Integrity

Parking Lots and Wineskins

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

For those expecting Canada to make concessions so we get a deal with the current U.S. administration; where have you been living for the past 18 months?

It’s become increasingly obvious that Agent Orange doesn’t really want a deal. He has frequently said so, and in just so many words. If there is a deal, that means there’s rules that need to be followed, and rules are the one thing he considers to be most beneath him. Iron-clad contracts are a thing that exist only in the minds of other people. Recent history has made it clear that for him a deal is only something he can take credit for, until it gets in his way, then it becomes an atrocity someone else created, which he had nothing to do with it, even if it has his signature on it.

Too many people have forgotten that there is only one goal in The Autocrat’s agenda – annexing Canada and making it the 51st state. That hasn’t gone anywhere, he just stopped talking about it in the hope we’d forget and act as if it’s not there. Far too many of us have; people who should know better.

All the tariffs, all the threats, everything this Epstein-denier does is designed to fulfill the objective of owning Canada. He said it at the very beginning. How will he get Canada to become the 51st state? By “economic force”; plain and simple, that’s been the plan all along. Add tariffs, remove tariffs, change the rules, ignore the rules, it’s all “weaponized uncertainty” designed to bring us to our knees and have us begrudgingly agree to become part of the U.S. He really doesn’t care if we like it, just so long as it happens.

So what do you do when you need to make a deal with someone who doesn’t want a deal and you have no apparent leverage? You make deals with people who do want a deal, and in so doing build leverage. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to figure that one out. If the Pedophile-in-chief figures we need them more than they need us, then you restructure so we don’t need them as much. You endure the hate, the taunts, the injustice, the tactics while you restructure your economy so that it’s far less reliant on the single relationship.

While that’s going on more and more of the sycophants currently occupying Washington D.C. come to realize they actually do need us, far more than any of them want to admit. It hurts to wait things out for sure; and for smaller businesses and the more disadvantaged among us, it hurts a lot. I’m on a fixed income so I feel the pain, I assure you. However, there’s some truth in the idea of “no pain, no gain”, but that too is leverage. You let the pressure build on the inside until eventually something’s got to give.

Which is why I like what the Prime Minister is doing. Frankly, it reminds me of Jesus’ comments about wineskins.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, there’s a point in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus is asked why his disciples don’t fast (avoid eating for a time, often for religious reasons) the way the Pharisees do. Jesus responds by saying the time is not yet right for his followers to start fasting and gives this analogy …

“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are ruined, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:16-17)

What’s he trying to say here? Well, new wineskins (leather bottles commonly used for carrying wine around in the 1st century) are fresh, elastic, and pliable, allowing them to expand under the pressure created when unfermented grape juice ferments and releases gases in the process of becoming wine.  Now in contrast, old wineskins have already been stretched to their limit; they’re dried out, becoming stiff and brittle. They are fine for storing wine, but they can’t take the pressure of the fermentation process. If you try, the old wineskins will burst, resulting in the loss of both the wine and the wineskins. 

Picture of the excavator tearing up my parking spot

As I write this; a large John Deere excavator is out in the parking lot of my condo tearing up the asphalt and loading it into dump trucks so that a new parking lot can be laid. It would be a lot faster, and cheaper, with less inconvenience to just lay down a new layer of asphalt on top of the old one; that’s what they did the last time just before we moved in here more than 25 years ago.

And that is the point; they used that option a quarter of a century ago. If we do it again now, cosmetically it will look great, but underneath it’s just a pretty layer on top of an old crappy layer, which is on top of an even older, crappier layer and chances are it won’t last very long. It will crack and buckle as the layers underneath it shift with time and temperature. The time has come to start over.

Like I said, it seems to me, in a way, that is what Prime Minister Carney is doing, making new wineskins. In this case, new economic infrastructure that will hold up better when we finally do reach some kind of agreement with the unpredictable “genius” south of us. Yes, there is risk, there’s inherent risk in anything new. The new parking lot may well crack anyway, I mean, shift happens. And like the crap my neighbors and I are going through right now, restructuring is going to be a royal pain until everything plays out.

Unfortunately, only time will tell whether my new parking lot and our new economy can handle the traffic.

Melting Pots, Mosaics, and the Body Politic

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

When I first watched this video and listened to our Prime Minister discuss the difference between the ‘melting pot’ in the U.S. and the ‘mosaic’ here in Canada my thoughts immediately went to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians…

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. [1 Cor. 12:12-14]

Politicians spend a lot of time trying to express society and the nation with various metaphors that speak to the unity or solidarity of its citizens. Family is a common one, so is team, which I always thought had a real us vs them vibe. But there is one metaphor that they seem to avoid these days, the human body. As Paul points out when referring to the body of believers, each part of the body serves a different purpose but they are all part of the same body, working toward the same goal, the healthy survival of a whole being.

