A Crowd of Saints: All Saints' Day

My solitude of social distance is suddenly congested

by reminders today of the great cloud:

that crowd of witnesses huddled over there in eternity,

peering into time

from the vast margins of timelessness and voids of space.

How is it that we eternal beings—

now trapped in time,

like prehistoric insects in amber—

How is it we are so obsessed with the amber

that we imagine ourselves the focus?

Can we seriously sing of saints “who from their labours rest”

as though eternity is the monotonous, endless task of watching us?

Such dreary infinitude.

This amber chamber in which we live and move and be

confounds and imprisons us

defining our vision

regulating our expression;

so we envision our ancestors of millennia

eagerly peering over each other’s shoulders 

to catch glimpses of us—

“the living ones”

The irony catches in my throat,

a log hung up on  the flotsam of a cosmic flood.

That our amber-vision so defines us

rather than enabling us

to gaze beyond and marvel at the Idea

where amberlessness means movement. 

Lament for Delilah and Bathsheba

Cohen, in your haunting song

Of a poet-king and judge gone wrong

Infiltrating battered hearts of many,

We hear the grief, remorse, and pain

That festers in a heart of shame—

The music weighed us down; it was uncanny

How cleverly you spun the tale:

The men were victims through the veil

Of women who despised them and tormented,

Cruelly planning  wicked schemes,

To make them break upon their dreams,

It feels so web-like, and so perfume-scented.

How you sang it.

How we felt it.

How we listened and believed

We believed you.

But wait a moment, you forget

The women didn’t hold the net:

The men were writers of their chosen script.

Women softly passing by,

Too bad for them, they caught the eye

And found their lives and destinies now ripped

Savagely from their clenched fists,

They struggle, but now find their wrists

Are bound by history’s endless “she’s to blame.”

Their hearts beat on, misunderstood,

Voices hushed by victimhood

As men judge by their rules of their own game.

How you sang it.

How we felt it.

How we listened and believed

We believed you.

Why this song? This slow lament?

This dirge to justify the men

Who could not reach above for hallelujah?

The means to freedom always there—

It was no further than a prayer,

But still the victim’s called to bear the shame.

Hallelujah in the shame.

Hallelujah in the pain.

And listen to the one in pain

The one who’s forced to bear the shame

And pray her story ends in hallelujah.

A Letter to the Electoral College

Dear Electoral College,

I never dreamed I’d be writing you, but here I am. I have discovered your dirty little secret. Your designers tried to hide it, but it’s embedded in our system and when we look seriously, it’s there for all to see.

The first time I recall hearing about you was in Miss Louters' history class. The one held in that dungeon basement classroom under the auditorium with the plumbing and venting system hanging from the ceiling. (Little did we suspect we were being treated to the advance chic of 21st century restaurants.) Anyone else would have resented such a room for teaching, but Miss Louters made it cool. Her magic influence made those grey cement walls vibrate with history as she walked and lectured and threw the occasional book or chalk. We all loved her and believed everything she told us.

So on the fateful day when she told us about the Electoral College, she gave all the important reasons why you were there: to stand up for the minority and the oppressed. To keep the big states from running rampant over the little ones. To make sure that democracy was democratic. Her explanation was overly detailed for our early adolescent minds and it made more or less sense because it was about being fair. And democracy is all about fairness.

So we all believed. I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker: the Electoral College makes sure the majority does not oppress the minority. It protects the underdog. That was what the Constitution and all those founding fathers of ours were about. After all, they were the underdogs when George III was taxing them without their representation. So the Electoral College was just more of our exercise of the freedom and liberty we fought for in the War of Independence.

Why is it then, that every time I have voted, I have wondered. I have voted quite a few times over the decades: whether in person or absentee, it is my right and responsibility. I vote. But there was always a niggling feeling that my vote didn’t really count. After all, our individual votes don’t elect our president. We have an Electoral College that makes sure things are fair. Sometimes when we all get out and vote, the majority vote for the person who doesn’t win the Electoral College votes.  Five times the popular vote and you, Electoral College, have not agreed. And you have determined the winner when most of us cast our votes for the other. If the majority of us don’t choose our president, how does “one person, one vote” actually work?

It would appear that it doesn’t. So why do we still have a college of people voting and in most cases giving all the votes of a state to the person who wins 51% of the popular vote? What part of democracy is that? What is fair about being in a state where I vote with 48% of the people and all our state electoral votes count for the other guy in the overall grand scheme? 

So I did some homework because every time someone dredges up this mystery, people older and wiser and more politically savvy (or just more brain-washed) remind them that the Electoral College is about protecting the few against the many. And it’s about being fair and just. They get long winded and repeat all the arguments I read in the websites about why we have this complicated system—to protect us from ourselves.

