this morning. The topic is Sunday school: past, present, future. No need to be there.

Slip slidin' Away

Mennonite Heritage Museum

I am currently board chair of the Mennonite Heritage Museum. Occupying the historic first-campus building of Rosthern Junior College, it houses donated artefacts, photos, books, etc. reminiscent of Mennonite settlement in the valley of the two Saskatchewan Rivers.

               Museums, auto restorers, antique collectors, nostalgia magazines—seem to me—are all working toward the same goal. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to describe it. Call it conservation, preservation, call it pickling-the-past-so-it-won’t-go-bad, if you like. You can probably describe it better than I can.

               At age 69, I’m the youngest member of the board. I’m reminded of the lyrics of Paul Simon’s Slip Slidin’ Away:

God only knows, God makes his plan
The information's unavailable to the mortal man
We're workin' our jobs, collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away.

And then, the haunting chorus:

Slip Slidin’ away. Slip Slidin’ away

The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip slidin’ away.

I suppose it’s a natural consequence of living; unfortunately—as Simon says—the information’s unavailable to mortal man. This much we know: as we near our destinations, we become more “preservative” in our thinking, become more nostalgic about the myths of “good-old days,” become more burdened by the prospect that we and our lives will be unappreciated, forgotten. That what we have learned and found to be true will not be passed on to a next generation.

               So we create museums, write memoirs, collect artefacts.

               What we should have cultivated—along with the collecting of material objects as “preservative tools”—is the art of storytelling, of myth and legend building. There’s an enormous difference between looking at a Woodland Cree stone hammer lying under glass in a museum and a wrinkled elder holding it in his life-worn hands and telling its story to a rapt audience.

               Let me put it more bluntly: what are slip sliding away are not the collections of stone hammers, samovars and Roger’s Golden Syrup pails; they’ll be here long after we’re gone. What is urgent is the preservation of language itself:  

Hey! Hey! You! You!
I don’t like your girlfriend!
No way! No way!
I think you need a new one
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I could be your girlfriend
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I know that you like me
No way! No way!
I know it's not a secret
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I want to be your girlfriend

Contrasting Avril Lavigne’s I wanna be your girlfriend to Paul Simon’s Slip Slidin’ Away is by no means a fair fight. But consider this: if we lose the art of myth, legend, storytelling that bridges the past to the present and the future, will our language then be all and only about our personal appetites and desires expressed in monosyllabic utterances? Will we cease to contemplate matters beyond ourselves if we forget how conversation, storytelling and listening happen; if we no longer have the words to express much beyond hey, you, I don’t like your girlfriend?

               We are to blame in this. We’ve flooded the world with books, cartoons, games geared for pre-schoolers, then children, then adolescents, pre-teens, young adults, all appropriately scaled to “their level of understanding and interests.” What we’ve missed in this process is that our efforts have served to retard their language learning when we thought it would advance it. Watch “children’s television” for an hour or so if you don’t believe this. It’s the Sesame Street curse on the human race. We’re in danger of wiping metaphor, allegory, parable and poetic appreciation out of our cultures in just a few generations.

               And no collection of artefacts will ever make up for that unless accompanied by the storyteller who’s not afraid to turn off the TV and gather the children ‘round.

               Don’t worry if the last washboard is lost; worry that the story and the storyteller may be slip slidin’ away, gagged with the duct tape of mediocrity and material relevance.

               Have a happy day: tell your grandchild a story.

              

A Post-election Harp

Don't jump; it's only four years!

I was right about one thing: “the economy” is issue enough to win an election. Harper harped and harped on “the economy” to the exclusion of other issues and it turned out to be the winning formula.

 What I was wrong about was pretty much everything else: I thought “contempt of parliament” was basic enough to our democracy to turn the tide. I thought the selective de-funding of agencies as a back-door policy-making strategy would strike more people as fraudulent. It didn’t. I thought the dictatorial management of Harper’s backbenchers would make enough of a difference in local politics to get some voters to say, “Now wait a minute; what about MY issues.” It created a barely-perceptible ripple. I supposed that a substantial block of anti-abortion, pro capital punishment Conservative supporters would revolt at Harper’s ineffectiveness in promoting rightist social issues. They didn’t.

