Shore Pebble from Author David Weale: A New Year Wish

We are, no doubt about it, the unhappiest species on the face of the earth, and the most fearful. As a child I was informed it was because of all the sinful things we did, but these many years later I am more inclined to think it is the opposite, and that our chronic suffering is more attributable to all the "bad" things we didn't do. In other words, I am inclined to think that my angst, and that of others, is because of what we have repressed. That is the haunting...the misery of those demons of desire who have been locked up in the psyche and continue to make us unhappy until we free them.

If that is the case the solution would seem to be a simple one: release the pent-up energies. Unfortunately there is such a history of fear attached to those buried passions that their release seems the most dangerous thing in the world. They have been "put away" for a reason, and releasing them would be akin to emptying all the prisons at once. If that were to happen they would surely overwhelm the storylines that hold our lives together, and plunge us all into the emotional chaos that the psychiatrists call psychosis. The process of liberation must, it seems, be patient and methodical.

I find it helpful to remember that the passions or instincts themselves are not the earth-destroying energies we see around us. The destructiveness is entirely a function of the repression (or compression) that turns small atoms of passion into atom-bombs of anger.

Is this not what is alluded to symbolically in those stories and myths where the beast is discovered to be quite lovely, and always wants to be known for what it is, and not feared and loathed for being so ugly and scary.


So I guess that's my New Years wish for myself and others, that we will have the courage to welcome the demons of darkness into the light of consciousness, and welcome them as living parts of who we are ...and in so doing, set the prisoners free.

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David Weale is the Author of The True Meaning of Crumbfest. The unabridged audio edition of The True Meaning of Crumbfest, performed by Antonia Francis is published by Rattling Books.

Shore Pebbles from Author David Weale: Two Porpoises and a Moose

Two Porpoises and a Moose
by David Weale

It was one of those rare crossings on the Wood Islands Ferry where I hadn’t met anyone I knew very well, so was passing time in the lounge area with my head stuck in the morning paper, but looking up from time to time to be sure I didn’t miss anything. At some point I became aware of a general stirring among the other passengers, and observed that most everyone was scurrying outside, to the port side of the vessel.

I had a pretty good idea what was happening, and, sure enough, when I joined the others at the rail I saw two acrobatic porpoises cavorting playfully in the water near the boat, sliding in and out of the water to the beat of some inaudible rhumba. I’m not sure they were meaning to entertain the humans, but that’s certainly what it looked like, and soon there were so many spectators on that side of the boat I feared it might list. Suddenly, a rather uneventful ferry crossing had been transformed into a festival. Small children squealed with delight every time one of the graceful performers reappeared on the surface, and the adults were pointing and laughing -- sharing their high spirits unabashedly with perfect strangers. Indeed, within moments there were no strangers in the crowd, and I realized the people on the crossing were more familiar than I had thought. It lasted only a few minutes, but when the show ended the effects of the sighting lingered for the remainder of the trip. Thanks to the two porpoises the ferry had become a different, more congenial, and more enchanted place.

That experience at the rail was, for me, a revelation. In experiencing the grace and freedom of those two sea-creatures it seemed we all had touched somehow the deep-down beauty and freedom in ourselves. We became, for a time, unbuttoned and unblocked, and went our separate ways rejoicing, newly glad, and grateful for the day. Further, for the brief time we had stood together, watching the porpoises, there was a powerful feeling of solidarity: a sweet experience of shared discovery and delight, and of being fellow travelers, sharing a common Life. We were many eyes, seeing as one, and many hearts, beating in unison, and as I drove off the ferry at Caribou and continued on my way to Cape Breton I found myself lonesome, not so much for the other passengers, or even for the porpoises, but for that part of myself which had come swimming to the surface, but was already headed back under.

Mid-afternoon, the second day of our vacation, we were traveling along a remote section of the highway in the Cape Breton Highlands, somewhere between Cap St. Laurence and Cheticamp. Earlier in the day I had remarked with mock indignation to Andrea, my traveling partner, that I felt teased and sorely vexed by all the moose-crossing signs, with nary a sign of a moose. “Either take down the damn signs, or bring on a moose,” I railed.

Well, it worked. Moments later we drove around a bend in the highway and were surprised to see a very large number of cars, trucks and RVs parked on either side of the road. “Must be an accident,” was my conditioned response, even though there was no sign of a crash. What we could see was a large congregation of people standing on the side of the road, staring off into the distance.

“A moose!” we cried out in perfect unison.

Soon we were standing shoulder to shoulder with the others, peering and squinting at a large bull moose feeding so far upstream he was scarcely visible to the naked eye. It made me wonder how anyone had spotted him in the first place, but even at that distance he had the same magnetic power the two porpoises had demonstrated the day before. The magic was simply that he was there, and we were close enough -- though only barely -- to see him. And, just like the previous day on the ferry, an instant camaraderie emerged among spectators from all over the continent, and beyond.

We struck up a conversation with a young, professional couple from New York City who were on their first trip to the Maritimes, and positively ecstatic about what they were witnessing. The woman, a lawyer, was attempting to take a picture of the moose without a zoom lens, and I teased her good-naturedly, saying the animal would not even show up in the photo, and that her friends back in New York would all give her a hard time about the phantom moose she had spotted in Canada. She laughed, but said even a tiny dot in the picture would help her remember, and then proceeded to shoot away. To everyone’s surprise Andrea then suggested that she take a picture through our binoculars. I had never heard of such a thing, but she informed us that on a previous trip she had taken a picture of a whale that way, and that it had turned out just fine. The woman was skeptical, but decided it was worth a try. Personally, I thought it rather foolish, but like so many other foolish moments in life it had the redeeming quality of providing amusement. If I had been just a little more into the spirit of the moment I would have taken a picture of the woman, as she was taking her picture of the moose, with the camera held up to her eye, and the binoculars, in her other hand, aligned in front of the camera. It was a curious sight, and visual documentation of how separated we are from all that is wild.

The sight of that New York woman, twice removed -- by camera and binoculars -- from the object of her fascination, struck me as a powerful reminder of our alienation from the natural habitat and its creatures, and of how deeply we miss it. And I wondered whether our desire to get close to the wildness “out there” is a symptom of our estrangement from the wildness inside each of us, buried beneath protective layers of conventional behaviour and civilized routine. That, at least, was how I felt as I left the scene. We were a hundred random travelers on the side of a road, and that solitary moose had triggered the same recognition and wistful longing in all of us. We were, however, much closer to our vehicles than we were to him, and when he went his way, we all went ours. We lost sight of him, but it was a strange comfort just to know he was out there somewhere.

