Faith, Hope and Love

One of my favorite Christmas songs is “Boy from the Woods.” It’s not particularly religious (God is mentioned but Jesus isn’t) but it is moral and describes the exact kind of life that a secular humanist strives to live. It is based on those traditional values of faith, hope and love.

Faith, of course, means something quite different to an atheist than it does to someone who is religious. I don’t place my faith in a higher power; I undertake something much more difficult, I put my faith in my fellow man. I honestly believe (for those of you who wonder what atheists believe) that people are capable of great good. This, despite the evidence that they are also capable of great evil, is what sustains me and makes it possible for me to get up and face the day. It is clear to me that given the chance, most people will choose to do the right thing rather than the wrong one – not because of promise of reward or fear of punishment – but because it is part of fundamental nature to be altruistic. This is not blind selflessness. Rather it is something evolution has created as an advantage for creatures who cannot survive alone, outside of social situations. You may point out the occasional loner or hermit but I can tell you they would never have gotten out of their crib if not for the multi-year support of a social construct.

So faith is an important part of my daily life – but no gods are required. Simply civilization and human progress – something we continue to make despite the best efforts of certain politicians and religious leaders to prevent it.

Hope is essential to our on-going existence. This becomes increasingly clear to me as I grow older. It seems that not a day goes by without some further bad news – not the kind that is broadcast on the TV but the personal kind, of friends who have sickened or died, relatives who have fallen on hard times, businesses that have failed. Life is filled with bad news and bad news has a way of impacting and weighing on you in ways that good news doesn’t seem to do. Hope is what we use to shed those burdens – hope that tomorrow will be a better day. That a friend will recover or at least hold on long enough so you can be together one more time – or ten. Hope is the thing that makes us look at children and think – maybe they can solve the problems we failed to get around to (or created). Sometimes it is hard to be optimistic – the glass seems to be draining fast – but what other choice do we have? The future is unknowable but I suspect that our attitude towards it will help shape it.

And finally there is love. It does triumph over fear and hate. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that. A little hug at the right moment is restorative. Putting your hand in your pocket to feed someone who is hungry may restore their faith and hope. And faith and hope doubled can’t be a bad thing, right?

Faith, hope and love. You know you have it in you. Just look at your moral compass and it will show you the way.

And that’s ten minutes.

Coming Home

Over the course of sixty years I’ve lived in 8 towns or cities covering four provinces and two territories. I’ve visited, sometimes for extended periods, every other province and territory in Canada, about 15 American states and parts of 9 other countries. I’ve been around – not as much as some but enough to know what it’s like to try to figure your way around someplace new. Enough to know what it’s like to finally come home.

My trips have always been my choice – moving for school or work or because I wanted to live someplace new, visit someplace different. I’ve relished the difference, the smells and flavours of new places, the sound of new languages, the different landscapes and the line of buildings that mark one culture from another. There have been surprises and occasional shocks. I’ve witnessed almost everything the human race has to offer – joy, generosity, fear, violence, happiness, grief, riches and poverty. More than anything I’ve witnessed the desire we all seem to share for normalcy, peace and a better life for ourselves and our children.

Not that I have children but I understand the concept.

I’ve lived a fortunate life to see all that and still be walking around, mostly whole and unharmed. I’ve had my moments when I feared my luck would end – but so far, so good.

Not everyone has been so lucky. People who have faced natural disaster, economic and social collapse, war and the grinding life of poverty have seldom seen much more than the doom that hovers over them, that threatens to end their lives and their children’s’ future in a flash. They do not move by choice, do not visit to experience something new; they do not even migrate with the expectation of a better life. They run, they hide and then they run some more.

When they arrive at our doorstep we can choose to react in one of two ways – with fear or with generosity. In the drudgery of our own hard – but incredibly privileged – lives we may forget what it is like to lose everything – home, community, friends, family, children – may have forgotten how desperate we might be to cling to a dying parent or a job we loved. Our losses pale in comparison, but it is in our loss of memory that we risk losing the most important thing we have – our humanity.

