If this is real, SIGN ME UP!

 

This card was stuck in our windshield when we came back from shopping today. Up to now, such things have been ads for gutter cleaning, roofing, landscaping, or something mundane like that. But this was different.

Haven't seen anything quite like it - it seems to cover any known human issue (including Mother Katery and Removing of Obiya), a few that aren't even known yet, problems that you don't have and may never have, or CANNOT have ("Help! I'm stuck on the moon!"). I don't wish to be too critical here, as something like this may help someone, or maybe a lot of someones.

If this person has some real ability to help with SOME of these issues, or can at least provide a listening ear. . . but that's NOT what it's usually about. 

Like Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar, this person may well be preying on the weak and vulnerable. OR NOT. The fact that this advertisement likely represents a different culture (South Asian, I think) makes me want to tread carefully - for  how do I know what it's like to live within that culture? 

Still, when a solution to EVERY SINGLE problem is laid out for you like a banquet of exaggeration, you've got to wonder. And I'd have to go all the way out to Delta to partake of this, unless it can be done by text message or Zoom (the way most "therapy" is done these days. You have to have the app.)

I can't begin to go into the times I've been taken in by people who seemed to have a genuine gift. But at some point, the "gift" became more important than they were - and the whole thing got corrupted, if it ever had any value to begin with. 

My former friend Paul Biscop, whom I met when he was teaching a university course in anthropology,  claimed to be a spiritualist medium, and even founded his own church on Vancouver Island (though that ended rather badly). But the relationship was rocky and uneven, and  eventually he dismissed all of my spiritual experiences as "fantasies" or even mental illness - which really hurt, though I can't imagine why. He said he was trying to help me with this insight, and of course I should have been grateful. But he often pulled rank, citing his two Masters degrees and his PhD as proof that all of HIS experiences were obviously valid, and mine were bogus.

Many years later, long after I had broken off the dubious friendship, he suddenly died, and what he left in his wake appalled me. His partner/spouse of 24 years (also named Paul) was left with more than $10,000.00 in debt that he had no idea existed. Far from  being left with no insurance money, he was left with a gaping hole that couldn't be filled. Last I heard he was literally homeless, and the spiritualist church Paul Biscop stomped away from was trying to help him by setting up a GoFundMe page. 

As nice as the folks at this church were, I could tell there had been bad blood there. It had become Paul's little pocket cult, and the rest of the congregation ultimately protested. When he died, his memorial was held at a local Masonic Hall, and very few from the church attended.  A table was set up at the back of the hall to sell off some of his books on anthropology and spiritualisms in order to help his surviving partner. . . survive. 

To this day, there's a page-long tribute online all about  how wonderful the man was, with none of the problematic things he did even mentioned. It almost seems like, as with Elvis, dying was a good career move for Paul. In any case, it's a cautionary tale, for it's just possible Paul set off on this spiritual journey with good intentions. Like Marshall Applewhite, like David Koresh, like Jim Jones? ALL of these men started off as relatively mainstream Christian preachers who may have thought their intentions were good. And they brought a lot of people along with them, one way or another. 

Let's just say it didn't end well.

OK then. . . what does this have to do with this card? Everything and nothing. It may be a whole 'nother circumstance, and I hope it is, but I also hope it isn't another form of Benny Hinn-ism, where people pour all their hopes and most of their savings into something that will only leave them spiritually bankrupt. 

FURTHER READING. I  went into more detail in this blog post, which deals with some of the same issues. Read it if you like.

https://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-way-we-live-way-we-die.html

The Gift(s) of the Magi

This is a piece I tried to track down for years. It was on a Robert Shaw Christmas album (vinyl), but not on any known CD. Finally I found it on a tape, but it was a different version. I'm not sure who the conductor is here, or which orchestra it is because when people post classical music videos they don't ever mention these things, and it seems to me that nobody minds very much. It's just nice music, "relaxing" (which is what most people say about classical music).

I was born and raised in it (not on it, that’s a different thing), and while it may have been pitched at me like a religion, I nonetheless learned something about the fine but crucial distinctions between different artists and conductors and orchestras. My Dad, who was for the most part a son-of-a-bitch who didn't love me, did seem to care if I knew something about music. Most of it I learned just by having it around me all the time, dinner music and the music he played every night as he sat in his reclining chair with a vibrating pad on his back.


Strangely, this wasn't one of the pieces I heard then. I discovered it much later, when the Magi still meant something to me. I also dug up, just now, some information about the deluxe nativity scene which adorned our mantelpiece at Christmas. The figures were probably made by someone named Fontanini. At least there's a strong resemblance. The camel was marvelous, about 7 inches high, and I always wanted to play with it. I see now why my parents wouldn't let me.

As for Respighi's Magi, I respond to this sort of music almost excruciatingly, as if my brain is somehow wired wrong. Well, I might be convinced of that today, having just received ANOTHER rejection for Harold from a publisher that hadn't read the manuscript. It was based on my query alone, which I guess didn't sufficiently condense 300 pages into one or two.


I think I can write, but sales? The whole thing escapes me. "Just get an agent," I am told, but that's kind of like saying, "Just win the lottery, it will solve all your financial problems." Which it probably would.

I think this is Advent now. I'm not with the church any more, which sometimes causes me considerable melancholy (but not enough to go back). It's weird how many things suddenly dropped out of my life around 2005. I used to be a semi-professional astrologer, studied it from about age ten, used to cast individual birth charts for people, and now I can't see any use in it at all. It's just a bunch of hooey. Christianity is almost never truly lived out by anyone, least of all clergy. I don't know if I've ever seen more emotional hangups concentrated in any other group of people.

So this time of year is, well. . . But hark, there's better news, for I have four small children in my life now. So the Christmas projects are in full gear. This week we made felt stuffed animals (I found my tiny battery-operated sewing machine in the closet, and it actually works), snowmen and gingerbread men and teddy bears. Very messy and labour-intensive, but absorbing and fun. But I find I feel overwhelmed these days. Underwhelmed, too. Funny how those two often coincide.

If this year is like all the others, in the next few weeks I'll receive most of the rejections I get in a year: the most succulent one is usually reserved for Christmas Eve. Most likely the one I had prayed for, or at least fervently hoped for. This can trigger a sense of futility that is downright embarrassing. All out of reach, though just barely, like a balloon that keeps popping up above my fingertips. 

I'm not supposed to want this so much. What do I think it's going to do for me? I don't know, solve all the problems in my life, I guess. Why not?


Next weekend, gingerbread. I hate making gingerbread and have never been successful at it. Last Christmas Caitlin and Ryan convulsed when I threw the dough at the wall (it stuck). I hate cooking with molasses, molasses is the devil, dark and sludgy and evil-tasting, but the recipe calls for it.

What if my life ran out next year? What if 2012 is the last year I will ever live? Oh, stop it, Margaret.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm