Is the epic street drama seeding commitment?

Previously in this space, the difference between a fixation on literalism as a kind of litmus test for what to believe, in contemporary discourse, and a more symbolic metaphoric, archetypal and even mystical window on the nature of reality has occupied our time.

Yesterday, positing the picture of a Christian theology book-ended by original sin and a final judgement, dependent perhaps too much on a literal notion of both book-ends. And it seems worth some unpacking to shake these images loose from their strictly literal meaning and importance in order to open up overtones, resonances and rumblings of a different kind of perception.

Not the difference between figure and ground, as the gestalt’s would have us distinguish, so much as an integration into the threatening/dark implications of those damn book-ends, and their potential place in a mystical universe in which we all dwell.

There are some well-worn notions in our culture that speak for example, to an artist’s being able to present a scene/scenario that speaks to a contemporary audience, while it also expresses an eternal truth with which people hundreds of years hence can identify. Epitomizing this imaginative gift of bridging the “now” with the “eternal” from the perspective of literature, is Shakespeare. His histories, comedies and tragedies continue to shed light on the most intimate, nuanced, and profound human traits displayed in the face of other equally commanding, nuanced and intimate traits of others. Exaggeration in such controlled and muted delivery, often through only hints, glances, raised or lowered voices, a mere gesture perhaps, we are transported from the routine of our lives into the “weeds” of the lives of others albeit fictional characters, often to the point where we are ‘inside’ an experience the Greeks called pathos, ‘suffering’ as we enter into the “plight” of the tragic hero.

Literary and theatre critics have, and will continue to parse the components of a drama, comparing them to other titles and experience. However, the audience, (in Shakespeare’s instance the ordinary folk in the ‘pit’ (for a penny) is both ingesting and digesting what is playing out before them, and simultaneously being enveloped into the scene. The first dynamic (ingesting and digesting) is likely more conscious, cognitive and perhaps even emotion; the second, however, is likely to be more unconscious, not given voice perhaps until weeks or months after the experience. The immediate tensions being enacted on the stage like sound and light penetrate the first layer of perception. The resonations of those initial stimuli, like a pebble on a pond, continue to reverberate beyond our conscious, mental, emotional or even psychological control.

 Depending on the unique relevance to each person in the theatre, the whole experience flows into a metaphoric stream of images, themselves both literal and imaginative, that like a river form currents, eddies, shoals, whirlpools and even cataracts to which each day, book, person, and imaginative vision are added. We are not necessarily cognizant of the imprinting each of these experiences leaves, at the time. It can be decades before they rise up into a new day of consciousness, demanding to be encountered again, as if for the first time.

One example: On reading Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea for the first time, one is left with the heroic endurance of the old man and his tender and deep affection for the young boy. Decades later, it is the “destroyed but not defeated” irony, paradox and the depth of the human spirit’s resilience that becomes the hero. Depending on the contemporary cultural current, some will read Hemingway as the prophet of macho Alpha masculinity; at other times, he will be considered a poet of such understated, even sparse prose and another irony/paradox will take centre stage. Curiosity, including a vicarious search for Hemingway’s own pursuit of the fine line between safety and danger, where the thrill of human existence comes face to face with the characters and each reader, seems to keep us reaching for his books.

In each and every moment, we can experience those same thrills, fears, tears, ecstasies and traumas that have been the life-blood of the human story from the beginning. And without our controlling these moments, we often come face to face with both trauma and ecstasy simultaneously without giving voice or even cognizance to all of the complexities of that moment. We have been so conditioned, trained, and shaped by a culture that considers such paradoxes outside the norm of normality that we unconsciously comply with the overriding convention. And religion, in its attempt to regain ‘touch’ with the depth and the beauty and the complexity of what it is to be human, too often falls into the same kind of complicity.

There is a legitimate argument to be made that religion, especially of the mainline religions, is too embedded in the corporate, for-profit, short-term revenue and happiness curve that comes from opinion polls, and thereby almost by default, either avoids or denies (or both) the deeper, wider, more complex and more penetrating truths of our relationship with the ineffable, the ultimate, the inestimable and the mystical.

Of course, we permit adventures of the imagination through science fiction time travels, or dark-forest thrills among vengeful beasts, or romanticized heroic adventures in epic conflicts, as part of our literary, imaginative and cognitive development. Nevertheless, we generally leave those escapades to the fiction writers, the screen writers and the movie producers to provide ‘entertainment’ that feeds our various appetites for adventure and/or escape.

It is, however, that moment when the art and the audience unite, that moment when there seems to be no separation between the actions and actors on the stage (screen, book) and the now participant in the scene that we know a different experience than one in which we are mere spectator/manipulator/objective evaluator.

The most common path to travel in pursuit of something “unique” and “moving” and “beyond both reason and imagination” is that path of human love for another human being. It is no accident that movies in which central characters travel closer together, not only physically and emotionally, but also as one spirit, continue both to be written and produced. Our appetite, among both men and women, for the inexplicable, ineffable, undefinable unity of two spirits, minds, hearts and persons is a core feature of our identity. Naturally, we ascribe our individual uniqueness to those occasions when it seems that we are in such a state of euphoria, with or without our trust in its capacity to endure.

And as in many of our activities, we ‘work’ at making such experiences of euphoria happen. It seems, to a superficial observer (as opposed to a clinical specialist) that both men and women “work” at this “adventure” differently. Ironically, as with other aspects of our journey, it seems that when we are less compelled, less obsessive, and even apparently less interested, and therefore less competitive, strategizing, finagalling and even dedicated to the pursuit, “something” happens for which we are neither in control nor prepared.

In a culture in which observable, measureable, definable objectives are the hallmark of achievement and the concomitant acceptance, integration reward and advancement, we are means to an end. Often, we participate in “ends” that have been designed and defined by others. And while those ends seem worthy, we are then embedded in the pursuit of creative means to achieve those ends. Along the way, we develop social and educational structures dedicated to helping young people fit into the needs of our defined ends, some of which are less worthy than others. Additionally, the full range of individual talents, skills, interests and proficiencies is shaped by the overall strategy with the “end” taking precedence over the means.

In our inflated perspective of our expert knowledge, based on the empirical evidence of researchers in various scientific fields, we leap into tactical decisions, in the first instance that seem appropriate for immediate reward (personal and/or organizational), having abandoned common sense insights of what it really means/needs/aspires to be fully alive as a human being.

In fact, even discerning between personal and cultural needs and aspirations has become something of a mystery. We are so intent on appearing appropriate, engaged, valued and “on point” that if we witness an eruption in the public consciousness, the culture, including many corporations, governments, schools, universities, and, yes, churches, seem to rush to be part of the band-wagon of public energy, enthusiasm, and change. Like moths rushing to the porch light, only to burn out to the porch floor by morning, we are gravitating from one pole of apparent innocence, ignorance, insouciance or even apathy to another pole of nuclear urgency. This is not to disdain the current “black lives matter” movement, nor the legitimate pursuit of equality by the LGBTQ community.

However, it is to illustrate how disengaged, disinterested and un-empathic we are unless and until we are stirred to some kind of new consciousness.

