Lensdiary

He had been in a gloomy, despondent, unpredictable mood all-day and he knew his wife and children had tiptoed warily around him. He busied himself in the garage sorting the shelves, rearranging items, taking them down, and putting them back, in exactly the same place. His wife had been busy inside making cookies and cupcakes with her two young helpers. It was Christmas Eve, 2023, a time for peace on earth and goodwill to all.

It had been quite the year, a new variant of Covid had emerged and the country was in lockdown restrictions once again, inflation was running at 15% annually, his five-year mortgage at 1.6% had matured and he had renewed for one year at 10.5% and as if it couldn’t get any worse Russia had launched a tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine in anger as it withdrew troops from its last foothold in Crimea. The world was now waiting for NATO’s response to this extreme provocation. No wonder his mood was foul.

The kids were finally in bed, milk and cookies left for Santa, it was midnight, his wife was wrapping presents, and he had retreated once again to the garage, Cuban cigar in hand, a selfish Christmas present in his hour of need. It was a cold, crisp star-filled night as he reflectively stared at the heavens’, puffing on his cigar and sipping from his glass of spiced rum. Was there really a God looking down on him, did God even exist, if not who was responsible for creating this chaos of existence. He continued to puff and to sip and to gaze at the stars and to drink in the majesty of the universe.

He began to relax, his soul finding a semblance of peace, “I am a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars” words from Desiderata came flooding into his consciousness. He continued to gaze at the stars and visualized that night in Bethlehem where that bright shining star shone on the babe in the manger. It was then that the tears came, a trickle, then a flood, and he wept, even though he didn’t know why he wept. Christmas comes, a time of hope, of peace, of expectation for a better tomorrow. Peace on earth and goodwill to all.

The old man settled in his chair on the porch marveling at the beauty of the sunset and listened to the cicadas trill their strident mating call, he closed his eyes and recalled his youth.

His childhood heroes, Kit Carson, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers, the cowboys of the old west flooded his imagination as they tried to outshoot the bad guys, and he could see Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier with his musket and his coonskin hat.

He remembered emulating his heroes running through the bushes his cap gun ready to shoot those mean, ugly, skulking outlaws, or raising his wooden knife ‘old faithful’ ready to take down any grizzly that dared step in his path.

He was happy that the cowboys were now making a comeback with the screenwriting of Taylor Sheridan and his shows Yellowstone and 1883, though sadly these shows were strictly for adult viewing and not for children.

As the sun started to set below the horizon he imagined he saw Roy Rogers astride his horse Trigger galloping into the sunset and he began humming softly to himself ” happy trails to you until we meet again, happy trails to you keep smilen’ until then”.

His wife came out on the porch noticing the old man was sleeping, “come inside you old coot, it’s getting cold out here”, and she shook his shoulder, but he never heard her voice or felt her touch because he was riding the range with his heroes in Heaven.

Person A: How many children do you have?

Person B: Biological, spiritual, emotional, or legal

______________________________________________

Person A: How many children do you have?

I have two children, born six years apart. My daughter is 48 and has five children, and my son is 42 and has one child.

Person B: Biological, spiritual, emotional, or legal

That’s a thoughtful take on children. I’m not sure how to answer that, except write about my own involvement with children. Children are our future. All we can do is pass on some knowledge from our own experiences and hope that they can survive whatever is to come in these uncertain and technology-driven times.

I was raised Catholic and I tried to pass Catholic values on to my children. To ground them in moral values of right and wrong. I can honestly say that they have both embraced those values. For which I give thanks to God.

I have been involved with children for a great deal of my life. I was involved with scouting from the age of nine to sixteen. Mainly because of the hikes, camping, and venture weekends of orienteering and obstacle challenges. I was a cub leader at eighteen, Bagheera, and when I emigrated to Canada became a scout leader at twenty-two. I introduced boxing to the scout troop which I quickly vetoed when the first boxing match turned into a one-sided event involving blood.

I married and my wife and I moved into condominium living consisting of thirty-four units arranged in a square around a park-like setting. There must have been about forty children under the age of eleven residing there. As a member of the condominium board and social director, I organized street hockey games, water balloon fights, volleyball tournaments, dodgeball, British bulldog games, bicycle rallies, corn roasts, and many other events for twenty years. I also coached soccer for a number of years, as well as becoming involved in church activities, one of which was taking care of the altar boys’ scheduling.

My daughter birthed triplets, she also had a fourteen-month-old son. The triplets weighed two lbs each at birth and were three months premature. They were born in the middle of August and released from the hospital in early November. At the same time, I was downsized from my job and due to economic reasons, my daughter could not afford to quit her job, my wife and I agreed to look after the grandchildren full-time while my daughter went back to teaching after ten months of maternity leave. I would arrive at their house at 6:30 a.m. when my daughter and son-in-law left for work. My wife would relieve me at 11:00 a.m. when she came back from aqua fitness. She would give them lunch and put them down for a nap and then I would come back at 2:00 p.m. and have them till 5:30 p.m. when my daughter would return from work. We did this for twelve years and I could write many, many blogs on this experience.

I am a big believer in ‘equal love and equal forgetfulness’, we do what we can at the time as circumstances dictate and then move on, never looking back but always forward. We live out our life span understanding that the world is always shifting both technologically and culturally, and the best we can do for our children is to ground them in a value system that reflects respect for others as well as ourselves.

Lucifer, Chair of the Board of Hell Inc., looked down with glee on the fiery furnace he had created to harvest the souls of the new species of creature that God intended to introduce into his creation.