Then I found out why we really have you. And the explanations are all pretty much basically true. But all the explainers, including my hero, Miss Louters, failed to explain how you got started. Why were the founding fathers so prescient and worried about protecting the “minority”?

It turns out, they were the minority. Yep. Turns out they weren’t all that much excited about pure democracy because that meant that everyone was supposed to be endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We know the drill. But quite a few of our founding fathers were wealthy slave owners and in the minority. Madison, one of the architects of our Constitution, designed it to safe-guard democracy on his terms and those of his fellow rich plantation magnates. Madison and the other slave-owning founders could see that if people started getting the hang of their rights as people and understood that democracy meant they had a voice in the government, the situation might not go well for them. If straight up democracy was the name of the game, they stood to lose quite a bit. So they had to figure out how to protect their own minority rights (the lives and work of their slaves and their plantations) within the context of a democratic government purported to be founded on the sovereignty of the people. Much later Lincoln described it as government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Of course, when Madison and company were hammering out the Constitution, they had to create ways to protect the minority of extremely wealthy people from having to abide by the will of the general populace. They didn’t want to have to pay taxes to provide for the welfare or education or health or anyone else. So they invented you, Electoral College, and the Senate, both designed to protect states (usually slave states) with smaller (white) populations by favouring them. And to insure that minority people like slaves and First Nation people would not be able to access this democracy, they were legally designated as three-fifths of a person.  As for who could vote, they certainly couldn’t—only white male property owners had that right. 

To protect slavery, non-free persons were less than full humans and had no voting rights. So much for the self-evident truth of all men being created equal. Now the secret is out: the freedom our founders were protecting was their elite status so they could enjoy their own productive property without being accountable to anyone else for it.

And now, hundreds of years later, we still cling to an archaic pomposity designed to prevent the will of the general populace from overpowering the elite wealthy who use their influence to prevent the government from raising the taxes on their millions and putting it to work for the average people for things like education, health, police, parks, libraries, roads, and transport. 

But slavery is over, as Madison knew it eventually would be. So why do we still have the Electoral College? Because although slavery is over, there is still an elite group of wealthy people who want to keep control of the situation so they are not subject to the “tyranny” of democracy—living by the will of the people. The Electoral College is brilliantly designed to create the illusion of fairness. 

There are several big arguments in favour of keeping you around, Electoral College. One of them is our marvellous two-party system.  Although we have all seen numerous other parties and candidates listed on our ballots, and our democracy allows people to freely run for office, none of them ever has a chance of winning because you, Electoral College assure they never will. You hold a binary system in place that is nearly iron-clad. Getting another party into the game is insanely difficult. Despite the move for progressive parties and green parties as well as all the ones we have all heard of: communists and libertarians—no one stands a chance against the two major players. And the weird thing is these two parties are like siblings who simply cannot get along. As soon as one gets into office, all the bipartisan chitchat goes out the window and the one who loses spends the next four years trying to undermine what the current leadership is attempting to implement. But it is all part of the game because the winners, aside from their own agenda, are trying to undo what the previous party accomplished during their stint. 

And the folks defending you, Electoral College, say that this is a good thing. We wouldn’t want the confusion of more parties, more voices, more opinions. No we are much better off with two parties who (at the time of this election) offer us the vast selection of two white males in their seventies who urge us to vote for them by tearing the other guy apart.

Now, why would it seem so important to keep a two-party system? Because, it is argued, that when you have multiple parties, the only way to get elected is to create coalitions. And we all see how coalitions have failed in Europe. Oh, have we? It seems that in fact, Europe is learning about process as more voices are being heard. People are having to compromise and implement a little give-and-take. Elections are not simply a “winner take all” when parties have to negotiate and listen. Of course, it’s a situation rife for spin-doctors. But let’s not fool ourselves by trying to say we don’t have spin-doctors here. They are part of the political landscape as long as people are trying to hear what affirms what they already believe instead of being open to what is truly happening.

Electoral College, I wish you could quietly take yourself out of the picture. Let us try real elections without you. Back when we were a country of only a million or so and two parties was plenty to represent both points of view, you may have had a vital role. But 320 million is far too many people to be heard by two predominantly white, middle and upper class people who are not completely convinced that the climate is changing on our planet or that we should be doing something about it.

Please, go swiftly, go wildly, but go.

 

 

A Sonnet to Bathsheba and Delilah

Reflecting on Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah”

Oh, Cohen, when you poem-ised your heartache

To glorify men handsome, fearless, strong

Diminishing their own heroic soundtracks,

Unwilling victims of their chosen wrong:

The chords that tie the painful words together

Jog memories of dis-ease long past,

And tighten like a noose we cannot sever,

Indicting women blamed for being fast.

Your plaintive music tears into our heart-song

And histories well up with deep regret,

Now shift to self-defence and blame awrong—

The victims of the selfish, lustful net.