All of which serves to convince me that the 60% majority that lost the election—practically speaking—has its work cut out for it.

 A functioning economy is a wonderful apparatus; it distributes needed goods to people, encourages entrepreneurship and innovation, rewards hard work and punishes slothfulness. But this isn’t the economy that Harper was talking about in the campaign; he was talking about “less government, lower taxes, highest possible growth” model, the very model that brought the USA to its knees and is keeping it there.  It’s the model the corporate world has convinced a lot of Canadians is somehow a basis for stability and wellbeing, when it is actually its opposite. Boom and bust economies—and I hesitate to even call them ‘economies’—are the mothers of unemployment, disappointment, short-term gain for long-term pain, massive profits for a few, the high-speed rape of natural resources . . . 60% of Canadians know the risks and cast their ballots against it. It wasn’t enough.

Harper won the propaganda battle.

But let’s not worry too much. Four years of Harperism will be plenty to disenchant even their base. Harper is presiding over a caucus divided—some of our Saskatchewan MPs for instance, are expecting this majority to produce socially-conservative reforms, which it won’t. Lower taxes means less revenue for health care, the military, you name it, and cutting will be required. Cuts alienate people, even the Conservative voters who bought into the myth that you can spill half the pail of Kool-Aid at the picnic and still have more for everybody will begin to feel disenchantment. Backbenchers will turn on their leader.

But I was wrong before and I could be wrong again. Maybe less government, more guns, lower taxes do pave the road to happiness. Maybe the corporate world will actually ensure that the benefits of less government do trickle down to the masses. Maybe you actually can put the toothpaste back into the tube.

We have four years to find out. For many people, it feels like the Babylonian exile has just begun, and so I would like to comfort them with the words of the prophet Jeremiah in 29: 4ff: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce, Marry wives and beget sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters and you may increase there and not dwindle away. Seek the welfare of any city to which I have carried you off, and pray to the Lord for it; on its welfare your welfare will depend.” Putting aside the diversion that women are spoken of as if they were brood mares, there may be good advice embedded here for the disappointed 60%.

              

Is this as good as it gets?

. . . consider how the lilies grow.

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, etc. I expect you know where I’m going with this. While we’re holding elections in Canada and anticipating some surprising results, privileged dictatorships in other countries are killing their citizens in attempts to hold on to power.

In an extremely flawed world, there’s a danger of overlooking the magnificence of democracy as we know it. No matter what is decided on Monday, the vanquished will go quietly, if sorrowfully, to the sidelines. There will be no tanks in the streets, no crack-downs, no suicidal marches. The RCMP will not be placed on high alert; no jet fighters will be scrambled; the UN Security Council will not meet in emergency session.  

The current campaign has been highly educational. It’s pointed out in stark contrast, for instance, what we now are with what we could become. Stephen Harper has unwittingly made it clear that we haven’t yet mastered the degree of compromise and cooperation that would be necessary before we could ever declare ourselves a mature democracy. His declaration that he will not try to save a minority situation by seeking a coalition with another party smacks of the “my way or the highway” mentality that Canadians just won’t buy anymore—it’s far too reminiscent of an ugly, distant “lord of the manor “past.

The Royal Wedding juxtaposed with the campaign has been informative in its irony, if for no other reason. Even as we struggle (painfully slowly) to hone our democracies for ever more fairness, more equality, more transparency, we suspend our debate to revel in the ultimate cult of personality: adulation for an unelected, undeserved and archaic hereditary monarchy. I’m reminded of the lines from Loving Arms, a song popularized by Elvis Presley, Kenny Rogers, The Dixie Chicks and many others, and written by Tom Jans:  I've been too long in the wind, too long in the rain, searching for any comfort that I can. Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains; laying in your loving arms again. Democracy is hard work; sometimes we’d just like to go back to the days when a king made all our decisions for us.

