U2’s No Line on the Horizon

I’m tired of this art school music these past few years. Nothing against the hipsters but I want some music with blood and guts again. I’ve hummed along at The Social to all these bland generic bands with men in guyliner and skinny jeans. I’ve thumbs-upped the new new waves’ creativity though sometimes I longed for a simple melody instead.

Of course, all great music is built on the music of the past, so the tragically hep who never check out Bach or Loretta Lynn or Bob Seger oughtta be shot. But there’s a time for this new electro-gloom; there’s also a supershiny glow I get from the more buoyant fare on the airwaves. Hell, I’ve really been enjoying the Britney Circus, and I count a total of one in my circle who thought Paris Hilton’s Stars are Blind was really rather sweet and inventive.

But I’m sick of all this emptiness, too, this cutesy opera to madness chic. Or to the endless malaise of being born filthy rich. I’m looking for more than a melody, even as I insist on one. I’m looking for meat, for an album that has some weight in my hands. I want poetry, though, not nonsense syllables layered in sync with synth, words that make me feel something spiritual. There will be more time for more disco more pop more more more bubbles in life but right now I need music with real claws, not Lee press-on nails.

I suppose all of this is why I’m so excited about the new U2. I’d never quite relegated them to shark jumpers, and doubtless there were many fans of their last years. But I admit I can’t name their last four albums and don’t own any of them. I have a few songs on iTunes.

But this year is different. No Line on the Horizon is moody, both dark and glorious, with occasional waves of beauty and ecstasy flooding you. There are stories here embedded right into the very notes of the music, into the flawless ultrasleek production of the sound.

Thing is, I think, back when Bono was a young idealist, an offbeat imp, seesawing under spiritual crisis and the cursed caul that turns a man into a poet, we were all drawn into his seductive intensity. Then I kind of lost his beat ‘cause he was too mature, too stable, too smarmy. He had my respect, of course. But all this time I’ve been a hot mess and he’s been changing the world, and I just couldn’t sit still through it all.

There’s more than a glimmer here again, within the soaring melodies and swooping vocals, of faith with torment, a stirring of raw lust just just just underneath, there’s the feeling I should be reading Wilde and Sartre both, at a café watching sad and crazy people go by.

With U2’s newest inspiration, they rock, they roll, they belt out soul, and it’s slick and. thick and rich and never gooey. But there’s a rawness and desolation that’s been missing from their gracious goodwill these past years. It’s the kind of  album that goes well with wine, and lots of it.

Yes, yes, give me wine, I’m tired of measuring wine these days, give me one two three four glasses, five, no eight, give me pale Mozart tapestries on beautiful Laura, give me guitar beside Trout Lake, or better yet, the Mississippi where vampires played with an old mojo man on saxophone. Oh, give me the days when I made love behind dumpsters and pierced my lips and nose, oh, give me neural plasticity, give me back the kind of girl who could drive a stick shift through the desert.

I’m tired of measuring dollars, carbs, of doing everything in my power to be more my age. Oh give me those sunny mojito days laying in the bruising sun atop the boat with Al and the girls, give me endless sunrise serotonin, oh, bring me back from the dead into danger, let me fall in love or feel sick with lust and fear. What has become of me, in early on a Saturday night, drinking tea and watching my cat eat ham?

This new album gives me optimism that the best is yet to come and the stretch ahead is paved with subtle pleasures if not wild ones. It’s sort of a relief, to be honest. But it also feels like a funeral, a tribute album for just how well-adjusted I’ve become. It’s exhausting, careening heedlessly into middle of the road.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Incandescent Transcendence

Incandescent Transcendence

I hope you will all forgive the hopelessly flawed and erratic schedule of my columns. When I tell you that my infrequent and distracted postings are due to cataclysmic creativity, I trust you will understand. I must follow the muse elsewhere when she calls. This absolute inspiration surging through me, plus the busy reality of writing six various columns, has lately meant less attention to this one.

It has also meant some deep happiness, a rare treat. Happiness usually shows up for me in fleeting, elusive snippets, bright shiny fireworks that snap, crackle, and pop, gone by morning.

It also visits by knocking frequently on tiny and profound windows- black current in a favourite teapot, the man with the long eyelashes and gorgeous rippling biceps at the gym, a special poem in my email from Tara, the sliver of moon cutting through the navy expanse of spring dark.

But when I’m in the zone, really in the zone, for long and productive stretches, where brainstorming and output and focus share centre stage, I’m deeply, truly happy. It’s the most profound happiness I know.

In this period of my life I have been trying to transform the compulsion I have for over stimulation, as an exercise in coping with anxiety. I’m reaching for the kind of confidence I need to produce my truest work instead of giving all of my time and heart to other people’s projects, or to jobs I hate.

I’m reaching for peace, and for space, and I’m praying for time alone and time to heal from battle scars and the courage to think positively. I’m weeding out, breathing slower, letting go, moving on. And I’m making every effort to fill the hours with my art and not get lost in my unpredictable impulses and their consequences.

I’m fencing up my heart to say no more strays, not now, even though Timothy Findley once wrote, the “lost are so beautiful” and when you grow up in a labyrinth of madness, you see the beauty in Suzanne’s seaweed, too. But sometimes you get strangled in it, you drown. I’m practicing boundaries, I’ve promised to triple guess my heart, to look both ways before I cross the street.

It’s all about freeing up space. Mental and spiritual space. Space is scary. There’s too much of yourself in space, not enough noise, not enough distraction. The claustrophobia is deafening. Just you and your grief. You and the truth. You have to face what you don’t want to face, make peace with things you cannot change, come to terms with the dead because you yourself are not dead.

It’s about freeing up time. Taking the extraneous, unnecessary things away, so that a new gift of time and space emerges. Letting fall away the ones who didn’t really understand or love, the ones in whom you invested too much for nothing, and stop chasing after them, and stop giving time to the hurt that ripped you up, because you’re toughening up because you’re finally calling spades spades- (whenever you can see them and you’re not particularly deluded.)

Those parts always spent in upheaval and upset, in exhaustive depletion, too sensitive, too abandoned, too isolated, too surrounded- now they are free space for the people and things who have bolstered me, taught me, cushioned my falls, saw me, knew me- held me, not held me hostage. And more time for even more of my work. Less time chasing pavement? Not filling time with filler.

And here in all of this empty space, space that is lonely and unfamiliar, you know no one can rescue you after all, and you’ve been wrong to think it every time. But here you are. Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone.

And I have left that space wide open for the Muse and reading and creating voraciously, both written and visual work. I get sketchy now if I don’t get enough hours out of the day to put down the words I have in my head. I am calm and focused and resolved. I’m researching and writing all the time about fascinating people, finding out how other intense, disturbed, and serious artists function(ed). My novel is rapidly taking form, work I’m proud of so far and hope you will see one day and agree. I’m learning so much about wildly disparate topics- spices, the dudes who wrote the Bible, intersexuality, and the hard-drinking and serious writing life of Carson McCullers. And I’ve found fresh inspirations for painting, realized that my painting and writing are really interwoven, interdependent, fuelled one by the other.

Last year I was so supremely depressed I wondered how I could go on, and no doubt I will feel that way again, maybe tomorrow.

But today I can’t imagine how I could have been so pathetically sentimental, crying over spilled milk.

Happiness is not about the presence of an emotion or a distraction from hurt, and nor is it the absence of sorrow. It’s about investing all of your energy into renewable resources, if you can. Working hard at whatever you’re doing, and doing your best at it. About making time for silence and for art. It’s about letting nothing stand in the way of your calling. Nothing. That means not stopping even if it doesn’t work out financially. It might never. You do it because you can think of nothing else. You tap into flow, into the most alive parts of the universe and you don’t ever run empty.

You don’t run empty because you are no longer giving to distractions, the past, or to toxic people, the space and time that you are now giving to the muse. You have invited her to live with you, to sleep with you, to be with you forever. You have invited her in to stay, not just to come and go whenever you’re not busy.