These days, it makes me so proud to be a Canadian, to watch my Prime Minister personally greet refuges from Syria, to watch my fellow citizens open their arms and their pocketbooks to help people who can no longer help themselves. I know that we will be better because of what we are doing right now. This is a lesson we have learned in the past but it is a lesson others seem to have forgotten.

Fear is a terrible thing. The people fleeing war and terror know it full well. They have looked fear in its face and understood what it promises them. But they persevere. Who are we – so comfortable in our perceived First World insecurity — to do less? What does it really cost to say: Welcome Home?

But that’s ten minutes.

 

 

Being Social

Today is the day of our Christmas open house – one of the three or four big social events we organize each year. The others are mainly publisher’s parties at science fiction conventions, so this is the one where we welcome people into our own space. As you can imagine we’ve spent most of the last few days, cleaning, shopping, cooking and decorating to welcome the 40 or so people we expect to show up today.

It’s not always easy being social. While my wife, Liz, would likely have people over every other day, I find I have my limits. By the time Christmas and New Year’s is over, I’ll probably be happy not to see another soul – outside work requirements – for at least three weeks. I need some time away to recharge my batteries. Don’t get me wrong – I like people and being alone for too long doesn’t make me happy but I do need my breaks and alone time.

Others struggle a lot more than I do. Because many of my friends are writers or otherwise involved in the ‘geek’ community as we affectionately and proudly call ourselves, I know my fair share of introverts, for whom big social gatherings can be a chore. I’m always pleased and a little honoured to see them show up at my place. I must be doing something right.

I think it is important to remember – especially if you are the gregarious sort – that while it is in our nature as primates to be social and to want others around us, we all have our definition of what social means and we all have our limits as to how to express it.

I remember when I was a graduate student and would go to any event with a buffet. I was standing up in a balcony overlooking a crowd and watched as students from cultures where personal space was narrower than it was for most Canadians try to interact with their hosts. While engaged in conversation, they would move closer and the Canadian they were talking to would step back. Closer, back, closer, back as they wove an intricate dance pattern around the room.

It’s important to think of those kinds of differences when asking people to be social. You need to let them define the nature of their interaction. After all the purpose of a social event is not to change people, it is for them to have fun. And fun can only be held when people are comfortable.

So if you are hosting an event this year, make sure you have some spaces for people to retreat to so they can have a moment alone or with just a friend or two. Make sure everyone gets the experience you would want for yourself – comfort and joy, happiness and convivial surroundings. Parties aren’t sporting events, where you have to win and impose your idea of fun on others. They are places to let people know you care for them and want them to be around you.

And that’s ten minutes.

Helping

They say that lottery winners are inundated with requests for help. Literally hundreds or thousands of e-mails, phone calls, appeals on Facebook or notes in the mail. Some people have to go into hiding; others erect a stony faced defence. Some of the requests are from con artists or crazies but most, it seems, are genuine, people who are desperate and in need and don’t understand why some people should have all the good luck while they have all the bad.

As an alternative to prayer, asking money from complete strangers probably seems like a reasonable thing to do.

Of course, you don’t have to be a lottery winner to feel overwhelmed with pleas for help. Rich people — I’m told by the few I know — get similar requests all the time. Not all at once but in a steady stream. Those who are rich enough and human enough generally set up foundations  or give a significant amount of their money to charity, not to deal with individual requests but to set up support systems or to address the underlying causes — poverty, illness, drug addition, poor education — that lie at the root these problems. You know, the kinds of things civilized states generally deal with. The other rich people crow about how deserving they are and say screw you to the rest. Sadly, there is no hell to consign them to.

But most of us aren’t rich; a lot are just scraping by. What can average person do? We don’t have time and energy (let alone money) to answer all the appeals. And there are plenty to answer. Requests for money to save the children of Nepal — I got three of those today — or, more locally, to buy tickets to an event to stop cyber bullying or help a family who was burnt out of their apartment. It seems endless.

