Odeon Paradise: A Night at the Movies with Jesus and George

Interestingly, in some of the New Testament Epistles, “angels” are not always members of the heavenly court; sometimes, they are human beings.

These human angels can be people we know well, people who are only there for a moment, or anything in between: They may be trying to help us or they may do so without conscious intent. The important thing is that our lives are so much better because of them.

One personal example:

I know a wonderful woman at my church. We talk sometimes, maybe for a minute or so every week or two, and somehow she brought me a piece of my own puzzle.

When we started talking last summer, her hair was blonde, a month or two later it was brown, and then a reddish tinge appeared, along with a wider smile, I thought. I remember feeling, intuitively, that the outward change - in her hair colour – mirrored an inner change, perhaps some sort of personal renewal or a change in direction – something good. I was curious, but it’s not the kind of question one generally asks in casual conversation.

A few weeks ago, I looked in the mirror, saw my beard, and I HAD to shave it off. No idea why. I just did it. Immediately.

Then, I looked at my hair. No, I didn’t shave it off, too – didn’t Britney Spears do something like that a while back? But the next day at lunch, I took a walk along College St., looking for someone with scissors. All I could find was an old-fashioned barber shop – the place even had one of those red and white striped poles – but I walked in, anyway. I simply HAD to get my hair cut. Short. Again, no idea why.

But now I see that it mirrored something that was changing on the inside, something that was being shed, like the hair and the beard: some old habits and ways of looking at things that I was ready to be rid of.

But I’m getting ahead of myself . . .

I saw my friend at church a few weeks ago, and she expressed approval at the changes rendered by my new barber and my razor. I joked with her that, “I thought of colouring it, but that’s kind of your thing.” (Her hair colour, by the way, lovely as it is on her, would not look right on me, and I doubt her reaction would have been quite as favourable if I’d done that.)

But I see now that my little attempt at humour was not just a bit of light-hearted banter – it contained a grain of truth.

Before I get to that, there’s more . . . I’ve been busy!

This week, I found myself standing in The Bay with money in my pocket and a sale on – and it was like I was born to shop! Five shirts, three pairs of pants, two sweaters, new shoes and a jacket, all of them in light and/or bright colours – a big change for me.

You see, I had been wearing a lot of dark colours, mostly black. Now, I can’t bear to put them on.

A makeover! Inside and out! Colour!

Now where could I have gotten THAT idea?

As I wrote further up the page, I think that we can be angels to each other, bringing little pieces of the puzzle, whether we are personally close or distant or talk for a minute or so every week or two. We encourage each other. We plant seeds that blossom into gardens in their due season. We water them.

And we do it all the time.

Could that be a foretaste of Heaven, here on Earth? I’m think so.

Did she plant a seed? Water it a little? Set an example that I resonated with later? I don’t know, but it made me think of her, so I’m guessing that she had something to do with it.

Thanks, angel.

Recently, however, I re-examined the whole premise, along with a number of other things in my life. I guess the New Year gets us thinking about what we are doing.

Let’s call it housekeeping.

I don’t think there’s anything supernatural about the cards – I never did - and I don’t believe that they tell the future, at least not exactly. I think that the cards know about as much about the future as we do, and this is my theory about how that works:

When we shuffle the cards, we manipulate them (and the resonant symbols they contain) with our unconscious minds. That, in itself, is a huge topic, and I don’t have the time to dig up all the information, but you can find support for the idea of synchronicity – the meaningful coincidence – in sources as diverse as C.G. Jung and Stephen Hawkings.

Our unconscious minds know a lot. They are like an iceberg, lying 8/9 below the surface, if memory serves up an accurate metaphor. They influence our actions, which, in part, determine our futures. What we believe and feel at a deeper level makes it more or less likely that we will be prosperous, happy, find love, etc.

That’s just common sense.

Have you ever puzzled over something for hours and had the answer suddenly appear to you, seemingly out of nowhere, when you woke up the next morning? That’s the unconscious mind at work, and it can be pretty helpful.