A broken hallelujah’s cold mistrust:

The song of those who treat their victims thus.

A Letter to My Mask-Free Friends

 

Greetings, fellow sufferers from the indignities inflicted by the pandemic!

With great compassion and sympathy I write to bolster your spirits during this oppressive time. When I first thought of writing words of encouragement, I contemplated how to address you. An initial idea, “anti-maskers” I quickly eliminated because of it’s negative and possibly judgemental connotation. After all, you are not against masks as much as you are for free and open faces which smile and laugh and blow kisses and sing. 

So I begin this letter to assure you of my heart for you. I care deeply about you. I respect your rights: your God-given rights, your constitutional rights, and your rights as human beings on planet earth. What’s more, I sympathise with the discomfort, inconvenience, bother, mess, insanity, and general outrage which masks inflict on our lives and lifestyles. I see your side. I hear your protest. 

That said, I continue in the spirit of open conversation. Conversation has the potential of being monologue or dialogue. We have all been subjected to the dreaded one-sided conversation. Dialogue has the advantage of being more mutual, more friendly, more inclusive. So I offer you the other side of the conversation hoping that perhaps you may hear it with compassion.

There are fearful people out there. People who are afraid of getting covid themselves, yes. But far more are afraid that the people they love—really old and really young ones—will get a disease that kills them or has lasting serious effects. Such people are operating in fear mode. You have been afraid and you are well aware of what fear feels like. You cannot rationalise it; you cannot tell it that it is unfounded. 

You can respect it or scorn it, but you cannot argue with it.

There are also people out there who are not afraid but are aware of the impact they have on the society around them. They may not be worried about getting covid—they’re young, healthy, fit, or they eat right and take care of themselves. But they know that if they walk in crowded places without wearing a mask or get too near others wearing masks, they may feel like a threat. Or they may be perceived as being disrespectful or indifferent to the welfare of others. So, despite the inconvenience of “one more thing”, the bother of remembering to bring it, the unwelcome smell, the discomfort of wearing it, the hassle of making sure it doesn’t leak, and for some the damage it causes to the skin on their faces—they wear them. For the others. Not for themselves.

Our country makes up of 4% of the world’s population. Even as an affluent country with medical advantages, we could reasonably accept 4% of the deaths from Covid-19. But, perhaps due to our amazing testing (wink, wink), we account for 22% of worldwide Covid deaths. Statistics are just numbers and I agree that you can make them say just about what you like—but that looks plain weird to me. Little countries that don’t have our super-power and advanced technology have limited their death toll by things as low-tech as mask wearing and hand sanitising and social distancing. 

Seems to me that wearing a mask is a ridiculously small price to pay for a lower death rate. Let me wrap up with a quick observation: there are some folks who think that covid is simply not that big a deal. They point to other worldwide pandemics and marvel that we are making such a fuss about the flu. This might be the case: hindsight will tell us. However, this kind of hand-waving debunking sounds quite similar to the attitudes that claim that the climate is not changing and racism is not a thing in America. Never would I lump you in the same category as folks with those attitudes. But it would be well to acknowledge that dismissing something which does not affect you doesn’t really make it go away. It simply makes you less relevant in the conversation.

So please, engage in the conversation. Listen to the other side. And contemplate what it would feel like to be on the life-losing side. 

A Letter to Lemon Yellow, Ruby Red, Forest Green, and Cobalt Blue

 

My dear friends of the Rainbow,

I have addressed this letter to you in particular, but my desire is for all your friends and relations in the rainbow to hear me out for a few minutes. I love you dearly, from the first chunky eight of you I held in my chubby hands to the impressive 128 deluxe version with names we mispronounced but delighted in: magenta, puce, turquoise, wisteria, and fuchsia. Oh you are a multitudinous treasure to behold. 

Today I would like to say how much I love orange. Plain simple old orange. Please, don’t take offence when I tell you how precious orange is. I love you all. Some of you have been standing out in brilliant ways for millennia and getting quite a lot of attention: Blue, heavens, you have the sky in every hue you choose to wear. Green, my goodness, you’ve got photosynthesis going for you after all. Almost anything with a leaf is going to have a smudge of green somewhere. Let’s face it, some of you have a wide palette and massive family.

Orange has a number of relatives, but today I was thinking about how orange plays her role. Think about construction workers: their orange vests, orange helmets, and orange cones all remind us to take care. Orange is the colour for caution and care. But unless we’re talking about traffic signs or constructions sites, she doesn’t usually get first billing. She frequently ends up as a complement to someone more visible. 