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David Weale is the author of The True Meaning of Crumbfest (Rattling Books, 2005).

Shore Pebble from Author David Weale: The Apparition

The Apparition

I can’t even remember what it was I had forgotten. A book? My road coffee? It doesn’t matter. What I do recall is that when I pulled my truck back into the yard behind the house I glanced across the field to the east and spotted at the edge of the woods a big yellow dog which I took to be a Labrador Retriever. My place is on the Five Houses Road in Ft. Augustus, and as the name suggests, there aren’t many of us living there. Because I was almost certain no one on the road had a dog like that, it roused my curiosity and sent me scurrying off in search of my binoculars. When I located them I hurried to the bathroom window, from which vantage point I knew I would have an unobstructed view of the spot where I had seen the dog. I feared it would be gone, but a quick glance assured me it was still there, standing motionless and looking across the field in the general direction of my house. Good! I dropped to my knees on the floor, placed my elbows on the windowsill to steady myself, and raised the binoculars to my eyes.

“Lord Liftin’ Jesus! What do we have here?”

It seemed impossible I was seeing what I was seeing -- but I was. There was no mistake. What I had assumed was a large dog of some kind was not a dog at all. It was, incredibly, a very large cat – large enough to be mistaken for a full-grown Lab. I noted the small pointed ears, the squared face, and especially the long thick tail with a succession of dark rings along its length. It was magnificent, whatever it was.

Islanders, of course, aren’t very good at identifying large cats, since there aren’t any that live here, or so we all thought. I knew there had been lynx, or bobcats, on the Island when the European pioneers arrived, but that they had killed them off as quickly as possible, with the last of them disappearing in the late1800s. Just a few months before my sighting I had heard at Dave Wakelin’s store in Ft. Augustus that someone’s dog had been badly mauled in the woods by what, they speculated, might have been a bobcat from the Cape Breton Highlands that had found its way to the Island across the ice during the previous winter. But bobcats aren’t yellow, and they most certainly don’t have long tails with rings. No, it wasn’t a bobcat; more like a cougar, or a mountain lion, and it was fifty or sixty metres away, on the edge of my field, staring at my house. Perhaps, at me. I was dumbfounded.

After what seemed like about fifteen seconds the big cat turned gracefully, moved off into the woods, and disappeared. Its motion was so smooth it seemed almost to be gliding. I thought briefly about heading across the field for the chance of getting a better look, or of seeing some tracks, or perhaps some scat, but prudence prevailed, and I stayed put. I waited at the window a short time hoping for a re-appearance but after a few minutes I put away the binoculars, gathered up whatever it was I had forgotten, and headed for town.

I knew I had a great story to tell but realized I might not be able to share it without raising serious questions about my mental state, or perhaps my use of consciousness-altering substances. Would even my closest friends believe that I had locked eyes with a cougar or mountain lion at nine o’clock in the morning on the Five Houses Road? Did I want to run the risk of being known as a person who saw things that weren’t there, or who made up fantastic stories to fabricate a more interesting life? Not especially. But, on the other hand, how could I possibly keep such a thing to myself? It was just too good a story.

Before the day was over the raconteur in me won out, and by the time I headed home that evening I had related the event a number of times. Predictably, my hearers were largely incredulous. No one came right out and questioned my sanity or my sobriety, but I think there were a few who had doubts about my eyesight. On balance, however, the pleasure of relating the account outweighed the risk of possible side effects on my reputation, so I told it often, and here I am telling it again.

Over the years the core facts of the story haven’t changed in my telling, but I have drawn a meaning out of it, which is what storytellers do to make a good story better. I still am not willing to concede that, for some reason or other, I wasn’t seeing clearly that morning and that what seemed at first a Yellow Lab was, in fact, a Yellow Lab. My inclination is to interpret the sighting as a sign, and reminder, of all the animals that have been driven off this Island, and, in some cases, off the very face of the earth. When I tell the story that way, I get to remind myself and others of the disappearance from our Island of the walrus, sturgeon, black bear, otter, bobcat, deer, moose, passenger pigeons, and great horned owls. I get to remind them, and myself, of how vain and short-sighted we were to leave no place for them, and how, in doing so, we diminished the landscape and impoverished ourselves by removing the genius and grace of their wild ways, and the haunting reminder of their wild calls. And the more I tell the story, the more inclined I am to view that big cat as an apparition, or visitation, and to recognize that if I don’t understand why it appeared, it can never come back.

Postscript
Within a few days after spotting the cat I called the Fish and Wildlife Department to report what I had seen, and possibly to have my sighting confirmed. The officer on the other end seemed a bit uncomfortable, and I was imagining the look on his face, and how he was probably gesturing for his secretary to pick up the other line, all the while pointing at his receiver, as if to say, “This is a weird one.” However, after a short silence he told me that, oddly, there had been a similar report from the same general area a year or two before. And that was the end of it.

Maybe.

David Weale is the author of The True Meaning of Crumbfest (Rattling Books, 2005).

Guest Author Blog: Shore Pebbles from David Weale, Holy Land

Holy Land

According to Roman Catholic dogma a graveyard is holy ground because it has been blessed by the Church, but take a single step outside that anointed territory and you are on ground that is unholy. Indeed, the rod the church holds over the heads of the faithful is that if they don’t behave appropriately they will be buried without blessing in unconsecrated ground, where the harvesting angels won’t be able to find them. It is a powerful story, and I know that for a very long time it was one that both buttressed the authority of the church, and provided comfort and assurance to the dying, but like so many other old stories, the days of its usefulness have passed. It needs to be replaced, or at least greatly revised.

Because I was raised Protestant, and grew up believing that Catholic’s were credulous and superstitious, and that they were all going to hell no matter where they were buried, I was little affected by their graveyard mythology; however, I did hear a lot about another, similar concept called “the holy land,” and as I reflect on conditions in our world today, it strikes me that it has become an even more obsolete and dysfunctional teaching.

