we tear into the world
through a veil of blood and pain
and our first act defines us,
and our first act challenges us,
to be more than destroyers,
more than
machines of bone and sinew,
but to take the fire we’re made from
and forge something brighter with it

It is a rule of the universe that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In terms of human relations lets just say for every action there is a reactions.

Consequences.

There are consequences for what we say, what we do, what we write.

Should we choose to go out on a limb and have a formed thought about anything you can bet there are others who will be offended or supportive and will act in a way toward you.

Our words are powerful. Writing is an action. Writing ideas can be tantamount to revolution in some places.

In the days of the disconnected/overly connected internet and social media it can be easy to put our thoughts and words out into the aether anonymously. However, as brave and safe as we feel anonymous opinions are like still-born children…they are there, but not really. They carry no life with them.

When I put my words and ideas into the world and attach my name I am inviting consequences. I am inviting people to consume and understand my thoughts.

I recognize that sometimes, as a result of my own stances and ever growing/evolving ideas, the consequences can be significant. I may make new friends, others may become alienated. I may see old friendships strained under the weight of who I am flung out into the world.

I have to accept these consequences, especially if I had the fortitude to speak and write what I have come to believe is truth. It is important to present truth to the world as you believe it has been revealed to you while at the same time recognizing that others may be speaking exactly the same way back to you with an opposing perspective they feel may be truth.

I am speaking philosophically here. I cannot say that 2=2=5 and expect it to be received as truth. This is empirically wrong. However ideas…ideas are the realm of proposal and revelation.

Perhaps the hardest part of writing is that sometimes consequences affect the people around you. Sometimes your words have repercussions in the lives of people who had nothing to do with their release; people who have had the fortune or misfortune simple to be entangled in your life.

This is infuriating, unfair and reality. One must learn that while consequences are the results of our actions we are not responsible for what those consequences are when they come from other people.

I am not responsible for how other people feel when they read what I write. I am not responsible for how other people act in response to my writing – that is on them. Our choices are our own.

there is your red flesh
and your dimpled curves
that tempt me as
my mouth waters
with the anticipation
of tasting you on my tongue;
of pressing my fingers
to your taut skin…
I want to take a bite;
I want to feel your juices
running down my cheeks
as you satisfy my craving

I was having coffee with a friend and we started talking about an experience we both have had at one point or another – ostracism.

Ostracism as it was originally intended was actually a good thing. According to Wikipedia:

“was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or potential tyrant.”

That actually sounds kind of useful and I can think of all kinds of politicians and prospective politicians that should be ostracized. Unfortunately it is not a good thing within the context of community and human relations where it becomes shunning or excommunication.

Within communities it does not typically happen in any organized and conscious sense. Usually it is an instinct that people enact in response to a person or persons that have, in their eyes, done something wrong, something that makes them uncomfortable in that person’s presence.

Effectively we put these people to death.

You know what I mean, you have done this, I have done this. We come to an unconscious conclusion that in order to effectively move forward in a community certain people must die to us.

Practically speaking this can look like the following:

• we no longer acknowledge their presence
• we stop thinking about them
• we talk about them in the past tense (if we talk about them at all)
• we mourn their loss
• we move forward as if they never existed

We kill them. We kill them in our hearts and in our minds because this is far easier than having to navigate the complex and muddy moral waters of a friend who we feel has betrayed us somehow. It is far easier than maintaining the connection in the face of a community that has put the person to death. We know that we too, if we are not careful, could also be executed.

Usually when we kill people in this way they have the courtesy to oblige us by accepting their death with silence, creeping off to the isolated places the dead go and leaving us alone in ignorant bliss. Sometimes they leave the community because of the awkwardness of it all.

Although I speak of death in a figurative way sometimes this kind of separation leads to actual death for people – being shunned or separated from community can lead to depression and eventually illness and even suicide so that our metaphorical judgement becomes tragically real.

On occasion however the dead do not remain dead. Once and a while the ones we put to death stubbornly continue to walk amongst us and make their presence known. We call such creatures zombies or the undead and they frighten us.

We do not like being in the presence of one we thought dead. Especially the ones we executed. They freak us out and we do not know how to act around them.

If we come into contact with them perhaps we will become unclean – infected with the thing that killed them.

Of course this is all nonsense. The reality is we have no authority over the lives of others and when we kill people in this way we are concocting a fairy tale designed to ease our minds rather than have to deal with the dirty mess of maintaining real community.

Community, in its true form, is messy. Each of us has secretly or not-so-secretly done things that would cause others in the community to ostracize us should they come to learn of them. With this in mind there can be no such thing as community when we are constantly putting each other to death this way…only the disconnected walking dead.