Speaking of the cult of personality, how and when did our elections degenerate into American Idol-style contests? It’s all about four people, isn’t it? Are we for Harper, Ignatieff, Layton or Duceppe? Closely related to this dumbing-down phenomenon is the focus on strategy. Even our national TV/Radio provider, the CBC, has abandoned dialogue on issues to engage in endless speculation on strategy. It’s all about trends, polls, ads and who’s doing what to manipulate the voters, who’s failing in the ad wars and who’s succeeding. We might as well be watching another episode of “Coach’s Corner” on Hockey Night in Canada. Has Layton’s cane been critical to the NDP surge? Was William’s kissing Kate twice, as opposed to the traditional once, a signal of a new era in the British monarchy?

How I long for a sincere, civilized dialogue on (for example) what we as a country can do to improve the housing situation on reserves, what the right size of military structure might be for Canada, how we’re going to maintain our infrastructures for the next generation, what our current definition of freedom of conscience ought to be.   

How I long for less speculation on how the Liberals, or the NDP, the Conservatives or the Greens should approach the next election in order to succeed.

But enough complaining already. Whatever it is we’ve got, flawed as it may be, I’m exceedingly grateful for it. Remember Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria.

Like my fellow Canadians, I’m allergic to bombs, bullets and blood.

Even so, we could do a lot better, couldn’t we?—or is this as good as it gets?

What's your *****ist, I mean really?

When peace like a river . . .

What’s your *****ist, anyway.

I’ve cancelled my delivery of the paper version of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. “Why?” you ask, in a voice feigning interest. Here are the reasons:

 Main reason: I abhor the waste of resources in that mass of paper, 9/10ths of which interests me personally not at all.

 Secondary reason: Yesterday, the paper led with a huge, front-page headline about Harper pursuing successfully the youth vote. The building interest in the NDP was buried on page 4 or so.

 Third reason: For half the price of paper delivery, I can read on-line the StarPhoenix, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald and/or half a dozen other papers, some of which may print news and eschew propaganda (this may be wishful thinking).

 Fourth reason: Our paper is delivered by Karen refugee kids who are helping their growing family out by peddling their bikes around Rosthern in every kind of weather. It reminds me too much of serfdom. (This one needs more thinking; it might be a reason to continue delivery).


It’s Easter morning in the middle of an election campaign. Like the StarPhoenix, both events put pressure on people to declare themselves, to accept an *****ist adjective, to put themselves into their proper categories.

“Do you believe in less government?”

“No, not necessarily.”

“So you’re a socialist.”

“No, not necessarily.”

 “A communist?”

“Don’t you have to carry a card to be one of those?”

“I myself am an anarchist!”

“Funny. I thought you were a Biologist.”

“That too, I guess.”

“At least you’re not a bigamist . . . are you?”

"Certainly not."

“Well, if you’re an anarchist and an anti-communist, you must also be a fundamentalist, eh?”

“I could be; I don’t know what that word really means.”

“Neither do I, but do you believe in literal resurrection?”

“I’m a biologist, remember?”

“Then you must be an atheist.”

“No, not necessarily. I’m probably a fundamentalist agnosticist.”

“They used to burn hereticists like you at the stake, you know.”

“I think this conversation is going off the rails.”

“Probably a good thing. How about a game of ping pong.”

"Sounds good." 


It’s Easter morning. There’s magic in waking up at 6:30 in the morning and the sun already streaming in through the bedroom window. It’s a kind of resurrection—the spring of the year—that won’t tolerate an *****ist adjective easily. It shines on everybody, no matter what their *****ist, or lack of it. It unites; it abhors division; it shines over fences and walls and says: “Good morning, my children.”

It reminds us to celebrate all those who have spoken those magic words: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”

Peacemaking is a gerund - a noun made out of a verb, if you like; it’s not an adjective.

Pacifist notwithstanding.

Happy Easter.

