Declarations of Resistance - "What you do not know will not hurt you - so mind your own business!"

Declarations of Resistance - “What you do not know will not hurt you – so mind your own business!”

Everyday “Declarations” fill the air. “Mayor Ford” uses media scrums and voice to declare a position and hold onto a belief in who he believes he is. Government departments issue press releases and updates – hoping to assure and maintain the “commonly held beliefs” of the citizens. Such declarations in today's society are really words sought and iterated to keep whatever story / group / true to whomever is making the statement. There is no difference between Mayor Ford and the Alberta Governments response to the Obed Coal Mine wastewater containment failure as both are Declarations of Resistance.

I live by and drink water drawn from the Athabasca River. I am a counsellor working with persons living in violence cultures. I assist individuals to understand how others may perceive the choices and behaviors such individuals choose. Much of what I do is to try to name and explain my observations to shine a sliver of light to open awareness and comprehension of those I meet in my work. Such awareness and insights can lead to change and growth to living in healthier relationships.

When one considers “addictions” often present in any person or group statement – the denial factor can be blind spots and a reactionary resistance to any declaration presented to me. Time and changes to behavior is a measure of the “evidence of change” in rehabilitation work. I realize I am deluded by other's statements when I recognize and experience actual behaviors which do not fit the viewpoint of the declaration. The frequency of declaration might be a significant cover up to truth. Such frequency may be a flashing light of desperation of an unconscious broken inner child. When we live with the myth of who we believe we are can be dangerous for our well-being.

The media has been filled with Mayor Ford's declarations of innocense and upstanding citizen of meritorius service to the people. The people choose to accept or deny such declarations. Mayor Ford's behaviors are ultimately his choice and the ingrained behaviors of survival and what he consciously or unconsciously has learned through life experience. In terms of a story is it tragic comedy or pathetic reality of reaching a vision somewhat unattainable in the near future of one individual? The impact of Mayor Ford's behavior is an example that may assist many others to recognize their own need for adjustment and change. The story is important as I believe it is a current individual reality of a large percentage of Canadians. The story needs to be told.

Such addictions to our current existence however painful – keeps many of us from seeing and accepting our own needs to change. We believe our imagined heavenly vision is descending upon us now. The declarations we accept and believe hold us in our own denial. Recently in a “Chicken – Little Dance” I too have been proclaiming things I believe to be true but my declarations only stir resistance and hence rejection by others. What I am about to declare may upset and stir anger in many people who rely on the Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund for their “secured future”. Shareholders in companies like Sherritt International may include myself. CPP payments are connected to the innvestments in a fiscal belief system so many of us are part of as well.

The cost of the environmental destruction of our way of life is an expense fast forwarded to the future. It may also be a significant factor in our well-being and health or not. The impacts of toxic chemicals released in the 2^nd largest coal mine slurry containment failure in North American history is being flooded and covered over by declarations of resistance by the Alberta Government. There is much more to this story that needs to be told. Will our grandchildren really know what happened? How is our lifestyle damaging our children's health here in the “tragic gap of what is to what could be”. I will continue to declare resistance to that what destroys life for all for such is the business we are all into!     

Open letter to Premier Redford

Dear Premier Redford,

           Let me begin by congratulating you on your triumphant victory to leadership of the "ship of state known as Alberta".   As a ship captain you are sailing in turbulent, stormy and even uncharted waters.  Once pristine forests with their ecological and biological tapestries containing riches beyond our imagination were once whole - providing life for citizens of the planet in a complimentary way.  Life and opportunity still abound in this treasure house filled with many amazing gifts.   I believe the recognition of the individual importance of each gift requires a thoughtful and gracious approach as to what should be done with each gift.   It must be like going through an old jewellery box of an ancestor who has passed it onto the next generation. Your task and response abilities are "legion".