And that doesn’t even count the immediate personal things, like helping friends dealing with illness or who have fallen on hard times for no reason other than the struggles of trying to live.

Sometimes it seems so easy just to ignore it — especially the silent appeals, the requests that aren’t really requests. We all know people who suffer in silence and sometimes we think they want to be left alone. They don’t. But they may be embarrassed or they may be proud or they may be afraid. That’s when it is up to us to go that one extra step.

No is an easy word to say. Yes isn’t much harder. So, if you have a friend of family member in need of help, reach out. It can be as simple as a phone call or a visit, a night out or a night away from their troubles, a little cash if that’s what it takes or a casserole. Kind words — however clumsily delivered — are like gold. That family that got burnt out — surely you have something in your closet or garage they could use. Or cash — skip coffee out for a week and you’d be surprised. Give it locally or give it to the children of Nepal. Volunteering at the food bank cuts both ways — you help but you also learn to be thankful for what you have.

Not everyone has a few dollars kicking around. Yet, I’ve often seen those with little be the most generous of all — with their time, their energy, their love and, most of all, their kindness. I can think of a few billionaires who could learn about life from them.

But that’s ten minutes.

Positive Thinking

Relentless optimism is a pain in the ass. The idea that we should always face the world with a smile on our face — no matter how dismal the day might be — is advice that will occasionally illicit murderous responses.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m mostly a glass is half full kind of guy. In fact I’d even say that the glass was designed only to be half full in any case. Maybe that’s because I’m usually talking about red wine glasses. Whatever — they aren’t whine glasses.

Still, telling people to think positively when they are dealing with real problems is seldom helpful. There were times in my own life and in the lives of my closest intimates when things really weren’t going well — struggles with health, money, feelings that the world was out to get us (which as it turned out wasn’t true though some individuals in that world were). My ex-wife and I would take turns saying to each other: “Buck up, buckaroo!” as a sort of sarcastic acknowledgment that sometimes all you really can do is smile through the tears. But the smile doesn’t make the pain go away.

Still, for myself, as bad as things go, I usually bounce back. Or else I walk away. There have been times when my situation was simply so grim, with so little likelihood of improvement, that walking away, leaving behind everything was the easiest or at least less painful option. But I’ve talked about that before.

There are, in fact, some things you can’t walk away from. Ill health has this nasty habit of following you wherever you go. In those cases all you can do is try to get better or, if it is chronic, adapt to the condition, as I’ve tried to adapt to asthma and arthritis. I’ve known lots of people who have arrived at a place where their life is simply their life. They make the best of it and, often, they do amazing things. But they don’t get there by having their able-bodied or mentally healthy friends telling them to put on a happy face.

Some have argued that our way of dealing with cancer is plagued with a disease of optimism. People are told that the best way to tackle illness is to fight it, to have a positive attitude, to not give in to feelings of despair. Like paranoia, despair is sometimes just clear thinking. I happen to think that proper treatment — surgery, radiation, chemo — plus efforts at ‘wellness’ such as good food, exercise and the unconditional (that is unpreachy) love of others is more helpful. It doesn’t always work.

Then relentless optimism is a form of blaming — if you don’t get well, it must be a problem with your attitude. And when you have to face the fact you might be dying, who really needs that extra burden of guilt and shame?

And that’s ten dyspeptic minutes.

Newfoundland Sorrow

I’ve been to Newfoundland (really just St. John’s) four times — twice during my art education phase and once on Senate business, studying the oil industry. But it is the first visit — the one a week after my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer — that colours them all.

It was December 1995. Lynne had discovered a lump while showering on the day of her thesis defence. She said nothing to me — or to anyone else — but went to the defence, kicked ass and came home with her Master’s degree. It was Friday, so we had a party. On Monday, she went to her doctor and that night told me that she was scheduled for a biopsy the following Monday.

Given her age (41) and the rapidity of the lump’s growth (it hadn’t been there three months before during her exam), the biopsy was done in the morning and the results were delivered that afternoon. Stage 2 but aggressive.