If we had been asked, six months ago, if we believed that minority races among us were being treated fairly and justly by the government and the society generally, most of us would have answered “No!” And then we would have walked away from that pollster, immediately engaged and engrossed in our next text or lunch date, or movie review. It is not out business to be constantly engaged in the plight of those voiceless among us, unless we have determined and sought a specific role in the minimal energy that seeks and welcomes new recruits.

Homelessness, poverty, racial inequality, economic disparities, and the history of such blights have become such a drum-beat of cultural reality that we have grown inured to its depth. And, yet, at a moment, completely out of our daily lives, we witnessed a brutal murder of an innocent black man, under the knee of a white cop. So enraged are we, and so emboldened by the breadth and the depth of the uprising around the globe, that we breath differently, in the hope/aspiration that such sheer coldness will thaw this time, although it has so far not thawed at similar and even more devastating brutalities.

Now we are individually and collectively at the point, it seems, where our aspirations are intersecting with our needs. We need to have lunch, to find or do work with dignity, and we need to fulfil our responsibilities. Do we also need to take formal, personal and collective steps to become part of the wave of change?

Do we have a sense that we are participating in a moment in history that really connects with our deepest passions, beliefs, ethics, morality and personal legacy? Or do we consider such moments as merely another passing “flame” like those Roman candles on July 1 and 4 (in Canada and the U.S. respectively) that light the sky and then burn to ashes almost instantly.

Are we really part of a universal, human and humane energy that is disturbed by the various injustices, inequities, disparities, and brutalities in which we are all complicit so long as they continue? Or are we merely passing through, just eking out an existence, waiting for the next anniversary, or the next home game, or the next election, or the next promotion?

Such questions are not exclusive to a specific ethnic or religious, or geographic or political ideology. They are questions at the heart of how we see ourselves, how we consider our relative importance to the moment we are living. And they are questions begging answers that can come only from the depth and freshness of that river of our spirit, infused with the literary, and reflective and physical and engagement opportunities that we have been provided, that we have sought and that we hopefully continue to seek.

Our personal needs, it says here, are not disconnected from our aspirational needs; indeed without our aspirational needs, we would have no imaginative energy to put one foot in front of the other. Aspirations cannot be left to politicians whose promises we expect are hollow and merely mascara for their election, while anesthetizing our expectations. It is our complicity in permitting our aspiring leaders to deploy such aspirational bromides as political grease to enable their success, without transforming their aspirations into our legitimate needs, and calling for delivery, that makes us all less interested and willing to engage in the public process.

The eternal, ineffable and the mysterious, beyond the empirical digits of data to which we are all seemingly addicted, continue to hold both promise and challenge for those courageous enough to consider taking a legitimate seat at the table of the public square. 

Our participation only adds strength to the movement to right the glaring wrongs; our withdrawal, silence and cynicism only encourage those committed to their own needs, at the expense of the voiceless.

Stretching definitions of issues into a common humanity

Back in 1995, from Bejing we heard Hilary Clinton refer to women’s rights as ‘human rights’. Today, we read on the ReformJewish.org website, the headline,
“Racism is a health crisis.” Neither of these epithets misrepresents the fundamental principle that people and their health, and the laws under which we al live are essentially so intimately connected that we cannot deny their cross-implications.

Others have argued, again legitimately, that education is a human right, that health care is a human right, that clean air, water, land is, taken together, a human right. Access to daily adequate nutrition is a human right. Freedom from unwarranted targeting, arrest, and incarceration is a human right. Freedom of speech is a human right, as is the right to unimpeded access to live out a religious discipline. Access to work with dignity, is another human right.

Some countries, like Canada, have enshrined a “Charter of Rights” into our constitution, as recently as 1981. The collision of conflicting “rights” has prompted legal challenges to the Charter, given, for example, the competing rights of a landlord and a tenant in the landlord’s premises. In the former NAFTA, as in other previous trade accords, the right of a signatory country to sue another signatory in the event that a corporation in the former country demonstrates trade practices (i.e. price and wage subsidies) that are deemed to be a contravention of the laws and practices of the latter country. (The USMCA has, fortunately not included that clause.)

Pursued through legal, judicial channels, rights of whatever domain pertain to individuals or groups of humans. And these ‘rights’ are both defined and applied in cultures of their origin, while only occasionally, across national borders. Is the commitment of a specific crime in one country, for example, considered a crime in the country now being asked to extradite a individual to the applicant nation? So, while we have a practical language, street vernacular, that uses the words “human rights” and, on occasion, in order to underline the depth of urgency, a racial crisis is dubbed a health crisis, (amid a global pandemic) we are all left to live in the vortex of swirling notions on linguisitic continua, (implying also both legal and cultural norms), as well as the full range of urgency from mild to emergent.

In these spaces we have argued, seemingly interminably, for men around the world to open minds and hearts and spirits to the notion of androgyny, specifically our own unconscious ‘anima.’ And there are growing signs that men are becoming more aware and more importantly comfortable with our own sensitivities, compassion, empathy, and even our tears, and the permission to shed them. Such a  perspective has the potential to enrich the lives not only of each man but of each person in that man’s circle, including especially his family, including both sons and daughters. The mere tossing of that pebble into the common pond of human existence will ripple for centuries.

And here we go again, to stretch the elasticity of what comprises a human rights issue, or a health crisis, into a perspective that embraces not only the narrow ranges of a bell curve of normal human discourse and the parameters of public issues, into a shape shifting embrace of debunking myths that have held us in “check” for eons.

Example, we have already noted the Christian church’s historic cornerstone of the evil inherent in all human beings, linked to a forgiveness, by grace, through a death and resurrection of a Saviour. The ‘street’ version of that highly nuanced notion is that evil is predominant in human societies, and requires control, reconnaissance, individual and cultural ‘protections’ and the inculturation of the young into a kind of wariness and anxiety about ‘the other’. “Don’t talk to strangers” is one of the aphorisms along with ‘say your prayers,” and “Santa has been making a list of who’s naught and nice”…just to keep everyone on their moral and ethical toes.

Yesterday, the prison system in Norway featured a very different set of premises than those deployed in many western, ‘civilized’ and ‘developed’ nations. Rates of incarceration, sentence parameters, prison conditions and expectations, relations between ‘officers’ and ‘clients’ differ dramatically from many western jurisdictions.

Underlying some of those differences is the spectre that many people who “offend” are in such deep pain already, that mere separation from their rest of their lives is punishment enough, and does not need testosterone injections of political, racial, or military bullying to reform. It even appeared reasonable to suggest that world leaders, especially those whose contempt for human life seems exaggerated, neurotic and unnecessary, might visit and listen to the Norway judicial system’s authors and leaders, as a way of shifting their hard-power addictions (including subterfuge, secrecy, lies and the impunity of punitive scourges of whatever demented nature they employ, to a more modest, moderate, effective and humane foundational cornerstone for their respective jurisdictions.

