I am nothing, and everything

Ego has me convinced that 'I' am a discrete, tangible being, separate from the world around me. But this is illusion. I am the sum total of sensations, feelings and thoughts which have occurred since I was born. I will cease to exist when I die. There is no 'I' separate from these streams of experience. In other words, I am what I have perceived, felt and thought, and those streams of consciousness are rooted in my physical being - they are in fact three aspects of the Tetrahedron: the Physical, Emotional and Intellectual.

What then of will, the very essence of ego?

Will has to do with the fourth node of the Tetrahedron, the Spiritual. In short, will is the movement of the eternal and infinite - or the undefinable - spiritual force within me. Will responds to and interacts with the sensations, feelings and especially the thoughts that are generated in the physical me and in-so-doing shapes the person I become and the types of experiences it will encounter. In other words, will is to some degree self defining.

So how can I even use the word 'I' in this context. This is the dichotomy or contradiction that is ego. Spirit cannot manifest except through what is called 'incarnation' in some traditions. Incarnation occurs in the form of discrete, physical entities. So spirit must take on finite forms in order to exist, but in doing so it never loses its connection to eternal and infinite reality (again, the undefinable from the perspective of 'I'). In other words, spirit does not exist outside its incarnate forms, but the incarnate forms do not limit spirit except in an illusory way.

Does this view lessen my appreciation of self? Not at all. Individuated spirit is God expressing him/er self and experiencing his/er world. God does not exist without the illusion of individuated spirit, which makes each and every one of us a miraculous spark in his/er eternal state of becoming.

Layers and Meaning; Crime and Punishment

Flickr Photo - HA! Designs

When we are perceptive our experiences overlay one another in such a way that new meanings emerge from proximity and context as much as from the content of the isolated events. Now that's a long-winded, pseudo-philosophic statement if I ever heard one! Let's get down to an illustrating case study, which is unfolding for me right now.

It involves three seemingly distinct experiences, which have overlain one another to create a new filter through which I can interpret my world. I'll list the experiences. See if you can figure out their relationships before I get back into my long-windedness:

• I am presently struggling with debilitating pain caused by a groin injury, which I incurred playing the beautiful game - that's soccer for anyone out there who may be entertaining varient visions;
• I recently attended a book launch for a volume called Educating for Peacebuilding, written by Catherine Bargen, BC's Coordinator for Restorative Justice. Catherine has been instrumental in implementing a Restorative Action programs in schools all over the world;
• I am currently reading Romeo Dellaire's agonizing account of how child soldiers are recruited, trained and abused by military regimes in destabilized regions throughout the world.

Take thirty seconds or so to see if you can identify the connecting strand between those disparate streams of consciousness. Then, if you are interested, read on.

Stained Glass - In the Beginning

Flickr Photo by GregPC

At first she had doubted. Despite the strength of her own convictions – her revulsion – she could not imagine herself doing what she must do. So she sat at the kitchen table, alone, her hands folded in front of her. Albert would be in the church with the others. “I’m sick of this, Margaret,” he’d protested. “We’ll be the laughingstock of the town if you go on this way.”

People wouldn’t be laughing once she got up her nerve, though. They’d be scurrying around like the rats they were, looking for a ditch to dive into. She smiled grimly at the notion. “Forgive me, God,” she muttered, bobbing her head in the direction God might have been, out the kitchen window. Sunlight slanted in from the southeast. Pure unadulterated light, the way God had created it on the First Day, not tainted light, paid for by whores and tinged by Satin himself.

That’s what bolstered her in that decisive moment, the pure light pouring in over their kitchen window sill. Surely it carried a message from God. A sign. And it occurred to her, as she tilted toward action, that signs abounded. All nature was a sign, but only a few could decipher God’s commandments, which blossomed inside you more like feelings than anything else once you were chosen.

Albert called her stubborn, even stupid. But that was only because he was such a weak man. He’d been with her at the start, now he’d fled back to the herd. So be it. With him life had become a series of choices, based on which was the least damaging to his career. She had become an embarrassment to ‘a man in his position’ – a liability on the social ledger. Once it became clear she would not budge, Albert’s calculus led to the inevitable conclusion that it would be best to publicly break with his wife rather than side with her against the entire congregation of St. Saviour’s. Thus, his decision had been rendered.

She despised him even more than the rest.

The Present

flickr photo, Light Chaos by KevinDooley

I know it's been said a million times already, and that a million people after me will say it, too. But all my past experience is concentrated into this one precise moment called the present; and all my future actions begin at this exact moment, too. Pleasure, pain; love, hate; right, wrong; bliss or damnation - everything that possibly can be exists right now, compressed into a present so infinitesimally brief that you could say it does not really exist at all. Therein lies wonder, love and freedom, for in the transitory nature of the present lies our ability and our inalienable right to choose.