Thank you Me Me, wherever you are

three-quarters empty

A commentary on Yahoo News by a person calling himself or herself “Me Me” was entitled, “Why the Conservative Base Will Always Vote Conservative.” It equates Conservatism with Authoritarianism and lists the following points (with references to Altemeyer; Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, 1993: Robert Altemeyer is a retired professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba and has written widely on Right-wing Authoritarianism. Haddock, Zanna & Esses references are to a 1993 paper on “Assessing the structure of prejudicial attitudes: The case of attitudes toward homosexuals.)

Does any of this ring bells for you?

*Authoritarianism…happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want--which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal.” (Altemeyer, 2006, p. 2)

*An Authoritarian is “someone who, because of his personality, submits by leaps and bows to his authorities.” (p. 8)

*Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honoured, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians.” (p. 9)

*Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:

1. a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;

2. high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and

3. a high level of conventionalism (believing that everybody should have to follow the norms and customs that your authorities have decreed ).


*High authoritarians are extremely self-righteous individuals who maintain a strong acceptance of traditional (i.e. Religious) values and norms, possess a general willingness to submit to legitimate authority, and display a general tendency to aggress against others (especially those who threaten their conventional values and norms). They see their own aggressive behaviour as righteous rather than hurtful. (Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, 1993)

Authoritarians believe in traditional gender roles, racial prejudice, negative attitudes toward homosexuals, conservative (fundamental or orthodox) religious values, and are low on openness to experience. They are also extra-punitive toward law breakers. They assign longer jail times for any law breaker (no matter how small the crime), they think the crimes are more serious than most people do, and they find “common criminals” to be highly disgusting and repulsive – it makes them feel glad to be able to punish a perpetrator,

. . . But they go easy on authorities who commit crimes.


Thank you Me Me, whoever you are, for condensing some interesting research on the authoritarian mindset.

Don't Walk Your Dog in Swinglow, Saskatchewan

The burning at the stake of 224 Waldensians in France in 1243.

A copper-plate etching by Jan Luyken

Lately, I've been led to think about the meaning of religious freedom by a number of events, starting with a request from the Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan to review Tongue Screws and Testimonies. In keeping with this current preoccupation, I present here some religious-freedom scenarios . . .

1) The Conga Bonga Church in Swinglow, Saskatchewan believes that the god, Conga Bonga, can only be appeased by animal sacrifice, so they have built a huge furnace into which every member throws a beloved pet on the date of the summer solstice, and the smoke rising is a balm to the nostrils of Conga Bonga, and the faithful are protected from dire tragedy for another year.


2) In Bountiful B.C., a fundamentalist Mormon community believes that polygamy is sanctioned by their faith as a legitimate way of life. The leaders are brought to trial on charges of abuse.


3) “In September, 2008, the Province of Quebec changed the religious education curriculum, requiring all students from first grade to the end of high school to take a course each year entitled, Ethics and Religious Culture. The course surveys all religions, treating Christianity on par with all other religions. No religion is permitted to be presented as more desirable than any other. The course is mandatory for all public and private schools. Even religiously based private schools are not permitted to teach a religion course contradicting Ethics and Religious Culture (Quoted from Canadian Council of Christian Charities release of April 5, 2011).”


“CCCC is asking members and other interested parties to pray that the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada make a decision preserving this religious freedom in Canada (ibid).”


It’s quite certain that the definition of “Freedom of Religion” is going to need some pretty significant discussion and debate in Canada in the future. Cooler heads would say that in a multi-cultural democracy, the public institutions shouldn’t favour one religion over another, hence the abandonment of the Lord’s Prayer and Bible readings in public schools makes democratic sense. There are many, however, who still declare that we are a “Christian Nation” and that newcomers ought to adapt . . . so there. You’ve heard the rhetoric.


We’re prone to see issues as having two poles, and only two. You either ban books, or you don't; you favour nuclear energy or you oppose it; you vote on the left, or on the right; you either have free speech or you don’t; either you have freedom of religion or you have tyranny. We don’t do well with nuances, especially on emotional issues.