Given that the populace of ordinary people does not have access to the legal systems in their towns, and the labourers do not have the resources to change the way leaders dominate, except by amassing in numbers in shouts and cries of angst, anger, oppression and even desperation, perhaps the concept of how extremes of thought, language, ideology, including abstract concepts like evil and time, life and death concurrently play out together, simultaneously, everywhere.

Not only are humans part of nature, we are all intimately engaged with the first moment of human history (including the discoveries of pre-history, archeology, anthropology, as we are also intimately connected to what human cultures have termed ‘the end times,’ or ‘eternity’ or, from an even darker perspective ‘the apocalypse,’ and ‘the judgement.’ For many in western Christian regions, human seems book-ended by an “original sin” and a “final judgement” when every detail of our lives will be disclosed to an omnipotent, omniscient, and obviously stern judge and judgement. Not accidentally or incidentally, it is worth noting that many live their lives in a state of more anxiety than might be justified, without the “fear” of God (the Greek word really translated as “awe”). States of the ambitious pursuit of perfection, including a prevalent reduction of whatever one does to its minimalist dimension, (in order to maintain complete control), and/or the resistance to expectations one deems inordinate, while representing guide-rails for the young to help them learn the middle of the road, tend to generate excessive examples of self-sabotage. It is many of these self-sabotages that then become either or both legal infractions and judgements, or health crises. Tying each moment to eternity, at least as an exercise in metaphoric imagination and envisioning, after having shed the collar of original sin, again imaginatively and metaphorically, could open clearings in a dense dark forest of prevailing, cultural and 'religious' darkness into a very different mental, imaginative and spiritual rocky cliff. In that 'space,' overlooking a panorama of nature,  one can see the gift of being an integral, necessary and creative component of a thriving, pulsing, vibrant and inspiring universe. And that just could be a stimulus to a conversation with both the self and the Great Spirit that sparks new possibilities.  

At each end of the continuum proscribed by the Christian tradition is a form of scarcity, writ SCARCITY, especially in comparison with an effable deity. We are not enough, could be inscribed on the bulletin boards of classrooms and in workplaces, certainly in hospitals, and prisons. And the conventions that embolden such a wide-spread attitude are present, (without being recorded by name) in each cabinet meeting, each corporate board meeting, each diocesan convention and in far too many seminaries and academes. It is not merely by the specific content of their deliberations that these conversations are limited, but by the range of those conversations.

It is not only the absolute need to identify “systemic abuse" (racism, greed, opportunism, ageism, sexism, inordinate control needs/neuroses) but the range of thought, and the strategies that are inhibit so much of our private thought and public discourse. We limit ourselves by notions of scarcity of money, of imagination, of creativity and of possibility, not only because we are convinced that we have to be “responsible” and that means ‘sticking to budget’ and being “realistic”…Yet, our lens for the interior assessment of such parameters is so reductive, based on our determination to “fit” into the expectations, and by our fixation on precedent.

Precedent has, of course, provided us with previous learnings that show us how “not” to do something. Nevertheless, even with all of those cautions, we often forget that “that was then and this is now” …the epithet that attempts to release all discussion from having to conform with the past merely to honour it and its heroes. It is cliché to note that in every birth there is a corresponding death, and vice versa. It is also a continuity to which few refer/defer, given our preoccupation with all things “life-giving,” in the most literal sense of those words. In every beginning lie the seeds of each ending; and similarly, in each and every pandemic, in which millions die, there are millions of greenings that are erupting, without a library of precedents (in their specific discipline), and without a truckload of incentives.

We are learning of the limitations, both of the ways our societies and cultures have been blind to the notions of what is possible, what is conceivable, what is and has been permitted, given that we are all living in conditions that threaten the very foundations of our economic principles (many more are now advocating for a guaranteed annual income, for example, as well as for social workers and mental health workers to accompany calls for help). The parameters of the phone number 911, for example, are based on the need for “fire, ambulance, or police”…and the  operators are trained to ask which option is required in each call. Conceivably, those parameters will expand to include a more nuanced characterization of the situation of the alarm, with a corresponding outcome of fewer lives being injured or lost.

Accountants, and lawyers, while necessary, are not the most imaginative “experts” to generate either policy options or even perspectives for a government mandate. Public discourse, including the dominance of conflict required and even manipulated in order to generate headlines for news outlets, is another of the limiting and thereby defining cultural expectations. So long as a fight is going on, even if the two sides are shouting about irrelevancies, redundancies, petty differences, our culture runs a serious risk of considering the ‘heat’ more significant that the darkness (as opposed to light) the debate is generating. To consider most of the contemporary political debates substantive, is, in a word, laughable.

We are reduced to a daily menu of minutiae, crumbs on a menu of only fast food, at a time when only the richest and most expansive, creative, courageous and challenging of ideas, and the people to espouse and advocate for those ideas is required.

We have to begin to see the ‘universe in a grain of sand’ (Blake) or the reality that each moment in time is indeed connected to both the beginning of time and the eternity (Jurgen Moltmann), in order to fully appreciate the significance and the humility that must attend each of our decisions. Following in the moccasins of our indigenous brothers, we have to begin to see ourselves as empowered stewards of the land, the water, the air and the creatures of the planet, both in the wild and in our streets and neighbourhoods. And we have to resist the vacillation that has accompanied so many pendulum swings from one ideology to it opposite, from one economic system based solely on profit (unfettered capitalism) to one that excludes all foreign people (nationalism), and from one differentiated approach to the protection of the environment (thereby preserving political turf, domain and tenure) to a less “effective” approach. We have to come to a shared, voluntary and embracing vision that if one of our brothers or sisters is left in the ditch of our insouciance, we are all shamed by the dereliction, not merely of our duty, but of our denial of our highest aspirations, including our better angels.

Hope is that concept so abstract and so illusive as to be embraced by all political, economic and religious entities. And like the appropriating of their definition of a deity by all enemies in all wars, having been appropriated for all causes, both honourable and dishonourable, hope has fallen into the trash can of our disavowal. We have lost the potential of hope to inspire, not only because our leaders have so tarnished its potentially platinum sheen, but because we have slid, together and almost unconsciously, into a slough of literalisms, diagnoses, instant and completely successful remedies, along with a growing dynamic of trashing our competitors.

The potential of the political aphorism, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” is not adequate to restore a faith in and a pursuit of a unity of purpose, as well as of method to confront, together, the convergence of the many forces that are facing us, from behind our masks, and under the prospect of both testing and quarantining, into the full breathing and dancing on the beaches of our best, shared and interdependent hopes and dreams.

Let’s all try to shift beyond the clichés of our faith, of our economic system, and of our inherent comportment with conformity and tolerance of  minimal expectations linked to maximal anxieties.

An apology for and an application of revised perspective on human beings

 How does one reconcile the notion of a kind, generous, compassionate, gregarious, collegial and collaborative concept of human beings with the rampant abuse of power both by individuals and more importantly by organized power blocs? Readers in Hong Kong and Ukraine have to be disturbed, anxious somewhat frightened and perhaps even disconsolate given the conditions under which they are trying to live.