The holy land I learned about was nowhere near where I lived. They said it was on the other side of the world: where Abraham trekked with his children and his goats because of a promise from Yahweh; where prophets with musical names like Ezekiel and Obadiah received urgent messages directly from the divine; where Abraham‘s descendents, under the resplendent and charismatic King David, slew the evil, unbelieving Philistines; and, most importantly, where Jesus lived and died, and was raised up from the dead. Compared to all that Prince Edward Island seemed terribly ordinary, but when I became an adult I began to recognize the danger lurking in that old, holy-land narrative. One day it dawned on me that by designating certain locales sacred we had effectively desacralized the rest of the planet, including the place I lived.
I also couldn’t help noticing that the place called the Holy Land by the three major religions of the West was, and remains, the most dangerous and ravaged landscape on the planet. Hmmm?
When I was in high school I had a teacher who traveled one summer to the Middle East to visit the shrines and holy places declared sacred by his faith, and the next year he spent one whole class showing us the slides from his trip, and rhapsodizing about all the amazing sights he had seen. His face was shining as he spoke, and we were all duly impressed, and glad for the break in routine, but as I think back on that time it occurs to me that neither that teacher, nor any other, ever attempted to open our minds and hearts to the sacredness of the landscape in which we all lived. And if they had, we probably would have resisted the notion, having already been instructed that the holy land was someplace else.

In North America we have scoured and trashed much of our landscape, and stretched long tentacles of exploitation around the entire globe. Like a fox in the henhouse, or vandals in a temple, we have pillaged and ransacked, and created a great, global mess. Bulked up with the steroids of powerful technology, inspired by a largely uncritical view of progress, and directed by old religious beliefs that promoted anthropocentrism, and undermined reverence for the earth, we embarked on an immensely short-sighted journey of despoliation. The hand-wringing litany of what we have done to our habitat is a long one, and, like most everyone else, I am tired of hearing about it. I also dislike the feelings of fatalism and powerlessness it sometimes evokes. But I am not without hope; and it’s not because I believe in some new technological quick-fix that is just around the corner. Putting more and more sophisticated tools in the hands of deranged people, who are captive to old stories, is hardly a solution. The reason I am not without hope because I know what great storytellers we humans are, and because I believe we are capable of a new narrative that will get us off this blundering course.

Stated simply, we need to author a new mythology; one that honours the earth and expands the old concept of holy land in such a way that every square foot of landscape, every drop in the ocean, and every creature (including ourselves) is regarded as sacred -- something to be treated gently and reverently, and experienced as a source of wisdom and communion. That is what we must do, and even as I write I know there are millions of soulful men and women world-wide who are joined in a powerful, unofficial alliance, all working together to create a different consciousness, out of which will emerge a new, redemptive storyline. Historically, our great, religious stories have separated us, and sent us clanking off in one righteous crusade after another, but the creation of a new storyline, in which we are all members a single family, living on the holy planet Earth, can point us in a new direction.

It simply is not possible to build a new world with old stories; or, in the words of a not-so-old old gospel song, “No you can’t get to heaven in an old Ford car / cause an old Ford car can’t go that far.” There are many intelligent people in our society who say we should respect all spiritual traditions, and in this country it is considered politically incorrect to be critical of the religious beliefs of others. But why should we honour and perpetuate beliefs that promote fear and hatred of outsiders, and that proclaim that certain parts of the earth, and certain of its inhabitants, are more sacred than others? I might respect my old stove for what it has been in its time, but when cracks begin to appear in the sides, and hot coals are spilling out onto the floor, I know what I must do do.

So long as old, short-sighted, religious narratives prevail, and continue to shape the world-view of hundreds of millions of individuals, it really doesn’t do much good to clean up rivers, or reduce smog emissions, or teach courses on the environment, or promote eco-tourism, or sign multi-lateral agreements. The disorder arises from a place so deep that none of those things can touch it. It is in ourselves, and our dysfunctional myths about who we are, and what is good for us. It is, in a word, a spiritual problem, and any measure that does not address that is a mere palliative.

We can pass all the laws, impose all the penalties, and initiate all the programs we like, but so long as our political strategies, our economic policies, and our educational views are based on those old “chosen people,” and “holy land” narratives, the despoliation of the earth, and the exploitation of many of its inhabitants, will continue. One thing alone is required: that we make for ourselves a new Abrahamic emigration to a renewed holy land consciousness.

And the next time anyone asks you if you have been to the Holy Land, it might be a good idea to tell them, with your face shining, that you were born there.

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David Weale writes his Shore Pebbles from Prince Edward Island. He is the author of The True Meaning of Crumbfest, the unabridged audio edition of which is available from Rattling Books and the print edition from Acorn Press.

Shore Pebbles from Author David Weale: Dream of Lights

Dream of Lights

There was a period in my late forties and early fifties when I made a gallant effort to come to terms with my dreams. I even kept paper and a pen by the bedside, and often in the night I would turn on the light and jot down notes for the next day when I would write out the dream in full. Eventually I wearied of the practice, but by that time the account of hundreds of sensational, often bizarre nocturnal excursions had been filed away in a large binder. Some of them were dark and horrific, and I would sometimes wonder how I could be more frightened in a dream than I ever was in waking life, and whether the terror I experienced was my own -- the emotional residue of some forgotten childhood trauma -- or whether in my dreams I was somehow tapping into a terror that belonged to a dimension of myself which extended beyond the bounds of personal life experience. I do recall that in a number of these frightening dreams there was the suggestive presence of descending stairs or ladders, and in one a manhole cover of some kind that opened to a ghoulish underworld where emaciated figures gestured pleadingly.

Who were those pathetic sewer-dwellers, looking up at me in such misery, and how and when did they become stranded there? They seemed to believe I possessed the power to liberate them, but I felt such a powerful aversion to their pain and helplessness that my desire was to get as far away from them as I could, even though there was another part of me that felt I should embrace them. I am an introspective person, and there are days I fancy I know myself quite well. But do I really? After a dream like that one I am humbled. How well can I know myself when I am unable to recognize the strange cast of characters inhabiting my inner life? Are they aliens, invading from outside? Or, lifetime inmates, begging for emancipation, or perhaps just acknowledgement? Or are they all just actors in a play? But whose play? My own, or another’s?
My dreams make me wonder about my facile, daytime assumption that I am living my own life, for many of them suggest I am more interpreter than author, and more audience than actor.

