Christians in the park

   Christians make me nervous. Christians in large groups, celebrating their Christianity make me even more nervous. Christians in large groups, celebrating their Christianity in public parks make me really nervous.
   There were a bunch of Christians doing this very thing this past Saturday morning in Victoria Park. I was running through the park in the morning and heard some music coming from the band shell, wondered what was going on, and then remembered---oh yeah... Christians.
   The fellow who'd organized this group of Christians had been in the paper and on T.V. recently because he'd been asking city hall to raise a Christian flag on city hall property to mark this special day and gathering. I guess city hall had originally said yes but then changed its mind. This may have had something to do with controversial remarks this fellow had made about kicking Muslims who wanted to practice Sharia law out of the country. This same fellow coolly predicted there would be 5,000 people in the park on the weekend to help celebrate.
   You could almost predict the outcome of all this. Nowhere near 5,000 people showed up, it was probably more like 500. Hecklers made an appearance and a couple of women started necking, provoking a response from the guy who arranged the whole thing. And that was about it, as I understand. There is a danger, of course, in reporting more or less only what the paper reported but it did seem like one man's brief moment in the sun, in the name of the Son.
   When thinking of large groups of historically organized Christians I am hard-pressed to come up with examples that don't cause my emotions to run the gamut from mild nervousness to a case of the full-blown heebie jeebies. The list, without much thought and as quick as they popped into my head, includes the Ku Klux Klan, the Amish, Mormons, Nazis, the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic church, not to mention the Crusaders, the Salem witch hunters and people responsible for the obliteration of the Aztecs, Incas and North American First Nations. Saving the worst til last...T.V. evangelists.
   I imagine if you're a Christian and you're reading this then you're not taking to it too kindly. This doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me because if you're a true Christian, as I understand it, you have a "turn the other cheek" mentality and will not take me too onerously to task on anything I've said here. By which I mean you won't hit me. Unless, of course, you possibly belong to one of the above groups...
   The fact that Christians make me nervous is a very personal thing and I imagine it stems from the feeling I'm just about to have something foisted on me whenever I'm around them. They occasionally even show up at my door, bearing books or pamphlets, extolling their brand of Christianity. They're harder to get rid of mainly because they're...well...nice. I am at the age now where it seems quite alright to be gruff and non-appreciative of telemarketers, door-to-door sales persons and rude shopkeepers but, because of their niceness, it is harder to be this way with Christians.
   I am one of those people who believe that Jesus may never even have existed, that he is a myth. I say this because there is apparently no secular record of an historical Jesus ever having existed. This statement is refuted all over the place (all you need do is Google "was there an historical Jesus?)  and what you end up with is scholars refuting other scholars so you really need to make up your own mind on this. If there actually was a Jesus, I believe his life was vastly different than the one portrayed in lore. In the two thousand years since he was said to have existed we have had to essentially rely on a word-of-mouth interpretation of the events back in those days. I also know that no two persons' recollection of an event will be the same and that no subsequent re-telling of a story will tell the same story exactly all over again. This is why I have doubts. I trust people as far as I can throw them. Because they are people.
   The funny part about all this is that I totally respect much of what Christianity stands for and much of what is said in the Bible. A lot of it makes sense. Jesus and his parables resonate with me. I am a pacifist by nature and appreciate the non-violence talked about in the Bible. My objection to Christianity is when there appears to be an agenda attached to it.
   I object to Christianity being used as motivation for killing people. I object to Christianity being used to make money. I object to it being used as part of a political agenda (see first two objections). I object to it being used as a means toward self-aggrandisement. I object to athletes making stupendous plays and then crossing themselves and pointing to the heavens, as if to give credit to God (unless, of course, they are willing to do the same thing when they drop the game-winning catch...).

   I appreciate people being Christians quietly, going about living virtuous lives with little mention made of their spiritual beliefs. If there is mention made of Jesus Christ it is perhaps because someone asked them, out of curiosity, why they are so happy, or motivated or driven or calm. I think all Christians need to do is "live the life" and I will, over time, lose my nervousness about them! 
  
