For Christ’s Sake

Overheard at a Thai restaurant: “I’m not religious, but I am spiritual.”

I get that, I thought. Then I wondered at the difference.

According to my ancient Webster’s dictionary, the adjective religious is defined as: “1. one that believes in or supports a religion; devout; pious; 2. of or concerned with religion (eg., religious books); 3. belonging to a community of monks, nuns, etc; 4. conscientiously exact; scrupulous.”

The adjective spiritual is defined as: “1. of the spirit or soul as distinguished from the body or material matters; 2. of or consisting of spirit; not corporeal; 3. refined in thought or feeling; 4. of religion or the church; sacred; devotional etc. 5. spiritualistic or supernatural.”

Interesting. The word “spiritual” does not appear in the definition of “religious”, and the word “religion” only appears in one of five possibilities under “spiritual”.

I recently learned that the religion into which I was baptized at the age of eighteen is not accepted as a Christian religion by other Christian religions. This is alternately hilarious and disturbing. It doesn’t bother me a whole lot, as I’ve been long inactive due to my issues with the church rather than with anything Jesus taught, but when I do think about it, I am a little annoyed. No matter what other Christians think, I took my baptismal vows to confirm my faith in the teachings and divine mission of Jesus Christ ... so how could I not be considered a Christian? Especially by other Christians?

But you know, I’ve always been a goat among sheep. Even when I was an active churchgoer, I refused to accept that my deeds would be judged by anyone other than God Himself. When my father gently suggested the Almighty might be too busy to manage my exit interview personally, I replied: “I’ll have all Eternity. I can wait.”

I have known many religious people. Few of them are truly happy. They are hard on others and harder on themselves. They keep their gazes down rather than their gazes up, as if fearing to meet the eye of God—and given the god presented in the Bible, I can’t say I blame them. The Old Testament God is not a nice guy. In fact, in human form, he’d probably have had his children removed by social workers until he completed a course in anger management and could prove himself a worthy parent. Seriously. Love born from fear is not love at all. Even we ignorant mortals know that, so Dad Above shouldn’t be surprised that his kids have abandoned him. They deserve better.

I know a few spiritual people, too. Most of them are happier than the devoutly religious folks, but every soul that is or ever was is here to experience contrast and most of us have as many dark days as we do sunny ones. Jesus was a spiritual person. These days I am less assured of parts of his story than I am in others, but I will not deny he was a light being with an extraordinary connection to his divinity. It’s unfortunate that his darkness was not as well recorded; relating to him as a conflicted human is difficult when he’s only ever portrayed as the solemn master of his mortal state. Of course his death was horrible, but he wasn’t the only one crucified in those days. The Romans practically made a sport of it.

I know, I know—his story is really about the Resurrection.

Or is it? Well, maybe, in that it seems many of his present-day followers strive to be worthy of his sacrifice by behaving in complete opposition to his lessons about loving thy neighbour as thyself and judging not lest ye be judged. Since our sins have already been atoned for, why not transgress with gay abandon knowing he gave us a free pass back to Heaven?

Ironically, I may be more of a Christian now than I was in my churchgoing days. I focus more on what he taught while he was alive than what religion says we won by his death (and even then, it has to be the “right” religion, otherwise it’s “do not pass Go, do not collect $200”). I prefer to trust in his loving way, in his sound sense of his own divinity and his efforts to convince everyone he met that they were just as precious, just as special, just as beloved, just as deserving of blessings, as he was.

As I am.

As you are.

With love,

Compliments to the Chef

Farewell, Tony (1956 - 2018)

Life strikes again. This time, it took out Anthony Bourdain, so it’s hit closer to my heart than more recent celebrity deaths.

Ter saw it first, via Google news. She called to me from the Ocean Room, and though I didn’t hear what she said, something in her tone alarmed me. I got up to go see her, saying, “What?’ as I went.

Her voice was closer, coming down the hall. “Anthony Bourdain is dead …”

My own mind immediately interrupted: A heart attack finally dropped him in his tracks.

Ter appeared in the doorway, her face stricken. “… by apparent suicide.”

That’s when the tree jumped in front of me. I took the blow right in the chest and for an instant couldn’t breathe or think or speak. Everything froze. Then, in the next frame, “What??”

It will always be a “Where were you when?” moment. As usual with such moments, the death itself isn’t the issue. It’s the manner of death. Without getting into morbid details—most of which I neither know nor care to know – I am gutted that a man who lived life so fiercely, who had faced and survived his demons, who braved the streets and back alleys to discover magic in the world’s most dangerous places, who seemed, in short, indefatigable, chose to end it.