Happily, there is a sweet side to all of this, for there also have been many ecstatic, liberating dreams: the kind I hated to wake from. In those the limitations of everyday life would disappear and it was possible, not only to do things I couldn’t ordinarily do -- like flying -- but also to roam through fields of wonder and delight that were, in everyday life, strictly off limits. I attempted at one point to master the art of lucid dreaming, hoping it might enable me to prolong, or even direct, those ventures of lightness and joy, but it never worked for me, and now I just take them when they come, and am grateful for them.

Time, like identity, is often a casualty of the dream state, and one night I had a dream that was recapitulated in waking life years later. In the dream it was night and I was a boy, returning to my home across an open, rolling landscape that didn’t correspond to any place I knew in the everyday world, but was remarkably similar to the fields of Entry Island that I visited for the first time just last year. As I walked I was singing a beautiful Christmas carol that also was unknown to me. Suddenly, the air was filled with tiny, brilliant pinpricks of light. They weren’t far away, like stars, but were just above me, and all around me, in the air itself. I’ve witnessed something similar during daylight in winter, when the air is crowded with tiny flakes of frost that sparkle like diamonds in the sloping sun, but in the dream it was night. The spectacle evoked a feeling of great gladness, and when I awoke the euphoria remained for some time. It was one of the most memorable of my recorded dreams and when I spoke of it to friends I recall stating that it was the only full-fledged epiphany I had ever experienced in a dream-state. Certainly I never expected to experience anything like it again.

Ten years later I was returning to my home on the Five Houses Road in the company of my second eldest son, Josh. It was a cold, clear winter night under a brilliant moon, and all the branches of the trees and shrubs were covered with a thin layer of ice from the freezing rain that had fallen earlier in the day. As we passed by a large lilac bush Josh let out his breath in astonishment. “Look at that,” he exclaimed. The moonlight was deflecting off the branches of the bush and as we moved by, changing our angle of vision with every step, the result was a scene of thousands of tiny points of light, sparkling and winking above and around us. When we stopped the flashing stopped, but as soon as we resumed walking the air was filled once again with the same magical light-show.

We retraced our steps a number of times, filled with amazement at a sight so rare and exquisite. Both of us said we had never seen anything quite like it before, but that was not entirely true. Later, in the house, I told him about my dream of lights, and how remarkably similar it had been to what we had just witnessed. He, of course, didn’t know what to make of that, nor did I, except for a hunch that occurrences which appear to be separate and unconnected, aren’t, and that a moment is no small thing, and not really a moment at all.

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David Weale writes his Shore Pebbles from Prince Edward Island. He is the author of The True Meaning of Crumbfest, the unabridged audio edition of which is available from Rattling Books and the print edition from Acorn Press.

Shore Pebbles from Author David Weale: Stairway to Heaven, a meditation on sex

Stairway to Heaven

We all know that the incandescent stage in sexual pairing is at the very beginning, and doesn’t last very long. It moves, all too quickly, in the direction of the dreaded ‘relationship,’ where the initial carbonation dies down, and what remains becomes increasingly tepid and routine, often fizzling out altogether. The soaring ends, and the trudging begins. I also believe that, contrary to much conventional wisdom, it is in the beginning that we experience the deepest sharing and confidentiality. It might suit us to believe that after the intensity of the ‘merely physical’ aspect of the pairing diminishes the couple can then begin the more important process of getting to know one another; but that, in my view, is a post-romantic rationalization. The deepest, most glorious knowing, is in the beginning.

A man returning from the arms of his lover is a man full of grace, and there was a night when I was seventeen when I was so filled. It was the night of the senior prom. Over the objections of my puritanical parents, who regarded the dance floor as the Devil’s playground, I attended the prom with my girlfriend, Sandra, whom I had been dating all through grade twelve. That evening she seemed especially beautiful in her low-cut, spaghetti-strap gown, and all night long as we danced together my hormones were in a state of rock and roll excitation. The song Great Balls of Fire, popular at the time, would have described my condition precisely. We were travelling with my friend Jimmy Hogan and his girlfriend, Diane, and after the dance we all went to Andy’s Downtown restaurant for a meal, then headed directly for the Experimental Fox Ranch, a fairly secluded spot north of town where everyone went to neck.

The word necking was an apt description for my level of sexual behaviour at the time, and even though I wanted very badly to push my hands beneath that prom gown, I was prevented, by her scruples and mine, from any type of direct exploration of the territories south of the necklace. When I think today of how many scores of hours I spent entwined with that girl, without so much as laying a hand on her breasts or thighs, it underscores just how great was my parents’ control over my life at that time. Two months later, the night before I left for college, I gave it a tentative try, but she didn’t seem to think the historical nature of the occasion called for more liberty, and I was gently dissuaded.

The night of the prom, in the back seat of Jimmy’s car, I confined my attentions to the neck and above, but experienced, nonetheless, a marvellous intimacy. At some point, I told her I loved her, and she told me the same, which we had never done before, and I thought my heart would burst.

The girls had to be home by three, but after we dropped them off we drove to the end of the railway wharf and just sat together for a couple of hours talking quietly, listening to an American radio station, and teasing out for as long as possible, the delectable, erotic buzz that the evening had created in both of us. As the sun came up slowly, and Holman’s Island emerged from the darkness, I thought it one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and was filled to the brim with a wondrous serenity. I was in love, Jimmy was the best friend a guy could have, the music on the radio was perfect, and the world was radiant with loveliness. And all that without a drop of booze. If it wasn’t a spiritual experience then I don’t know the meaning of the term, and anyone who is bothered by the role of the hormones in the epiphany is surely being prudish.

One of the greatest travesties of Christianity was the attempt, by the Church, to demonize sex. Its teachings on the subject weren’t just cautionary; they were defamatory. Many of the austere fathers of the church, like Augustine, would have preferred a world entirely without sex, and went so far as to declare that, even within marriage, it was a sordid activity and a venial sin, and that it debased a man by drawing the blood away from the brain to the gonads. Not everyone was that extreme, and we know that over the centuries many of the churchmen failed repeatedly to live up to their own celibate standards. But while there was always dissent, there was never any clear, corrective voice of protest against the gloomy maligning of sexual behaviour by the church; no acknowledgement, as in Hinduism, or the discredited pagan religions, that the coming together of a man and a woman is more than a mechanical act of giving and receiving seed, but a mystical experience of self-transcendence and ‘oneing,’ a term the mystics borrowed from lovers.

And are we to suppose that this correspondence in language is a mere coincidence, and that spiritual ecstasy and sexual ecstasy are two entirely separate experiences? I don’t think so, and suspect, as some research has already indicated, that the part of the brain that is activated during the spiritual epiphany is the same part that glows during foreplay and orgasm.

What I experienced that night, in the back seat of that big brown Buick, was a swift ascent up the stairway to heaven: an intensification of awareness which delivered me out of the mundane; made me more poignantly aware, not just of my girlfriend, but of everything around me; and put me in touch with the deep, procreative urge of the universe. The whole world became the beloved, and what could be more righteous than that?

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David Weale writes his Shore Pebbles from Prince Edward Island. He is the author of The True Meaning of Crumbfest, the unabridged audio edition of which is available from Rattling Books and the print edition from Acorn Press.

A new Shore Pebble from Author David Weale: Everyday Mystics

We are, most of us, most of the time, small-minded, but every now and then that changes, and our knowing becomes profound. In those moments the door to the hut swings open, and we experience an unexpected shift into a type of consciousness that, for a time, delivers us outside the confining walls of the little place we live day to day.

There are many words and phrases sprinkled throughout the literature of religion and psychology to describe such experiences. The Quakers call them “openings;” the psychologist, Abraham Maslow, called them “peak experiences;” L.M.Montgomery referred to them as “flashes;” Jean Vanier speaks of “blessed moments” when, for an instant “we are no longer controlled by fear, anger, indifference, vengeance, or feelings of despair and unworthiness;” John Milton testified that in such moments he experienced the “enormous bliss of Eden;” C.S.Lewis said he was “Surprised by Joy;” and the great Spanish mystics, St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila spoke of “consummation” with divine love. Many others refer to them as epiphanies, or mystical experiences, or as moments of awakening, ecstasy or self-transcendence. In my own work with students over the past fifteen years I most often referred to them as “thin moments:” moments when the veil, or curtain, of ordinary consciousness lifts, or becomes thin, and we are able for a time to escape the limitations of everyday perception.

The problem with these descriptors, including my own, is that they can sound so elitist and esoteric, or so sanctimonious, that most people outside a religious studies class wouldn’t be caught dead using them, and simply assume they have no relevance in their lives. That’s a great shame, because the expansive experience to which they all refer is not the special prerogative of a spiritual elite, or of especially gifted writers and thinkers, but of every human being, and has nothing to do with being religious, or even intelligent.

Many individuals have become convinced that the key to spiritual wellness is something they must acquire from outside themselves, not realizing that the Holy Grail is right there, in their own experience, and that they need to reclaim what has been usurped by institutional religion, or devalued within our materialist culture; namely, the realization that all of us, in the midst of all kinds of everyday activities, experience a direct connection to the grandeur of Life Itself, and that we do it without the mediation of priests or preachers. Further, when we pay close attention we discover we already have everyday vocabulary to describe such experiences.

Consider, for example. the doorways to the eternal that are discovered at the hockey rink, on a basketball court, or at any number of other sports venues. It may sound far-fetched, yet most individuals who have participated in athletics know what it is to be “in the zone.” I have been there myself, and have heard the experience described by dozens of others. What they invariably say is that on certain occasions during a game, or even a solitary run, they achieve a level of performance that is so effortless and automatic that it seems some greater force has taken over their minds and bodies, and that they can do nothing wrong. It might be sports lingo, but it is also the language of spiritual alignment. Further, every fan can recall the immense joy of those moments when the finesse and grace of a superb athlete shattered the barriers of what seemed humanly possible, and made everyone in the stands feel for a time enlarged and liberated, as if they themselves had accomplished the feat.

Then there is music. It seems almost all of us can recall times when we were listening to a CD of our favourite band, or attending a concert with thousands of others, or enjoying a beloved symphony, or playing the piano, or singing in a choir, and became utterly “lost in the music.” In the elation and awe of such moments self-consciousness dissolves, along with every care and worry, and we are delivered out of our ordinary selves, and out of time. And is being lost in the music the same as being united with the divine? Of course.

Openings to holy awareness also are discovered frequently amid the circumstances surrounding the death of a loved one. Time and time again I have heard individuals testify to an experience of unanticipated acceptance and serenity in the midst of their sorrow, and of a clear and certain knowledge that everything was just exactly as it should be. The people who related these experiences were not necessarily religious folk, yet claimed that an awareness filled them that was unlike anything they had ever experienced before, and that for a brief time they were able to comprehend “the big picture.” As one woman said to me: “I don’t really know how to describe it, but for a little while it was as though a window opened up for me, and I could see that everything okay.”

Then there is lovemaking. The language of romance is filled with words and phrases that describe ecstatically the temporary loss of individual identity that often occurs when two individuals melt together so completely they feel they have “become one.” When that state of oneness is reached it is no longer a dance of egos, but of deep identity uniting with deep identity; which is to say, of being coming together with itself. And everyone who has ever been in love knows that the experience radiates, and creates a sense of deep intimacy, not just with the beloved, but with the whole world, and everything and everyone in it. It’s not surprising to me, therefore, that when the individuals we know as mystics attempt to describe their experiences, they often borrow the language of eros, and when St. Teresa speaks of how she was “ravished” and “penetrated” by divine love she was, in my opinion, merely employing religious terminology to describe what every lover has discovered.

These moments of ecstasy are, literally, moments of finding oneself outside the small field of ordinary consciousness, but are not considered by most in our society to be of any spiritual significance. Indeed, most individuals, when asked, are quick to disavow awareness of any spiritual experience in their lives. The very question makes them nervous and defensive. In their minds it would be terribly presumptuous to admit to such a thing, yet my sense is that such experiences are commonplace, and that most of the activities we enjoy deeply, and return to again and again, are enjoyed precisely because they offer the promise of temporary deliverance outside the straight-jacket of ego-absorption into a wider realm. Whether dancing, drumming, reading, cooking, cuddling, golfing, gardening, skiing, swinging, swimming, sky-diving, star-gazing or just walking the dog, when we get our minds off ourselves and our troubles, we find ourselves at home in a larger reality.