Do we need the cards to access it? Are they even helpful? Accurate? Do they make it easier or harder to glimpse what we are creating in our lives with our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs? “There,” as Hamlet suggests, “is the rub.”

Someone I studied yoga with told me that she had no use for psychics. “If you want to know the future, look at your thoughts,” she said.

That sounds good to me.

So the next time I want some idea of where I’m headed, I’m going to look at my thoughts. I don’t need tarot cards to do that.

That’s what I wrote about a month ago, and I’ve had some further thoughts that I’m going to add now.

Gravitating to the tarot cards seemed to make sense for me at the time: I have pretty strong intuition, and it’s right most of the time. And using the cards came easily. But I think there’s another side to them, and it puts me off – now that I’ve had a chance to think about it.

Obviously, people use the cards because they want to know something about the future, and there’s a fine line between wanting to know the future and wanting to control the future, one that I am not interested in crossing. The only thing I want to control is myself.

The cards and a few books about them sat on a shelf, unused, for  a few months now . . . not good enough. It was time for a symbolic act, so I had a little fire in the back yard, and as I saw the flames rise, I knew that I was doing the right thing.

I am thankful for my intuition: it’s saved me from some messy situations and led me into some good ones.

That’s more than enough for me.

Besides, I like surprises.

It can get complicated:

- If you are both children of the common ancestor, you are siblings
- If you are both grandchildren (GC) of the common ancestor, you are cousins
- If you are both great grandchildren (GGC) of the common ancestor, you are second cousins, and so on

It’s the distance in generations from the common ancestor that counts:
- one generation = siblings
- 2 generations = cousins
- 3 generations = 2nd cousins
… one less than the number of generations

All the above applies if the two people are an equal number of generations from the common ancestor. Unequal numbers are a little trickier.

If one person is is one generation from the common ancestor and the other is two generations, the relationship is niece/nephew to aunt/uncle. Every generation forward from the niece/nephew (their children, grandchildren, etc.) adds a “great” to that uncle/aunt: you are a great uncle to your nephew/neice’s children, for instance.

But if two relatives are both more than one generation from the common ancestor and the number of generations is unequal, you need a new word – “removed”.

Think of your first cousin (common grandparent). His/her children are still your first cousins but once removed. Their children? Still your first cousins but twice removed, and so on.

In other words, “removed” is to cousins what “great” or “grand” is to parents, aunts and uncles. The parent of your parent is your grandparent. The parent of your uncle is your great (not grand, although it is occasionally used) uncle. But the parent of your cousin is not your great or grand cousin; he/she is your first cousin once removed. Not entirely logical but certainly decipherable.

You can find it in a chart form here: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~sassytazzy/reference/relchart.html

Here is another good one: http://www.birminghamgenealogy.org/research/kinship/kinship_chart.htm

Actually drawing the family tree helps a lot.

Have fun with it!

Well, it is – in one respect, at least.

The gist of the stories is that the guardians of political correctness are finally begrudgingly admitting that it’s alright for us to wish each other a “Merry Christmas”. It’s not racist or sexist or Eurocentric . . . it’s alright. Like we didn’t already know that!

Last year, in fact, I got an email from the Toronto District School Board giving me, one of their teachers, permission to say “Merry Christmas”.

Nice of them.

The story, of course, then and now, is that the pendulum is staring to swing away from political correctness back to a more sensible approach to customs and beliefs, one that is truly inclusive.

I guess someone finally figured out that 92% of Canadians celebrate Christmas, so it’s alright to say it out loud.

On another front, the Monarchy is coming back into fashion after the Royal Wedding. William and Kate – our future King and Queen – are immensely popular: Royal Wedding publications are still on the magazine racks. The government restored the “Royal” designation to those branches of the Canadian armed forces that Trudeau stripped it away from – take that, Pierre!

Muslim women must now uncover their faces when they take the citizenship oath. Imagine, having to reveal your identity when you become a citizen! And the interesting thing is that the move is finding support among Muslims – they get it.