The good news of course is that there is an alternative to putting the ones that discomfort us to death…there is an alternative to ostracism – genuine relationship; the kind of relational community that works hard at keeping one-another alive through the uncomfortable reality of our mutual humanity. Not ignoring the pain others can cause us but dealing with it head on with the intent of preserving one-another.

The next time a friend does something that makes you want to ostracize them consider grace and compassion instead of judgement and perhaps you will find life, where once death wanted to enter.

 

words,
there are no…words
nothing but empty lines
in a heart once filled;

there are no words
that do justice to you,
no words that reverberate
your presence like a song
now left unsung;
nothing on the shelf
where once was a beautiful volume,
just a black and bottomless gap;

words fail me…
I am lost and mute without you

Let us pray –”Lord we are gathered here to celebrate and mourn a life ended far too soon. We are here to thank you for the time we were given though we would ask for more if truth be told. We ask for your presence here among us and your strength and comfort to hold us up as we say goodbye to mum. As we contemplate in sadness and anger the loss of our loved one we cry out to you in the words you gave us –

Our Father who art in heaven
Hallow’ed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those
Who trespass against us
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil
For thine us the kingdom, the power and the glory
Forever and ever – Amen.”

In the Gospel of Saint John, chapter 16, verse 33, Jesus is speaking to his followers about the world and life and the difficulties they will face and he recognizes that the things he is saying could be discouraging so he says to them“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

In this verse you have wrapped up both the truth and the hope of mum’s life – in this world, there is no doubt, mum had trouble. To say her early life was difficult and full of troubles would be an enormous understatement…but it would be just as true to say that her faith and her family, as they grew through her life, became her peace and her hope. I believe mum understood the words of Christ in John 16:33 very well. I believe she lived these words.

Born Monica Mary McCarty on August 1 1948 to parents William and Savina McCarty, husband to Oscar Kenneth Goebel )predeceased), we are here to express our thankfulness for the time we were given to know and to love her and to be loved by her. We are here to express our sadness over the loss and mourn.

While we mourn her passing and stand firm in the truth that she died too soon we celebrate her beauty, a beauty outside and in, that shone past every brutality and darkness she ever experienced to the benefit of every person she ever touched.

We take some small solace in the likelihood that mum passed away in her sleep, in her own home – though we will not deny wanted more of her.

We stand in awe of a fierceness in life that was formidable. No one wanted to be at the receiving end of Monica when she felt she had been wronged…and God forbid you hurt her children or grandchildren.

We smile in memory of a sense of humour that never quit – a woman who could laugh with you and just as easily (and sometimes frustratingly) laugh at you. Because of mum I am incapable of being even a remotely decent liar. I cannot lie for any stretch without eventually laughing and giving myself away. This was mum’s fault…she could sense a lie a mile away and continue to pester you about it – sometimes for days, pursuing you – “just tell me the truth, nothing is going to happen, I know you did it…why are you lying? You know if you laugh that’s a sign you are lying right? Don’t laugh or I’ll know.”…and it would go on until you broke.

She taught us humility and that no matter how serious things got…there was always something funny to find.

We are confounded by a heart so large that she seemed to be able to contain a world of worry for, and about, everyone she loved…her mother, her brother, her sisters, her children, her grandchildren…always before herself.

We went through many things as a family. As children we were exposed to much that mum would have preferred we were not…but she was a wall before the world for us…she met every dark thing head-on to keep as much of it from her children as she could and what she could not stop she absorbed into herself.

She was savage in her desire to see us sheltered from the pain of life that she knew too well and she always put herself last when it came to her children. We can consider ourselves successful if we give to others a fraction of the love she gave to us.

If there is any good thing is within me – the seeds were planted there by her.

So while now we mourn and now we remember, we also can seek and find encouragement in the words of Christ that so encouraged her from Psalm 23:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. God makes me to lie down in green pastures: and leads me beside the still waters. God restores my soul and leads me in the paths of righteousness for God’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies: you anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

Poem (read by the grandchildren) –

“Grandma’s favorite poet was Robert Service, it was her father’s as well. As a tribute to her, her grandchildren will recite a Robert Service poem called The Mother:

There will be a singing in your heart, There will be a rapture in your eyes; You will be a woman set apart, You will be so wonderful and wise.

You will sleep, and when from dreams you start, As of one that wakes in Paradise, There will be a singing in your heart, There will be a rapture in your eyes.

There will be a moaning in your heart There will be an anguish in your eyes; You will see your dearest ones depart, You will hear their quivering good-byes.