          I am writing about the unseen dangers lurking below the water line and shores where your "ship is sailing" and what appears to me to be destruction and wasted opportunity for the whole ship of state of Canada.  Trying to "get one's head around" the complexity of an economy is like trying to understand the one who cannot be named - aka God - or life in its full regalia.  Humans are a curious animal with a penchant to figure things out - and often the only way to do so - is to begin by taking things apart to see how they work.  Another approach is to try something and if it works try harder and faster.  In my humble opinion this is the current approach of fracking for oil and gas industry world wide.  Not knowing the impact of what the results of the approach are - because they are not being measured,  combined with denial of  possible impact is in my estimation setting the possible outcome similar to the iceberg that sunk the Titanic.

       As a trained biologist, theologist, psychologist, I have many lenses to observe and contemplate the possible outcomes that may occur over time from any action.   I also know that when testing and observations are compiled in experiments knowledge and information can be helpful.  Science usually works with only a few variables to limit probabilities and permutations.  Such partial answers also eliminate what may need to be known.  Political science often fails to acknowledge the complexity of power and many variables of such power as to how it can build up or destroy - depending on the chosen variables for the outcome desired. 

          Corporations and people can provide insight from the micro to the macro as to outcomes of behaviors.  Those with the most money and capital can buy what they want and need.  If corporations or citizens always get what they want, beyond their needs, the greed and course of actions may be more about the unconscious destruction of life for multiples of others remains unacknowledged and unaccouted for.  Now that foreign governments and their state agencies are buying into the oil-sands operations in Alberta so that they can have access to the golden geese in their own lands, via the technology and where with all they have will one-day provide a surplus of energy beyond the human needs.   Such speculation can spell out the boom will burst as most alway do.  The lack of support in "sailing a diesel powered ship" for alternative models of energy and efficiencies is that the icebergs of disaster, although seemingly becoming less visible (by warming water melting them all) does not eliminate the dangers and "black holes" that can take down a ship without warning.

           Since the investments of foreign states as they remove the oil and gas from our land, and hold in reserve their own tar sands and un-fractured oil and gas opportunities, what will future generations of Canadians have to meet their own needs at prices.  Like food shortages, water shortages, and clean air and other ways that limit the possibility for life are unseen icebergs.  I believe as a community we  need all eyes, ears, and ideas to chart the course of the future.  Your governments role as directors of investment and opportunities should be cautious and discerning using critical factors for the course ahead to the final destination.   

        Finally the "black-hole" of the future is in my perception going to arise from the poisoning of the aquifers underground in our land.  This era of poisoning water  will impact life around the world.   Using the fresh water - for oil and gas aquisition through fracking will be "the contaminated needles of life" for life in future if we can not heal our addictions to the life we know versus who we can be.  Fracking into the underground where cracks and crevices are part of the infrastructure of earth the transmission and contamination possibilities unknown yet probable is the approach of denial.    I hope you can find and listen to what is really happening in the land and water, as you sail your ship that seems impervious to the voices and life beyond the walls of power and in places you never see or experience.  

             My children's children are depending on you and your government to accept the responsibility of your actions, whether they are acts of commission or acts of omission.  Such responsibility must make your soul weary.  I will continue to encourage and support you with my observations and thoughts.  I hope you have access to read this.

Sincerely - bruce 

Staying Awake In Alberta - Out of Site - Out of Mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xRQt3Q0xPc  

The election is over.  Why do the media in Canada ignore this topic?   If you live in rural Alberta you may now or soon will be getting your drinking water from a regional pipeline connected to a river system.  Why do we need this to stay healthy? In the video above "Jessica Ernst" speaks of her truth to the most important issue facing future generations of life on the planet.

It became clear in the latest election in Alberta the political parties and media picked up on our sexual repressed human rights issues.  What about the right to clean - safe - drinking water?  Just because the water looks clear does not mean it may not be dangerous to consume or use.  The ongoing violence and abuse by the misogynistic culture of entitlement and power of the real rulers of Alberta (the oil and gas - energy industries) in this fascist state leave the citizens abused victims.  When people try to figure out why an abused person finds it difficult to leave it is often due to the invalidation and control by fear the other has over them.  The citizens are aware but like any mob continue in denial or like the rabid sports fans at hockey - football - extreme fighting events do not recognize the violence and how they dispense their deeply rooted expressions of their own invalidation in their past.  Most of us have our mark of "voldemort - the one that can not be named!"  but we do not recognize the violence that our culture has inoculated or acculturated us with.