I talked to one of my Muslim students, recently, and without any prompting from me, she revealed that she loves Canada, would never consider returning to her country of birth because it has nothing for her, and has no desire to see Canada change to suit her. Her family celebrates Christmas, and she “loves” the Queen.

The era where immigrants can be used (and abused) as an excuse to undermine traditional Canadian values is passing. It is a welcome sea change where multiculturalism is seen as something to add to our culture rather than to replace it.

Finally!

And that, to our fair Dominion of Canada, is the greatest Christmas present of all.

Reiki I was an interesting experience. I studied it over two full days in a class with seventeen women. Since I was the only man there, and a fairly quiet one by nature, I think they let their guard down and talked differently than if there were lots of men around. I felt like an honorary girl!

Another interesting thing: there is a lot of practice involved, and I don’t think I’ve ever had my hands on so many women for so many hours with nary an impure thought – should I be worried about this? Some men would say yes, but I found it kind of refreshing.

Reiki, in case you didn’t know, is a Japanese system of healing touch, and it really works. I’ve never felt anything so profoundly relaxing, and we know that stress has a suppressing effect on the immune system, so it seems like a good idea for that reason alone. I’ve had massage, accupressure and Shiatsu, but nothing has ever felt as good as this – at it lasts longer.

Why does it work? I have no idea. Some people think it is the channeling of universal life force energy, others think it is the interaction of personal energies – who knows? Modern physics tells us that everything is energy. Even the most solid object is mostly space and the few atoms there are just energy. So why not?

Being a Catholic, albeit a recent convert (two years this Easter), I am a little wary of things that sound New Age, but I read that a large number of women religious (nuns) in the U.S. started practicing Reiki in convents and at retreats over the past twenty years - and I figure that one should consider them “good Catholics”.

All I know is that it works, and I can’t think of any way in which it contradicts the teachings of the Church.

And the nicest thing is that after a Reiki session, everyone feels better, not just the person receiving it, but the one who is giving it, too.

Jesus advised us that if someone struck one cheek, we should turn the other. The Romans must have had a really good laugh over that one.

It goes against common sense, doesn’t it? If someone strikes you on the cheek, whether literally or metaphorically – and I’m not talking about S & M here – the only thing to do is to smack them back, isn’t it? Don’t we have to set boundaries? Isn’t that important for our emotional health?

My answer to that? Yes and no. Why the complicated answer? Because it’s a complicated subject.

Why did that person smack you? There could be all sorts of reasons. Let me suggest one possible scenario:

The person is desperately unhappy about something. He can’t get what he wants/needs and it’s frustrating the crap out of him. Frustration can make a person a little snippy. (I think you see where I’m going with this.)

If you smack him back, you’ve got a smackfest going on. It could escalate . . .

What if he’s lonely, feeling unloved, and being treating unfairly. Smacking him back will do nothing (except possibly making it worse).

What if you were to say, “Okay, I figure you just did/said that because something’s bothering you. What’s up?”

He might tell you. You might be able to to help him. Then, he’ll probably never smack you again, metaphorically or otherwise. Might even be nice to you. Anything is possible.

I think that most of the time, we have problems with other people because we misunderstand each other, and that happens because we don’t dig deep enough. Sometimes, turning the other cheek is the best available shovel.

If that doesn’t work, you can always hit him with the shovel.

Metaphorically, of course.

So, this afternoon, I recorded my favorite of the bunch, “Towards the Light”, on my iPhone, and posted it on YouTube.

It’s at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E9rL7MxBCU.

I hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75MROyEDwGo

There are certainly problems stateside and probably just about everywhere else, but Canada (especially Ontario) is what I know.

As I wrote in another post, I’ve had some medical problems this year: high blood pressure; low platelets . . . but that’s what you expect when you get older, as I did this summer, right? I mean, don’t be a wuss, Palmer! As Art Linkletter – remember him, anybody? – title a book he wrote, Old Age is Not for Sissies. I love that. I haven’t hit old age yet, but you get the idea: as we age, we expect things to go wrong.

As it turns out, I have a few more miles to go before I have to read that book – in fact, I’m in perfect health now – no thanks to the medical establishment.