  
  

Counselling

   When I walked away from my first marriage, my wife at the time was pretty adamant that I needed counselling. At this point in my life, I was facing a lot of "how could you?" from many different corners and the fact that I might need counselling almost made sense, even to me.
   My ex was pretty sure that the counselling I required centred around my relationship with my mother. This was probably the easiest conclusion to come to based on the number and types of mental, psychiatric and emotional issues my mother had to deal with in her later years. Once again this seemed to make sense, even to me.
   I was still left, however, with the nagging feeling that there were actually no unresolved issues between my mother and me that still (or ever) needed to be dealt with. Of course, a lot of people who need counselling around an issue don't know they need counselling around that issue so I had not totally dismissed this as an area requiring attention. At the same time, however, I never went for counselling.

   Then I began golfing with my Dad.

   As I have described in previous blogs, Dad and I got together every Monday morning for a round of golf. Afterwards, he and I would sit in the clubhouse over a beer or a pop and we would talk. We talked about a lot of things, most of it being stuff that had happened years ago, when I was kid and sometimes even before that. He had stories to tell about his childhood, his summer jobs, his adventures in the Navy, how he met my Mum, the places he worked, all the moves we made from city to city, his two marriages, right up to the present.
   This also gave me the opportunity to ask questions about things that had happened when I was a kid, why we moved so many times, what was wrong with my mother, and those kinds of things. We often compared memories and, generally, Dad was surprised that I could remember as much as I could.
   Slowly, after many post-golf sessions, certain small realizations were made apparent to me. I guess the first and foremost was that my Dad was never there while I was growing up. This, unfortunately, was mainly due to the nature of his job in the insurance business. There were many times when he was away for days at a time, off on business trips, adjusting peoples' insurance claims. If he wasn't off doing that, he was taking a training course somewhere. This pretty well left my Mum and my brother Bob and I to fend for ourselves, or at least it felt this way. So this is what we did.
   At the same time we were fending for ourselves, we were being moved around, almost constantly, until I was eleven. At this point we ended up in London but prior to that we had lived in nine different houses in four different cities in two different countries. Fending had become a life skill by this point.
   During one of our reminiscing sessions, Dad asked me if I'd ever played ice hockey. For once, I just stopped and kind of looked at him. I remember thinking to myself were you to remember anything about your son growing up it was likely that whether he played hockey or not would have been one of those things. It wasn't even something I could credit his Alzheimer's with, at this point in his life Dad's short term memory was the pits but his long term memory was dead on. It felt to me that somehow or other he had either relegated this memory to the "unimportant" bin or perhaps had simply and intrinsically been "uninvolved" with large sections of my youth.
   My Dad loved cars and boats. I grew up disinterested in both. This has never really bothered me but at the same time I have often wondered what the dynamic was in all of that, I have seen other examples (most notably with one of my stepsons and his father) where the dad's passion for something has somehow been passed on to his son. This didn't happen in my case. On the other hand, my mum loved poetry and writing and now so do I.

Love of poetry and lack of dickering.

   Another telling moment--when I bought my first car I, of course, was all excited and couldn't wait to call Dad and tell him all about it. We got into a discussion about the cost of it and my interaction with the salesman. I had not "dickered" with the salesman and had paid full price for the car. Dad pointed out to me that, essentially, I had been "taken". This completely deflated me, naturally. Dad, to his credit, realized right away what he'd done and tried to make amends but the damage had been done. In later years, though, I went over this many times and it finally occurred to me that if you are going to learn to "dicker" over cars then who's the person most likely to teach you that? Your dad. Now in the lifelong relationship between a man and his son I'm not sure if there's a course called Dickering 101 but I had certainly never been signed up for it. I also don't think you need to drag your kids along with you every time you're purchasing a house or car but if you're really and truly involved with your kids then it's one of the subjects that somehow or other should come up. (Note to myself: Check to see of your kids know anything about dickering...)
   One of the things I did pick up from my Dad was a love of sports and I have all sorts of fond memories of being taught how to fish and throw balls and shoot pucks and all those kinds of things. As strong as those memories are, though, the memories of having to beg him to do those things with me were just about as strong. As an adult, I became involved with organized sports and I offered him all sorts of opportunities to come and watch. I offered him opportunities to come and watch both his son and grandson, at the same time. But he never took me up on those chances to be involved, even as just a spectator.