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net. You can find her books at www.amazon.com.

quote of the day

“Look at that sea, girls–all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Babykiller Obama Saves Lives of Millions

I have never felt a need to be embroiled with the emotional debate over abortion. I always felt it was a private issue of great solemnity and really wasn’t aware of the circus made of it by many right-to-life advocates until Obama’s wise move to resume sending aid to third world countries. That’s when I found out that this ‘babykilling money’ wasn’t anything of the sort. The right wing can’t think straight, it seems, more often than not. It was sheer lunacy to withhold women’s health aid. The reason? Those aids MIGHT counsel abortion. It’s obvious to me straight off the bat that most third world countries are Catholic and Muslim, and abortion is not handed out like candy- only in sickness or threat to life. Withholding birth control is one of the greatest shames of the church. It’s sick prudery has meant millions of lives suffering, in slavery, in child prostitution, starving, sick….sick, sick, sick, shame, shame, shame.

But my opinion on the facts- and the facts are that this ‘babykilling agenda’ will save babies, PREVENT abortion, and save moms- is just my opinion. So I wanted to share the facts so you can share them with the pro-life lunacy faction which is actually celebrating death and suffering. And why? Because heathens don’t matter, and people who have sex don’t matter. That’s what it boils down to. Those ungodly people are poor because they are heathens, not because of natural disasters (oh, God again) or colonization’s greed.

Paul Tobin gathered these facts in The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager site:
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/ambush.html#8

“Culture of Life”:
The Deadly AmBush on Third World Women
The most apt, and appalling, example of the unholy alliance of the Catholic Church and fundamentalists Christians is in the anti-abortion policies of the current US administration of George W. Bush. Both groups of Christians were major factors in helping George W. win his reelection campaign of 2004. [1]

Ever since he took over the presidency in 2001, Bush has been doing everything he can to push family planning back into the dark ages. Keen to please his religious conservative base, on the first day of his first term as president, George W. reinstated the global “gag rule”. The “gag rule”, first introduced by President Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980’s, calls for the with-holding of U.S. financial aid to any foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) that even mentions the word “abortion” in their provision of health services to pregnant women. Thus even if a woman’s life is in danger from her pregnancy, any mention of “abortion” would mean that the NGO would lose all its funding from the U.S. [2]

One casualty of this gag rule is the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). The IPPF provides reproductive health information and services to women in third world countries. These include providing information about, diagnosis and treatment sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV/AIDS), gynecological care, post and prenatal care for mother and child. Providing information on abortion and its availability, if necessary, is a fundamental part of the IPPF goals for reproductive health. As a result of this its funding of around US$20 from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was terminated.

Considering the fact that 80,000 women die every year - one every seven minutes – due to unsafe abortions, IPPF’s provision of abortion services is a crucial life saving campaign. It’s provision of contraceptives, such as condoms, also help prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Hilary Fyfe, of the Family Life Movement in Zambia commented that the with-holding of funds is akin to murder: “I think they are killing these women, just as if they are pointing a gun a shooting. There is no difference.” [3]

Not to be outdone by this early success, President Bush in 2002 withheld US$34 million of contribution, approved by both houses of Congress, to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The fund, active in 144 countries, provides contraception, family planning, and gynecological health services to women in third world countries. It also works against the spread of HIV/AIDS and against the practice of female genital manipulation. The withheld funds would have made up a substantial (more than 10%) portion of the UNFPA annual budget.

What did the UNFPA do to deserve the funds being withheld from them? According to the Bush administration, the funds were withheld due to allegations about their activities in China which supposedly involved coercion of abortion and forced sterilizations among rural inhabitants in China. The charge, made by the right-wing anti-family planning, anti-abortion, “Population Research Institute” (PRI), [a] , was used by Bush as an excuse to withhold this fund. We know that it is an excuse because in May 2002 Bush sent a fact finding team which reported that the UNFPA was not involved in any coercion programs. Before the American mission, a British delegation did the same investigation and also confirmed that there was no evidence whatsoever of any forced abortions. In September 2003, a group of U.S. (non-fundamentalist) religious leaders went to China and returned with the same conclusion. Other independent investigations have also cast serious doubts on the veracity of the claims made by PRI. [4]

Upon the announcement in 2002 of the withholding of funds, fundamentalists and Catholic “pro-life” movements were ecstatic. The Roman Catholic Church, whose irrational views on abortion are well known, must have felt its prayers were finally answered. Deal Hudson, editor of the catholic magazine Crisis gladly proclaimed that it is “good news” and that his sources told him the funds will be “permanently withheld”. [5]

Indeed Hudson’s sources were correct, since 2002, the Bush administration had withheld the payment to the UNFPA for the last three years – all the while using the same discredit reason of “coercive” abortion practices in China. [6] The real reason for with-holding the funds is transparently clear: the fundamentalist and Catholic supporters of the Bush administration are against any form of abortion – whether it is coerced or not is beside the point.

Indeed the excuse is even more blatantly clear when we consider the whole picture. Of its US$300 million annual budget, the UNFPA only spends US$3.5 million (around 1.2%) on China. The bulk of the funds from UNFPA goes to other third world countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas and much of it would have been for family planning and health care – not abortions. The money would have been used to help reduce the childbirth mortality in countries such as Burkina Faso, Zambia and East Timor where the mortality rate ranges from 500 to 5,000 (in East Timor) per 100,000 births. Some of the money would have been used to train midwives. In Chad, for instance, the whole country of nine million only has fifteen obstetricians. It was reported that two untrained midwives there tried to deal with a breech delivery (where the baby’s head is facing the wrong direction) by holding the pregnant woman upside down and shaking her to try and get the fetus in the “right” position! [7]

Thus the “China card” is just that: a ruse for the Roman Catholic Church and their fundamentalist allies to continue their anti-abortion crusade. And like all wars – there are casualties: the innocent pregnant women of poor countries around the world who depend on the UNFPA to safe their lives. The UNFPA estimates that the withheld fund annually would have prevented up to 2 million pregnancies, nearly 800,000 abortions, 77,000 infant and child deaths and 4,700 maternal deaths. That’s a lot of blood on the hands of these “right to lifers”. [8]

Asking how these numbers arise from provides us with a picture of the cruelty of the horribly misnamed “pro-life” movement. Sometimes deaths can be due simply to the lack of cheap surgical procedures. One condition that would have been easily treatable by inexpensive surgery – the type provided by the UNFPA – is called obstretic fistula. It happens when the pregnant woman is either too malnourished or too small to deliver the baby. Without medical help, “the baby’s head rips a hole clear through her bladder or rectum”. It has been estimated that more than 2 million women in Africa and South Asia suffers from such a condition. The baby usually dies and the mother becomes incontinent for life. [9]

Othertimes the deaths can be due to the lack of simple hospital supplies such as an oxygen. Below is a collection of two such tales in Chad as told by reporter Nicholas Kristof:

Zara Fatima, a 15-year-old girl, was in labor for four days before her family loaded her onto public transportation – the back of a truck – and took her to the dilapidated National General Reference Hospital here on Tuesday. Her blood pressure was high, 170/80, and she soon lapsed into a coma. The baby arrived stillborn. Zara needed oxygen, but the hospital had none to spare. …Zara died…

Fatima Adoum, a pregnant 15-year-old, lies unconscious on a hospital bed, gasping for breath, convulsing and slobbering. Her arm has a two-inch suppurating burn wound, and the doctors point to it grimly as a home remedy against sorcery. The delay in getting her to a doctor has hurt her, and now she needs oxygen, but it is unavailable…Fatima’s prospects are still uncertain. [10]

Thanks to the “pro-life” policies of George W. Bush, where the fertilized egg is more important than the lives of thousands of pregnant women in third world countries, these sad stories look set to multiply in the near future. [b]

Abortion is not the moral equivalent of murder, but what would one call letting thousands of women needlessly die each year when one has the power to prevent it?

Update: January 23, 2009
On January 23rd 2009, the new American president, Barack Obama, overturned the Bush policy. The move will, as a statement from Population Action International noted, “save women’s lives around the world.” Sanity has returned to American politics.