Ego, with its exaggerated sense of the individual self, creates in us the illusion of being small, and fragile, and mortal, but despite its tyranny, from time to time a deeper truth breaks through. It’s why the moments of being “in the zone,” or “lost in the music,” or “at one with nature,” are so precious. Not just because they feel good, but because they are revelations of what we are, and of our deep connection to the holy power. And that is the heart of mysticism.

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David Weale writes his "Shore Pebbles" from Prince Edward Island. You can find others in the Archive of this Blog. He is the author of our favorite Christmas story The True Meaning of Crumbfest. The unabridged Earphones Award winning audio edition of which is available from Rattling Books (print edition available from Acorn Press).

Author Guest Blog: 'Fluffy Jesus' a Christmas story from David Weale

It's the sixth night. Cold and calm here in Tors Cove after a day of feasting with good company and skating by the sea. And now an evening Christmas story from David Weale.

Fluffy Jesus

The night of the Christmas concert arrived at last. As I walked along the dark, snowy road with my family I could see the school in the distance, shining like an eye on the top of Greenmount Hill, and it seemed a grand novelty to be going there at night with my mother and father and little sister. Indeed, because of my enthralled state of mind almost everything that happened during those approaching hours seemed uncommonly delightful, and I had the strong urge to compliment everyone and everything I encountered. A bird landing on a branch, or flying away, or the sun slipping behind a cloud or appearing suddenly, all were revelations and signs of the great and billowing goodness of everything.

That year I was to play the part of a doctor in one of the sketches, and was carrying a pair of glasses made out of wire, and a top hat and valise fashioned out of cardboard and darkened with stove black. My father had made them for me that very afternoon and I was expecting to carry them home with me when the concert was over. I had no way of knowing that a surprising turn of events would make that impossible, and if I had guessed for a year, or a lifetime, I could not have predicted what that turn of events was going to be. There were no stars out to guide our journey, but somewhere behind the clouds they were lining up portentously.

The school that night was a magical place, like something just touched by the end of a wand. And I was that wand. The nickering of horses, the glad ringing of sleigh bells, the shouts of greeting -- how splendorous and complete it all was! Each stepping horse seemed a darling creature, and the sight of each man and woman, boy and girl, a cause for rejoicing. The school itself was bursting with light from the gas lanterns brought from homes and hung along the walls, and in the yard fat, falling snowflakes, in slow descent, were being picked out of the darkness by the window brightness.

Inside was a small, improvised stage, built that week by some of the fathers, on which had been set an asthmatic pump organ, lugged to the school on a wood sleigh for the night’s entertainment. There were two white sheets, strung across the front on a piece of number nine wire, with a big, self-conscious boy at either end for opening and closing, and crepe streamers hung diagonally across the room, with a large, red, accordion bell at the centre that sank down slowly as the school warmed, and rose back up as it cooled. Or was it the other way around?

It was a full house, with the young men of the community standing side by side in a bachelor pack, leaning along the back wall. I presumed they had come for the concert, but now understand they had gathered, not to be entertained by callow youngsters, but to be in the same room with the eligible, Christmas virgins of the community. They had lines of their own to deliver that night, and were watching for an opportunity.

Strangely, I can’t remember anything of my own performance, but I do recall the little brown bags of homemade fudge that cost ten cents; the Christmas apples; the large yellow and red barley candies, shaped like animals, that would linger in your mouth for hours; and the little, wooden pencil-box, with the sliding top that I received from the teacher. One other year I received from her a small number of pencils, with my very own name, DAVID WEALE, emblazoned on the side in gold letters, which seemed to me at the time one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. The teacher, I reasoned, must have had some very powerful connections to be able to get specially stamped pencils for every child in the school. In that porridge and potatoes world of hard-scrabble subsistence, when some people were still dropping pennies into the collection plate, and frugality was a virtue that ranked right up there with faith, hope and charity, it didn’t take a very great present to fill a child’s heart with delight. It’s why that Christmas for me was so spectacular. I was joyous as a carol with my pencil-box in one hand, a royal, red apple in the other, and my cheek bulging with a barley shape, and had no idea the best, by far, was yet to come.

As the concert drew to a close the intensity heightened as every child in the school waited for the heavy THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! on the school door. “ He’s here, he’s here,” we all would cry out, and with that Santa would step through the door, from the outside to the inside, and from his world to ours. I think I understood at the time that he wasn’t in the same league as God, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was supernatural, with great and incomprehensible powers. He also showed up. The heavenly father was a distant figure who was often talked about but never seen, whereas Santa arrived every year, on schedule, at the door of the Greenmount schoolhouse -- with treats. Eventually we were all informed that he wasn’t real, and that we were too big to go on believing, but that was just another adult ploy to remove us from childhood and direct us into their world of reference. I’ve since discovered that adults, even the smartest ones, don’t actually know what is real. Most of them imagine that they do, but it’s precisely what they’ve forgotten. They talk all the time about truth, but don’t seem to realize it’s just their replacement for the Santa story.

Appearance wise, the Greenmount Santa was not at all like the stylish, perfectly turned out, mall-Santa of today, with his red suit, immaculate white trim, and designer boots. The Santa I remember was more earthy than that -- a peasant -- wearing a large, scruffy racoon coat, upon which the moths had obviously feasted, with a string of sleigh bells around his waist, held in place by a coarse length of binder twine. He also had a stocking cap pulled down over his ears that helped hold in place his absurd shag of a beard that looked like it had come off the sheep’s back just that morning. The only thing new or shiny about him were his calf-high, black rubber boots that had never seen the barn or the potato cellar, and doubtless had been purchased especially for the occasion. And there was no red whatsoever, save for the red of his nose. He looked, in a word, like a slight variant of any one of the old men who could be sighted in the barnyard of almost any farm in Greenmount. But it didn’t matter. Neither the high drama of his arrival, nor the grand effulgence of his presence, was diminished a whit by his rustic, rag-tag appearance.

It was alleged that one year, before my time, Santa entered and passed right out from the heat in the school, and, I suspect, from the Christmas moonshine he had been sampling to ratchet up his courage. I’m glad I didn’t witness that as I don’t know how the sight of a supine Santa might have affected my very great reverence for a figure who was, in my mind, as invincible as he was good.