In the past forty years - I have seen destruction of water wells that fed communities and people.  Oil spills that have contaminated the water in many Alberta communities.  The Town of Innisfail - used water wells dug by the CPR in 1890's to provide the water for the steam trains as a community source of water.  This town source water was used until drilling for oil and gas in the region began in the 1960's and by the 1990's the water was unfit for human consumption - smelled of rotten eggs - hydrogen sulphide dissolved in the water.  Where I currently reside beside the Athabasca River  within the published  fishing guide that accompanies a licence to fish in the rivers in  Alberta a warning to fisherman not to consume the fish (as it is a threat to life - especially for pregnant women) from the Athabasca river is published.

In the current pro - oil propaganda the idea of "natural occurring" contaminants within the water of the Athabasca river could be a fact.  A University of Calgary - Hydrologist has pointed out that over 80 percent of water flowing in most rivers in Alberta is sourced from ground water.  Ground water comes from the underground aquifers that flow across the province at various depths of the geological strata.  With the millions of oil and gas wells now drilled throughout our province what assurance is there for the "natural occurring" pollutants in the rivers that they are not residual collateral damage to the lives of all people living in Alberta and across western Canada? 

As a family violence program facilitator - the violence in the "body politic" - and the invalidation of people who speak up and speak the truth is mirrored in the children who attend our schools.  Our grandchildren and life on planet earth hangs in the balance.  Meanwhile the institutions of higher learning have adopted the sinister approach of the Milfoy's - group as known in the Harry Potter Chronicles using their wizardry for evil rather than the common good for all.  See previous post Expensive Lipstick

I belong to a church that appears to fiddle while Rome burns as the organization reorganizes it's state of affairs to match its relevancy.  Trying out new models of leadership - unconscious of its colonialism mind set of its arrogance and supremacy and inculcated racism.   I know that my statement may be an example of invalidation of others' own person and may lead to my own crucifixion but to hide my "enlightenment under a bushel basket" may only be a rant until one day people will wonder who were the voices that tried to let us know?  Which is truth -  To be right when everyone else believes your are wrong or to be wrong until others realize you were right?  I am not sure which side of truth I stand - but I sense the feeling of being on the cross.  When will resurrection of the truth become part of the mindset of Albertans and all Canadians?

Hope resides in sharing and recognizing my own dangerous tendencies and how deep my denial can lay a blanket over my mind. 

Meanwhile I will go plant my potatoes - as I can expect to live beyond the coming winter and will need food to sustain me.  Perhaps like my forefathers from Tipperary, Ireland the blight will cause me and my family to move.

Preparing for election - Anger - Invalidation - Power - the blessing of story

In honour of all I have met in the last month

Once upon a time - long ago there was a young boy who had many questions.  He went around asking people "what are you doing?" The linemen on the telephone poles - the men in the ditches - the women in the kitchens.  The butcher, the baker, the plumber and even the people on the "honey - wagon" coming to haul away the buckets of excrement from the outhouses down the back lane.  Why were there so many dead chicks in the garbage cans behind "the hatchery"? Why was the man with the horses in his yard so grumpy?   As a child - the memory as to the response went something like this; "just making little boys ask questions!"  The statement contained a profound truth that imprinted on the author during that critical stage of development a neural pathway deep within the recess of memory.  So many years have passed - but such memory is foundational to my own sense of self and for my readers such inquisition continues.