Paul’s references are below.

The truth is, any thinking person, for or against abortion morally, can clearly reason that the above facts weigh in pro life either way. Women are not the murderers of their children that these sick sadists make them out to be:  blood is on the hands of the church- again, as always, what a surprise- and the government- oh, same thing these days….

You know I’ve always been a very religious, very spiritual, Christian person who expected others to be thinking, reasoning people- after all God gave us brains. This has not been the case, and the disgusting hatred of heathens, of women, and of gays- science, history, reality be damned- has propelled me like a cannonball from ‘faith.’ At first I feared I was becoming an atheist because of the haters. Now I know I’m deprogramming from mind control that I thought I’d long shaken off.

I’m converting to reason.

Notes
a. According to UNFPA officials the tactics used by the PRI to spread their false charges involves planting unfounded allegations in the local newspapers of third world countries. Once “in print” – these stories take up an air of credibility. Subsequently they are picked up by the international press, allowing world wide dissemination of clearly made up stories.
b. Throwing up our arms won’t do. We can all do our part to help. Please donate to the The 34 Millions Friends of UNFPA.
References
1. Alan Cooperman and Thomas B. Edsall, “Evangelicals say they led charge for the GOP”, The Washington Post, November 8, 2004
2. Molly Ivins, “Another Slap against Women: Getting around Bush’s cheap move”, Chicago Tribune, October 22, 2002
3. “Report: Global Gag Rule Spurring Deaths, Disease,: Women’s eNews, September 25, 2003
Bert Wilkinson, “Report from the Field: Gag Rule’s Impact”, Population Connection, February 1, 2001
IPPF Abortion: advocating for the right to safe abortion services
4. Greg Barrow, “Abortion row threatens UN funds”, BBC News February 27, 2002.
“US to Withhold $34M in UN Funds”, Associated Press, July 22, 2002
Diane Carman, “How to Undo a Travesty of Politics”, Denver Post, June 27, 2004
Knight Ridder, “Small Advocacy Group Influences American Policy”, Jodi Enda, September 22, 2002
5. “US to Withhold $34M in UN Funds”, Associated Press, July 22, 2002
6. “Birth Control; Help the UN Fund (Editorial)”, Charleston Gazette, September 14, 2004.
David Gollust, “US Cuts Funds to UN Population Fund Agency Over ‘Coercive’ Policy by China”, Epoch Times, July 17, 2004
Christopher Marquis, “U.S. Cuts Off Financing of U.N. Unit for 3rd Year”, New York Times, July 17, 2004
7. Nicholas Kristoff, “Terror of Childbirth”, Op-Ed Column, New York Times, March 20, 2004
Ian Black, “EU Replaces Cash Denied to UN Family Planning by the US”, Guardian of London, July 24, 2004
8. Molly Ivins, “Another Slap against Women: Getting around Bush’s cheap move”, Chicago Tribune, October 22, 2002
9. “No headline could sum up how sad this is”, Jane Magazine March, 2004.
10. Nicholas Kristoff, “Terror of Childbirth”, Op-Ed Column, New York Times, March 20, 2004
11. Obama reverses abortion-funding policy, CNN, January 25th, 2009

Thank you Paul.

stem cell research brouhaha

I’m no expert on the stem cell research debate. But I do know the idea that such research has been useless is right wing propaganda. I do know that much of our continent’s pro-life stance is obsessive sadism. Life does not end at birth, people! There are sick people suffering, unwanted children starving, and before we yammer about whether or not research on microscopic cells is killing a soul, we should concern ourselves with those who are alive and have a name.

Sam Harris says is best in Letter to a Christian Nation:

Stem cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every disease or injury process that humans suffer….A three day old embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100 000 cells in the BRAIN of a fly. The embryos that are destroyed in stem cell research do not have brains, or even neurons.

Killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulty…

Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blostocyst is the latter’s potential to become a human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being.

But let us assume, for the moment, that every three day old embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming…identical twins. IS this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single…called a chimera…what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case…

The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supercede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics. ..religious dogma supercedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion.”

Reading Hooked, by Carolyn Smart

Ever feel you’ve got to keep your obsessive peculiarities under wraps? Forget about it. Interesting women aren’t flatliners devoid of personality. They’re wild, depressed, smart, creative, unfulfilled, particular, impulsive, and more often than not, can drink a man under the table.

If you’re hooked on fascinating people, the way I am, you’ll enjoy Carolyn Smart’s poetic journey into the lives of seven ‘unstable’ and remarkable women.

Carson McCullers, Unity Mitford, Zelda Fitzgerald and more- Smart’s found her way into the heart with this poetry. Listen:  here’s what liquor does/ it shows the hidden things/…whole sides of mountains crumbling loose.

Or this: at eighteen, I wanted to be gone, pure gone/and when I moved that way, I drew a crowd.

You may find that sometimes the attempt to push poetry into another character’s theme falls flat, feels forced, comes off a bit ambitious and loses its flow. But then there are moments of such revelation that you’ll swear the ghosts of these women have always lived where you sleep. Most importantly, perhaps, is Smart’s courageous act of kindling/rekindling an acquaintance with unusual women or creative contributors who are so often forgotten beside their equal counterparts in men. I rushed straight online to find out more about the names I didn’t know, and ordered some of the McCullers books I haven’t read.

Later this week, I’ll be rereading Hooked and perusing a few biographies over a nice mellow whiskey during happy hour at a crowded bar.  Perhaps not what Carolyn had in mind, but absolutely necessary.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

This Little Light of Mine: the astonishing art of Canada’s Pat Moffatt

There are a few tricks to getting the kind of colour and light that seems almost supernatural in Pat Moffatt’s paintings, the kind of colours that bounce around the room against the sun’s changing shadows, reverberating with glowing energy. One is gratitude, an inner illumination that comes from letting go, forgiving, moving on.

The other is more technical. Just don’t use brown. Ever. “Brown is a zero,” Pat says. “In my mind, brown is one big orgy of colour, that the brilliance of the truth of colour has been lost. There is no opposite of brown, it sits alone.”

This act of symbolic omission creates stunning works that vibrate with a luminous beauty I’ve never seen before. There’s a certain purity, and maybe that’s exactly what the artist is longing for. The colours shine like stained glass, like a lighthouse clear and bright over shadowy pines and a dark bay.

I happen to like brown very much- it is the colour of bark, sand, the earth, chocolate, giraffes…but I admit I’ve never seen a vivid brilliance like what shines in Pat’s work. Besides, everything Pat does has an important symbolism. The number of flowers in a vase, the colours used, a doorway, what the sky holds- all of these hold a story, a particular piece of Pat’s heart and soul. And the things that are not there- brown- also have meaning. “Brown symbolizes a wealth of bad things,” he says. And Pat prefers to leave the bad things out.

His symbols are not consciously planned out in advance. “I see it after they are done, not before or during,” the artist tells me. Consider the painting Forty. “I started painting January of 2003, I was forty. I had my first one man show at The Gallery Wall on Bloor Street in February 2005. There were forty paintings in that show. The show was called Forty. I knew it had to have a theme. A consistency. So I started working on a ‘theme’ piece. In it you see a wheat field with nine modern

Forty

bails of wheat. Two of them are in the foreground, representing my two marriages. The sky, a very dark blue, almost like there is a planet very close to earth, and out of there is a bolt of lightning hitting a pine tree. Illuminating it from within. The tree being hit with energy represents me being given the force to paint, to create… to connect with God? There is an abstracted version of a small chapel on the left representing my belief that there is something much greater than ourselves and because it’s abstracted it may mean that ‘religion’ has corrupted the ideal of spiritualism. The painting is actually a sign of gratitude for the ability to paint. To express.”

The ideas come in a flash, on a subconscious level. “I have this urgency to act on it…and when the creative process is over, I always see profound things in the work that pertains to my life. This in turn helps me deal with those things. Come to think of it…. during the whole process, I’m not a part of any of it.”