   Getting back to counselling. What I think has happened is that I have self-counselled. My ex thought I had issues with my mother and she also thought I had issues with being a Dad. I truly believe she was wrong about the former. I also truly believe I had a dad who didn't do a lot of  "Dad" teaching when I was growing up, likely for a number of reasons, one of them being simply not being able to be there enough. I don't know for sure but I also suspect that both he and I were probably much closer to our mothers. Whatever self-doubt I have about my role as a father, I think, likely stems from my father. That is my way-too-simplistic conclusion from all the self-counselling I have done.
   My Dad, as many of you are likely aware, has passed away and now there is little opportunity to address any of this, not that I likely would have anyway. When he passed, there were nothing but wonderful things said about him and I imagine I have somewhat tarnished some of that. I cannot emphasize enough, though, that by the end of his life he had more than made up for anything that had happened or not happened when I was a kid. He ended being a man who demonstrated no end to his wisdom and profundity and showed how much he loved those around him with no reservation. Anyone who met him liked or loved him in return. His grand kids loved him particularly so and this was reciprocated in full.
   For myself, I have way too many things to thank him for. I did have the opportunity to express to him almost all of these before he passed and that is just another reason why I am thankful. My self-counselling has, ironically, been somewhat of a joyful thing. I think I now have a better picture of my relationship with my father and, warts and all, it has been a very self-fulfilling process insofar as I believe I now have a better understanding of myself and a higher comfort level in that regard.
   This is not to say that I have totally eliminated the possibility of engaging in counselling at some point. It might be nice to sit down with someone and say,"I did this and I did this and then I did this and what does that mean?" And then go from there.
  
  
      
    
  
  

Songs You Should Probably Hear At Least Once

   There is a lot of wonderful music out there, you hear it on the radio every day. If your my age, you've been hearing it on the radio for about fifty years now. What I've learned over the years, though, is that the music you hear on the radio is not always the best music there is out there, even by the the same artist.
   I find this very frustrating to talk to people who have an opinion on an artist only based on what they've heard on the radio. To help relieve my frustration a little in this regard, I'm going to post some of my favourite songs you probably haven't heard on the radio.

   The first one is Leonard Cohen's "The Sisters of Mercy". I was kind of torn between this and "Dress Rehearsal Rag" but I was after a slightly lighter tone so chose the former. I saw Cohen perform this song live here in London many years ago and he told a little story about how it came to be. Apparently he was wandering frigid Edmonton after a concert one wintery evening and somehow got invited in out of the cold by a couple of young women. He ended up spending an "unfortunately chaste" night at the girls' place and ended up writing this song as a result, if my faltering memory serves.
   Melanie Safka has always been one of my favourite artists, ever since "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain). It always bothered me that one of her most popular songs of all time was "Brand New Key". It certainly is a catchy little song but in her overall body of work there is some achingly beautiful music. Once again I had a hard time choosing. I finally opted for "Leftover Wine", probably one of her best. Briefly, it describes her relationship with her fans and audience. It was hard not to pick "Momma Momma", "Bobo's Party" or perhaps even "Birthday of the Sun", plus many others. This particular song, perhaps more than any other, showcases her amazing voice.

   I was watching a Harry Chapin PBS special many years ago and saw him perform a song called "Sniper". It was an amazing nine minute opus and I immediately went and bought the album it was on. Out of many Chapin songs I love, this is personally my favourite. It is a fascinating character study, touching on human nature and the effects of alienation. It was inspired by the story of Charles Whitman, who, in 1966, went to the top of the University of Texas tower and started shooting, killing thirteen people and an unborn child. Not typical Chapin stuff but he goes back and forth, almost documentary style, getting the story both from the sniper's viewpoint and the people who knew him. This is a powerful song.

   I was only mildly familiar with Joni Mitchell before I saw an appearance of hers on the Johnny Cash show way back when. She sang a song called "For Free", from her "Ladies of the  Canyon" album. At that point I was hooked, bought the album and many more. Nothing of hers I'd heard on the radio at that point really would have prompted me to become a fan so I'm very thankful for Johnny Cash having her on.

   Okay, I think I might stop there although I could go on and on. As you've probably figured out by now, I am an old "folkie" and I make no apologies. If you've hung in there and actually listened to all of these then you've heard almost half an hour of "Brian Baker music" and you should be congratulated for making it through! There has always been so much music out there that the radio and T.V. stations couldn't possibly do all the artists the justice they so readily deserve. The end result is that we, as an audience, lose out. We never get the opportunity to hear all the other music that's out there. Occasionally, Doralyn and I will be watching a movie and somewhere in the soundtrack we'll hear a song we fancy, that we've never heard before. So we look up the artist and discover all sorts of new great music! That's the wonderful thing, it's all at your fingertips!