Take freedom of religion: there’s no likelihood that animal sacrifice will ever be excused in Canada as a facet of religious freedom. If Swinglow, Saskatchewan and it's worship of Conga Bonga actually existed, would the prosecution of animal sacrifice be an infringement on religious freedom? Whether or not polygamy falls under that right or not has yet to be shown. And in the third case above, I’m not sure CCCC has explained it correctly. To my knowledge, separate schools that teach a specific religion will continue to operate under the protection of the Charter, although they may be required to teach the generic course on world religions as a part of a provincial curriculum if the state requires it for graduation, much as they must teach the Biology course even if it includes the theory of evolution.


Like freedom of the press and freedom of speech, freedom of religion is not on a toggle switch – either off or on. By way of comparison, to say one is against the banning of books is absurd. What people who argue on one side or the other of the book-banning question really mean is that they want a more or less liberal policy regarding acceptable literary content. (If the education system were to introduce a neo-NAZI history text into the curriculum, I would be a book-banner, at least until a defensible case for its introduction had been presented. In general, I favour a liberal content policy where material is classified and the choice of its purchase is left to the reader.)


Likewise where the fundamental freedoms are concerned, we shouldn’t allow our debates to boil down to strident defenses of one or the other pole; there is more merit in seeking together the sweet spot, the compromise that allows every citizen to live life in an environment that feels like justice and fairness have been the bases for legislation. That’s what democracy in a secular state means, in the end.


At election time, it seems especially important that we forego clinging to the poles—and risk real dialogue somewhere closer to the middle.


And then, you might well say, we can look down at our feet and realize that hell really has frozen over!




I'm fed up, by George

Jasper Station

Here’s something new besides Election 2011 for which I may sue somebody. You may have heard it among the thousands of ads we’re exposed to—even while watching the news. “By George . . . it’s George—exclusively at WALMART”

At WALMART, no less. Henceforth, don’t look for me at Sears, The Bay or Work Wearhouse. WALMART has appropriated me for their “exclusive” use. Used to be, classmates in elementary school would taunt me with “Georgie, Porgie, puddin’ ‘n’ pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.” Now I expect I’ll be greeted with “By George . . . it’s George.” How can I and all the other Georges go on after this?

If that isn’t depressing enough, how about the election rhetoric we’re supposed to swallow day after day? My good friend, HS, and I agree. Democracy may be a wonderful ideal, but the way we do it these days, i.e. party-system acrimony, is dumbing down the population. The competition for seats has become the underlying theme, as if it were the world cup of propaganda; the issues are only trotted out as absolutely necessary to support that propaganda. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between the competition for sales among the big box chains and our politics, except the retail world may still retain a smidgen of respect for our intelligence, 'by George . . . it’s George' notwithstanding.

CBC interviewed some voters in a car dealership in Northern Alberta the other day. They will all vote for Stephen Harper. One said, “Ah, we’ll probably vote Conservative, and then be ashamed of what we get.” If that doesn’t sum it all up, I don’t know what would. He’s obviously grasped in his own way the absurdity of party politics in our day.

HS suggests that change will never come from the top, and I agree. At any given point, the persons in government see it as a detriment to their interests to effect a change. That’s our Gordian Knot. But I look at Libya, Egypt and Tunisia and realize the other truth that HS iterated forcefully: change has to be forced by the people, by you and me.

So here’s one proposal. A vote strike. Let’s all agree to spoil our ballots, or stay away from the polling stations altogether and back our refusal to participate with a clear message and a bold demonstration that we want a more civilized governance model, and then insist upon it. There would be massive upheaval for a time, but look at Egypt; if you’re serious about change, you have to put some money where your mouth is.

Here’s one example of what we’ve allowed ourselves to become: that debacle we call a “Leaders’ Debate,”—that display of petulance, bad manners and false accusations wants to exclude Elizabeth May because the Greens had no representation in the last parliament. Well excuse me, this isn’t about who GOT elected, but who WILL BE elected! Every Canadian who votes will see a representative of each party on the ballot and will choose among these equals. It is in our power to make Elizabeth May prime minister, and for the leaders currently in office to deny that we have a chance to oust them and choose someone else—say Jack Layton or Elizabeth May—is tantamount to holding the ballot in contempt.