Teachers told Pat early on that he was an artist, but he did not begin painting until he was forty. It began rather suddenly, and has been wildfire ever since. Each and every work is created, “rapid fire, no thought, like an oracle.”

There was a “set of rules, in place, in my mind, from day one,” Pat says. “These were there before I even touched the brush to canvas for the very first time. I never break them, and starting and finishing a painting in one sitting- three to four hours, on average- is one of them…It’s all about letting go for me, and in that, comes beauty.”

Pat lavishes the canvas with abundant helpings of paint, another symbolic gesture of the generosity and giving of humans, and his gratitude. This effect, combined with the furious brushstrokes, the colour vibrancy, and the speed of the composition, gives a cosmic energy to each work. He churns out about two paintings a week, but feels he should be making several a day.

Indeed, the muse has come amazingly often since Pat began painting only six years ago. He has since created hundreds of gorgeous oil and acrylic paintings, and none show any sign of a fumbling evolution, a movement toward maturity, of the search for one’s own artistic identity, signature style- the “voice.” Rather, they are all, from the beginning, instantaneous masterpieces. The “brownless palette” creates an immediate and vivid cohesion. The fast fury of brushstrokes contributes to their vitality. The underlying use of symbolism means that a still life is not quite as still as it appears. And the distinctive use of perspective and choices of subject matter have yielded, in the artist’s earliest stages, the works that an artist might finally come to after decades of study, experiment, exploration, trial and error. Could it be that this humble man from Thunder Bay, Canada, is a master in our midst?   For even the creative geniuses had a gestation period, Renoir, Picasso, Van Gogh…

Van Gogh. It’s what the viewer thinks about from the first moment.  When I experienced Pat’s work  at a Touched By Fire art exhibition, it was exciting to see someone continue on in the master teacher’s style, even, dare I say, improving on it? I assumed the stylistic focus was intentional, and I admired the artist for such singular dedication to learning from the best.

I was surprised to learn that the connection was spontaneous, and there from the very beginning. “I somehow do paint like him. A blessing or a curse…not sure?” Pat says. “This comes naturally and logically to me. My natural brush strokes look almost identical to his for some reason. My best friend for 32 years has an oil painting I did when I was thirteen. I had no idea he’d kept it all these years. Recently, he brought it out and showed it to me- I almost fell out of my chair. My brush strokes are the same as they are now! But at the time it was painted, I hadn’t even been introduced to Vincent Van Gogh.”

Van Gogh did use browns, but the kind of quick, short brush strokes that energize everything Pat paints indeed evoke the master and no other. The type of perspective used, the sorts of colour choices, the framing and splicing of the composition, and the subject matters- laneways, churches, flowers, faces, skies, landscapes, fields- all of these things have the feeling of deep homage to Vincent. I can’t help but wonder at the connections, the statements Pat has made about not really being there during the process, not premeditating the work, acting as an oracle.

“When I paint, it’s almost like I’m in some sort of state,” Pat tells me.  “Like runner’s high. Most runners will tell you that they cannot remember any details of the five miles they just covered. For me it’s the same thing. …. To me, painting is 100% freeing, connecting, maybe even connecting with God.”

Depression and madness cut Vincent’s life short at 37 years.  Outside of grade school, Pat didn’t start painting until he was 40- and then he did so furiously. Vincent sold only one painting in his lifetime. He would have wanted to sell more, and to have more time to paint, take his distinctive style to the next level. Could Pat be his channel? Or a reincarnation? Well, stranger things have happened…

Pat says he could talk about Van Gogh forever, and whether or not it’s conscious, I feel that he exudes a playfulness that celebrates the parallels. In Ballet of the Silent Mind, a dancer stands before two paintings that show Van Goghian chairs. Chives or Chinese lanterns in vases tribute the composition and vividness of the famous million dollar sunflowers. The many churches in Pat’s work suggest the rambling angles of the Church at Auvers. The dark swirling skies are more than a little evocative of the unforgettable Starry Night. For whatever reason, the spirit of Van Gogh is part of Pat’s work, a blessing and honour.

Or, as Pat suggested, a curse? Because even with this uncanny high honour of effortlessly conjuring one of the greatest artists of all time, it must be odd to represent the limelight that another never had.

And of course, Pat has many distinctions in his style that are difficult to convey in words. The parallels to Van Gogh are in no way detracting from a body of work that is wholly original. The purity of colour, as mentioned, is breathtaking.  Each piece is so glossy and shiny that the paint still looks wet. There’s a surreal, dreamy quality as recurring characters like nuns or accordion players enter the works. And some of the works are unmistakably Canadian, like the beautiful Northern Lights and Silver Birch. Occasionally, an oeuvre veers completely away from everything else, like Apology, which is sort of like Keith Haring and Kandinsky at the same time.

And then there’s the other part of the ‘curse. Depression. “I have battled alcohol since my 20s and I’ve been diagnosed with major depression. I think very creative people are so sensitive that problems or obstacles tend to be too much to deal with. A misdirection of fear or vulnerability,” Pat confides. “The worst enemy of the artist is fear.”

“There have been many days when I cannot paint due to depression. I don’t force the issue,” Pat says.  “But another one of my rules is that there will be no darkness in my work. I will not subject the viewer to the dark places in life. My job is to lift people up… not to share some horrific thing because I feel that I must. There would be no light without darkness, and it’s my job to show light. I really hope that come across.”

Pat says surviving his childhood is his greatest accomplishment. “I will not get into the details of it but I will say that the first nine years of my life were full of trauma, violence, tragedy, loss, and confusion.”

“More than anything…I long to become one with God. Becoming one, instead of being lost. Money or material things mean little to me. I have been extremely poor and middle class. I have climbed the corporate ladder to great heights only to fall off the ladder. I have dined with artists, writers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs. I have also dined with the poor, the insane, criminals, addicts, and have-nots. We are all the same, deep down, we all want the same things.”

That’s what I see reflected in the light of his artwork, in the attention brought to vivid objects or paths or angles we may miss along the way if we’re not watching. I see that beauty that’s reflected off the darkness, just as the luminous moon dances diamond ripples across dark waters.

“My eyes have never been wider than they are right now,” the artist tells me.  “There is so much to learn, to forgive and to let go of. If anything I am ultimately grateful.” He feels it is amazing to be here, to be able to create, to feel the connection with spirit, or God, those forces beyond ourselves that are mysterious and majestic.

“If I had a ‘normal’ upbringing, I think I would be selling used cars or vinyl siding,” he says.

Contact artist Pat Moffatt at patttygo@hotmail.com.

See over 100 of his works at http://www.artmajeur.com/?login=moffatt&go=artworks/display_list_galleries.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

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Maiden, Madonna, Crone- (or, How Madonna Taught Me to be a Fearless Writer)

Maiden, Madonna, Crone- (or, How Madonna Taught Me to be a Fearless Writer)

It’s hard to be a writer for many different reasons, but the fact that your parents might read what you write is no small censorship. The truth is, you often feel naked and exposed or embarrassed by a harsh opinion, a contentious phrasing, or good old- fashioned sex. But if you stopped writing those things just because someone might read it, well, that would defeat the whole purpose, now, wouldn’t it?

Well, I’ve always learned from the best. What if Madonna had run back to Michigan and given up the first time she met with opposition? What if she threw in the towel the moment she made a misstep? What if she had thought, gee, I can’t do that, my dad wouldn’t approve? Thankfully Madonna paved the way for us to be all we can be, and those who find her somewhat hard or brazen might do well to recall the tremendous drain of being the most famous woman in the world. It’s bad enough when they love, love, love you…but what about when they hate you?

Scandal is one thing, but that’s just a bit of blushing. It’s more difficult to stand naked in public with certain opinions, and find yourself unpopular. Contending with venom, or plain old hurt feelings, is hard for me to do- it is a fault of the sensitive bipolar to take everything very personally. It’s not easy to be super-sensitive and have a big mouth at the same time.