They offered to do the surgery that week but we had a trip planned to Newfoundland to visit Lynne’s closest friends before going on to Nova Scotia to spend Christmas with my family. We had put a lot of resources — time and money — into the trip and she refused to give it up. The doctors agreed that there was no harm waiting a few weeks (it actually was optimal because it would then occur in the middle of her menstrual cycle — maximizing chances of success) so a few days later we were off to St. John’s.

Lynne was determined that the trip would be fun and focussed on our friends who were in Newfoundland teaching at Memorial on a term assignment. They weren’t all that happy and she didn’t want to make them unhappier.

So we didn’t say a word for four days. We visited museums and shops, climbed Signal Hill in the fog, ate and drank and listened to music at their house — a beautiful old place on the waterfront — or at the many bars and restaurants scattered through downtown.

Winter often comes late to St. John’s and so it was that year. It was mild — I doubt if it ever is warm there, at least not based on subsequent trips — with a couple of beautiful clear days, the sun shining like gems on the harbour, plus some real low overcast days with the banks of fog moving in and out with the tide. It was, in a word, perfectly beautiful. It was Newfoundland.

But sun or cloud it was all coloured with a deep shade of blue and the weight of impending doom.

On our final night there we broke the news. There was wine mixed with the tears but as the night progressed there was also love and laughter. That colours my memory, too.

Lynne was lucky. Her cancer was effectively treated and she is still well to this day, though we are no longer together. But I can never think of Newfoundland without thinking of that first visit and her toughness and tenderness. And the sorrow — not for her, but for those who weren’t so lucky.

And that’s ten minutes.

Christmas Music

People who think they know me are often surprised to discover that I like Christmas music. They are shocked to learn that I have nearly 200 albums. This, of course, is a paltry collection — Manny Jules, former chief of the Kamloops First Nation once told me he had 900. My mind boggled and my secret Santa got jealous.

How can someone who is not only an atheist but a secular empiricist, who demands that nothing— whether in science or politics — should be taken without proof, like Christmas music so much? It’s not for the mystical qualities. I’m not in the least connected to anything that can’t be measured; people who have called me spiritual may recall the blank bemused stare I gave them and my remark of: You’re projecting your own insecurities.

Yet I do like Christmas music. I find it entertaining, often moving, sometimes amusing, And fun to hum along with. Though what I call Christmas music might not pass muster with those whose experience is limited to Church choirs and shopping malls.

One of my favorites of all time is from rocker, Melissa Etheridge whose riff on O Holy Night is truly divine. It manages to merge pure secular values of optimism and action with both pagan and Christian themes of the solstice/Christmas season.

Then there is Little Drummer Boy — one of the most often performed but frequently most annoying of all songs of the season. It shot up my list as a seasonal favorite because my friend, George Roseme, who walked into the woods and died about seven years ago, hated it so much. He would moan and cover his ears when it played and curse the musician for performing it. So, now, whenever I hear it, I think of George. It is one of the bittersweet memories of Christmas for me.

There are some strange ones too. Every one points to the Pogues, “Christmas in New York” as particularly disturbing but it has nothing on Henry Rollin’s recital of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

Some music is so bad it holds a weird fascination. All of Bob Dylan’s Christmas album is strange, some of it horrifying and it is hard to know if he is being sincere or sinister. Then there is the Jethro Tull Christmas. The less said about that, the better. And I certainly have my limits when it comes to rank sentimentality: I can’t listen all the way through to “The Cat Carol.”

I also love the ethereal beauty of the classics when they performed with delicacy and grace. Libera, the international boys’ choir, is particularly good at that but I’d also recommend Katherine Jenkins and the Canadian Measha Brueggergosman.

But one of my favorite songs is the little known ‘Boy from the Woods.‘ For me it captures the purest secular values of kindness, charity and altruism and the philosophy of ‘pass it on.’ Yet, if you want, you can accept it as a religious song, too. The writing is so clever that either interpretation works and is emotionally satisfying.

But that’s ten minutes. (Merry Christmas)