The heart of the moon
is marrow in a broken bone
blood and black as the days
dead beauty expelled
like a haunting corpse
suspended spinning beyond reach
cold old mirror reflecting life
keeping none for herself

proud stands obsidian tower
shining strength in the sun

immovable
insurmountable
impregnable

but when the winds roll in
so come the darkened skies
pregnant with grey rain
that soaks the stones
till once cold rock now dull
weeps in the deluge

It’s times like this as we have just finished a federal election and are entering a provincial one that I am happy to live in a parliamentary democracy as opposed to the presidential system the United States has been increasingly floundering with lately.

When I watch what has become a circus of ineffectiveness in the US as partisan politics immobilizes the country I am thrilled to death for the good old boring parliamentary system. Don’t get me wrong – we here in Canada have the same level of partisan petty politics as anywhere but it does not grind the entire nation to a halt and essentially turn our leaders (however much we may or may not hate them) into lame ducks as it seems to have done south of the border.

I have a theory.

I wonder perhaps if, in this time of global tumult and economic crisis, the fact that our system of governance has had nearly 800 years to mature makes any difference. On June 15, 1215 old King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta on the plains of Runymede near the Thames River outside of London by angry Lords who sought to reign in a corrupt and power abusing monarch effectively launching what would eventually become the parliamentary system of governance we know today.

The presidential system, however much Americans would like to tout it’s inspiration as being rooted in ancient Greece is really only a little over 200 years old…is still in the tumultuous years of youth as far as history is concerned and possibly still an experiment.

Like Canadian football the parliamentary system is agile, relatively fast to pass (legislation) in comparison to other models. Sure it doesn’t have some of the same entertainment value that comes with the blunt, big, war-like cousin to the south but what it lacks in pure violence it makes up for in strategy and pure movement.

The agility of our system is a direct result of what Canadians often moan about – the fact that we do not vote for the executive branch independently from our legislative. Our executive and legislative are tied together to the degree that a majority ruling party can get quite a lot done with little in the way of filibustering opposition but still has the check of the Senate (which thankfully looks like it will move toward an elected model).

By contrast a president is elected independent of the party which means that the American people can, should they choose, put in place a leader that nobody – Republican or Democrat – wants to work with. In this instance the state is essentially headless and a power vacuum ensues with all the political manoeuvring (backstabbing, pandering) that is bound to occur as a result.

The scary thing about such circumstances is that it takes a crisis of enormous scale to force cooperation in a presidential democracy floundering in such a vacuum. It took 9/11 to solidify near monarch-like support behind George W. Bush in 2001 but what that created was not a democracy so much as a feartocracy which the country is now attempting to extricate itself from.

When Bush entered office he did so with a 50 percent approval rating (reflecting the divisive nature of the election). After 9/11 his ratings soared to an unprecedented 92 percent in October 2001 eventually falling to 19 percent when he left office.

The point is, in a system that elects it’s executive independent of its legislative branch politicians are forced into unnatural positions for the sake of re-election when crisis inflates their popularity to an unrealistic high. It effectively eliminates virtually every check and balance in place and writes a blank cheque for one person ruling the most powerful country in the world.

The irony of course is that it was the American disdain of the parliamentary system and the associated  figurehead of the monarch that essentially put in place a system that centralizes power in one presidential individual – sometimes to the degree where they have more power than the very monarch they were fleeing and leading to all the same abuses.

It is no surprise given the current circumstances that the American Tea Party movement has picked up steam recently. They carry essentially the same platform the original American Revolutionaries carried only now it is directed against their own presidential system instead of a monarchy.

All that to say I am pleased with our parliamentary system which focuses power on no particular individual or office (and don’t try to tell me the monarch has all the power in our system because we all know that is not a reality).

Just some thoughts on governance.

Abortion – the word alone is enough to clear a room (let alone a blog).

For three years I was part of the Pembina Valley Pregnancy Care Centre, for two of those as chairperson, and one of the things we noticed was the absolute scorn and anger raised at the very suggestion that abortion contributed to any form of mental illness. The term post abortion syndrome was looked down upon as politicizing by pro-life advocates and dismissed as psuedo-science.

This past week the respected British Journal of Psychiatry published an article entitled: Abortion and Mental Health: Quantitative Synthesis and Analysis of Research Published 1995-2009. You can find the abstract here: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/199/3/180.abstract.

The report abstract calls the latest research “the largest quantitative estimate of mental health risks associated with abortion available in the world literature.”

Quite the statement and I am sure psychiatrists around the world and others with a vested interest will pour over the research and prepare either rebuttals or articles of support.

The report states its primary conclusions as follows:

“Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion. The strongest subgroup estimates of increased risk occurred when abortion was compared with term pregnancy and when the outcomes pertained to substance use and suicidal behaviour.”

I think it is safe to assume these results will be divisive just as every other aspect of the subject seems to have been for year after year. I do hope it sparks dialog however. Petty partisan fighting helps no one – especially the women who find themselves in the middle of having to decide whether they will have an abortion or not.