Of course, I had never anticipated any of this stuff, because up until I began to have a readership, however humble it still is, my idea of ‘fearlessness’ was getting my ears pierced fifteen times or wearing a Marshall Mathers t-shirt.  The writing part is easy- being read is far more difficult. And so I practice remaining open to

mixed-media by Lorette C. Luzajic

change: only a fool never changes her mind. I practice knowing you can’t please everyone all of the time. I practice standing firm for the convictions that aren’t negotiable. I practice drawing on a renewable resource of strength instead of buckling, because I’m going to be doing this for a very long time. It doesn’t matter if my bravado is just an act, and behind it lurks a very shy woman. I’m going to need it, so I best practice using it.

No fear, no fear, no fear. Recall that Madonna started insisting on women’s right, no, her obligation, to pursue full spirituality, sexual liberty, and creative recognition at a time when we were still supposed to submit to a man’s headship and vote for whatever he did. (Oh… we’re still there….) Today it’s commonplace to see naked women in the entertainment business, and so we forget. If Madonna had gone sobbing to her ladies knitting circle the first time they called her a slut, where would we be? Possibly nowhere. If she had faded into obscurity security the second they called her a faggot lover, where would civil rights be today? We can’t know.

Way back when, Madonna was a mouthy teenager in a billion rubber bracelets and not much else. Today she is blowing up that last frontier of stereotype. AGE. We razz her for trying to disprove she’s a washed up starlet, an aging rock star, for fighting her wrinkles with expensive creams promising the fountain of youth. We accuse her of trying too hard, being so over, of being past her prime, of being totally sexless, of being old enough to be a grandmother, bla bla bla.

Excuse me?

For those of you too dense to see the reign of Madonna as the mythic incarnation of the goddess, let me spell it out for you. Having been named Madonna by her mother, not by herself, she was born to the role. The role begins with maiden- you know, like a virgin. It continues to motherhood- you know, suddenly she started penning all those lullaby songs. Now it’s on to crone.

Maiden Mother Crone, the original trinity. It’s a tremendous duty to be the goddess in the public eye. Some still yammer such petty and ruthless idiocies like, “I don’t know why she’s so famous, when she has no talent.” Her talents clearly range from pop ditties to staying power to extreme yoga, to marketing, to choreography, to video making, to dancing…so what if she wasn’t the best actress? She tried. And so we, her minions, can be empowered to try new things, even if we fail. To explore the outer reaches of our powers, to discover our strengths and our weaknesses.

Now as Her Madgesty sails through fertility into menopause and older age, she shows us that we can continue to be productive, funny, creative, sensational, experimental, and fully sexual beings. She shows us that we may endure humiliations like divorce and disappointment, but not to just lay down and wait for death. Live, live, live.

It’s too bad that Guy was such a fuddy duddy. Their relationship is not my business, but I always wondered what she saw in him in the first place. He seems nice enough, but far too average. Of course, in the mother stage you long for stability, and you fancy that it might be somewhere outside yourself. A nice guy seemed like a safe bet after so many torrential bad boys and whirlwinds. Madonna’s husband, whoever it would be, should surely have been intelligent enough to know he would always be Mrs. Madonna, and that he’d better take that like a man. Instead, we get a pub scruff mumbling about how her body is like a piece of gristle, and she’s not all cuddly and not a stay at home mom.

Er, no. To be a woman of this kind of power, you unfortunately do need to work out five hours a day. I’m grateful that to do my job, I merely have to tend to my carpal tunnel issues. To work the stage like Madonna does, you need the training of a professional athlete with the practice of an acrobat. I’d love to see her a bit softer, too, and we might in her last years. But remember what she said: “This is who I am, like it or not, you can love me or leave me, but I’m never gonna stop.” Not even old age is going to keep her from raising the roof every time, from being the centre of the biggest show on earth. She will never just stand there and sing- remember? she can’t sing anyway. She takes her limits to the limit every time, using her body in every conceivable way.

So what do you do when you are a fifty year old Madonna and your bland, smarmy husband dumps you? Well, you head to Brazil in the biggest hussy wig you can find, and take up a torrid affair with a boy named Jesus, of course. Perfect.  Brazilian porn actor and model Jesus Luz has the kind of muscle definition any cougar worth her salt dreams about. Rippling, tan, with intense eyes, he was the perfect accessory for her Old is Sexy campaign. Hear that girls? We get better with age, and won’t have to worry about making babies, amen! I bet Madonna is not as pretentious as some conclude- there is a great deal of camp in the things she does, a deep vein of humour. Indeed, she said so herself: “You only have to have half a brain in your head to see that I’m quite often making fun of myself.”

What’s not funny is that to live out loud for a female still means cruel whispering, and worse, death threats from men who are completely threatened by the power of the goddess. The crone is the most frightening of goddesses, because she cannot be bound by virginal naivety or biology/pregnancy. She outlives her consorts. You can’t lock her up or knock her up. She is too old to worry what people think, so social sanctions mean diddlysquat.

“I will have the honour of to be the first one to cut the head off Madonna,” said the Palestinian leader. While certainly Madonna’s nouvelle-ancienne Jewish mysticism must miff a country scorned by Israel, all evidence guarantees that if Madonna embraced Islam, the tables would be turned. Come on, now, are the ancient wars in the Middle East, raging since Bible days, entirely the fault of this one woman? That said, he is inadvertently acknowledging that she has many heads, like the timeless Hecate, if he should be the “first” to cut it off. Hecate: maiden, mother, and crone.

Now the only death threats I’ve received have been from that fount of compassion, the life-loving vegans, for some food writing where I had the audacity to suggest that the human heritage diet is omnivorous. That was unnerving enough, but it wasn’t an influential leader of a furious country threatening me, nor was it the public at large. It would be terrifying to face the public fury after such grand scale trespasses. Recall that there is no greater sin than blasphemy, a convenient way for the church or government to assert that their interpretation of mystic events is the only way.

The very idea that there’s only one faith, or only one way of interpreting The Book, sprung up because the patriarchs of Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions wanted to stop the goddess worship of the time. Think about it: Iraq, today’s battleground, hides beneath its blood soaked soil all the secrets of Sumer, the first civilization, where the goddess reigned supreme in temples miles long. Purging pantheism was never entirely successful, but in the old days, it meant the only god left was a thundering war God who avenged and smote every city and left no one alive except the virgins, whom his people could make use of as they willed. Whenever new (old) philosophies began to surface, the monotheists burned/looted/stole/destroyed the literature, but some survived because they were so busy warring over the finer points of their own faith, killing one another over an interpretation of the same damn god.

No, I’m not implying that the days of primitive cults and goddess worship were not bloody. That’s a utopian dream. We’ve always used mythic names and ritual stories to explain things we don’t understand, and so her many names were also associated with storms as well as with fertility and harvest. War would rage regardless, with or without religions, but the danger of a ‘god said so’ kind of religion is that people are willing to kill and die for some apparent reward in the afterlife, without instead sorting out the issues here and now, whatever they might be. No era has ever been perfect, but with what we have evolved to become, with the information and affirmation we have, it is feasible to have an egalitarian society at long last without one gender or one ethnic group or one religion being threatened.

It was Madonna’s fate to carry out the terrifying and monumental task of encouraging society to evolve until the point where women would feel their power. While stuffy governments were still deciding whether it had been wise to let black people sit at the front of the bus, and church elders were squabbling over whether unbaptized babies go to heaven, Madonna was blasting the airwaves with empowerment and unity for all. She was unafraid to touch a black man, an AIDS patient, or herself. She put racist, sexist, homophobic garbage in your face, and then threw it in the dumpster where it belongs.

Dismantling the cumbersome terror of sex was no small task. Women have been the gateway of the devil for so long, disposable garbage, good for nothing but ensnaring godly men, that it’s high time the world had a mama who taught us how to use it or lose it, all the while engaging the rest of our brains and imaginations, too.

Listen:

Woman is man’s destruction, Tertullian said. “Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil’s doorway. You led astray one whom the devil would not dare attack directly. It was your fault that the Son of God had to die; you should always go in mourning and rags.” Thanks a lot, Tertullian. Or the ‘great’ Augustine: “Only man is in the image of God.” So much for protestant “reform”- John Knox wrote, “Woman was made for only one reason, to serve and obey man.” His follower, John Wesley: “Wife: Be content to be insignificant. What loss would it be to God or man had you never been born.”