Yours will be the heart-ache and the smart, Tears that scald and lonely sacrifice; There will be a moaning in your heart, There will be an anguish in your eyes.

There will come a glory in your eyes, There will come a peace within your heart; Sitting ‘neath the quiet evening skies, Time will dry the tear and dull the smart.

You will know that you have played your part; Yours shall be the love that never dies: You, with Heaven’s peace within your heart, You, with God’s own glory in your eyes.”

Flowers: As a farewell mum’s family will lay roses at the grave – from her siblings, her children and grandchildren.

Let us Pray – “Praise be to you God who gave us the chance to spend time in this world with Monica our sister, our mother and our friend. The gift of her life was more than we deserve and we will treasure it for as long as we live. And now we pray to you for comfort and restoration through your own mother in these words which we have been given –

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Let us go in peace and celebrate a life lived in our presence. Let us go with the remembrance that life is too short, death is a thief, and the antidote to anger and pain is the forgiveness, grace and love that has been extended to us, and, from us to one-another.

If we can do these things we honor mum and the one from whom she came – the one to whom she has returned.

I am sitting at the airport waiting for a flight to Toronto. Less than 11 hours ago my sister called me to tell me my mother had died suddenly and I think I am still in shock.

I recognize this is a very personal moment but since I tell you everything else I feel I can talk to you about this too. It may be selfish but it feels necessary as well. I need to write. Writing helps me.

Mum was not sick. I talked to her just the other night. “Hi Peter, just calling to say hello. Nothing important is going on here.”

As with all our chats on the phone this one ended with the words “I love you” shared between us. I am grateful for this. That these were her last words to me and mine to her.

I might be in shock. I don’t know.

My sister Angel called me and sent several texts saying I needed to call her immediately and I knew there was something wrong the way you do about these things sometimes.

Mum was not answering her phone so Angel went over to see if everything was ok. She found mum in her chair. She seemed to have died in her sleep.

67 years old seems too young for this.

I am warring with myself – part of me wants to excavate every memory of my mum and another part does not want to think about it at all. I go through odd periods where I feel absolutely nothing and then all of a sudden like a well-spring it all comes pouring out in a wet mess.

She was here two days ago and now she is not and I am finding this very difficult.

It feels as if a small explosive device went off somewhere deep inside of my chest. I ache in a way that does not want to stop. I am exhausted although I have slept. I find myself talking to mum in my head – like prayer almost. It is hard to accept that she will not call me next week; that I cannot call her next week to gloat about our weather and tease her about hers.

It is difficult.

Mum is fierce and foundational. Mum is all things. Mum is why I am and I owe her everything.

It is hard to tell people about it. When I told my children it was difficult not to cry and so I did. It doesn’t matter who I talk to…even now it is hard to write these words without gasping as if I no longer have air.

Mum is gone but ever-present now. It is an odd juxtaposition of absence and presence. I am thinking about her all of the time. Every moment is filled with her in a way it has never been before. I don’t like that we take these trips to say goodbye…they should be more for hellos.

I need to go now. They are boarding my plane and I have to start this journey that I don’t really want to take. I know it has already started but I think you know what I mean.

Thanks for listening. I need to go and say goodbye.

People will kill for what they believe in.

It’s true. They will kill and often they will do so without thought.

We do this because what we believe in, whatever that is, forms our foundation or paradigm; our worldview if you will. What we believe in becomes a the hub of our existence out of which all other things extend like spokes.

We often do not see it happening. Our defense of belief is almost always reactionary and knee-jerk with the thinking coming later when it is too late to back track (at least we think this).

While the killing too often is very real most often the killing occurs in the form of words. Anger that can, if we are not careful, lead to hate and hate which so often leads to death…the death of people in our hearts and minds and sometimes in reality.

It is the call to humility which is the cure for this kind of violence. Humility which first and foremost says that we know nothing (as one would say to Jon Snow). Humility which says to us we know so little that we cannot even be certain we know what we think we know.

With these things in mind it becomes far more difficult to condemn a person when you must first remind yourself of how little you know.

True wisdom may start at the point when one can honestly look at themselves and say “I believe I know nothing at all”. From this vantage all things are possible, including peace.

here’s to the fists
that rocked the skulls,
that knocked opponents
dead-hard to the mat;

here’s to the man
that tore into the world,
that roared into the world
a lion and a lamb

the man that floated,
the man that stung;
a great man pulled himself first
and
a great man put himself last;

here’s to the fighter
that refused to fight,
here’s to the champion,
to the tongue and to the wit
of one who won in every way,
held freedom tight every day

here’s to the proud and humble
contradiction of a hero;

hands raised high for Casius Clay!
Fist to the sky for Mohammed Ali!