The most recent imposition of a national security law by Bejing in Hong Kong will not only drive out some businesses (e.g. TikTok) and pro-democracy leaders (Nathan Law)

The government of the United Kingdom has indicated it will offer a home to the three million British citizens living in Hong Kong, with an assurance of both work and eventual citizenship, should they choose to leave. Other governments, including Canada, have scrapped their extradition treaties with Hong Kong and some have discontinued shipments of technical military materiel to the island. The virtual demise of the “one country, two systems” framework along with a high degree of autonomy promised back in 1997 when control reverted from Britain to Bejing seems the most likely outcome from the latest clamp down by the authorities in Bejing. And given the widely reputed abuses of human rights by the Chinese government (currently think Uyghurs), and the severe restrictions on free speech (even the law enforcement and public shaming of the COVID-19 whistleblower doctor in Wuhan), the rest of the world has little to no confidence that democracy will ultimately survive in Hong Kong.

And here is where the better angels of the human species have been, are and hopefully will continue to be awakened, aroused, activated and eventually effective in resisting Being’s hegemonic over-reach. Fifty years, beginning in 1997 stretches to and includes 2047, the next twenty-seven years of what will undoubtedly be some of the most turbulent decades in world history. The Hong Kong crisis brings into clear focus and magnification the need for the civilized world to come to grips with rogue states who consider they have free license to take whatever actions they deem appropriate to silence free speech, to arrest protesters engaged in legitimate civil disobedience and to flex their national muscles/ambition/and interior neurosis into international waters, across national boundaries or into regions like the Arctic and space.

Given the record of the international community to confront, push back and even leave a dent in the international reputation and standing of the Putin-led Russian government following its incursion into eastern Ukraine and its “snatching” “Crimea” from the Ukrainian government (notwithstanding claims of Russian cultural and linguistic roots there) can the rest of the world have confidence in the willingness of western government leaders to surrender “sovereignty” sufficiently to generate resistance adequate to restrain Putin’s insatiable appetite for re-establishing what he considers the glory of Russia? Increased contributions of both money and resources to NATO from member nations, while needed, seem somewhat lame given the apparent urgency of the invasion of Crimea at the time it happened. Sanctions too, on individuals and agencies/organizations/companies seems to have minimal impact.

Dissuading oligarchs like President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin from over-reaching into political, geographic and national territories (let’s not exclude invasions in the privacy and national security of western nations by both China and Russia), from price and supply fixing with Saudi Arabia, for example, and for building military bases in the South China Sea as another example, seems to have become a step too far for western governments to take.

It is perhaps trite and glib to peek through this porthole on the hegemonic abuse of power by China and Russia and see on the horizon little or no authentic and credible and trustworthy evidence of any prospect that either China or Russia will join in other rather urgent international issues like arms shipments, nuclear build-ups, support for rogue nations and leaders (e.g. Kim Jong-un, and Syria’s Assad and Iran’s Ayatollah)and eventually pandemic management and environmental protection.

Efforts at such potentially impacting initiatives as universal access to education of both boys and girls, one of those issues struggling even to claim a step on the extensive ladder of global issues requiring urgent, creative and courageous attention by global leaders, will see evidence of support only indirectly through foreign aid directed to philanthropics and some business operations seeking to gain a foothold on technology and curriculum in the developing world. Even the free flow of objective, legitimate, authentic public information (news) is restricted and controlled as well as massaged (in propaganda) in both China and Russia, with the alleged acquiescence of the majority of their citizens. This can only continue because both regimes threaten, interrogate, arrest and imprison those who oppose the way their governments operate. And while fear is a very strong motivator inducing silence and mascara compliance, just as we are witnessing in the United States with the presidential declaration of the reporters and editorialists as “the enemy of the people” we in the west are increasingly and unavoidable, if still somewhat unconsciously, moving into a place where we are beginning to comprehend what it means to live under a totalitarian regime that will not and does not tolerate criticism.

Some will naturally consider this next statement hyperbolic. Nevertheless if put in the form of a rhetorical question, it might pass the reflection-worthy test: Are we in the west being nudged, pushed, urged, and even recruited into solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and the people of Hong Kong, along with the other oppressed people in North Korea, in Afghanistan, Yemen? And this at a time when the streets of both Canada and the United States are legitimately witnessing hundreds of thousands protesting human rights abuses in their own towns and neighbourhoods.

Deprived of a decent education, adequate housing, work with dignity, freedom from arrest, ethical and principled judicial discretion, and especially the prospect of a better day envisioned on their personal horizons, black and brown people in America, indigenous, black and brown people in Canada and in Europe, many people in the Ukraine, in Hong Kong, not to mention capitals like Moscow and Bejing are all under a cloud of oppression. And it is the impunity with which such clouds are conceived, inscribed, imposed and then executed by people and governments whose integrity, morality and political ambition render them unworthy of the power in their hands, to which ordinary people of all racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious and geographic backgrounds are protesting.

If we are ever going to achieve those international political institutions that incarnate and espouse the principles of human rights, democracy, a clean environment, access to quality education and health care regardless of wealth or income, we are going to have to build repositories of the best of human achievement, not only in our museums, and in our underground storage vaults where seeds are preserved in protection of food supplies in the face of a global holocaust, or even in digital archives. We are going to have to build publicly accessible (not only to university doctoral candidates, and to laboratory scientists, and to judicial bodies) best practices files. An example is the current judicial philosophy and practice in places like Norway.

How does a piece about the potential solidarity of western people with the people of Hong Kong and Ukraine permit digression into the penal system in Norway, you ask? 

Well, think about the phrase, “the abuse of power,” not only from the perspective of how nations treat those they seek to oppress as a political act, but also from the perspective of how power is abused in the treatment of ordinary citizens in those places that consider themselves enlightened, democratic, free and open to both criticism and amendment, in pursuit of higher expectations and better angels! Even the modus operandi of education systems is a legitimate target for the issues around how power is deployed/abused, reconstitutive of justice, dignity, respect and value of each human being. Teachers are among one of the more influential groups in any society, and the precepts and principles that undergird how the schools operate go a long way to inculcating an albeit perhaps unconscious conception of the nature of each human being.

A report in the BBC, July 9, 2019 entitled, “How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours,” reads in part:

‘It’s called dynamic security!’ he (a prison officer, not a guard) grins. ‘Guards and prisoners are together in activities all the time. They eat together, play volleyball together, do leisure activities together and that allows us to really interact with prisoners, to talk to them and to motivate them….The architecture of Halden Prison has been designed to minimise residents’ sense of incarceration, to ease psychological stress and to put them in harmony with the surrounding nature—in fact the prison, which cost 138m pounds to build, has won several design awards for its minimalist chic. Set in beautiful blueberry woods and peppered with majestic silver birch and pine trees, the two storey accommodation blocks and wooden chalet-style buildings give the place an air of a trendy university campus rather than a jail…..(E)very inmate has his own cell, which comes with an en-suite toilet and shower room, a fridge, desk flat tv screen and forest views.

