SOTERIA

(Part One)

Now there arose a new King over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. (Exodus 1:8)

As strange as it sounds most revolutions start because we don’t like change. It may seem funny and oxymoronic to protest in favor of keeping everything the same (“What do we want?” “Status Quo!” “When do we want it?” “Now!”), but when shopkeepers take to the streets it’s usually because change has been experienced as painful. We dislike change because we prefer the comforting continuity of repetition and its illusion of permanence, and some changes shake us to the core and leave cracks the light shines through revealing our fear, unease, and discontent, and we know we cannot carry on the way we are. We come to the end of our rope and can no longer cope. Our days and nights have been made bitter with hard bondage. We realize our life has become unmanageable.

I have never won an argument with reality. I’ve picked fights with reality but failed to win a single round and always felt sad afterwards. Accepting reality doesn’t mean allowing cruelty and injustice to continue unchallenged but it does require that we admit the truth about the way things are in the present moment. What is so hard about that? Well, nothing really except that we prefer our own version of the truth to the real thing, especially the version in which we are still in control and able to handle our own business in our own way. In this preferred reality we believe we can return to the way life used to be, only better, because things are going to be different this time. When this doesn’t work we blame others for being unhelpful, hyper-critical, controlling, overbearing, and otherwise failing to support us and our internalized anger is directed outward, aimed at the very people who love us and want to help us but don’t know how.  Rather than admitting we are powerless we insist we can manage if we just get a little help, take the right pill, find the right job, and meet the right person. We still think we can do something to fix ourselves not yet realizing that the ‘us’ who seeks to save the day is the problem. Speaking metaphorically, we believe there is no need of handing over life’s car keys because we’re okay to drive. This version of reality fails to include real surrender.

Ego fearfully crouches at the door of consciousness upon the first hint of surrender. As a primitive survival mechanism the ego endeavors to keep us safe by establishing control through the passive and aggressive manipulation of our environment. It greets the unfolding of life not with a loving spirit of joyful wonder but as a frightened, anxious entity; some body alone in a hostile world of endless dualities either for or against us. To our ego surrender equals death. It means well enough on its own terms. It is, after all, trying to protect us, but it has no idea who or what we really are. Its version of us is like a quilt made up of various patterns. It did not create the patterns. The ego isn’t creative because that isn’t its function. Protecting us is its function and one of the chief ways it does this is by noticing patterns. It constructs its version of ‘us’ from these patterns. This version of us cannot surrender because it isn’t real; we must simply let go of it and put it away as we do with childish things.

Sometimes events occur which we find so devastating our self-image is shattered. It is like being beheaded from our own life and from everything that we once allowed to define us. When the image of ourselves we cannot live without is destroyed so that not one stone is left upon another, we discover in the midst of our pain that images shatter because they’re imaginary, fragile and fleeting, requiring our flesh and blood to sustain them and give them the appearance of life. And we know something else as well. We know we are not that image. There is a self which is conscious of that image but cannot be reduced to it. This self abides in the depths of awareness. It is here that surrender is possible; only here and now. We will not surrender, though, as long as we think we can escape. We will never admit we are powerless as long as we believe we can go back to the way things were while remaining in control this time. Admitting we are powerless means admitting we have no control. Without power we cannot go backward or get ahead. The past has thrust us out into this moment but still pursues us and threatens to catch up with us. The future appears as an impassible barrier, a turbulent sea threatening to drown any hope of moving forward. What is required of the powerless is not an act of will but simple recognition, knowing the truth at a level where the image we’ve struggled to maintain is left behind the way shoes are discarded before standing on holy ground. In accepting the present moment in consent we surrender to a power higher than the level of ego.

 In ancient Greece sailors returning from a perilous voyage or soldiers grateful to be alive following a battle would offer a sacrifice to Soteria, the goddess to whom one prays for safety from danger. The writers of the Christian Gospels used the word ‘soteria’ to indicate salvation, rescue and recovery from harm and oppression. ‘Soteriology’ is the study of deliverance.

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain

(‘The Waste Land,’ T.S. Eliot)

Living free of bondage is to walk in newness of life and so liberation is always a springtime affair, exhilarating and frightening, as all that was cozily and hazily familiar is experienced soberly and sanely in our rightful mind. It’s as if we know the place for the first time. This path of liberation is always a narrow way because it is lived only in the present. It is therefore not all that helpful to encourage someone in recovery to focus on the future. The ego lives in the past and the future, the latter being a projection of the former. Ego views the future through a lens of scarcity as a cruel place of breeding, mixing, and stirring desire. When you’re living in recovery the problem with the future is it holds too many memories.