Growing up in a community where a toddler felt safe - asking questions - wondering around the ever expanding neighbourhood -  many marvelous discoveries were made.  The expeditions of "wondering boy" granted him a world view that it was okay to ask questions of who, what, where, and why "life" was the way it was.  This remarkable journey of discovery had many risks and depending on how such risk was measured it may have been deemed; foolishness or brilliance - depending on who was making the commentary. In school we were told stories of the work of the people at the United Nations who were helping to build a world where everyone could live in peace.  We were told it was important to learn and grow - imagine beyond what we thought we knew.  We were tested - and shown how to write with a stick with a metal nib that we dipped into little strange shaped bottles - the contents in a variety of colors - careful not to spill or "the blotter" was engaged.  The confines of the subject matter in collusion with the personality and level of grace and blessing of the teachers the experiences of schooling was often either a blessing or a curse for many.   The blotter effect of both the blotter which left the offending blot not as significant, may not have had the same outcome of the words, responses and behaviours of the teachers and the systems they were involved with in attempt to provide a common destiny for all.

The words, responses and behaviors of the human factors dispensing the insidious power of cultural formation of the social body left many wounds.   The testing - the negation - the invalidation of termed as "the right: answer - idea - word - way including not using one's left hand and other inanities marred and covered up the soul and spirit of many along life's journey."  Other markers of spilled colors included privilege - race - superiority - class - wealth and a dominant (mob) violence towards the weak, the vulnerable and the different.  I was granted a valid passport on the first class train rolling across our nation because I could recite back to the gatekeepers what they wanted to hear and see.  I was informed of duty, service, and the obligation to challenge authority.  Much of my life has been lived in resistance to power.  But like the single tickets to ride the buses - public transportation - or ability to go to school or hospitals have "portioned out moments of validity" and when such moments end - one is forced to leave - step off the system "marked or deemed invalid" - left vulnerable to the ill-winds of righteousness and narrow visions of political masters.  The legacy of invalidation provides my heart - breaking work with survivors of domestic violence helping them recover their precious "little - elder" self of innocence beauty and awe they were blest with when they were born.

I have learned from my brothers and sisters and as a witness to their pain, shame and suffering what resilience and life lived valiantly is about.  Living with a legacy of invalidation I honor the survivors of all schools - especially the ones who endured "residential schools - and those taken away from their families", I admire their courage to get up and speak truth to power - I have no excuse not to do the same. I experienced overwhelming evidence of shared grace, courage and hope spoken in truth and love at the gatherings of the Truth and Reconciliation events in Halifax and Victoria.
trc.ca

In this Easter season, I will pick myself up and come out of my cave - with new life to bloom for a short while. I will get on my bicycle and go down the hill to vote for hope,  optimistically allowing the vision of being part of the amazing spirit of life, to grow and thrive in a community that values love and all life. The saving grace is that together using canoes and other amazing ways of travelling together we can slow down our lives- heal and recover - and allow mother earth to restore and hold us close once again. 

Remember you are nothing less than beautiful

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIn-q7YkVSo&feature=related

Expensive Lipstick and Truth Suppression.

http://www.campusalbertainnovatesprogram.ca/Energy&Environment.html


It has been along time since Pasteur / Fleming and other scientists developed - penicillin which saved multitudes of people and animals from biological attack on their person. Today in the land of the free'con'omics a plan to research the use of microbes to solve the energy / carbon crisis of our time is an opportunity not to be missed. The search / research to find the “antidote” to the poisoning of mother earth's aquifers, part of the collateral impact in recovery of all available carbon based gas and oil, is in theory operable and ongoing. To search deep in the rocks and life – underground in the “mordor of middle earth” - for the new microbes to vaccinate, prevent and cure the damage from in part where the  life giving water flows.

 The damage is a result of fracturing the layers of the earth using toxic poisonous substances. Framing such “holy grail” quest to find such key to eternal life, to maintain our lifestyle -- might be named as a state of delusion. Such is an exercise in obfuscation to continue the obsession to find the last gas and oil at all cost might reveal psychopathic tendencies if looked at in another perspective. Could it be that “The Alberta Innovates Program” is truly a rouge to dress up the situation so people won't see the beast as it is?  Rouge and lipstick on what ever "beast" or wolf , we require  few woodsman to decapitate and relieve us of our impending death.