The Governor says: ‘In Norway, the punishment is just to take away someone liberty. The other rights stay. Prisoners can vote, they can have access to school, to health care; they have the same rights as any Norwegian citizen. Because inmates are human beings. They have done wrong, they must be punished, but they are still human beings”…,

Then idea is to give them a sense of normality and to help them focus on preparing for a new life when they get out. Many inmates will be released from Halden as fully qualified mechanics, carpenters and chefs.

Governor says: ‘We start planning their release on the first day they arrive…In Norway all will be released-there are no life sentences.’

(The maximum sentence is 21 years, but the law does allow for preventative detention, the extension of a sentence in five-year increments if the convicted person is deemed to be a continued threat to society.)

The BBC piece continues:

It takes 12 weeks in the UK to train a prison officer. In Norway it takes two to three years. ‘My (prison officer trainer) students will study law, ethics, criminology English, reintegration and social work. Then they will have a year training in a prison and then they will come back to take their final exams.

Scotland locks up 150 people for 100,000, compared to Norway’s 63.

For many people, receiving a jail sentence would be the worst thing that ever happened to them. But when you’ve been experiencing domestic abuse—as most female prisoners have—you may see things slightly differently…

‘(R)icidivism in Norway has fallen to only 20% after two years and about 25% after five years,. So this works.’ (Governor)

Clearly, a different understanding of human beings, the conditions in which many acts that offend society and the manner in which to help these people to regain their often lost dignity and self-respect prevails in the Norwegian prison system.

Imagine, just for a brief moment, if such a perspective, philosophy, theory and practice were to be applied to the way nations treated each other, including rogue states whose leaders have been (self?)-excluded from the mainstream of humanity, or have inherited a perverted notion of the need for hard power and secrecy as the exclusive path to national security. Imagine too the impact on attitudes of superiority/inferiority that would inevitably flow throughout the community, in the full consciousness that prisoners are being restored to full participation in their society, by their own society, as a national commitment.

If such an approach can apply in Norway, why not consider it in both domestic affairs, especially at a time when current policies and practices are under such legitimate scrutiny and criticism? And why not have the leaders of all nations in the United Nations, visit the Norwegian justice system, with a view to pulling the blinders of fear, bias (both overt and covert), insecurity and fiscal shortsoghtedness from their view of their people, themselves, and their healthy future.

Imagine too if such equality and dignity and respect were to be extended from those in power to those without a voice in our own towns and cities, and in our seats of both governance and justice!

Human kindness, compassion, empathy, and fair-mindedness are not stored in a secret vault under some yet-to-be-discovered mountain. They are right here right now on every street and every neighbourhood in every town and city, in every nation. Let’s start to shine a light on its brilliance, and move out of the dark of our own design.

Joining the transformative view of human history...we are not like our leaders!

Having poured zillions of electronic digits into some one hundred attempts to paint a picture of a moderated, liberated, enlightened and expansive masculinity, especially among those men in positions of leadership, borrowing from others like  James Hillman, I want to stretch my own thinking into another entangled root system.

Believing that hard power, dominating power, punitive power and repressive power, both of the administrator and the target is an entrenched root in the history of western civilization, and that definitions of such aspects of human behaviour as “abnormal psychology” are far too restrictive and even distortive of the imagination and the creativity and the compassion and empathy that flows through the veins of each human being, along with others, I believe it is past time to call a halt to the homage many offer in worship to a theology based on the preservation, and the elimination of what the church calls sin and evil. From the Christian church’s perspective, Paul’s dictum, “We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God,” while expressing a grain of truth and reality, has come to play an inordinate role in the way people are indoctrinated, taught, guided and ‘shepherded’ back into conformity with some set of expectations defined by and administered by and sanctioned by the church’s exclusive monopoly on morality, ethics, and eventually western culture.

Premised on the notion of the primary fundamental and essential need for redemption, as the defining quality of human beings, and that need for redemption being founded on the premise of a core of guilt, shame, wrong-doing and nefarious, toxic and satanic motivations, the church has fallen into a trap that sabotages not only its own legitimacy and survival, but also cripples any legitimate notion of a God. At the heart of this convergence of belief, dogma, liturgical practice, and pedagogy lies the infrequently uttered neurotic need for control, power, leadership, responsibility and the need for the interminable flow of cash to keep the institution functioning. At the nexus of where humanity (individual human beings and their identity) meets the institution lies the colonial, subordinating and even dominating need of the institution over the individual.

Look at this premise through a wider lens. The family needs a ‘head’ in order to keep it in control. So too, the school, and the bank and the army (and all of its military children). And as God is envisioned as creator, progenitor, and judge (along with teacher, healer, and prophet among other archetypes), history has invested a super-power halo around this anthropocentric figure. Some have gone so far as to believe that their wars and their executions and their excommunications and their assassinations, along with their physical and emotional and psychological imprisonments of “heretics” or “apostates” or “deviants” or “666’s” (anti-Christ) or even eugenically impure ethnicities (see Jews, Tutu’s Uyghurs, Armenians, Bosnian Croats, Georgians, Hindus, Rohingya, Muslims, Palestinians, Black Africans, First Nations) has been justified often on religious, ethical, moral and political bases. Underlying these cleansings, epitomized by the Crusades, so-called spiritually pure and highly motivated people and their leaders undertook atrocities the legacies of which have stained the blotter of human history from the beginning. “Holy Wars” have dominated much of western history, including deep and profound conflicts inside the ecclesial ‘empire’ itself, culminating in the office of Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly know as the Holy Office and as the Roman Inquisition.

The pursuit of purity, and its Siamese cousin, perfectionism, is perhaps appropriate in the science laboratory where miniscule measurements, formula and high demands of something today we know as quality control. The automaker Lexus found it a useful “sell-line” in its pursuit of aristocratic purchasers and drivers in a previous life. Standards, as measurements of quality, prevail in academic accomplishments, athletic competitions, medical operating room and emergency room protocols, scientific management and industrial production processes and methods, not to mention criminal investigative techniques. And following in the footsteps of ‘standards’ has come the marching boots of credentials, certifications, as essential proof of one’s intrinsic value.

Our legal system is one of the extensive and expanding vestiges of an epistemology, not to mention a theology, that seeks to “weed” out all forms of human behaviour with which the current culture disapproves. And whether we think or talk about the roots of such “weeding,” it is nevertheless also implicitly integrated into a gestalt of fear, insecurity and resistance to the unknown. In fact the unknown, often captured in horror films, as well as in gruesome acts of inhumanity in our own communities, has so traumatized many communities in the west (perhaps elsewhere also), that ‘insane asylums’ have traditionally been built outside those communities, as a way of preserving the safety of the residents. (Not incidentally, such structures and their residents were also more likely and more easily rendered “out-of-sight-out-of-mind”….another way for normal people to escape having to face their own demons.

While archetypal psychology is a valiant and worthy path to recovering many of the “aberrant” behaviours from the ‘dump’ of evil and sickness, the dominant dumpsters into which behaviour we did not understand, or did not approve, or did not wish to investigate further, was eliminated, there remains a precipitate in the beeker of our culture that shackles the hearts, minds and spirits of many. That precipitate is embodied in such novels as Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, and the front pages of every daily as well as the screens of our tv’s and laptops pointing to the essential sine qua non of the human species: that we are violent, evil and sinful. This is the premise of many of our law enforcement theories, protocols, sanctions and systems ‘to keep us safe’. A new book, by a Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, entitled, Humankind: A Hopeful History.