There was nothing false about Tony Bourdain. He wrote honestly about his tumultuous, drug-addicted youth and spoke his truth at every opportunity. He was cynical, pessimistic, abrasive and hilarious, but he was also warm, generous, respectful and genuinely grateful for (if not somewhat perplexed by) the life he embraced with such incredible passion. He was so interesting, yet his gift was to make other people in other cultures in other countries interesting as well. He had no fear of the dark, that’s for sure. He did his best to shed light in the shadows, to bring attention, not to the differences that divide us, but to the similarities that bind us together, whether he was in Iran, Russia, Lebanon, or Pittsburgh.

Ter followed him as a foodie. I followed him as a writer. We both adored him for his unvarnished sincerity onscreen and in writing; we’ve collected his books and TV series, and even had our photos taken with him when he stopped in Victoria on two different book tours.

Of course I know nothing about his personal life beyond what he revealed as he went along—and that’s fine because the details are not my business. What he brought to the world, to my life, is all that’s important. My loss is the world’s loss; hardly the same as the black hole he’s left in the hearts of his family and close friends. And while some people are now calling him out for the selfishness of his leaving, I will not judge him. Only he knows what pushed him to end it now (before it got worse?). I must reconcile myself by myself. And I will … but I’ll miss him.

His caustic New York attitude and sometimes harsh opinions inspired me to view his light as more of a dark, but he was definitely a light being, and like most light beings, he was a powerful spirit locked in ongoing battle with equally powerful contrast. In the end, contrast won. My invincible tough guy road warrior swashbuckling hero has surrendered. Another light gone out.

The sun rose this morning. It always does, after all. So the world is as bright the day after as it was the day before—but one thing is notably different without him.

It feels colder.

The King of Pop

Watching This Is It inspires me to renewed awe for the late Michael Jackson’s genius.

He was a Virgo, you know. *beams*

But seriously, folks, when he died, a halogen spotlight died with him. He had such ferocious talent and relentless instinct for music and movement—watching him rehearse for the tour that never happened is a mesmerizing glimpse at the inner working of a savant.

The tragedy: knowing it was filmed during the final weeks of his life.

The miracle: that he had decades of material from which to choose. 1987’s Bad is my favourite album except on days when the posthumous CD Xscape surpasses it, and even then, naming my top five favourite MJ tracks is like picking my top five Beatles songs. It absolutely depends on the day.

In all honesty, Ter made his work a fixture in my life; she was the greater fan. She mapped out the moves to Thriller when choreographing her own performance in her dancing days (we still laugh about the stick figures bent this way and that across the foolscap). His death immobilized her; she couldn’t listen to any of his albums until well after his funeral.

Six years later, he remains a vibrant presence in our music library. Prompted to revisit This Is It the other night, I became acutely aware of his effect on the world and on me. Whenever I need reminding of creativity’s power in action, I look to his legacy.

I suppose there are people who will always mourn the music he never made. I am more inclined to gratitude for the music he left behind.

“Forever in His Eyes”

Nature boy

authentic, organic

at one with the earth

Lullaby lyric

velvet in his voice

healing in his hands

Pure power

used for good of others

used against himself

Dark angel

caught internal conflict

pushing love away

Infinite soul

mortal, immortal

luminous and loving

Light essence

stars and space

forever in his eyes

Extraordinary Miracles III

“The Concert”

Gee, maybe I am a fan!

Ter and I missed my niece’s wedding reception because we had tickets with our good buddy Treena to see Sarah McLachlan the same night. I have never seen Sarah live, though I have every album except her greatest hits—which, if you want to be literal about it, means that I have her greatest hits, just not on a single disc. I didn’t even realize that I have all her discs. 

How can someone be a fan and not know it until the night before the show? Maybe because I had not been driven to see her live? Not until last spring, anyway, when Shine On was released and I got word of a tour starting in Victoria on October 18. The email notification came and I debated getting tickets. It’s no fun going alone, and Ter isn’t enough of a fan to make me make her go with me. Treena has some of her albums, though, so I thought I’d ask if she wanted to go. Then Ter said she’d come with us just for the joy in watching us see an icon perform live in our hometown. So I got the tickets and put them away until October.

In a day piled high with extraordinary miracles, the concert was the cherry on top. First, the seats turned out to be most excellent – the only three seats in the second row up in the bowl, just shy of right angles to the stage. The set was modeled after a living room, with cozy chairs, carpets, a couch, and hanging lamps reminiscent of Christmas ornaments. At 8:00, a woman who could have been my sister walked on stage and welcomed everyone to the show. She explained the format, the band came on behind her, and this normal, chatty individual instantly morphed into Sarah McLachlan performing Flesh and Blood off the new album. Even then, it didn’t really register that I was watching her play live until the second song, Buildinga Mystery, which is one of my favourite Sarah songs and numbers among her biggest hits. I think it won a Grammy; the album, Surfacing, certainly did. Her voice is so distinct, so unique, that it stands alone among the voices of her generation, but when she’s talking, she sounds like any other Canadian girl and you’d be hard-pressed to believe your eyes when they try to tell your brain that yep, she’s the real deal.