Now, I need to point out that this idea did not begin with Paul of Tarsus. The idea of society functioning as a healthy human body, as far as we know, is first found in the Hindu Rigveda, explaining the caste system by comparing societal roles to different parts of the human body (e.g., mouth, arms, thighs, feet) about 1500 BCE. Plato refined the concept in Republic and Laws in the 4th century BCE, emphasizing that a state’s well-being relies on all its parts functioning properly, while illness represents societal dysfunction. We call this concept the body politic.

Why would Paul draw on a political metaphor to expound on Christian unity? Simply because using common cultural imagery is a habit of his writing. For example in Titus he quotes the Cretan poet Epimenides: “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Again, in 1 Corinthians 15 he quotes Greek playwright Menander: “Evil company corrupts good habits. So it is no surprise that he uses what, for an educated Roman citizen, would have been a common image of the structure of a society.

So why then, do we so seldom hear politicians today use the body politic as a metaphor in their appeals for unity? I think it’s to avoid the obvious question, “If you think the nation is a body, then why don’t you take better care of it?“

Indeed, regarding the body of citizens as functioning like an actual human body would, quite naturally, imply that one has a responsibility to maintain that body. If your ankle hurts, you try to ease the pain. You might start with a salve or ointment. You might wear a brace of some kind. If the pain persists then you would seek medical attention, but regardless of the strategy, the goal is the same, ease the pain, deal with the issue, restore the body to a healthy condition.

If you’re a politician, using a metaphor that highlights your responsibility to listen to the pain of the parts of the body and actually do something about it, is something you might understandably want to avoid.

That was the point of a publication called The Body Politic published in Toronto from 1971 to 1987. It was a monthly newspaper and magazine that became the anchor for Canada’s gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements, playing a foundational role in queer journalism, activism, and community building. The various columnists and writers that created and maintained the publication were quick to point out that a large part of Canada’s body politic was in pain and needed serious attention for the nation to be whole.

Of course the LGBTQIA2+ part of Canada’s body are not the only ones suffering. The various members of the aboriginal community, immigrants, women, teenagers, we could go on. Governments of all levels in Canada struggle to adequately listen to and address the pain that each of these groups feels, so again, it no surprise that they avoid using imagery that highlights their lack of action, or even acceptance of the responsibility to the nation’s well-being.

But let’s get back to Paul because the church has missed the larger point of the metaphor as well. While an argument can be made that the church, in all it’s various incarnations, has a somewhat better track record than many levels of government, there are still members of the body of believers who are in pain, who are feeling ignored, even criticized and attacked, and are in desperate need of medical attention.

We talk a good game, but have a long track record of finding more reasons to exclude people from the body of Christ than for including them. We shut people out for not living in the manner we think they should, or for being born just a bit different from us. We amputate parts of the body of Christ over points of theology and dogma that, from my point of view, amount to gnat straining and camel swallowing. (I’ll let you look that one up, but a lot of you get my meaning.)

I think we need to revive the body politic as a common metaphor for the society we live in, not just in Canada, but everywhere, because we need to be reminded that we have a responsibility to do better, as a church, as a society, as a nation, and even, as a species.

Jack Layton Passes Due to Cancer. Now What?

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

It’s odd what associations you find yourself making sometimes. When I heard on the radio that NDP leader Jack Layton had passed away during early hours this morning, the first thing I thought about, after the initial shock, was Jesus’ apostles the morning after Good Friday.

I know, on the surface that seems more than a little strange, even sacrilegious, but stay with me and I’ll explain.

On that dismal day the disciples were, in all likelihood, shell-shocked. You couldn’t have stunned them more if you bombed Jerusalem.  Despite Jesus’ warnings, his death was the last thing they expected. I’m sure that they were waiting for Jesus to perform another miracle even as he hung there on the cross. When the miracle didn’t happen they were devastated.  Huddled in their room they sat in disbelief wondering what the future would bring – or if there was a future at all. The question rang through each of their minds, “What now?”

Right now, thousands of NDP party members and supporters are feeling just as devastated and are asking them selves that very same question.

Most commentators and pundits across Canada will agree – the NDP accomplishments in the last election had nothing to do with policy, or a massive philosophical shift to the extreme left in Quebec – it was all about Jack Layton. Frustrated with the ineffectiveness of Gilles Duceppe, irritated by the elitist prattling of Michael Ignatieff, a large portion of the country, especially in Quebec, looked at Jack Layton and saw something they rarely saw in Canadian politics – authenticity.

That authenticity drew people to Jack Layton in droves and subsequently to the NDP. And I think most people within the party recognize that fact.  That is why I’m sure many of them are feeling just as lost as the Twelve did that day so long ago. True, Jack is no messiah figure, not in the true sense of the word. But he was definitely the embodiment of the NDP dream. Jack gave them a renewed sense of determination and self-worth. He gave them a new vision for the future, a future that actually seemed possible. He gave them hope!