The year of the supernatural surprise we all noticed immediately that when Santa arrived he was carrying not one, but two bags over his shoulder. That was different, and promising. Then, as he made his way through the crowd toward the tree we all observed, with almost hysterical glee, that one of the bags was wriggling with some form of concealed life. There was definitely something alive in Santa’s sack, and as the silent guessing spread across the room in a wave, he arrived at the front, held the mysterious, moving bag out in front of him, and announced, “Ho! Ho! Ho! I’ve got a present here for you here, but you’ll have to catch it.” And with that he dumped out onto the floor a little toffee-brown puppy, with long fur and three white feet.

It was a birth.

A portal from the other world had opened right before our eyes, and when that little, blinking creature came sliding out of Santa’s sack it was as though joy itself, on padded feet, had been delivered miraculously into our midst. The frightened puppy began immediately to run through the crowd and, incredibly, headed straight in my direction, attracted doubtless by the powerful magnetism of my heart’s desire. For a moment I was certain I was to be the lucky child, but just then a farmer, Marshall Rayner, stooped over and grabbed that little, headed-straight-for-me puppy in his thick, sausage fingers.

The night shattered, like a dropped dish. How was it possible to be so close to something so perfect and have it snatched away in the blink of an eye. I looked over at my father for some kind of comfort, or understanding, but he was laughing along with all the others. It was terrible, but just before the big tears began to roll I heard Marshall say, “David, do you have a dog at your place?”

“Noooo,” I stammered.

“Then here’s something for you.” he said, as he placed the puppy in my outstretched hands. Immediately, the night flew back together again, like a movie played in reverse.

The room didn’t suddenly go quiet, and I believe a choir of homespun angels was probably singling hallelujahs somewhere on the side of Greenmount hill, but there was a very great hush came over me as I stood silently, in speechless awe. I suppose I could say I was grateful, or surprised, or pleased, but the great and weightless wonder of the moment left no room for any of those lesser emotions. The Almighty had done it again; become flesh and bones and a hank of hair -- not in a cattle shed, but in our crude little schoolhouse, and walking home that night in the snow, with that puppy cradled in my arms, with me looking down at him, and him up at me, I had some inkling of what the Virgin Mary must have experienced. She could not have felt more blessed.

For obvious reasons I wanted to call him Jesus, but that wasn’t very well received by my parents. My mother said she didn’t want to hear me out in the yard calling, “Here Jesus. Here Jesus,” or saying, “Jesus, get off that couch.” Said it wouldn’t be right. So I called him Fluffy, and thereafter he became my constant companion and bounding co-adventurer. But though I never told anyone, at least not until now, in my own mind he was, and continues to be, Fluffy Jesus.

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David Weale is also the author of our favorite Christmas story The True Meaning of Crumbfest. The unabridged Earphones Award winning audio edition of which is available from Rattling Books (print edition available from Acorn Press).

Author Guest Blog: 'Charlie and the Paper Boy' a Christmas story from David Weale

As we head for the second in the twelve nights of Christmas we figure it's a good time to bring you a story from David Weale.

Charlie and the Paper Boy
 
He grew up dirt-poor in a large family of brothers on the Miramichi. When he was old enough to work he became a lumberjack, and with his thick, tree-trunk of a body, and large, powerful hands, he looked every inch the part. But when he was still a young man he gave up the life of the woods for another vocation. He became an entertainer, and by the time his life was over he had become one of the county’s best loved troubadours.

His name was Charlie Chamberlain, and during the 1950s and 1960s he became famous across the country as the lead male vocalist in the “down-east’ band, Don Messer and his Islanders, and there are old-timers yet alive who still haven’t forgiven the CBC for cancelling their weekly TV show in the mid-1960s. Charlie’s heartfelt, even maudlin, renditions of traditional Irish folksongs, favourite hymns, and popular ballads endeared him to an entire generation of Canadians. He touched them in deeply familiar places, and they loved him for it. Some critics questioned his sincerity, but someone told me a story a few years ago that indicated he was just as sentimental and soft-hearted in life as he was on stage.

In 1953, before they were famous, Charlie and the rest of the band were living on the Island, and on the afternoon of the day before Christmas Charlie put in a call to his old friend, Russell Downe, and invited him over to his house for a few tunes, and a little Irish dew. Russell, happy to oblige, grabbed his guitar and headed over, and it wasn’t long before the two were seated, one on either side of the Christmas tree, having their own little Christmas concert. According to Russell they were right in the middle of Down in the Little Green Valley, when the doorbell rang.

It was the paper boy, from a couple of streets over, who was there to collect his paper money. “Come on in,” shouted Charlie, as he fumbled in one pocket after another for change. While this was happening the boy, wide-eyed, was staring at the tree. Charlie noticed his wonderment and asked, “Do you like my tree lad?

“Yes sir,” replied the boy.

“And do you have a tree like that at your house,” asked Charlie off-handedly, as he continued his search for the paper money.

“No sir,” was the soft, flat reply.

“You don’t have a Christmas tree!” exclaimed Charlie incredulously.

“No.”

“What about a turkey, and presents? You got those?”

“Not this year,” replied the boy.

“What do mean, ‘not this year?’” demanded Charlie incredulously.

“Me father’s not workin’” answered the boy. “He said we’re going to have Christmas next year.”

“Do have any brothers and sisters?”

“Yes.”

“Well now,” proclaimed Charlie emphatically, “you must have a Christmas tree. That’s all there is to it,” and then he went into action. He laid his guitar on the couch and walked over to the tree. As Russell and the boy stared in amazement he proceeded on a course of action that was so unexpected, and so impulsively rash, that they could scarcely believe their eyes. He unplugged the lights, then reached through the branches with his big right hand and picked the tree right off the floor – lights, ornaments, tinsel and all. Tree in hand he then marched down the hall to the kitchen where a big turkey was lying in the sink, its neck flopped out over the side. With his left hand he latched onto the bird and headed back down the hall. “Open that door Russell,” he cried out, “we’re going to make a little visit.”

“Show me where you live young fella,” he said as he stepped through the door, pulling the tree through behind him, as ornaments and tinsel went flying in every direction.