My blood pressure, always 120/80 or better – perfect, in other words – went up to 160/90. My GP recommended losing weight, getting more exercise, etc., none of which helped. He started talking about medication, probably for the rest of my life.

To make a long story short, I did a lot of reading and tried a lot of things, and it turns out that the cause was emotional, mostly work related, with a situation in which I felt that I could not express myself – that’s putting it politely and anonymously, which is what one does on the internet – this is in public, technically, at least.

So I started expressing myself, and not just at work. It turns out that I had a lot of unexpressed emotion, which can drive up your blood pressure. I started journaling when I felt bottled up, learned relaxation techniques, etc., and my blood pressure went back down to 120/80 – perfect. Better than pills for life, yes?

Then there was the low platelet count. It went from 150k (which is the bottom end of normal) down to 69k (which is definitely low) in one year – I didn’t like where that was headed.

My GP didn’t have a clue what was going on. He sent me to a specialist who also didn’t know what was going on. He ordered a bunch of tests, including basic blood work monthly, and told me to see him again in six months. He ordered a test for HIV, which is, I assured him, utterly unnecessary.

Then a friend of mine told me about a Toronto doctor who had opted out of OHIP. You can still get some minor reimbursement from OHIP, but most of what he does is uninsured because he goes way beyond what OHIP will cover. The first visit, including a ton of tests, and a followup cost around $1000, but it was worth every penny, and was ultimately cheaper, in dollars, because unlike my GP and the hematologist, this guy actually found the problem. The only difference is that it came out of my pocket.

I’d do it again.

One of the tests he did is called live cell analysis. He takes a drop of blood and looks at it under the microscope. He sends the image through a computer onto a screen so that the patient can see it, too. He could tell all kinds of things, but the most important one was that I had blood parasites.

Blood parasites!

And I could see them! They look a little like a sperm cell, but smaller and darker with a shorter tail. I could see them swimming around in my blood. I could see the holes they had eaten in my red blood cells. I could even see one of the little buggers furrowed into a red blood cell with his tail sticking out. He was gorging on my hemoglobin and showing me his ass!

So the doctor gave my a ton of supplements, including an herbal concoction that gets rid of parasites. I saw him again a month later and they were gone. The bloodwork from a week ago – that’s just three weeks after my last set of tests – showed that my platelets had “zoomed” (to use his word) from 69k up to 93k, obviously back on the way to normal.

Yippee!

I later did some checking on the internet and found that parasites can, indeed, cause low platelet counts, but neither my GP, nor the specialist, nor a naturopath I saw even mentioned the possibility, let alone checked for it, let alone treated me.

If I had relied on the medical establishment, even supplementing it with “alternative” medicine, I could have gone the rest of my life with those little wrigglers in my blood, and who knows how low my platelets would have gone?

And the taxpayers of Ontario would have wasted thousands of dollars without curing me.

So how could that happen? I mean, they do blood tests, right? They would find little creatures if they were swimming around in your blood, right?

Wrong!

When they do blood work, they draw your blood and cetrifuge it, spinning it around to separate the various blood constituents. That way, they can easily (not to mention cheaply) do things like check your red and white cell counts, etc. But that’s not all that flows through your blood vessels. There is also the liquid that carries them around your circulatory system: the plasma. Guess what they do with that? The throw it away! Along with, in my case, the parasites. So they can test my blood all they want, and they’ll never find them. Lots of other things, too.

The irony is that in my grandfather’s time, every doctor had a microscope. He would take a drop of your blood, disappear into a back room, and come back to, potentially, tell you things like: your’re anemic, lack vitamin B . . . have parasites, etc. But it takes too long so they don’t do it any more.

We pride ourselves in Canada on our government-run, universal health care sytem, but it’s not doing a very good job.

People overuse it because it’s “free” so it’s costing us more and more money, and eventually, we’ll go broke, but it’s not giving people the help they really need. Wait times are long. There are documented cases of people dying waiting for treatment. It couldn’t help me with my temporary high blood pressure or my low platelet count.

If ever something needed to be fixed.