Local & Global

This morning’s parish newsletter arrives as usual with a reminder of a coming Community Dinner. This is a project going back more than twenty years. Once a month we feed 80-100 urban poor - some occasionally homeless, but most with some kind of permanent shelter. What they don’t have on a welfare income is the ability to buy enough wholesome food. We try to provide that. It is the least we can do for these regular guests that we have come to know over the years - and sometimes they tell us their stories.

Stories count in the world of climate change and too often they are horror stories. The fires in Hawaii have hit home and in a recent Zoom meeting, people talked about the places they had been - now completely devastated. Being there in the past made it matter. They understood the loss.

What is difficult is the stories we don’t hear. I’ve been reading the book, Not Too Late, which is full of stories of parts of the world with which I have no direct connection. Many are heartbreaking as the people affected suffer the climate degradation caused by mining, deforestation and other forms of exploitation that lay waste their world, while we ignore them. What if it were mandatory for any community like mine to adopt a far off island where the people face the disappearance of their land through erosion and flooding and hear their stories regularly in their own words? It might knock some sense into us as we recognize what we are doing to our island home and its effects on our siblings.

Holiday Pursuits

When I looked at two books on a coffee table, I was amused at the common titles with the same words. After years of never reading fiction, I am doing so at a furious pace now. It took me a while to discover the Canadian writer Louise Penny - and even more time to get a copy of the first one on the public library app, since it begins a series - and everyone wants to read the novels in sequence. While it took her five years to write this first one, I devoured it in about six hours. Luckily she has speeded up to produce far more. There are crime writers who like to create deeply flawed characters, but I am happy with Gamache - and the chief detectives of writers Donna Leon and Susan Hill. None of them are perfect but they and their accompanying families and cohorts live for me through dozens of books and become friends.

Drawing is also something I have pursued for years - sometimes in classes and for this month, just on my own. The library book has projects in pencil, pastel, watercolour, acrylics and oils - and I have plenty of supplies of all but the last - not a good choice for an indoor environment in any case. It’s not about creating masterpieces, but learning to see.

Insights from novels and paints - a good way to spend a staycation.

Musings

I lived in New York city in the early 60s and loved being there. A return visit a;ways confirms the energy and repeat visits are always welcome though they come too seldom now. But things are different watching America from a Canadian perspective. I’ve also just finished the book, How the Irish Saved Civilization - well worth a read. Much of it talks about the failure of the Roman Empire as the barbarians invaded it. The strange American scene we watch now causes reflection.

There is always a sense that Canadians are different - borrowing, I have often thought from, our British roots as well as our American ones. But the truth is that those roots are far more multicultural than I grew up thinking - even when living in a community where the roots were primarily German. More than 24 years ago we realized that half the people in Canada’s largest city, Toronto, weren’t born in Canada. That was OK and one of the things that made it interesting. There were neighborhoods with ethnic flavours and we sought out their restaurants - Greek, Italian, Indian and Jamaican. While there are clearly groups in our country that have suffered from our white privileged roots, there is no desire for us to return to earlier times, which we know weren’t necessarily great.

Another difference is clear now. We would never characterize our judges as Democrats or Republican - even substituting our local party designations. We don’t have a clue as to what government appointed them. We would be hard pressed to name the members of our supreme court even though we could come up with most of the names of the ones of our southern neighbour. We take it for granted that our judges are apolitical. We speak up when our politicians do things we don’t like. but we don’t demonize them and for the most part we are polite.

Walking to a concert last week, I came upon a very small group of protesters slowing down traffic on a main street. They were shouting “Trudeau must go” - and carrying a very large banner reading “The Trudeau Communist Regime must go”. Passersby generally smiled if they paid any attention at all. We might think that the Prime Minister’s office has too much power - but we would never call it a communist regime, unless we were very young with more enthusiasm than knowledge.

I get the feeling that we still think truth and facts are important. I hope it stays that way. Empires come and go. Thank goodness for the Irish scribes who thought learning from the past was important. If truth and facts can’t find common ground and stay in memory, they begin a downward spiral.

Productivity

In reading 4000 Hours again - a common practice, because I rush through books and then often re-read to absorb more of the details rather than the main argument - the author spends a good deal of time debunking our notions of productivity and our lack of control over our work and our inability to focus - and thus our fritter away our lives.

I was reminded of an interaction with a grandson about 12 years ago now. I was called into action as a sitter for two small boys on an afternoon when I had a tight deadline. I thought I had come up with a clever idea to keep them busy for the next hour so I could finish my assignment. I presented them with two large sheets of plain paper and a collection of markers and crayons. My instruction was to keep busy- and use the entire sheet of paper - while I got on with my work. “This will keep them occupied for a good long time”, I thought. I was wrong. The younger one returned within five minutes with the assignment completed - even with some decoration. There are many kinds of productivity.

Finitude

I have a new word in my vocabulary. It comes from a book that attracted my attention when I escaped from being too involved with a project, walked some final letters to the post office - because there are still people without email - and crossed the street to my neighborhood independent bookstore. Book City combines a large range of magazines, new books and remaindered ones in a relatively small space. I tend to head toward remaindered, after looking at the new releases.

But this time a new one published in 2023 appeared to have my name on it. Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. by Oliver Burkeman. Its cover reads Embrace Your Limits, Change Your Life. My life needed a change. Being burned out as a retiree ought to be an oxymoron.

Four thousand weeks is what you get if you live to be 80 years old. I’m already beyond half way to 4700 weeks if I make it to 90. The introductory chapter is headed, In the Long Run, We’re all Dead. Time Management seems like a solution and I have read all the books for years. This one does take a different and salutary direction.

The author is quite witty and well read - he has lived through both Trump and the Pandemic nad like me, still here. Perhaps the kernel of what he says comes from - of all people, Martin Heidigger, who defeats all students of philosophy by being more obsessed with the subject of finitude than any other. An d there is the addition of the two strikes of being a member of the Nazi party for ten years, and being almost impossible to read. Burkeman though, helps us through Heidigger by pointing to the question, somewhat like Hamlet, :What does it mean to be”? He says the only real question is whether we are willing to confront that one or not. The answer is that we are mortal. We are born here, we live here, we die here. All we can do is live our one miraculous life - a gift that never depended on us.

I’ve also been reading a report this morning of the results of some consultations - with one group of people saying, “If only we could get back to the past when everything was the way we wish it were now, it would be so wonderful” - and another group saying, “What do we have to do to make the future exactly the way we want it to be - which will be so wonderful”. I tend to join the second group with all its worry and anxiety. But the truth dawns. The only life over which I/they have any control is the one I/they have right now. It’s not as if we can manage time. Our life is our time - with limits.. It’s not as though our choices don’t matter because clearly they have consequences. But to pretend that we can fully control the future by our actions or recover the past is crazy. Learning finitude is important before it’s too late - both for me and everyone else.