Digging successfully for historic anecdotes, like the Tonga group of boys isolated on an island, developing a functioning harmonious and life-long friendship, Bregman attempts to counter the premise of Golding’s dystopic novel, in which the choir boys, after having ravaged the island in violence, are ironically rescued by a second war naval vessel. Pointing to the inception of agriculture, as the beginning of ‘conflict’ over needed resources, Bregman also digs deeply into significant, sinister headlines of murders, for example, whose headlines and follow-up contextual pieces avoided the compassion of others than the perpetrators in caring for the victims.

Wide-ranging anecdotal evidence pointing to the capacity for care, compassion, empathy and an uplifting perspective on the nature of the human ‘beast’, compared often by reviewers to Malcolm Gladwell, for his penchant for collecting evidence that debunks cultural mythology, Bregman, following in the footsteps of Rousseau, while countering the Hobbesian view of man as dark and evil, does have a significant insight: that it is mostly those in leadership who have perpetrated sinister, evil, destructive and inhumane acts on others.

Given that the literature, the history, the psychology, and sociology, and the research emanating from those academic wells digs into the numbers of trends and levers of leadership, management, governance, and responsibility, most of which evidence regards the way men have comported themselves, it seems worthwhile to parse some of the exigencies and the expectations of those in positions of power and influence, as well as accountability. Would some or all of those defining parameters have anything to say about how and why sinister, evil, inhumane acts would have been perpetrated by such leaders?

Structure, form, rules, regulations, training, discipline, subordination, and extrinsic rewards are just some of the extrinsic fences that define both the purpose and the modus operandi of any organization, starting from a street gang, up to and including the Pentagon, the Vatican, and the United Nations. Even loosely defined and structured organizations like the World Health Organization, without a budget except from voluntary contributions by participating members, can accumulate, collate, and disseminate information, without attaching directives, in the middle of a global pandemic. Diagnosing, interpreting, dissemination and persuading, while honourable and necessary, do not provide muscle to their leadership toward healing and flattening the curve of the virus of COVID-19.

Similarly, the United Nations itself, has no army, no military, except for the voluntary contributions of members to such a ‘blue-berret’ coalition of forces, “for peace-keeping.” On the other hand, executives, leaders, presidents, principals, bishops and archbishops are encased in a pyramid of heavy stones, among them, the need for adequate fiscal resources, the need for accountability from all hires, the need for quality control from all departments, the need for a clean public image without the stain of embarrassment, crisis, poor judgement, criminal behaviour, fraud or illicit relationships.

Managing the energies of such competing forces, (each of those needs) renders many leaders mere tactical “managers” whose professional lives are defined by the avoidance of turbulence, conflict, change, and certainly protesting revolutions. Survival, (and the anticipated promotions) depend on manipulating the flow of public information, with a determined and disciplined view to protecting both the organization and the leader, given that the identities of each are intimately dependent on each other.

Underlying all of these pressing exigencies and expectations, however, is that earlier articulated notion of “wrong” and “right” now applied to the personal lives and the organizational reputational documented narrative of personal biography and organizational trustworthiness. The maintenance of trust, in both individuals and in our institutions/organizations has become the litmus test of acceptability, in a world where every hand and every eye and every ear has a camera and a recording microphone. And while we all pay lip-service to the notion that we are all imperfect, repeatedly uttered in passing epithets of mourning, or disappointment at the fall of another, or sadness and disbelief that ‘he could do something like that’…and for the moment we might even believe in our own imperfection. In popular music, “perfect imperfections” in a loved one are applauded by the singer lover. Imperfections, then, of a noted, yet not defining, dimension are tolerated, even assumed. We can be imperfect to the extent “that s/he had no social graces” when everyone uttering such a descriptive phrase of an individual knows that s/he is really a controlling dominator/rix. We are especially careful and restrained in our expressions of a deceased person of our acquaintance, given the  mortuary aphorism, “nil nisi bonum”: “say nothing but good about the dead.” It is not a stretch to imagine that such a phrase has come to us from a cultural history that champions the victors in wars, the principals in governance, and the elites in commerce.

On the other end of the social continuum, stretching from the people in power to the people without any power. In a 2010 piece on NPR’s All Things Considered, entitled: Study: “Poor are More Charitable than the Wealthy,” Paul Piff, a Psychology researcher at the  University of California, tells host Guy Raz, “we found that people who were actually ranking themselves as relative high in the socio-economic status were less inclined to give (points away) than were people who ranked themselves as relatively lower in social class….It was a statistically significant difference, and what we found was that the lower-class people…were inclined to give away 44 percent more (of their points or their credits, in the experiment)…the main variable that explains this differential pattern of giving and helping and generosity among the upper and lower class is feelings of sensitivity and care for the welfare of other people, and essentially the emotion that we call compassion.”

So while Rutger Bregman’s book inspires a new look at history, while debunking that barnacle of human identity and definition of sin/evil/narcissism/insouciance and the over-riding need for and compulsion toward salvation and remediation both of which provide cornerstones for the Christian church’s ubiquitous and heavy-handed footprint on western culture, it may well be long past time for men and women of good will and of hope and imagination and creativity to re-consider our collective, unconscious, deeply embedded and seriously compromising perspective. Humans cannot and must not be defined by the blood, lust, deviousness and deceit, not to mention the outright defiance of human goodness, by headlines, by talking heads, by clergy, and certainly not by aspiring, empty and hollow presidential candidates.

Human goodness, also, is not and never was a defining concept of only American exceptionalism, and none of the rest of the world can permit the American exclusive ownership of that truth. In fact, the American devotion to the word exceptionalism may be part of the insidious infiltration of the puritan pursuit of the sanctity of godliness and perfection, in order to meet their God, that infects the world’s denial and avoidance of our shared heritage of compassion and empathy and, by extension, forgiveness. Imagine what such a transformation of attitudes would do to our military dominance and our imprisonment addiction and its racial over-and-under-tones!

#100 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (Profound gratitude for you, dear reader!)

Which is worth more, crowd of thousands, or your own genuine solitude? Freedom, or power over an entire nation. A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given to you. (Jalaluddin Rumi)

We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves. (Martin Buber)

Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way. (Martin Buber)

Solitude is the place of purification. (Martin Buber)

Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. (Martin Buber)

The number 100, at least in this series, denotes, connotes and symbolizes some kind of ending. Endings, like beginnings, are moments of both reflection and new beginnings. They are also moments of sadness, loss, bringing to consciousness just how incomplete we all are, including each and every project, even a project of multiple essays that have been attempting to peel the onion of masculinity. Compiling and curating memories of conflict, separation, alienation, and my place in them leaves me somewhat regretful and much more open to how I participated in those divides. Impulsive, never far from a trigger-finger on flashes of anger, criticism, judgement and disdain of “the other” with or without offering an opportunity for ‘the other’ to explain, to contextualize. Having repressed my own needs/voice/recommendations/expectations, in my personal life, (although not so much in my professional life), I no longer permit myself such self-denial.