“It was quite a procession,” recalled Russell, shaking his head. “The boy was ahead, and behind him marched Charlie, carrying the turkey and the tree, with the cord from the lights dragging in the snow. And I was bringing up the rear, picking up ornaments, and laughing at the look of Charlie. When we arrived at the paper boy’s house his mother came out on the porch, and just stood there with her mouth dropped open.”

“Open your door wide missus,” shouted Charlie, “we’re comin’ in.”

“Oh my Lord Jesus,” she replied.

“No, not the Lord Jesus,” he laughed “just Charlie and Russell,” as he swooshed into the house, set the tree in the corner, then strode out to the kitchen at the back of the house, and deposited the massive Christmas bird on the counter. “Merry Christmas,” he cried out as he exited the house as abruptly and flamboyantly as he had entered.

“Mr Chamberlain,” called out the boy, “you don’t need to pay me that paper money.”

“Oh Christ,” replied Charlie, out of breath, “ I forgot all about it. “Russell, pay the lad for God’s sake.”

As they walked back to Charlie’s place through the snow Russell reminded Charlie that he had neither tree nor turkey at his house, and that the stores would soon be closed. According to Russell he just grinned and said, “It’ll all work out Russell. It’ll all work out.”

When he was done with the story I asked Russell just how much Christmas cheer he and Charlie had had by that point. He didn’t say anything for a moment, then replied with a soft look on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, “Just enough I would say; just exactly enough.”

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Prince Edward Island author David Weale has been most generous in sending us several Christmas stories for the Blog. David is also the author of our favorite Christmas story The True Meaning of Crumbfest. The unabridged Earphones Award winning audio edition of The True Meaning of Crumbfest as performed by Antonia Francis is available from Rattling Books (print edition available from Acorn Press).

Author Guest Blog: 'Wrapped' a Christmas reflection by David Weale

Wrapped

Feeling constricted, or trapped, is a universal human experience, and every culture has symbols, or figures of speech, that allow it to express the condition. One of the most powerful metaphors for me is that of being swaddled or wrapped, like poor old Lazarus in his winding sheet when Jesus called him back to life, or Harry Houdini, wrapped with chains inside a sealed box, attempting to rise like a god from beneath the dirty waters of the Hudson River. Legend and myth are rife with evocative images of that kind, and for me there is something about the way we celebrate Christmas that inspires a similar meditation.

Like it or not, Christmas has become, more than anything else, a lavish festival of wrapping and unwrapping, and when we participate in the ritual I suspect we are all unconsciously acting out the central drama of the human condition. I know this will sound far-fetched to the symbolically challenged, but I think there’s something to it, and what intrigues me most is not our enthusiasm for exchanging gifts in an extravagant, sometimes impoverishing, potlatch of generousity, but the curious insistence that all the gifts be wrapped, so they can then all be unwrapped. I could be completely wrong about this, as I am about many things, but have concluded that the most important part of the ritual is that of unwrapping, and stripping away, as a necessary prelude to joy. It’s why it would be unthinkable for most of us to give a gift unwrapped, and why it’s not prayer that puts so many of us on our knees on the floor at two o’clock on Christmas morning. In wrapping we replicate our ego-confinement, and in unwrapping, our desired emancipation.

What put me on to this way of thinking was an exchange I had with a woman in a department store when I was in my early twenties. I don’t know her name (it probably one of those sweater-girl names from back then like Wilma, or Arlene, or maybe Sandra), but I do remember that she was attractive and flirtatious, and probably around thirty-five. She was wearing a shiny white blouse, unbuttoned to cleavage, ornamented by a Christmas corsage big enough to serve as a table centrepiece. Her friendly smile was framed by lots and lots of holly-berry lipstick, and her straw-blonde hair teased up into some kind of indestructible hairdo. All of that doesn’t sound so great to me now, but at the time I thought she was quite something.

She worked in the department store every Christmas wrapping presents for busy shoppers, and on the wall above her table was a sign that declared, IT’S NOT A GIFT UNTIL IT”S WRAPPED. And that’s just the spirit she brought to her work. Wrapping for her was a passion, and the way she shook loose the ribbon, spread the paper, and then picked ever so carefully the final sprigs of green or silver, reminded me of how a great chef might garnish a meal, or a famous artist finish off a canvas.

On the day of my recollection she was wrapping a gift I had bought for my girlfriend, and to pass the time I asked her what was the biggest wrapping challenge she ever faced. She said it was a toboggan. “I don’t do those anymore,” she added with a smile. I also asked her if it bothered her that within a few days all her work would be torn to shreds. “Oh no dear,” she replied as she folded under the edge of the paper, “that’s the whole point isn’t it -- to get to the gift.” I liked her reply, and the confidential way she phrased it, but it made me wonder why, if the whole point is to get to the gift, we expend so much time and effort concealing it in a box beneath layers of tissue and seasonal paper, and then wrapping string and ribbon around the whole business.

We both were enjoying the banter so, when she was almost finished, I informed her teasingly that if she did much more to beautify my package my girlfriend might not want to unwrap it. Without missing a beat she smiled provocatively and responded, “Well then, I guess she’ll just have to unwrap you,” which made me blush a little because I realized she was probably reflecting back what I had been thinking about her.

Arlene, or Wilma, or whoever she was, was wiser than she knew on that Christmas Eve Day afternoon, for I have discovered over the years that getting unwrapped is exactly what I want for Christmas, and what I wish for all my friends. In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing I want. If I can also get disrobed that is a bonus, and another powerful metaphor, but it’s my eyes I want unwrapped, and my heart, so I can once again glimpse the infinite in every brown nut and piece of hard candy, and feel the presence of the sweet eternal vibrating in everyone I meet, and in myself.

Unwrapping presents doesn’t do that for me anymore, but in the removing of layers of concealment, and the cutting of strings, I am at least reminded of what I really desire, and that I already have it.

And by the way, if I was making the sign it would read, IT’S NOT A GIFT UNTIL IT’S UNWRAPPED.

David Weale


David Weale's children's story The True Meaning of Crumbfest is available in an unabridged audio edition from Rattling Books. Narrated by a five year old Antonia Francis it recently garnered an Earphones Award from AudioFile. Several of David's books are available from Acorn Press in Prince Edward Island where David makes his home.