I also hope the report is a step toward admitting that resources are required for women who have had an abortion…that support needs to be provided both before AND after.

 

 

 

 

I was about 11 years old when I came to realize there was no such thing as magic. I was part of Pioneer Boys at the local Pentecostal Church and they had brought in a magician to entertain the children one evening. I expect he was called an illusionist because of magic was evil whereas illusions were not.

At any rate I was called up at one point to assist in a trick in which the magician was going to pass a handkerchief through my wrist. I was intrigued. I had no doubt he would do it I just was not sure how. As it turns out he simply took an end of the handkerchief in each hand and proceeded to rapidly bring the outstretched cloth down toward my wrist. When it touched my wrist the magician let go of one end briefly and managed to grab it again just beneath my wrist.

I can only assume mine were not the sole preconceptions shattered that day save perhaps for a near-sighted child in the back row.

What an incredible disappointment. I remember the empty feeling after the performance. Of course you never shared these feelings with anyone. As a child it was simply recorded, reacted to and relegated to a dark corner of the mind.

Sometimes I wonder if growing up is essentially the gradual but increasing awareness that there is no such thing as magic. That the incredible is simply the ordinary in disguise.

Of course there is a great deal of arrogance in such an assumption but then no one ever claimed humanity was the picture of humility. As with nearly everything we base our impressions of the world on our experience. I decided at 11 that there was no such thing as magic based on one moment with a poor illusionist. It seems silly now that I think about it.

In how many myriad ways do we define the world, the universe and each other based solely upon our infinitesimal experience? In the grand scheme of things we are in no position to decide anything absolutely.

In a universe that is 14 billion years old (or six thousand depending upon where you learned Geology) on a planet where the average human lifespan ranges from 32 years in Swaziland to 82 years in Japan we simply do not have enough information or experience do decide pretty much anything…

…and so I suppose I will hold out hope for magic; Hope that it is out there somewhere cohabiting with the miraculous.

After all who am I to say what is and is not?

some dream in colour
i have heard
while others court night
in tones of sepia
but
i like the black
i like the white
for between the two
lives imagination

Like icebergs piercing
a cold, rolled steel skin
the realities of the the world
burst in upon dream-drugged mind
flooding consciousness
with frozen life
shouting –

“you drowned yourself”

as if the truth were manifest
by sheer force of volume

the one winged bird
it flies in circles
like the fish with one fin
and the one legged man

left with one eye
we lose all depth
and cannot fall
for the flatness of it all

half a thing
is no thing at all

I was reading Kai Nagata’s latest blog post and it gave me pause to think a bit. For those of you who are not aware Nagata was, until recently, a celebrated 24 year old journalist and Quebec City bureau chief for CTV. Nagata shocked his peers by quitting his job effectively closing the door on a promising career with CTV for reasons that are more complex than I can do justice here (check out his blog www.kainagata.com for more info on his decision). Suffice to say he felt he could do more with his life outside of journalism than within.

At any rate Nagata poses a question in his latest post that is worth pondering. He asks:

“How do so many smart, talented, well-meaning people, working together, create something so intellectually flaccid, even morally ambiguous?”

He is asking this of television journalism but it is likely a question most organizations anywhere doing anything could ask of themselves be they businesses, non-profits, churches or even families.

I believe one word can answer the question above – fear. Fear has a tendency to kill every creative impulse. It is ironic given that fear is an instinct designed to keep us alive by alerting us to threat and if we were mere animals we would do well to heed its voice every time. We are not, however, mere animals but human beings and there is a distinction whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

Fear prevents us from taking risks, it prevents us from potentially offending people and yes, it still prevents us from dying, more often artistically and creatively than physically but a death is a death.

Perhaps one of the things that makes us human is the need for us to overcome our fear and risk everything, even our lives, for the sake of what we are endeavoring to create or reveal as the case may be. Nagata should understand this because his career died when he overcame what was likely intense fear – fear of what friends and family would say, fear for the future, etc.

Fear as an animal instinct is a good thing, but fear of creativity, fear of truth – these are not good things and they are the reason that so many groups of people become less than the sum of their parts instead of greater.

To overcome this fear and achieve truth and real creativity a person must overcome their fear and be willing to die. You might think I mean this metaphorically and certainly I do to a great extent but we cannot exclude the possibility of real sacrifice being required for the sake of life, truth and creativity. One need only look to certain historical figures such as Christ, Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and others to recognize the truth in this.

Most people are simply not willing to go that far, either metaphorically or literally. It requires a kind of revelation that few ever have. We (and I include myself in this) are content to satisfy Mazlo’s hierarchy of needs. Give me food, shelter and companionship of one form or another and I am content with my mediocre life.

That being said mediocrity has never changed the world for the better…nor does simply complaining about it’s state. It requires personal, sacrificial action. With such dedication even one person can change the world. It has happened before and will no doubt happen again.