Now that hope has suffered a potentially fatal blow. The embodiment of the dream is gone and, unlike Jesus, Jack Layton isn’t coming back any time soon. He’s not the messiah, the foundation of a new religion, or even the second coming of Tommy Douglas.  And if you think I am discrediting the gospel by comparing the two, you’ve missed my point. This isn’t about comparing Jack to Jesus, it’s about the followers of a movement. It’s about the disciples.

And the followers of Jack Layton have one more thing in common with the disciples of Jesus; whether the dream stays alive or not is up to them. The future of the NDP is in their hands now and I sincerely pray that they are up to the challenge.

As a libertarian I seldom agreed with Jack’s politics but I often admired the man. Jack Layton was an authentic politician. More importantly he was an authentic and likeable human being. Ottawa will be a better place if his example is followed by more than just the members of the NDP.

Horns of a Dilemma

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

As I listen to the rhetoric start to ramp up as we slowly careen toward the provincial election in October, I find myself once again torn on the subject of who to throw my vote away on.  Do I sound cynical? Well, that’s likely because more and more I find politics so generally reprehensible that elections are starting to resemble the process where the prisoner gets to choose their mode of execution; one way or the other, you’re still dead.

My dilemma largely starts with the fact that I can’t define myself neatly on either the left or the right politically. While I have a number of conservative tendencies, I also support many policies traditionally associated with the left. The result is I’m not allowed the luxury of being able to stamp my forehead with a party logo and lock myself mindlessly in step with whatever drivel drools out of the party leader’s mouth. I am forced to examine the evidence, consider all the ramifications and try to come to a rational decision as to which political entity is least likely to cause Canada, or in this case Ontario, to follow the same course as say, Greece.

Let’s take Dalton’s tax record for example. Tim Hudak and the PC Party of Ontario love to point out that Dalton promised not to raise taxes and then promptly introduced the Health Premium; essentially a tax to help pay for health care in Ontario. As a recent cancer survivor I find myself less upset about this lie than I used to be.

In the last nine months I have had 4 CT scans, 3 x-rays, 2 MRIs, 36 radiation treatments, 2 surgeries, 1 colonoscopy and 26 office appointments with a GP, an ear/nose and throat specialist, two surgeons, an oncologist, and a GI specialist and throughout it all the only cash I had to fork out personally was cab fare.  I have no idea how much all of that costs. I’m not even sure I’d like to know as I am sure it’s a frightening figure; but if you were to tell me that the reason none of that cost had to come out of my own pocket was Dalton’s Health Premium, I wouldn’t quibble with you for a second.  MRIs and CT scans and Radiation machines are expensive and the money has to come from somewhere and asking me to pony up my share is entirely reasonable.

But lying about it isn’t. According to the CQCO (Cancer Quality Council of Ontario) if you are diagnosed with cancer in Ontario you have “one of the best chances of survival anywhere in the world.” [ref] And the billions we spend on health care here is the reason why; not to mention the millions raised by events such as the Ride to Conquer Cancer.  This is something we should be proud of and celebrate, but our leaders still find it hard to just be open about it and say, “Look, it costs billions to make health care happen and taxes are the main source of that money.” Then make sure you taxation strategy is fair and balanced.

But when you lie about it and try to hide it and obfuscate the details so that people who disagree with you are more likely to vote for you it does not inspire any level of confidence even if the result is largely positive. Give the public some credit and simply tell us how much stuff costs and how you’re going to pay for stuff up front. So while I understand the need for the tax, lying about it does not increase my willingness to vote Liberal.

That said, I’m also sure there’s a big slice of those billions are being pissed away paying consultants and contractors and others way too much to do things that have been done before and accomplish very little that actually results in more people getting colonoscopies, surgeries, and visits to the doctor’s office.  I’m sure of this because I know from experience that’s the way far too many bureaucracies work (remember eHealth), and b) that’s the way far too many consultants manage to stay in business (again eHealth).

I am also fairly sure there are savings to be found on the front lines as well. I used to work security for one of the hospitals in Guelph and was curious as to why the guy mowing the lawn got paid as much as the orderlies did. One of the staff in the administration office told me it was because “of the extra training and skills required to do the job in a sterile hospital environment.” I will never forget that line.  Mow the Lawn? In a sterile hospital environment? Really?? 

And yet, while I’m sure cutting health care costs is on Hudak’s agenda, most of what he has said so far leaves me convinced that I can’t trust him to be selective enough in his cutting to do any real good. Rather than separate the wheat from the chaff, I can easily picture him just burning the whole field; leaving me unable to confidently vote PC either.