She doesn’t need a band. Her songs are poems set to music; she can sit at a piano and mesmerize you with a range of emotion that defies description. Treena put it best after the show: with almost every song, I thought, oh, my favourite! Until the next song started and I thought, No, this is my favourite! And so on, for almost two hours straight. She broke to invite a few fans on stage and answer questions submitted pre-show from the audience; I swear, it was like spending an evening with my sister. She was warm, funny, generous, honest, powerful and absolutely perfect.

Well, except that she sang one song in the wrong half of the show. She finished The Answer and launched straight into I  Will remember You, which confused her band though they let her go unsupported and joined when they were meant to. We only knew she’d goofed because she apologized to them.

Yep, every song was a gem. Every lyric a poem, every moment a precious reminder that this woman, this singer/songwriter with the angel’s voice, is actually more to me than a mere nice-to-have in my CD collection. She started to sing Fallen and I realized with a jolt that the Afterglow album was the soundtrack for Reijo’s failed first romance, one of the most powerfully painful stories I’ve ever written. The album Fumbling Toward Ecstasy fuelled the relationship between Lucius and his half-sister Fae, particularly the songs Possession, Fear, and the title track. And yes, she performed those songs on Saturday night. I couldn’t believe my luck. She cranked that voice up to an octave undocumented on Fear—the recording of it is unearthly and haunting beyond chills, yet live (and twenty years later), she nailed it. Effing nailed it! I wanted to scream with her, but burst into tears instead.

So embarrassing.

During the intermission, Treena and I decided we had to hit the swag table. This occasion could not pass without acquiring some memento to mark it. She was as blown away as I was and, in a day of mounting miracles, so was Ter. It’s relatively easy to satisfy a fan. To elevate your status in the eyes of a casual awareness takes some talent.

Will I see her again? Dunno. Am I playing her music as I write this? You bet. She is and always will be one of the strongest musical inspirations for my writing. If I had to see her live to realize this, then her work is done. I am a fan, but in this instance I’m a fan for different reasons. I listen to her for pleasure, but mostly, I listen to her music, her lyrics, and her voice, to write my tales of the human heart in all its conflict.

I am in awe. I am inspired. I am grateful.

Star Quality

Why do the brightest spirits lead the most desperately troubled lives? Is their light so bright that, by law of contrast, their darkness must be opaque? And why do they often perish before their time?

The list of luminaries is a long one, but the most enduring legend may be that of Marilyn Monroe. Even I am fascinated by her story, perhaps because it was so tragic, but more likely because I want to understand the paradox of a spirit so pure trying to survive in a world so impure that it broke her.

Imagine, burning so fiercely in life that your memory lives longer than you did. Not to suggest that she was pure in the “virgin-snow” way of being pure; to the contrary, I think she was far savvier and more practical than society at the time allowed her to be. So why did she choose a traumatic childhood and 1950s Hollywood?

Only she knows for sure. It doesn’t stop the speculation, the judgments or the opinions, but no one who embarks on a quest to discover the real Marilyn will unearth the diamond that was her true essence. She was most definitely a light being in a human experience. She had a purpose for being here, she chose her time for a reason, and we will never know what she took with her when she left.

The same can be said of so many others, a few who were global icons compared to the many bright stars who were special to none but their own. This life is a struggle. Even if you achieve your dream, it won’t be easy to get or maintain. But really, wasn’t Marilyn’s dream the same as Princess Diana’s or Michael Jackson’s, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s or JFK’s, my own dear niece’s or everyone else’s, for that matter? The dream of all dreams, the quietest to admit, the easiest to want, and the hardest to make real:

To be loved, to be valued, to be accepted as we are … and, for some, to die trying.

August 5 is the nth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Hers is the eternal mystery, a life celebrated in public, suffered in private, and ended abruptly. I think of her and wonder how she might have fared in my time? Not much better, I decide. Her tragedy is everyone’s tragedy, for we are all born stars. Some will shine, some will twinkle, some will burn out, and some will implode.

The things we do for love.

Xscape

Fuelled by the MJ hologram at the Billboard awards, and because she’s a lifelong Jackson fan, Ter immediately went out and bought the “new” album. That was a week ago. In that time, we have both fallen to our knees at further evidence of his creative prowess, not to mention in love with the songs themselves.