Living free in newness of life beyond bondage does not require that we accumulate new knowledge, memorize facts, or read any book of any kind. Mostly it involves ‘unlearning’ our programming and our ego-driven ways of responding to life. As Socrates points out to Alcibiades, mistakes in life and practice are “to be attributed to the ignorance which has the conceit of knowledge.” It is not simple ignorance which perplexes us for we can always learn what we need to learn or else entrust what we don’t know to experts. Our perplexity is that of those “who do not know and think they know.” (Plato, Alcibiades 1, Benjamin Jowett) We think we know how to live free. We think we know how life works. On the other hand, being taken over by a tyrant and turned into a slave in a land of bondage has a way of showing us the limits of our supposed knowledge and self-reliance.

Children in Kindergarten are taught to hold hands while crossing the street. Lovers of wisdom have always understood that we are social beings and so liberation means a call to a new kind of fellowship. We belong together, and we best express our happiness when we support each another in the fullness and newness of life.

YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE

YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE

You can see it in their eyes even when they turn away

You can see it in the hands that toil night and day

You can see it in their faces if they really look at you

It’s even in their walk; you know what they want to do

Yearning to breathe free

When you leave your world behind; another land, a distant shore

Do jobs that others won’t and never ask for more

Struggle on to make ends meet in a dicey part of town

And get treated just like dirt but still keep coming round

Yearning to breathe free

Start up a family business, stay open all the time

Save every hard earned penny and never waste a dime

Make sure the children study; check every report card

No time for drugs and trouble, just working really hard

Yearning to breathe free

Work all day and half the night and never once complain

They make it seem like living here is worth a lot of pain

Freedom is a flower, sacrifice the stem

Nowadays we don’t believe that we were once like them

Yearning to breathe free

***   

© 1994 Dale Petley (Abbaye Notre-Dame du Calvaire, Rogersville)

SILVER CHAINS

I wrote this in Montreal for Jeremy. He went out on a very cold day to get new nylon strings for our friend Caroline’s folk-style guitar. As I was completing the tuning I kept repeating a chord progression which eventually became the bridge between the verses. It’s funny how songs get written.

SILVER CHAINS

City Streets that lead nowhere

A neon field of dreams

Behold the corridors of power

Where nothing is what it seems

Power Couples on full display

Wearing all the well known names

Paradise for the old at heart

Wrapped in silver chains

Clubs that beckon like sirens

Calling travelers inside

Carnivals for the lonely

They’ll take your soul for a ride

How can women so beautiful

Have eyes that are so far away?

All our affairs and relationships

Wrapped in silver chains

I’m living here on a shoe-string

Don’t eat and I’ll probably get by

Adrift in an ocean of lovers

When I feel better maybe I’ll cry

That glowing cross on the mountain

Looks over this city of pain

And points to one who with mighty love

Breaks these silver chains

© 1994 Dale Petley (Montreal)

OUR JIMMIE RODGERS

OUR JIMMIE RODGERS

Play some Country Music if you play that thing at all

Let’s hear the Carter Family and the Wabash Cannonball

Before there was Rock Music, long before your Blue Suede Shoes

We had our Jimmie Rodgers and his mule skinner blues

Go on up to Woodstock, Old Home Week and the Fair

They love their Country Music; it’s playing everywhere

Hank Snow and Wilf Carter sing of life and love and pain

You can hear that yodeling brakeman still waiting for his train

Go on down to Cocagne, Bouctouche, or Cap-Pelé

They love to hear the fiddle and sing and dance all day

A common language spoken whether French or English born

Is a Jimmie Rodgers love song from a heart so sad and torn

Up in Jacket River and way down in Letang

They love to hear Hank Williams and everything he sang:

Your Cheating Heart, the Mansion on the Hill, and Lovesick Blues

Were written cause Old Jimmie paved the way and paid his dues

At the Legion Hall in Harcourt or a camp in Boishebert

You feel old Jimmie’s spirit when a guitar rings the air

It’s music pure and simple; it’s a love we will not lose

It’s Jimmie Rodgers singing his mule skinner blues

“Good Mornin’ Captain …”

© 1994 Dale Petley (Petitcodiac)

A RIVER CALLED MIRAMICHI

I tried to write a traditional folk song about the Miramichi and this is what I came up with all those years ago. Although I play the guitar and sing the lyrics I post here I'm not really a musician and would rather hear my songs performed by those who are. I was delighted to learn that this song had been performed at the Miramichi Folk Festival and also has been sung by a children's choir there. Huzzah!