But then, contempt for the people, their parliament and now, their ballot, seems not to be a deterrent politically.
This, too, shall pass. But only if we want it badly enough and exercise some courage.


If you happen to see me this week, don’t greet me with “By George . . . it’s George” or I will take you to WALMART against your will, chain you to the ladies’ wear rack and make you spend a whole day absorbing the ambience of consumerism gone mad. Or I’ll make you sit through the entire leaders’ debate.

Two scenarios specifically designed to prepare us for the rigours of hell.

The substance of things hoped for . . .

Still life #6

“I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.”
(http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/i/immanuel_kant.html#ixzz1HWKiIuSS)

Let me begin by toying for a minute with the quote above from Immanuel Kant:

In the boarding house of my soul, I harboured two tenants; Knowledge and Belief. Belief was resident on the premises first and occupied the big room, but after Knowledge moved in, his need for space kept expanding and he demanded that he be given the big room. Thus ensued a continuous tension in the household and I felt compelled to make a choice. Since Belief was my cousin and was in close harmony with the remaining tenants, I sadly evicted Knowledge and resigned myself to living without him although I had found his dynamism invigorating.   

Obviously I’ve ripped the quotation out of its context, unless you consider the brainyquote website to be a context. Also, it could be interpreted in other ways than through the “boarding house” imagery. It could—by itself—be a lament for having misunderstood that knowledge and belief can dwell together, indeed must dwell together in harmony. And then there’s the whole issue of the meaning of the two slippery words at its core: What is our common understanding of knowledge? What do we mean by belief? Is knowledge a synonym for wisdom? Is belief another word for faith? Definitions of abstract nouns are approximations at best.

I’m pretty sure we all know what the quotation is about, nevertheless. When discovery contradicts belief, a crossroads presents itself. Many choose the road of denial in the assumption that holding on to a belief against all evidence is a virtue. Others turn their backs on their previously-held beliefs, sometimes with great disappointment and dismay. Some seem to have accepted the great conundrums of life with equanimity and confidence.

I don’t believe that earthquakes are shakings of the earth by an angry God. They are the inevitable results of the earth’s brittle crust reacting to the contraction of a gradually-cooling interior of our planet.  Fill a bottle with water, screw down the cap and set it out in a Saskatchewan January night. The bottle will break; earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes will happen. Knowledge tells us why.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).” Maybe we’re just too hung up on the sanctity of “believing.” Faith may be where it’s really at; faith in the sense of “the substance of things hoped for.” I suspect that between expanding knowledge and the kind of faith that hopes, that loves, that is optimistic about a future as yet unseen, there is no conflict.

 No reason why they can’t live amicably in the same house.

Gormley vs Shasko

Still Life 05

Few people will know this, but Larissa Shasko is the leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan. I know this because she and two party stalwarts stopped in at the Station Arts Centre a few months ago and we had a chat about this and that, after which I wished them luck and gave them my card. I now get their email communications: policy developments, nominations, news, etc.


So I was drawn to a podcast of a guest appearance by Larissa on John Gormley live. Gormley is Saskatchewan’s resident "right-wing" talk show host on Rawlco Radio’s News Talk 650 in Saskatoon, a role that seems to have become a staple fixture in every North American city these days. The subject was nuclear energy. John Gormley is avidly for it; Larissa Shasko is adamantly against it. I’m guessing that no minds were changed by the exchange. Neither was it a very “compelling” subject; Gormley had to work hard to get three people to phone in.


The basic positions are clear: Saskatchewan mines raw uranium and will need energy in the future; it makes obvious economic sense for the province to exploit this resource for energy and medical purposes. On the Green Party side: the problems of safety have not been resolved and we don’t appear to be getting closer to finding, for instance, a safe storage place for spent, radioactive material; at the same time, it diverts us from the real challenge, namely to make advances in solar and wind technology and the reduction of our need for more and more energy.