And because the determination is both relatively new and immature, it often comes off as arrogance, impatience, impertinence and offensive. There is, naturally, a price for such offensive behaviour, and aloneness is the principal cost. It is, however, the aloneness that affords the time, the quiet, the energy and the opportunity to look deeply into those unresolved conflicts, ‘failures’ and regrets that are an inevitable part of each life span.

Aloneness, however, is not a ‘sentence’ nor a prison. It is, as is nearly every other experience, both a blow and a blessing. It does, however, not mean that the two extremes of each experience are conscious at the same time; the bruising, often crushing impulse often strikes first, and naturally brings back all of the previous blows, regardless of whether they were physical, emotional, psychological or professional. And it is primarily from our bruises, failures, disappointments, embarrassments, rejections that we come to a more intimate awareness of how/who/what we are and have been to others.

To three daughters left behind (at 9, 14, and 17 respectively) when I exited the twenty-three marriage, I am deeply sorry that your lives were then, and have been ever since, impacted by both by abandoning you, and by your responses to that abandonment. I am deeply aware that abandonment, unlike a broken leg or even a serious surgery, does not leave a visible scar; it leaves a far more deep and permanent scar on your psyche, your spirit and your heart. At the core of that scar is inevitably an erosion of your willingness and capacity to trust, not only your father but also by projection other men and other persons in positions of authority in your life. I can neither remove the scar, nor can I say that I was even modestly conscious of its inevitability when I left. Somehow, I felt impelled to leave and face my own demons that had been driving my ambition, performance and insatiable appetite for affirmation, applause, and a kind of extrinsic acceptance.

Ironically, and tragically, it was self-acceptance I sought and needed, although I could not have known or said so back in 1987. I knew that, although I had developed a few skills, I had not pursued more intrinsic and what I have found to be life-enriching experiences of the human soul. Now thirty-two years later, when you have grown, become accomplished professionals in  your chosen fields, I can only hope that your own persons and lives are filled with a more clear and confident perspective on your options and the supports you need and can access to face whatever crises cross your path.

To the hundreds of students who endured time in classrooms for which I was responsible, I want you to know that I learned more from you, individually and collectively, than I was able to teach to you. Fielding your questions, your opinions, your suggestions and your angst was enlightening and empowering, as well as challenging. There were times when I demanded too many words in essay assignments, thinking, probably inappropriately, that through extra practice, your facility with language would be enhanced. Were I to engage in those assignments now, I would place a higher premium on the variety, the imagination and the impact of your choices of vocabulary and prose and poetic structure and form. With respect to the manner in which we explored specific poems, novels, plays and essays, I would delve more deeply and more patiently into the finer nuances of each idiom, phrase, image and theme, in a more deliberate and disciplined way to illustrate the complexity and the richness of the writer’s thoughts/feelings/attitudes and their relevance to your lives. I would, however, never apologize for those infrequent moments when your “issues” (allegedly to draw the teacher away from the proposed and assigned curriculum) replaced the lesson plan for the day. It was in those moments when your perspectives were being poured into the culture of the room, and by extension into your own developing perspectives and attitudes. And those perspectives and attitudes (and comfort and facility with your own language) did not apply only to those specific issues, but also to the world in which you would and now do live for the rest of your lives.

To the teachers with whom I worked, I treasure the memories of your facial  features, still many of them carved in my memory, as well as the tone, pace and musicality of your voices in faculty lounges. Unique, disparate in perspective and background, and sometimes interlocking with my own views, I nevertheless hold firm to the notion that for the most part our students were offered (if they were willing to accept it) a healthy environment and culture for their intellectual and social growth. Naturally, I did not always concur with either the strategies or the tactics of some of my colleagues, as, no doubt, neither did they agree with many of my own. Often far too energetic, enthusiastic and over-committed, I, unconsciously and naively, undoubtedly put others off by what some had to perceive as “unctuous obsequiousness” and what was then termed, “plotting for promotion.” Truth to tell, how to manage what was then, and continues to this day, as what some have called hyper-activity, was more the issue than political ambition.

To the principals and headmasters and the employers for whom I worked, I reflect on too many genuflections on my part, and too few open disagreements rarely permitted the kind of time they would have required. Schools, from my experience, at least from a planning and resource-allotment perspective, are nearly devoid of philosophic and curricular debate, except for those occasions when “Queen’s Park” issues some decree that attempts to shake up both academic, technical, vocational and artistic training and development, or to segregate students on the basis of apparent merit. As former Ontario NDP Leader, and former UN Ambassador, Stephen Lewis prophetically told an assembled OSSTF PD day at Widdifield Secondary School, education has been reduced to a discussion of numbers of dollars and numbers of students, when we all know that the process is much more complex than such a debate provides. From this vantage point, nearly a half century later, I still hear provincial governments and teacher unions arguing over class size, teacher assistants, and learning delivery models, all under the cloud of diminishing budgets.

There are a group of people charged with the responsibility for operating the Anglican/Episcopal churches in Canada and the U.S. respectively, in whose employ I served for approximately a decade. Beginning as a mid-forties theology student, in seminaries still more accustomed to recent university graduates, I found that while professional and accommodating, some students had at least as much professional experience as some of the faculty. Expectations, assignments in field education (parish internships), academic curiosity among class mates, and tolerance of differing views about theology, ministry, pastoral care and biblical studies varied dramatically between and among students of a literalist, fundamental, evangelical persuasion and those of a more liberal, poetic, mythological and philosophical/psychological bent. Asking questions in class could and did provoke impatience from those who “wanted to get out and save the world” without the hassle of more rigorous thought. Also, in parishes where significant pastoral trauma had not been resolved, or even addressed adequately, and where middle-aged men and women were more likely to be assigned, diocesan hierarchy were either unfamiliar with more recent theories and practices in grief management, pastoral counselling and spiritual growth or were uninterested in those approaches. The divide between the schools and the hierarchy, was, from the perspective of a student, unbridgeable. Consequently, what was being taught, (example liturgical hand-holding) was disconnected from the granular practice of ministry, especially in those parishes weighted down in depression, grief and conflict.

I managed to endure most classes, being aroused and awakened in John Kloppenberg’s class on Parables, and the class conducted by two sisters in Religious Education, both of whom belonged to an order whose original purpose was to defame the Jewish faith, until Pope John Paul revised their mandate to one of telling the story of the Jewish faith to non-Jews. James Reed’s class on Death and Dying, too, was both provocative and transformative, given my own grandfather’s attempt to take his own life, and the liturgical suicide by a clergy in a parish to which I was assigned. And then there were the months of training in Clinical Pastoral Education, a fancy name for “going inside” one’s own thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, beliefs” and becoming a presence of healing for others in extremis. 