A RIVER CALLED MIRAMICHI

There’s a river whose waters are known everywhere

Men sing of her salmon and beauty so fair

She’s famous, yet hidden, a grand mystery

I sing of the river called Miramichi

I was born on her banks where I shed my first tear

In the time of Black Salmon, the Spring of the year

And I sang my first hymn on my Grandmother’s knee

Near the swift running waters of the Miramichi

Chorus

Let us sing of a river so wild and so free

She’s timeless, yet changing, she flows to the sea.

No place short of Heaven, where I’d rather be

Than the banks of the river called Miramichi

My father drove logs on the river with skill

As young as I was I remember it still

He went to the war so we’d always be free

He fought for his family and the Miramichi

As a boy I would swim in her waters so cool

When older, I guided the sports through the pools

And often the guides were just young lads like me

Revealing the secrets of the Miramichi

(Chorus)

Like many before me I moved far away

In search of adventure, employment and pay

But this place where I’m living is not home to me

I long for the banks of the Miramichi

Some struggle for power and silver and gold

Some think life can be bought and happiness sold

But anyone’s poor who’s unable to see

The beauty and splendors of the Miramichi

© 1994 Dale Petley (Petitcodiac)

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

"I haven't seen Iowans this excited since the night Frank Gotch and Strangler Lewis lay on a mat for three and a half hours without moving a muscle. Ooh! That was exciting!" (Mayor Shinn: The Music Man)

My father was a wrestling fan. I’m not talking about the ancient and revered sport which ought to be a beloved event at every Summer Olympics but am thinking instead of Professional Wrestling, of the flying mare, drop kick, and figure-four leg-lock variety practiced by someone who might wear a mask to the ring and hide a ‘foreign object’ in his trunks, hailing from parts unknown. Although he enjoyed watching hockey and boxing and would tell tales of Bobby Hull and Joe Louis, (the ‘Golden Jet’ and the ‘Brown Bomber’), Dad remained an avid wrestling fan throughout his life. It was a point of contact with us and I was grateful for it.

As a child I watched pro-wrestling on television but it was never as exciting as hearing Dad describe it, especially when he spoke of the exploits of such larger than life characters as Bull Curry, Gorgeous George, Cowboy Len Hughes, Killer Kowalski, and Man Mountain Dean. His all time favorite wrestler was Yukon Eric whose strength was legendary and whose matches with the aforementioned Kowalski were some of the most dramatic moments in all of human history, to hear Dad talk.

My first trip to a live wrestling show took place when I was 10 years old and drove with my father and a carload of uncles to Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Whipper Billy Watson wrestled that night, and so did Tiger Jeet Singh, but the main event was Dick ‘The Bulldog’ Brower versus The Sheik. Had the Battle of Armageddon also occurred that evening it would have been a preliminary match early on in the card. As grand as all that was, though, for my money nothing ever quite matched the electric atmosphere and sheer thrill of it all found in Moncton, New Brunswick, on one of those magical nights when The Beast wrestled The Stomper. As Mayor Shinn would say, “Ooh! That was exciting!”

I’ve never been close to being in good enough shape or drunk enough to think I could be a professional wrestler. I’ve always been in awe of what they do. Not only does the body take a beating every time they perform, but their schedule with its constant travel and the countless times they’ve got to play hurt must all take a toll. The wrestling itself is something which relatively few people can do without incurring serious injury. Fewer still can wrestle well, and only a handful can do it in a way others will pay to see. They have to communicate, in character, with crowds in large arenas and with ‘invisible’ people through cameras in a studio. None of this is easy. Good writing helps. I recall how one guy used to say: “My opponent is a model wrestler; and if you look up ‘model’ in the dictionary you’ll see it’s an imitation of the real thing. I’m the real thing.” I always thought that was a good line but the funniest thing I ever heard in wrestling was during a taped local broadcast in the Maritime Provinces when one colorful combatant declared that he was going to win his match not only because he was more talented than his opponent but also because his opponent was ugly. “He’s ugly!” he exclaimed. “That man is so ugly he’s living proof of reincarnation. NOBODY gets that ugly in just one lifetime.”

By the time I was in High School I no longer really followed wrestling but endeavored to keep up to date with what was going on in that world so I could talk with Dad about it. He continued to watch the wrestling shows on TV where some drama was always unfolding and a good old-fashioned grudge match was just around the corner and coming to an arena near you, or later tonight … in this very ring.