It’s 2009. Now that we know that famines and plagues and the crucifixion of Christ did not happen because women were screwing Satan, we can carry on with our evolution.

And so, Madonna, the angel of apostasy rose forth, carrying the name of the only surviving goddess in the monotheist tradition, disguised as a bratty dance student. Who knew she would be known the world over as the whore of Babylon, even as the hatred toward the fountain of life was dissipating, slowly but surely. Oh, it’s still out there- we are, after all, only in the first century of equal rights for a paltry few countries of the whole world, for the first time in about five millennia. And though Christian Dominionists want to restore Old Testament law and enforce the death penalty for apostates, unchaste women, adulteresses, and homosexuals, perhaps Madonna has taught us well and we won’t let them have us back. Freedom of religion, freedom of sex, freedom of race- these are basic human rights, and Madonna’s been mixing and matching ‘em for quite some time, now. And we’ve been front row centre for her private spiritual journey, too, from spoiled megalomaniac to mistress of Malawi. Madonna insists you can be old, sexy, fit, rich, and still follow the true words of Christ: feed the poor.

Some have said Madonna has a hardened heart, but if she were as vulnerable as I am, she would have offed herself a long time ago, against that constant barrage of fury and controversy, and the exhausting drainage of giving everything you’ve got and us all wanting more. To carry out her fate, she’s had to have ruthless moments, and she’s also human, a particularly ruthless species if I recall correctly. In fact, she’s strong enough to carry out the role, and has asked generations of fans and foes alike to question everything, to vote, to ‘don’t go for second best,’ to

Pretty AND smart!

take control of our bodies and sexuality, to flaunt what we’ve got, to explore spirituality, to fix our mistakes, to accept our bodies, to push them, to refuse limitations, to speak against racism, to refuse sexism, to refuse homophobia, to use our wits and our brains, to grow and learn, to read, to love without fear.

Maybe her ex-husband has personal and realistic reasons to see her as hardened ‘gristle,’ as a tin woman with a tin heart. But I see that as only one guise in the thousands of facets of Madonna/Ishtar/Hecate/Luna/Aphrodite/Venus/Medusa/Artemis/Ashera/Shakti/Freyja/
Sophia/Inanna/Kali/Isis (her names unto infinity).

She may not be the cuddliest grandmother ever, but not a piece of “gristle.” She’s a lean, mean dancing machine. I see bravado, courage, audacity, power, discipline, fury, determination, creativity, and persistence. Madonna’s mission isn’t over- and it’s hardly just her own career at stake, in my mind. She has come to fulfill something much larger, a terrifying and exulting fate. Perhaps I give one woman too much credit? Doubtlessly, there are many forces of freedom at work, in the law, in the home, in big and small ways. Yes, yes, yes. But Madonna reaches the masses in ways of considerable power, and her inspiration is huge. Who would I be if I had not hidden the True Blue cassette under my pillow, sneaking it along when I went babysitting? We were fundamentalist Baptists, and all I had to look forward to in life was listening to a man bark orders while I changed diapers. The Mother Goddess wouldn’t be allowed into my home or heart, even if I were to become a mother- which is, after all, the most sacred art, one that somehow got twisted into property and service to the man.

Instead, Madonna told me a secret- I could be anything I wanted to be. If I had courage, I could live the wild heart that was inside me, and become an artist and a writer with a progressive spirituality of reason. I could answer my calling instead of suffering through the cookie cutter life that society had planned for me. And I’d have to be brave enough one day to make mistakes in public, to tell the truth as I knew it, to speak against injustice, and not to be afraid to be naked, in more ways than one. My fate is to write, and I’m committed to that, to writing as if my parents aren’t reading it, even if they are.

It’s the height of tongue-in-cheek that Granny Madonna is now cavorting with a 21-year-old man named Jesus, in all his Adonis beauty and power. Is Madonna making too much of sex again? I don’t think so. I don’t think she’s trying too hard to be young again. That’s bullshit. She’s breaking down that last frontier, that old women are used up, washed up, frail, powerless, sexless beings just because their baby bearing days are over. It was one thing for her beauty and power to change the world while she was still like a virgin, and then like a harlot. Yes, she is showing the world that she’s not desperate, and nor is any other old lady. Sex and beauty are powerful at every stage of life, and a wrinkle or two can’t change that.

My critics will say it’s easy for Madonna to be sexy when she can afford surgery, makeovers, and clothing that we can only dream about. But I think she has worn so many various disguises (‘reinventions’) of mythology, from waif to whore to cougar to soccer mom for the very simple reason of revelation, revealing that artifice and masks may simply be ways to show us the soul. In theory, I could blame every Playmate model for appearing without a stretch mark or surgically fixing their sagging breasts. But I don’t. Instead I see the simple power of taking off my clothes, and see the possibility that stretch marks and lard and all, it might leave a man speechless instead of sending him running.

Indeed, it has.

We, too, are free to experiment with all of the guises and masks- and I for one love to play dress up, and dress down, and yes, I do have to put cover-up on my varicose veins. But I’m not going to hide in a potato sack because I’m overweight. Nor am I going to marry a Baptist boy because I should. I’ve been over both those things for a long, long time, thanks to Her Madgesty. Maiden, mother, crone- I embrace all three. It’s not over ‘til it’s over. Life begins at fifty.

Do not regret growing older.  It is a privilege denied to many.
-author unknown

Not bad for an old bag!

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Fahrenheit 451 Revisited: Blinded by the Light

I had a heated argument recently with a person I respect profoundly, a person to whom I have turned for wisdom and comfort time and time again. The altercation occurred following some gruesome discoveries I’d made that a large faction of the Christian church is still in the superstitious throes of the Middle Ages, and that it is still looking to kill heretics and heathens just like the good old days.

I’d heard about the Dominionists before, in passing, in Rolling Stone Magazine or something, but I was part of a progressive church family that welcomed women and diverse faith families, so I didn’t perceive the gravity of the threat.

So what if a few fanatics thought unchaste women and apostates should be stoned to death? I lived in a society that was stumbling toward civilization, with its own faults, but certainly moving towards a truer morality than we’ve known in the Dark Ages, where we debated over whether brown-skinned humans had a soul, and used sex torture to provoke witchcraft confessions from perceived adulteresses.

But you never know what will happen to you in a day, and the day following the inauguration of President Obama was by chance a domino that has knocked over a house of cards- a house in which I lived, but of which I was not the architect. That was the day the sleeping kooks and crackpots came out of the woodwork, and the dormant extremism of racist, sexist, homophobic Christianity rose from the dead.

Ironically, while their own henchman Bush was at the helm, their voices were not as loud. Their purpose was placated to some degree. But once a mixed-race black man of mixed faith backgrounds who cared for women and the poor rose up, the ghouls crawled out of the ground and into the daylight, much like Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.

I won’t recount the multitude of disgusting racial, anti-gay, anti-women slurs I found in the body of Christ and in my inbox- I already did so in a lengthy diatribe about my crisis of faith. Suffice it to say, when anyone uses words like “plate lip nigger” in their threat to assassinate the babykilling president, you know we have stepped into a time machine and landed five centuries ago. But in my mind, there was no excuse then, either- we can always use ‘the times’ as an excuse to torture and terminate, and in that regard the times they aren’t a’changin’.

Horrified and regrettably naïve, I waded through a good deal of online and library literature, seeking what could possibly drive these people to such hate. I found it in the contemporary church. Indeed, I found it in the church yesterday today and forever. Twenty years ago when I first gave up God, I gave up the women-hating, women-erasing God. I discarded the ‘inerrancy’ fairy tale like a hot potato, as any thinking person must. Obviously the Old Testament must be filtered through the lens of patriarchy, for here some primitive scholars, at the cusp of pagan rejection, threw out all the goddess stuff and just kept God. Women’s divinity had to be swept out of the record in order to rape, pillage, and subvert us, just as we later had to question whether black people had souls to justify slavery and missionaries’ slaughter of those who had never heard of Christ.