In my Father's Arms - Stained Glass

Flickr photo by Daisyree Baker

Dad suffered a massive heart attack. He was dead by the time they got him to the hospital. My earliest memory of Dad is being in his arms as an infant. He’s carrying me somewhere and I can feel the movement through his shoulders and chest. He’s not paying attention to me. His eyes are fixed on some point in the future and he’s marching on like a character in a propaganda poster. I like that. It comforts me to know he’s moving purposefully and that his awareness of me is purely physical. In that precise moment I have absolutely no fear. I know I will be afraid of things in the future, that all the things I do fear are out there in the direction he scans with his intense blue eyes. But that doesn’t matter because he’s looking at them for me and they scurry away from his laser gaze. I am watching my left hand. I have placed it on his right cheek, just above his neck. He hasn’t shaved for a few days and the stubble tickles my palm. This sensation runs through me, a warm buzz rampant in the neural network. Every molecule of my being vibrates in harmony with it and the sensation is so delightful I have to laugh out loud. I’m not aware of it – not then as a child – but the rippling joy is propagating in both directions, irradiating two souls from the tiny patch of skin where they have established contact. Now I know my father remembered that moment too... that it only died when he did, and then only half-died.

Stained Glass - Made in Heaven

Photo from Wikipedia - Mary Magdalene

This morning has brought an amazing transformation in the story I have been calling Stained Glass, all stemming from my reading about Mary Magdalene and the various interpretations of her place among the Christian denominations. I had no idea she was such a controversial figure, or how uniquely she foreshadowed the emergence of feminisim within the Christian faith. I am astounded by her story! The Anglican Church accords her a place of honour in their calendar, as does the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Catholic Church also honours her, but in a more vague and qualified manner it seems to me.

Mary Magdalene was an 'apostle to the apostles' according to some, and favoured by Christ. Some believe she may have been Christ's companion and that her relationship may have been more intimate than that of a disciple to her master. Others go so far as to claim Mary Magdalene bore a child by Jesus. Without delving into those contentious issues, I think it safe to say most Christians see Mary Magdalene as a devoted and seminal figure in the early church.

As I got to know more about her, I could not help juxtaposing Mary Magdalene's persona onto Anna Armstrong. In fact, I see Anna as a manifestation of Mary's spirit 1,870 years after biblical times in the boisterous gold rush town of Barkerville. She has arrived there with a missionary zeal to serve the 'fallen women' who have been caught up in the sex trade, and in order to do so effectively she has taken on the guise of a prostitute herself. She is the one who encourages Madame Blavinsky to fund the installation of a stained glass window in St. Saviour's, and she suggests the image of Mary Magdalene as the subject of the glass. It ties in with her mission, and Madame Blavinsky is easily persuaded because she likes Anna and sees her as a 'special girl'.

Anna's own background as the daughter of an evangelical minister in Kingston, Ontario has influenced her choices deeply. She could not abide her father's bigotry against women, which borders on misogyny. But neither can she abandon her Christian roots, which are central to her beliefs. Mary Magdalene chrystalizes this contradiction in Anna's life, and she adopts Mary as her patron saint, a point of view which - even though it is not explicitly stated - further inflames her father's anger. She leaves on her mission to the West followed by her own father's curse, an episode that both shatters her and drives her into a deeper and more reckless resolve to help the prostitutes in the frontier towns.

This spiritual aspect of Anna emerges for Reverend Christopher Dryden as he gets to know her. He is the one who can absolve her of her father's anger. That spiritual purity and conviction can survive the kind of life she has been leading awes him. He not only falls deeply in love with her, he is forced to come to terms with his own prejudices in her presence. Their struggle to overcome the moral and sexual taboos of the Victorian era is the heart and soul of the novel. It will be the engine that drives the surrounding action. Anna is a feminist, a Christian and a Romantic all at once, and this mystifying combination of natures drives Christopher to the brink of madness because he loves everything about her, and denies most of what she represents at the same time.

That is the story. And rather than calling it Stained Glass - a worthy working title which I give up sadly - I think I am going to call it Made In Heaven, the connotations of which are still working themselves out.

For more details on characters and story development in Stained Glass (AKA Made In Heaven) go to the Stained Glass web site, which as of now becomes a static repository of past but still highly relevant thoughts.

The Lonely Man

Quite possibly the worst loaf of bread ever!

I have just finished baking what is quite possibly the worst loaf of bread ever manufactured since the first sheaf of wheat was harvested from a neolithic field in the pre-dawn of civilization. What you see pictured above is not my first, but my second attempt at Rapid White Bread in our foolproof bread making machine. The first attempt could not actually be called a loaf, so much as a glutinous glob of bio material that sort of rolled around in the machine like a giant booger. So, what I need from my friends and supporters is not advice on how to make bread, but recollections of their most catastrophic attempts at transforming flour, water, yeast and whatever other ingredients may have been included into something edible. It will make me feel so much better, knowing there are bakers more klutzy than myself out there. TLM.

PS: Ian, being the gentleman companion he is, says the bread is quite good 'actually'. But his assurances have not salved my wounded pride.