Years ago I was reading about the actor Leslie Nielsen’s brother who had been Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and was a Member of Parliament representing the Yukon. He may have been the Honorable Erik Nielsen, PC, DFC, QC, LLB, but to Canadians he was known as ‘Yukon Erik.’ I smiled when I read that and knew Dad would smile too. Happy Fathers Day!

FAMILY REUNION

In the twelfth grade at Moncton High School our wonderful English teacher introduced us to the poetry of Robert Frost. We were the better for it, and for having been her pupils. It seems everyone knows at least one line of a Robert Frost poem and will recite it if suitably inspired or properly provoked. “Good fences make good neighbors” is one such line from Mending Wall, and is often quoted as unquestioned truth even though the rest of the poem challenges the validity of the notion. (Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it where there are cows? But here there are no cows.) Then there’s The Death of the Hired Man, a dialogue poem in which the speakers, a husband and wife, discuss the nature of family. The husband famously declares:

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.”

That’s the verse we love to quote, but we forget the wife’s reply:

“I should have called it

Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

He speaks of ‘home’ in terms of obligation while she knows it’s a matter of grace; “something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” That’s how I’ve come to see things. Not long ago it dawned on me that I’m grateful for the way life has unfolded. I wish I could make up for the suffering I’ve caused over the years, but other than that, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Most happy memories of my childhood revolve around the kitchen. I’ve just read Cooked, the new book by Michael Pollan. He writes of how cooking “implicates us in a whole web of social and ecological relationships: with plants and animals, with the soil, with farmers, with the microbes both inside and outside our bodies, and, of course, with the people our cooking nourishes and delights.” (Michael Pollan, Cooked, New York, 2013, p.18)  The book helped me see how fortunate we were that cooking played such an important role in the life of our family.

My favorite meals are my sister’s boiled dinner and anything my brother cooks outdoors on the grill. My father enjoyed cooking, especially after he retired. He would prepare from scratch a big pot of savory stew or soup which he always called ‘fricot.’ Dad knew only a few French words and ‘fricot’ was one of them, so he used it with aplomb. Not surprisingly, my mother did most of the heavy lifting in the culinary department, and she excelled at it just as she did at so many things. Her roast chicken dinners were the stuff of legend and her dressing, the best ever. Her cold slaw was a perennial favorite. She got the recipe from Daisy at the Blue Circle Restaurant on Main Street. She even learned to make her own versions of the ‘sweet and sour chicken’ and ‘garlic spareribs’ she served customers when she worked at The Golden Dragon Restaurant, also on Main. If you recall either of those fine Moncton establishments you’re old enough to remember when phones were for talking with people and worked. But I digress.  

 The kitchen also was where music was played and where we gathered for parties. The living room held more people, but we always gravitated to the kitchen. Both my brother and sister played the guitar. Sometimes there might be fiddle music or an accordion in the mix depending on which relatives showed up. Dad did not play a musical instrument but was an avid listener, and if we didn’t know the words to the Wilf Carter song he’d request (The Smoke Went up the Chimney Just the Same), anything by Hank Williams would do. When my mother played the guitar and sang I thought she sounded exactly like Miss Kitty Wells, but of course I was biased, and six.

When I was writing Family Reunion I discussed it with my mother whose suggestions are reflected in the finished product. I once heard my friend Kimberly sing this song so beautifully that I changed the lyrics to keep the alteration she made; which is how I got an Uncle Norman. Anyways…

FAMILY REUNION

The highway still follows the river below

It winds through the valley where apple trees grow

And though no one’s with me I don’t feel alone

‘Cause I know that I’m headed for home

I drive by the school yard where children still play

I pass by the church house where pilgrims still pray

I smile and I’m grateful that some things don’t change

As I turn down the old road for home

At a family reunion it’s so good to be

With brothers and sisters I’m happy to see

And all of these cousins I’m so glad to find

And blest be the old ties that bind

There’s Uncle Norman, he’s talking to Dad

Whose hard work provided all that we had

And there in the doorway with tears in her eyes

Is my mother, I knew I’d surprise

She runs out to greet me with arms open wide

I’m filled with emotions I don’t try to hide

It’s so good to be where my thoughts often roam

Like the song says, there’s no place like home

At a family reunion it’s so good to be

With brothers and sisters I’m happy to see

And all of these cousins I’m so glad to find

And blest be the old ties that bind

(Repeat)

Blest be the ties that bind.

© 1994 Dale Petley (Petitcodiac)