But what a complement she can be. Where would autumn be without orange? We need her orange leaves among the browns and reds and golds. We glory in carving orange pumpkins to wear an orange flame and create a weird flickering face. We can’t forget orange chrysanthemums to bring a sparkle into the dying longer and darker days. What would a fireplace be without those streaks of orange in the flame? Or imagine a sunset that had to make do with all the other colours but without orange and her family for contrast. 

I think about orange every now and then because I have an original and quirky nephew who is colourblind in an interesting way. He cannot differentiate among most colours, but he can see orange. When he was married, his sweet and thoughtful bride, although definitely a woman on the cooler side of the spectrum: blues and lavenders, remembered orange. And right in amongst the blue and white flowers of her bouquet nestled a bright orange flower so her sweetheart could see it. And he wore an orange tie. It is pretty much his whole rainbow.

So please, dear glamorous, brilliant, and showy friends, when someone says “let’s hear it for orange” or “orange matters”, don’t make the fallacious assumption that suddenly you all don’t matter and no one cares about you. Of course you matter. You always have. Saying that orange has significance today is not to undermine yours. It’s a way to celebrate orange and see what she brings to the world of light.

After all, every last one of you is really only a reflection. Our human eyes don’t “see” you, we have light receptors in our eyes which communicate with our brains and we then get sensations of colour. In fact, the things we look at are not colours as you think of yourselves. The surface of the things we look at reflect the light of some colours and absorb the other colours. We see an apple as red or green depending on which light is reflected and which is absorbed. In an extremely simplistic sense, you are pretty much just reflected light in our brains.

So let there be no competition among you. You are all part of an amazing spectrum, quite a bit of which we humans cannot even see with our light receptors. When we delight in one colour, it is not at the expense of the others. 

Just bask in the light and get on with it.

A Letter to Alexei Navalny

 

Dear Sir:

Until a few days ago, I had not heard of you nor was I aware of the significant role you play in keeping Russia a country where people can hear the other side of the story.  The news of your suspected poisoning in an airport and the emergency landing of the plane to rush you to a hospital in Siberia was graphic enough to penetrate the networks here in America where we tend to be more interested in local news or foreign experiences of our own people. 

Your recovery is very important and I sincerely hope and pray that you will be restored to your family and the courageous work you are doing on behalf of your people. It is encouraging to know that you are being well taken care of with the best of doctors; I am grateful that the German government reached out to fly you to their own facilities where your wife will feel more confident of the outcome. May your recovery be swift and there be no long lasting repercussions.

This letter has a two-fold purpose: to salute you and thank you. 

Sir, I salute you for the decisions you made in your life which brought you to this dangerous situation, lying in a coma in a foreign land with the cause of your illness suspect. After doing some research on your reputation, I see you are willing to make difficult choices which have serious consequences. You could have left Russia in disillusionment and frustration. Continually waging battles against an overwhelming giant is exhausting. But whether for love of country or compassion for the people, you elected to stay in a dangerous life. You put yourself in harm’s way, but without the uniform and gun of which soldiers have advantage. You chose words as your weapon and transparency as your strategy. It has made you exceedingly unpopular with the leadership of the land.

You have been attacked before, a green acidic chemical was thrown into your face causing burns and eye damage. You have been arrested and detained multiple times, I guess you were interrogated as well. Threatening letters, legal attacks, having your private emails posted on line, and being in Kremlin cross-hairs pretty much sums up your life now. You knew the hazards and you have a family: two great excuses for you to choose an alternate career. One in which your talent, charisma and thinking skills could have been personally profitable and secure.

Which brings me to my second purpose: Thank You.

You chose to model risk and self-sacrifice to benefit the people of your country. It obviously hasn’t been convenient or lucrative for you. Nevertheless, you persist in calling out corruption and oppression. I am from a country founded by people who understood self sacrifice. Our patriotic forefathers paid a high price for American freedom. But we have come a long way since then. We have a saying: Freedom isn’t free. But the average American doesn’t have to look at the price tag anymore. We expect our military to pay the bill and we pay them to put their lives on the line. 

Meanwhile, we wallow in our freedom. We insist on it, even at others’ expense. We resent or moan or complain about wearing uncomfortable masks during a pandemic spread by air transmission. Some of us even claim wearing a mask violates our Constitutional rights, which would mean that in our hierarchy of values, the Constitution rates somewhat higher than “love your neighbour”. We have been known to resist social distancing, claiming it conspires to undermine our freedoms: to worship, to drink together, and even to attend massive motorcycle rallies without worrying about the next guy.

Sir, you are the kind of person I would want for a friend. You are the kind of person I would want for a countryman. Your willingness to stand in the gap for your people, to help them know what they need to know, to hold your leaders to account—these are valuable gifts to your country. We need your kind of people here in America. As the world holds its collective breath, hoping and praying that you make it out of this crisis, know that you have made a difference. You are a model for all of us. 

Thank you and blessings on you.