First in chaplaincy, where I was assigned to Emergency and Palliative Care, I found a kind of intellectual/emotional/spiritual ‘fit’ among others in extreme distress, some of them verging on death. Unexpected pregnancies, still-births, long-term palliative patients, whose spouses were so diligent and caring that they often died before their invalid husbands/wives, were just some of the encounters for our class of six. Writing the precise words of each conversation with each patient in our care, in a form called a “verbatim” was, to put it mildly, one of the most demanding and illuminating not to mention challenging experiences of my life. And these verbatims were then exposed to the class and supervisor for detailed and critical examination. “Why did you say that, when that it YOUR issue, not the patient’s concern?” is one of the interjections that could be expected in each verbatim review. Conducting funerals, engaging in prayer at the bedside of a dying spouse while her husband quivered, comforting grieving parents on the loss of a newborn and listening to long-term palliative nurse’s grief when a patient of her precise age dies of breast cancer at thirty-eight are just some of the more poignant memories.

And then there was the autopsy, the moment when each student is expected to participate as a pathologist and assistant perform a post-mortem, in our case, on a sixty-one year old woman who had been sleeping soundly at six a.m. in her home only to die suddenly and undergo an autopsy at 1.00 p.m. that same afternoon. Expecting a heart attack, the pathologist, along with the rest of us, was surprised to discover a large tumor in her lung, an illness of which she had been unaware. Anxious and even threatening to absent myself from the experience, I was persuaded by a wise, compassionate and insightful and intuitive supervisor, who counselled, “Just go and give yourself permission to leave at any time if you have to!” he told me privately and quietly. That was  more than enough to encourage my presence, which was then followed by an extensive four or five-hour period of reflection during which I walked in silence around the campus of the hospital in Scarborough, before sitting down to type the reflection. Awe, amazement, curiosity, bafflement, wonder and humility are just some of the words that fail to express fully my experience, at the overwhelming gestalt of a human being’s incredible complexity, symphony, vulnerability and even ‘divinity’ and one’s over-powering experience of consciousness of one’s own totality in the light of these discoveries. They are much more than anatomical discoveries; they are discoveries that illuminate a universe previously excluded from my consciousness, except in the abstract. The multiple complex inter-connected, inter-dependent systems that keep each of us breathing and functioning stretch one’s range of comprehension, credulity and even faith to a point where there can be no doubt about the existence of something far more significant, unknown and unknowable than any personification of a deity in any theological treatise. Call that presence God given that we have no other inadequate expressions to attempt to begin a relation with such a presence.

On the other hand, the disparity between the profundity of the afternoon of the autopsy and the grimy, grovelling, snivelling, vindictive and neurosis-based leadership of the ecclesial hierarchy, fixated far too much on dollars and bottoms in pews, on political correctness and even worse, political ambition and reputation offers a contrast deeper than the chasm that exists between a mountain cave and its peak. Yes, both are an integral part of nature, and both have been here longer than any of us, and both will be here long after we have departed. Men who incarnate a crippled, bent and often broken spirit, who fear the feminist movement and consider it their duty to appease whatever demands, overtures and/or recommendations that come, especially from women of stature inside the church, (and that in many cases is a majority, given that many church offices are filled by generous, ambitious and highly motivated women.

Such women, however, while they firmly believe that they are “doing God’s work” when they fold the linen, or when they write the cheques, or when they hold their bake sales or their dinners, or even  when they conduct a church school class, nevertheless, individually and collectively grow a culture of righteous infallibility. And they are, for the most part, endorsed and supported by their cheer-leading chancel guild members, in the face of a male executive predisposed to avoiding conflict at all costs. Naturally, one has to factor in the notion that volunteers, especially church volunteers, are both overly sensitive to their roles, and to the sacredness of maintaining and sustaining the standards of how those roles are to be carried out (thereby permitting undue gossip and defamation of those who do not “fold” properly). Consequently, any clergy walks on eggs in the face of the prospect of an instant departure based on the slightest hint of disapproval that might be legitimate from the especially male clergy, to some long-standing woman whose family may have funded the new sanctuary and parish hall. She not only thinks, but firmly believes, that this is “HER” church, and no clergy is going to have anything to say with which she does not and cannot approve.

And the men of the parish, for the most part, in my experience, are permitted much too much “influence,” once again based on the invalid and fallacious notion that conflict is to be avoided at all costs. Truth-telling, in even the most miniscule matters, hardly finds oxygen, unless it has been “lobbied” and “massaged” in private long before it hits the “street” of open discussion.

I grew up with a father who dubbed himself “Chamberlain” in relation to his “Hitler” wife, and his own father, too, was another example of a slightly lighter version of Chamberlain, to an autocratic, kindergarten teacher wife. I have watched men in all walks of life, lawyers, doctors, clergy, teachers, labourers and executives who have fallen into the trap of “silent subservience” not on every matter in the family or organization, but especially on significant matters. And while the feminine perspective and judgement is often more valid and more in tune with the complexity of the situation, especially around such issues as personal health, family relationships, and compassion and empathy when in duress, men have a legitimate and valid and credible perspective.

It need not be the perspective of anger or moping (self-pity) for which we are notoriously stereotyped. It certainly need not be based on a zero-sum game, whereby if I win, (as I must), then you must lose. Such a perspective, as is clear to most men and women, is a form of willed and almost traditional self-sabotage of many men.

Competitive spirits, regaled from minor hockey to collegiate athletic teams, might motivate a young man who has yet to discover something in which he can show passion and skill and who is still wondering around ‘in a daze’ as many young men are wont to do. Competition, however, as an exclusive socializing menu, simply does not work for many young men. And the fathers of young men who do not respond to such “hard-assed” paternal parenting are engaged in a process that will scar their sons for life, including throughout their own marriages and families.

Similarly, the fathers who acquiesce to the wives’ helicopter mothering, when they know that it is beyond the pale, for themselves, and especially for their child of either gender, are doing a different kind of disservice to their young child.

There is a kind of rheostat inside each of us that “knows” if and when it is time to speak up, and if and when it is time to call “time out” to stop a destructive incident from occurring, even with the best motive. And men, for the most part of the last three quarters of a century, even if the trend line is shifting more recently, need to hear another voice, albeit “crying in the wilderness” who has lived in a family, and attended schools led by spineless men, and worshipped in churches ‘clergied’ by spineless men, and worked in workplaces managed by men with spine and ethical clarity and confidence, and served in parishes and dioceses in which spiritual leaders, mostly men, were afraid to protect other men whom they knew were thrown in at the deep end of the parish pool without a paddle or a life-jacket, only to flounder and eventually break down.

And then when those floundering and broken men embarrassed the hierarchy, for their being weak, wounded, unproductive of dollars and numbers, those men in positions of power, authority and influence, have put their own reputations above the need for even full investigations, and a detailed and complex understanding of the precise situations in which those men were attempting to serve.

Men throwing men under the bus is more a signal of the inadequacy of those doing the throwing, than of those who may have taken their life, or who were dismissed illegitimately and without due process or who merely withdrew under circumstances they could not have known and were not given the opportunity to review prior to accepting an assignment. And, these spaces, for what they are worth, are a personal witness to the failure of too many men, including this scribe, who has had to shake off the image of Chamberlain, without resorting to its antithesis.