Two observations: the earthquake and tsunami in Japan raised memories of Chernobyl and although Saskatchewan contains no earthquake-prone fault lines, we all share a fear of the silent, invisible killer that nuclear power plants can’t keep caged with complete certainty. And secondly, economic arguments, compelling as they may be, shouldn’t be as determinant as they seem to have become. Nuclear energy—or any other consequential enterprise, for that matter—has cultural, social, religious, ecological, anthropological, psychological, health, environmental and practical implications as well. Why not argue the nuclear debate from a health point of view, for instance? Surely health is as important to us as economics.


It seems to be the first order of business for our culture—and particularly that portion of it we call the “right wing,”—to strip each decision of every consideration except the economic. If it makes us richer, it must be good.


I have to give the Green Party this: they’re not afraid to stand up and shout out that these are not simple, single-minded debates; that there are mighty things at stake here, things that no amount of money can remedy if they go wrong.


Seems to me the Green Party is the only one that isn’t yet embedded in the political culture of the Conservative, Liberal, NDP and the Bloc, where winning the next election is more immediate than making wise choices. Maybe that would become the Green’s future should they win substantial seats in any election, I don’t know. But when I look at the platforms of the parties, it’s the Green Party that expresses most closely my own view of how this culture ought to shape its future.


Gormley praised Shasko for being the only “left-wing” representative willing to appear on his show. It’s a sign of the political climate in Saskatchewan that every action, every comment has to be placed in a left-wing or right-wing box, which means in turn that every argument is categorized and accepted or rejected not on its merits, but on whether its source is the right or left. How sad is it when a wind generator can be categorized as a part of socialist plot?


Go, Larissa Shasko, go.

Image, Substance

Still life 04

Republican presidential-hopeful Mike Huckabee seems to have discovered what our Prime Minister could have told him a long time ago: in a large whack of the North American population at this time, substance is of little consequence; it’s image that sticks. Although knowing that none of these things are true, he has stated and/or implied that President Obama was born and raised in Kenya by his father and grandfather (he was born in the USA and spent most of his growing-up years in Indonesia), that he is Muslim (he has been a member of Christian churches all his life), that he is anti-West and anti-American (as proven by the fact that he had a bust of Churchill moved in the White House and replaced with one of Abe Lincoln – go figure!). (Check out an interview with Huckabee on You Tube, or see http://www.canada.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Huckabee+embracing+Obama+myths+eyes+Republican+candidacy/4385905/story.html )

 And image is everything in Conservative Party advertising these days: besmirch Michael Ignatieff’s character and fill people’s minds with images of Stephen Harper interacting with his family, silhouetted against the flag, playing the piano. The Conservative Party of Canada apparently believes that if they can throw enough mud at the opposition while portraying their leader in the best, most patriotic light, enough Canadians may buy into the propaganda to win them another election.

They may be right. Surveys show that Canadian young people (15-25) are not politically knowledgeable, and when many people don’t have the information or understanding needed to be active citizens in a democracy, image building (and besmirching) may be the road to victory after all:

“Young Canadians’ political knowledge is low – only slightly higher than the level of their American counterparts and, therefore, low compared with Europe. This suggests that European nations are better at disseminating the information and skills needed to turn its young people into participating citizens, and raises the question of whether Canadians should look there, rather than to the United States, in seeking to address the issue. (See http://www.irpp.org/newsroom/archive/2007/1115sume.pdf)”  

Do Canadians understand the significance to democracy of Bev Oda’s lying to parliament and Harper’s shrugging it off? Of the proroguing of parliament to avoid a critical test? Of the function of election spending rules and the far-reaching significance when leadership “bends the rules” they themselves have set? Of the repeated stonewalling on the dissemination of information vital to Canadians on something as serious as our war against the Taliban in Afghanistan?

People who don’t “get this stuff” can probably be swayed by image advertising; can probably even be found in enough numbers to win another minority. Seems Huckabee has figured that out. Our political parties seem to have come to a similar conclusion.

For far too many Canadians—and probably even a greater percentage of Americans—substance is of little consequence; it’s image that sticks. Someone needs to tell Harper the obvious; if he wants a majority, he may need to walk around in hockey garb throughout the campaign! Hockey is, after all “our game.” It’s something we get.