So you see my dilemma, no matter which option I choose I’m fairly certain the end result will be a horn up my butt. And not just with health care. A similar each-one-is-as-bad-as-the-other scenario can be demonstrated for just about every aspect of my existence.  My only hope seems to be that somewhere in the next hundred days one or the other of them will screw up so bad the decision will be made for me.

Until next time… Shalom

What’s Up Doc?

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

Monday was the first of 5 Review Clinic sessions I’ll have with Dr. James Wright, my radiation oncologist. Every Monday for the next 5 weeks (the last 5 weeks of my treatment cycle) I’ll meet with the good doctor and one of the nurses in the Review Clinic to take a look at how my regimen is progressing.

We started off yesterday with a look the CT pictures they took as part of the planing session. They are a series of cross sections of my head inside the mask used in the linear accelerator. Imposed on this in a number of colours, are bands that define which areas of my head will receive what levels of radiation exposure.

The hot zone, not surprisingly, is the location of my former right tonsil, where they found the tumour. They did cut the tumour out when they took my tonsil, but there are an unknown number of microscopic “roots” that are left behind and need to be destroyed by the radiation. This area of my anatomy is a bright yellow colour in all the various scans.

In the red and blue zones are the various lymph nodes located in and around my throat; down each side of the neck, along the upper edge of the clavicle. Since the cyst that disclosed the presence of P16 was in a lymph node, radiating the lymph system makes sense and gets the next highest does based on distance from “ground zero.”

There’s a green line (I think – I have colour blindness issues) that delineates the outer most reach of the treatment. No radiation above the level of my nostrils. Don’t want to irradiate the grey cells at this point. But then in my case, every cell is a Gray cell! lol… (All right. I’ll be good.)

The clavicle forms the lower border. No radiation below that level. Everything in the middle will receive one of about 11 varying degrees of exposure that were detailed on the CT scans.  I was impressed that they could discern all the exposure levels in such detail. Gives you a real feeling that they truly knew what they were doing. That is, until Dr. James Robert Wright made this encouraging, and inspirational statement.

“Yeah…    So…  there it is.  We’ll keep fartin’ around like this for the next five weeks and when it’s all over hopefully we’ll get the results we were looking for.”

Excuse me! You describe this supposedly high-tech, targeted procedure on which I am betting my continued future existence as “farting around” ?? Nice choice of vernacular Doc!

Flatulence references aside however, the good doctor is mostly correct in his assessment. The fact remains that as far as we have come and as much as survival rates have increased, cancer therapy still remains, to varying degrees, something of a crap shoot.

They can take a guy like me, mid-fifties, slightly over-weight, average health, clean removal of the tumour, a ‘species’ of cancer that has the best response rate there is to radiation therapy, and 8 or 9 times everything will work well and you get the results you were hoping for. Then there’s the 10 or 11th guy in the list; all the same parameters, all the same drugs and treatments, and for reasons you and your $100 million cancer clinic have yet to work out, it all goes to hell, the cancer remains firmly entrenched, and the guy dies.

I don’t know if Jim Wright had one of those days last week or not (I was his first appointment on Monday), but I can imagine that after a man like him, who has invested his life in this work, has a case go sour on him it can feel like all he’s doing is “farting around.” We are all prone to feeling ‘useless’ when we do everything right and it still doesn’t work.

However, focusing on the 10th or 11th guy isn’t going to help any unless you’re a research pathologist. For the rest of us we… I need to focus on the other 8 or 9 guys who make it. It’s like Paul says in Philippians:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8 (ESV)

So we continue on. Supported by Dr. Wright (whom I still have complete confidence in) and his amazing medical staff and volunteers at the Juravinski Centre, and by the many of you who are out there praying for Roberta and I. If you are inclined to do so add Dr. James  Robert Wright and his staff to your prayers; they work hard, care much, and need all the support they can get. Besides, he gave me these lovely lorazepam tables that make sleeping through this a hundred times easier.

I know, but before all you amateur pharmacists (and professionals for that matter – Joan) start emailing me the Wikipedia entries, telling me how highly addictive a drug it is, and regale me with all the side effects associated with benzodiazepines (I can Google it too), I am taking it under my doctor’s care and I’m real good at following instructions. So Chill!

But pondering the doctor’s choice of words aside, I seem to be in good shape; tat is, the treatments seem to be progressing as expected. The sore throat, treated with liquid pain killers, the sleeping aids, the general lack of energy and loss of appetite are all textbook symptoms and appear to be right on schedule. So I am hopeful.

Actually today, I am more concerned for my friend Darby than for me. At 10am today (Wed. Dec. 12) she goes in for a hysterectomy to remove a large fibroid she’s been carrying around for some time now. If you’re praying for me, pray for her too, please!

Till next time … Shalom.