Ordinarily, I cringe at albums released after an artist’s death. It’s hard to perceive such an exercise as anything other than a cash cow for the estate; a last-gasp attempt to grab what they can from desolate fans, and sometimes that’s exactly what it is.

“Xscape” is different, and not because I’ve always liked MJ’s music. The project team took part in a documentary that describes how they all came together as recording professionals, former colleagues and die hard MJ fans. They talk about their conditions for signing on, and describe in detail the remixing of the eight original songs featured on the album. The album includes the originally-recorded versions as well, as the vocals were complete at the time of MJ’s death. If he had lived, he would have been in the studio with these guys, and every song would have sounded exactly as it actually does. There are no disposable tracks on this album. Even the original recordings are exceptional—the production team have merely shot them into the stratosphere using their talents to complement the master’s. Jackson did nothing by half measures. He laid the foundation for this piece as if he planned its release in 2014. So it’s no surprise to me that everyone involved has stated quite seriously that each of them felt his presence in the studio as they worked.

This is no cheap ripoff culled from vocal fragments scattered throughout the vault. This is a real album of real songs—and sure, it could be the former and still top the charts and scoop all the awards because it’s Michael-freaking-Jackson, but when it does sweep the Grammys, I won’t be rolling my eyes in disgust. This record deserves to win.

It’s almost a cliché, how creative geniuses lead such agonized personal lives yet produce phenomenal art. Granted, if you’re not an MJ fan, this won’t mean much to you, but he’s not the only tortured talent whom the world eventually destroyed. In the film The Devil’s Violinist, a dying Niccolo Paganini refuses the last rites, but when the priest admonishes that he must be prepared to face God’s grace, the dissolute violinist replies, “Let me tell you something of God’s grace. He gave me a gift, then abandoned me in a world that couldn’t understand it.”

Heartfelt

Ter has lived most of her life by following her heart. One day someone asked her if she’s been successful at it and she answered, “Not always.”

On the surface, it may look that way. Life doesn’t always go to plan. You fall in love with a guy who breaks your heart. You give your best to a job where others advance by manipulating themselves into promotions. You watch other people living the white picket fence dream and having the nerve to bitch about it. Take enough detours and hit enough dead ends, and eventually you’ll wonder where you went wrong.

But did you? Can you ever truly err by heeding the keeper of your little voice? Life does go to plan, just not to the plan you imagine once you’re old enough to believe that you need one. Truth is, people are born with plans. That’s the point of this mortal exercise. If the plan you imagine coincides with the one you came with, great. If not, then you consider yourself a failure. But are you? Really?

In a world where all our priorities are skewed, you might think so. How sad is it when a loving, generous, trusting, inherently good person questions herself for being loving, generous, trusting and inherently good? When she’s not locked in mortal combat with herself, Ter is my example of how to get it right. Truly, she has suffered for it: the guy broke her heart, she was stonewalled at work, she took a while to realize that the white picket fence was only the dream she was promised if she did everything right. It wasn’t actually her dream.

At her core, in her innately wise moments, I think she is doing just fine in the plan department. She has a strong set of personal values that have steered her through all manner of adversity. She is by no means perfect (sorry, bud), but throughout the hardest moments of her life, she has remained impeccable. She hasn’t done that by following her head. She’s done it by following her heart … and in no way can that be called anything other than successful.

In Walked the Moon

in walked the moon

first you were a face

a rapture of skin and bone

artful and artless

cast in luminescent glow

then you were a smile

a blissful contemplation

of the innocence in whimsy

and the joy in guileless play

when you told me your name

the mystery unfurled

you revealed yourself a jester

on a journey of your own

you became a muse

a spirit to inspire

mystic dancer poised on tiptoe

between wax and wane

 

one day you’ll be a memory

your stars no more aligned with mine

but each night you’ll be with me

for you have become the moon

 

March 1, 2011

© Ruth R.Greig

I believe in what I call “light beings”—spirits so pure and powerful in their natural state that they shine bright white. I even know a few. Ter is one. Nicole is another. The only other one I’ve met inspired this poem, and since today is his birthday, I thought I’d share it.

He didn’t stay long, but his brief presence in my life initiated such dramatic change that I can’t help but be grateful for him. In his purest form, he’s a light being. He is also mortal and following his own path. He proved to me that the orbits of two vastly different worlds can occasionally cross, and when they do, magic happens. He taught me the value of play (and how sad is it that I needed teaching??) He introduced me to the music of Matthew Schoening and reintroduced me to my muse. He was mysterious and sweet and lovely and frustrating and funny and delightful and scary smart about many things. He dropped in and out so fast that he might never have happened except that I remember him whenever I see the moon.

Happy birthday, Joelique.

 

With love,