Could it be from their knowledge of Black-water Whiskey and the sulphur bacteria in most water found in rural Alberta today (long-term effect of oil and gas exploration) that they have placed such misdirected hope or was it just the whiskey of power and the elixir of greed?

Will our miniscule presence in time be known in future decades as to when they poisoned humanities source and sustenance of life – the water of life transformed to the water of death.
 
Still wondering

Call me Ishmael.

I have been away - visiting - listening - sorting out my narrative. I ponder Herman's words written so many years ago in the tome "Moby Dick". Call me Ishmael. What has changed in the human condition? How much of Captain Ahab is in my being? Are my obsessions leading me to my own death? Is my destiny unfolding as the fates are directing? Is my life providing sustenance for others?

 I live in Canada a country where the Captain's - obsessions are destroying and holding many entwined to a dream - more like a nightmare! The narrative of my country is not based on a victory on some foreign soil, where our patriots left their bodies for the worms as the military mongers proclaim! Yet our government is promoting and using the military budget to do just that.  Canada's great victory in the war of 1812??? Huh?

I am painting my own "white and black" house with strips of "dried red blood". Old Mexico is the color. What lies hidden in the unconscious of such choice? A house planted on territory that from many was said to be unoccupied - yet perhaps stolen by the newcomers intent on building a new life for themselves! People from crashed and war torn countries were "advertised to" by the corporate interest who marketed a dream of "the new land".   I am now coming to recognize my Canadian identity as a member of Treaty 6.  As it takes two parts to a treaty I am beginning to identify with my responsibilities of the treaty.

They had promised to share the land - water - and resources. Many are still in wait for promises made years ago.  I too complicit in the ongoing story - wanting to hide my white shame privilege through busy-ness and distraction.  It seems like Chapter 90 in Herman's Tome. The winds of time - still blow "the Pequod" the ship of life that I am on - towards the unknown future. Yet it is known - like the whale oil industry - taking everything than innocently lives - and regardless of the cost - there still is blood on the light in my house and the gas in my car! I confess - and promise to repent! But when Jesus asks -

"What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir'; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

Why can I understand it but not implement the choice I need to change! Grant me forgiveness - so I can heal - and take steps to the new life that is upon us.!

Just still wondering -  Have you made changes in your life lately??

Friends we need to know!!

I discovered something about myself today.  An article at the Toronto Star challenged my sense of my own being.  I have to interpret my own competency.    http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1137874--why-incompetent-people-are-too-incompetent-to-know-they-re-incompetent?bn=1#article 

Are humans questioning what is happening in their world?  The impacts of the internet has help us to look at ourselves. It has the potential to challenge and assist humans to confront or use critical questioning as to what they believe they know with what they actually know.  An example of misplaced assumptions in Canadian parliamentarians filled the House of Commons with mea-culpas as some realized some incidental truths of what they thought they knew, had to be confessed only to find out what they claimed a few days before as truth was false.  The Vikileak and Anonymous related to issues in some way creates a level of mis-trust that leaves everyone's integrity in question.   What appeared  yesterday as attempts to "save face" perhaps will provide a saving grace that will reduce their ego's impact on the denial of truth and what is spoken.  Consider  the possibilities of the internet becoming the "new Parliament of the Canadian People" and the impact on the current institutions and procedures.

I sense Parker Palmer in his description of "standing in the tragic gap" may have an insight we can use. His call to introspection of our living and using community to as part of the reflection model may offer a way forward.  Watch the video



It seems to me that with opportunities to gather people from all over the world in conversation small groups the world could be changed dramatically for the better.  If each of us was to treat everyone as a friend and others as a friend I haven't got to know yet we could make a difference.  I want to thank the person I did not know across the table at a pancake breakfast - ask me the question - "What will you be doing with the rest of the day?"   A good way to enter deeper into relationship with those we do not know as friends.

Hope you see new ways to encounter others in your life!  Would you recommend a community that is welcoming and challenging?

Still wondering