The Spanish Conquistadors Maim and Kill Natives for Personal Entertainment

Rather than squelch my faith in Christ, the mystery grew huge and profound. No longer terrified of ‘other’ religions, I studied the fascinating sacred worlds of other cultures. I acknowledged how much fundamentalist Christianity had injured me and distorted truth and reason. But I was also thankful for the many gifts that knowing Jesus inside out gave me, in comfort, in peace, and in poetry. The Bible has shaped culture through much of history in much of the world, and I felt the intellectual and literary impoverishment of those who weren’t familiar with its stories, truths, and metaphors. I didn’t yet know that once upon a time, those who read the Bible were slayed by the church, for its contents blew apart the whole premise of Christianity as a religion. Not just the timeless truths of Jesus, but the moral depravity of the Old Testament- these were rightfully seen as dangerous to a strict faith.

Those who believe that all faiths are the multifaceted expressions of one truth are the only ones who are on to something. The idea that the right God revealed Himself to your church alone is arrogant and immoral, and the cause of most racism, sexism, hatreds, wars, tyrannies, genocidal atrocities, and even serial killings. In our culture, we are quick to say, “Yes, we agree, look at the Taliban!” But we don’t see our mirror reflection inside.

That’s because our own faith is always right, and the other is always wrong. Other religions feel like fairy tales, or matters that are anthropologically or culturally fascinating, but certainly not ‘real.’  Ours only feels right because we are born and raised into it. Even more arrogant and confusing is the assertion of my childhood faith’s superiority of doctrine- thousands and thousands of other Christian interpretations are misguided, misled, not ‘real’ Christians, fakes, posers, or downright heresy. Catholics are especially hell-bound, for they do not profess the doctrine of being born again, and their Eucharist is WAAAAAAAY too frequent, not to mention all those pagan trappings and Mary worship.

It’s the same old story, Christians killing Christians for being the wrong kind of Christian. If not killing, then barely restraining ourselves from doing so. Gleefully resting on the laurels of knowing they’ll end up in hell.

That may be, but what then of the fact that for centuries, there was no other church to bring the scriptures forward, to carry the traditions and beliefs in Christ into the age of the Reform? And after the reform, which didn’t limit the superstitious tortures of women or homosexuals, heinous acts born of ludicrous repressions, but did revive a most appalling Lutheran brand of Jew-hating, and add dance, drink, gambling and Catholic art to the already long list of deadly sins.

Those who decry syncretism are not educated or open minded enough to see the obvious facts: the Bible is a fascinating historical document, indeed, a very special book that allows us to see the majesty and light of love and the darkness of both humans and our gods. But it is in and of itself a masterwork of syncretism.

Fundamentalists used every weapon of Christian apologetics to attack poor Tom Harpur’s brave suggestions that Christianity has pagan roots harpooned in The Pagan Christ. After all, what date was Mithras thriving in? And what context did other gods raise from the dead? Forget the “pagan Christ” for a moment and think about the pagan ‘other’ religions. No one in the Christian spectrum would find it a stretch to call Hinduism, Buddhist, Voodoo, the various Native American animisms, Mormonism etcetera ‘pagan.’  We can see clearly when we look at ‘other’ faiths. The seeds all come from our earliest ancestors. Christians call those ancestors Adam and Eve. And so does most of Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Judea,  Egypt, and on and on…why? Because Adam means ‘of the earth’ ‘of the clay’ ‘of the dust’ and ‘first man.’ Eve means ‘first woman’ or ‘mother of all.’ The very first words of the O.T. were penned some five millennia or more after recorded history began, or 2604 years if you are so fundamentalist that you believe the earth was created on 4004 B.C.  And 1400 is the generous Christian scholar’s guess for the writings of Moses. They would love it to be 4000 B.C. but know the latest possible writing time is 1440 B.C. The scholars who aren’t ‘real Christians,’ many of them Jews, are certain the dates are more like 700 B.C. Either way, there is no possible way Moses could have known the entire history of the world up until that time. Oh, I know, but God told him.

You know what would happen if I rewrote history, even with my best guesses, and said “God told me to write this down?’ Same thing that happens to everyone else with this story. They end up in the nuthouse. I won’t say here that Moses didn’t even write the Pentateuch because that’s another story.

Either way, the syncretism of the Bible begins with the Creation Story. Noah’s Ark, Jonah and the Whale, Moses the Lost Prince of Egypt, the Parting of the Red Sea, the Sacrifice of Isaac…. of course all religions come from the earliest seeds of faith in our civilizations. The stories came from somewhere, from other books and from word of mouth.

Three millennia later, the Christian Dominionists are seeking to return to Old Testament Law. The newspapers are filled with scare stories that Muslims want Shariah law in countries where they have immigrated. But these Christians want a return to a mythical world in which they will have free reign to execute heretics all over again. Not just heretics, either- but those who work on Sundays, rebellious children, adulteresses, women who aren’t virgins, prostitutes, apostates, and blasphemers. Oh and heathens- that’s every other religion but theirs, including progressive Christianity. Oh, and homosexuals. Notice the mirror-like parallel to everything these people find loathsome about Islam. They want the same power for themselves, but with their own God.

So what if a few nutcrackers want to prove their almighty might?

It’s not just a few. That’s what I found out when my domino tipped everything I had standing over. Forever. Under many, many names, they rise. They have trillions of dollars and media all over the world. They seldom make their agenda known, though if you look, it’s proudly stood for. So proud that one of their many modern journals of faith suggests with a straight face and no irony intended, that the execution of rebellious children should take place by stoning, so the whole village can get involved.

And where do they lurk, you ask? The entire American home schooling movement, for starters- the aim is not just for children to avoid learning science the way I missed learning it- it’s also so that they never meet children of other backgrounds. It’s brainwashing. It comes from Rushdoony, the ‘father of Dominionism’ whose racism and sexism knew no bounds. The subtle objective beyond keeping kids from book knowledge is to keep mom at home. These groups also ultimately want women’s and nonbeliever’s votes rescinded, the removal of all progressive,

raise up a child in the way she should go, and when she is old, she will not depart from it

unbelieving, or heathen judges from the courtrooms, and the execution of homosexuals. Homos are, after all, the biggest threat to America. They’re just so dang abominable.

In my furious unearthing of these sick inquisitors, I saw names that were familiar to me from my childhood, and from my friend’s library. James Dobson, James Kennedy, to name two.

The friend was unconvinced that there was anything wrong with Christians hoping to evangelize nonbelievers, even as I told him that Dobson had no understanding of homosexuality, and his unwarranted fear was ludicrous. I suggested he hang out with a bunch of queens and get to know them. Far from being a threat to society, gays are I daresay a more evolved kind of human being, and they are funny, intelligent, and creative. They are also my community. Even when I told this person that these groups want homosexuals out of the workplace, out of the schools, and executed- despite the fact that most child molesters are straight men- the person still didn’t concede that Dobson may be wrong. Dobson after all knows that the man is the headship of the family, created first, and he must subordinate women and not be some flim flam egalitarian who talks with a lisp.

Okay, I’m putting words into this person’s mouth. But not really. His words were even clearer: “The Bible says it is an abomination to the Lord.” The fact that the Bible was written three thousand years ago before an understanding of hormones or diversity came up meant nothing to this man. A man whose intelligence I admire, except in this one regard. And even though I presented masses of evidence loudly proclaiming a desire for Old Testament law and public stonings, this friend said he just couldn’t believe this was accurate. If I had shown the same documents about Islam or Buddhism it would have been easy to believe. But when it’s your own faith, no matter how much evidence piles up  against it, you can’t see. Blinded by the light.

I handed this man a list of over 1000 names of religious groups, corporations, and media outlets that support Dominionism and still he refused to acknowledge that something is not quite right in the Christian church today. “I don’t think it’s true,” he said. “These must be old records.” When you can look at documented evidence dated from this millennia but hold on to the words of every Dobsonite despite that all of his learning comes from only one book at the exclusion of the rest of his brain is mind boggling. “I don’t think Coral Ridge Ministries is wrong,” he said, dismissing the possibility of even investigating for himself whether my concerns were valid, if hatred really lies at the core of someone’s beliefs.. “Their doctrine is sound,” he said. Sound to whom?

The bomb dropped when he said I was “obsessed with defending homosexuals.” I guess African Americans were obsessed with defending black people.

by his stripes we are not healed: whipping scourges of a slave

Obama argued with Dobson over the homosexual issue. If we should execute gays, should we not then execute rebellious children and Sabbath workers, he asked. Then he shouted out, READ YOUR BIBLE, people! The problem? Obama didn’t know that that’s EXACTLY what these people want. Complete power to shed blood, in the Lord’s name.

I told my beloved that, inspired as The Word might be, it’s still subject to the bias of its writers, who knew nothing of the next 3000 years in evolution, biology, medicine, technology and other developments. These were people steeped in paganism, moving toward monotheism.  They needed stories to explain the weather and the plagues, things we now understand more. Today we know that germs cause many diseases. We know that brimstone in the desert easily catches fire. It’s easy to see why early people believed “God rained fire and brimstone” on evildoers or wiped them out with sickness. They didn’t understand epilepsy or schizophrenia, and so they believed these twitching, muttering mysteries were demon possession.

And that’s when my friend said, “Some mental illness STILL comes from demonic possession.”

Once upon a time a man named Copernicus was tried as a heretic for suggesting the earth was not the centre of the universe. Many others who suggested variations on this theme, or who suggested that bathing might reduce disease, were executed for blasphemy, heresy, apostasy, whatever.

I personally think it’s a sin to not use the intellect we are given to expand and explore and seek to know. If there is a God, he is disgusted with us all for being so prudish, self-important and genocidal in his name.

I told my friend that I believe that instead of brainwashing children into being terrified of hell and hating heathens, it should be mandatory learning from every pulpit about the ancient and modern atrocities of religion. Not the demonic world of tribal cannibals or Indian elephant worshippers, either- but the Christian slaughter of Muslims in Sarajevo, the Christian slaughter of Jews in Germany (no Hitler was not an atheist), the Irish Catholic/Protestant burnings and tortures, the sex torture of women ‘witches,’ the hunting of native Indians for sport, the religious justifications for slavery. Perhaps these crimes were a little more abominable than being born gay or female.

To me it’s no surprise that some ‘demonic’ killers invent perverse torture methods

Ed Gein himself could not have dreamed this shit up.

to get off. They learned it in the church. Do you have any idea of the creativity holy men used to torture women? The rack, the anal pear, the hook, the breast ripper…This history should be required reading.

But it always comes down to this: “Those weren’t REAL Christians,” my friend said. When will we take our heads out of the ancient desert sand?

“With all due respect,” I said, because I truly do love and respect this person above most, though we have seldom agreed on faith matters, but I was furious. “Have you EVER read a book in your life that was not written by Calvin or Dobson or other theologians, a single book on mythology or history or archeology or Christianity or science that was written by a progressive Christian or a person from another faith, or no faith? One? ANY other book in the past 2000 years that was not ABOUT the Bible?”

“That in itself would be idolatry,” he said.

I almost tore my hair out by the roots.

Would you like to know why our world is left with this particular bundle of scriptures and a few odd desert finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls? What happened to the other scripture-like contributions, or simply the other books 2, 3, 4 thousand years old? There are some- The Epic of Gilgamesh (the flood story), a few ancient philosophy texts. But not many. The church destroyed them. They didn’t want anyone to think in other possibilities. So much for free will. I said that Christians destroyed most mythic and historical literature, as well as divergent Christian thinking, and secular histories, as well as other Scriptures.  My friend didn’t believe me. “You can’t know that,” he said.

That’s the danger of burning books, and of not reading them. I CAN know this, though few people know it, or to what extent it took place. Priceless records that could tell us more about our world, our past, gone forever. It’s not a fairy tale. Early theologians gloated and glowed in their letters about the destruction of literature. Today we still burn books, and rock’n’roll records in churches- rock, often a portrait of dissent and protest- and we still censor science and history from our schools and churches. Christians in 2009 still find the two interracial sex scenes and the water-rod divining fantasy in Margaret Laurence’s brilliant The Diviners worthy of censorship. Christians still make a big to do about how Harry Potter and The Golden Compass books are homo-promo witchcraft and wizardry, though witchcraft and wizardry are now and have always been fantasy stories just like these.

Of course, defenders of the faith contest Christian vandalism- James Hannam presents a convincing argument that none of it ever happened. Like all other writers of Christian apologetics, including Lee Strobel, one might be convinced if their knowledge is limited. But if they have studied and learned from a wide variety of sources, they know apologists are masters of selective citations and of whitewashing history. There are plenty of Christian thinkers and philosophers who acknowledge the past and the present. They do not have to burn or banish contrary books to retain their faith. It is not threatened by learning or experience. It comes from and transcends through the ancient documents which illuminate it. Their predecessors may have been monsters, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It is not these willing thinkers in Christian faith whom I denounce, those Christians like myself who are not afraid of reality, but the unreasonable literalists who insult the intelligence of their God along with ours.

You can blame the world’s problems on sin, homosexuality, abortion, women, or westernization all you want, but this kind of bullheaded attitude is actually the root of all evil. It pains me to say so about someone I love, but if this person is free to blame the world’s problems on my homosexual lifestyle, I must be free to speak the truth. “The Bible said so,” whatever that culture’s Bible is has given rise to unspeakable crimes of war, rape, slavery, racism, murder, torture, ignorance and stunted intellectual development we have.

Primitive mythology, which was largely figurative as a way to explore and explain the world, would not have stunted our evolution this much. Indeed, even those peoples like the Aztec or Maya who were still practicing human sacrifices had

not the last vestige of human sacrifice rituals by a long shot....God told susan smith to sacrifice her babies, too, so why did she end up in psychiatric treatment in jail instead of on our lists of obedient Christians?

breathtaking knowledge in science and technology. And what did Christians do? The same as they did throughout history, to make it look like theirs is the only book ever written. They destroyed the libraries. Destroyed the books, the priceless mathematics and astronomies and histories.

Reading is, after all, idolatry.

“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
-George Bernard Shaw

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

missing my blogs?

Dear Friends, you must forgive me for my recent absence. I apologize that these blogs may be sporadic and for that I’m sorry. This year so far I have been so very, very busy with other writing pursuits and I apologize for the neglect here, especially after posting some heavy duty faith crises and then leaving you hanging. Fear not, I will continue to share the minutiae of my spiritual journey, literary landscape, mental health, joyous inspirations, and so on. I’m very busy right now preparing an art show, and the launch of my second book for April, as well as the final touches on the third book (‘b-sides’ and outtakes for the second!) and third!- a fiction. That means, yes, three books this year and you’ll be so tired of reading me that you won’t care if these blogs are spaced apart!

I’m very excited to be doing more research on our heritage diet and will be bringing you another series of ‘controversial’ writings on nutrition, gluten, meat, fat, and the like, including an expose of how ‘The China Study” almost had me fooled. I’m currently peeling back layer after layer of propaganda and I’ll be sharing that with you very soon on an exciting new Paleo eating website!

On a less volatile note, I’m busy with two new spin offs from Fascinating People (fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com). Fascinating Queers launched at Out Impact Magazine, and starting next week, I’ll be covering Fascinating Canadian Women at Cahoots Magazine! I am also developing another column that you’ll be able to read regularly online later this spring- centred on major themes in history and their interpretation in mythology. Myth buffs will get their fill- not just of classical mythology, but of stories all around the world, how religions interpret them, how various cultures express the big questions, now and back through our history. All of this is very exciting and I’m very busy- but you will of course see entries again about my wild mood swings, and my compulsive reading habits.

Joy to all,
Lorette