As former CEO of Heaven Inc., Lucifer, had tended his resignation to God when unable to garner enough support among the Angels to oust God from Chair of Heaven Inc. and had decided to incorporate his own entity.

God having read Lucifer’s resignation letter, summoned Lucifer to his office, expressing his extreme sorrow at the route Lucifer was taking and reasoned with him to try and dissuade him from dividing the Heavens.

After ten Millenium of discussions, God and Lucifer reached a memorandum of understanding on a separate division of the Heavens to include a territory for Hell which Lucifer would manage, and God would retain power in the remainder of the Heavens.

This memorandum of understanding also limited the terms of Hell Inc.’s existence based on the market share of souls, i.e. if after fifty Millenium the number of souls gained by Hell Inc. was less than the number gained by Heaven Inc. the agreement would become null and void and Heaven would regain control.

So in the beginning, it came to pass that God created Heaven Inc. and allowed Hell Inc. to co-exist as a separate entity from Heaven and God then blew on the void and caused the rhythm, rhyme, and meter of the universe to form their pattern and begin the process of creating organic life.

I’m not sure why I rejoined the cesspool of Twitter in January 2022, perhaps it was boredom, or trying to keep up to date on world politics. If Twitter can be counted as a go-to source for that activity. I originally joined for the first time back in 2018, but the Twitter logo of the bluebird of happiness quickly changed to a devouring vulture, and having never experienced the nature of trolling it was quite a shock to the system. So I left after two years.

So now I am back with 353 followers, while I follow 249. I always follow back after reviewing the follower’s bio and a sample of their tweets, so you may wonder about the 104 discrepancies between my followers and the people I follow. This 30% discrepancy is accounted for by the number of young, beautiful, Chinese ladies who have decided to follow me. I have often asked myself, is it the charm of my tweets, the subject matter of my tweets, or my vibrant, charismatic personality projecting on each post? But alas I feel it is something quite more sinister. In reviewing these charming, Chinese lady’s tweets, they are full of selfies taken in some exotic location and devoid of any other content. So I never follow back.

Twitter is usually a hive of negativity with a few positive nuggets thrown in here and there. I’m not sure if this negativity is fed by corporate algorithms, bots, media, or social media influencers. We have been in the middle of raging culture wars for some years now, amplified by the use of social media. How much more fuel can we throw on the fire? This negative activity, as Jonathan Haidt so aptly puts it, throws people into defense mode, as the sense of threat colors everything, and thus nothing creative emerges. Haidt in one of his books compares Twitter to the Tower of Babel, ” let us go down and confuse their language so that they cannot understand each other.”

For the first time, I am full of optimism for Twitter, now that Elon Musk has taken control, Perhaps he can eliminate the bots and trolls who like to play silly mind games with their audiences, and turn it into a legitimate platform of free speech where people can actually engage with ideas and arguments. I have never followed the proposition that the science is in, so there can be no further discussion on certain topics. Everything should be open to debate, and it’s my wish that Musk can turn Twitter into that kind of free speech platform.

Gabriel paced the floor lost in thought, as VP of Product Development he had been tasked by God, Chairman of the Board of Heaven Inc., to add some variety to the universe.

After three hundred years of relentless pacing, a germ of an idea began to take form in Gabriel’s mind, and then eureka, inspiration took hold and he arranged a meeting with Lucifer, CEO of Heaven Inc.

Lucifer listened patiently while Gabriel developed his idea of a brand new galaxy, inhabited by a new species that would be given free will to develop, with some guidance from God who would impart a little of his spirit of creation within them.

Lucifer liked the idea in principle but disliked the idea of free will and definitely hated the idea of endowing these new creatures with a creative spirit, but, he nevertheless agreed to bring the idea forward to God at the next Board meeting.

God liked the idea in its entirety as outlined by Gabriel, and overrode Lucifer’s objections to free will and creativity, it was that moment when Lucifer decided that God was not living up to his responsibilities as Chair of Heaven Inc. and he could do a much better job in his place.

He looked around the Board table for Angels he could gather to his side, but saw no supportive looks from either Michael, Jophiel, Raphael, Uriel, Samuel, or Sandalphon, and was on the verge of letting go of his dreams of a takeover when an idea occurred to him. (this has to be continued as I ran out of the required number of sentences)

My thanks to Nick, who blogs at Spira for his posts on Angels which gave me the inspiration for this six.

Where had it all gone wrong? She had been so much in control but now found herself spiraling ever downward, confined to a prison of her own making.

Kate Walsh sat reflectively in the back pew of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church reviewing her life, her family, and its highs and lows, trying to discern a course of action and decide what she should do next.

Her marriage of twenty-five years had produced six children, the oldest twenty-three years, and the youngest ten years. Had she been a good wife, and mother, or could she have done better, the thoughts went around and around in her head?

She did like a clean house, and she expected her children and husband to comply. She did like regimentation, never allowing her children to sleep past 8:00 a.m., ensuring they eat only the healthy nutritious food put before them, no snacking on garbage. She made sure they came home immediately after school to finish their homework, were not allowed social media, and disallowed friends she did not find suitable. She constantly corrected any misbehavior, and all the children spent considerable time in their rooms to reflect on their actions. She constantly scolded her husband for being too lenient with the children, was angry when he had to work overtime at the office, criticized his consumption of alcohol, and scheduled sex every second Friday at 10:00 p.m. In short, she wanted to control every aspect of her family’s lives and had sublimated her own will and desires to that of the family. She was the designated corrections officer in her house and the inmates had to tow the line.

Kate spent every Saturday afternoon at 5:00 p.m. in the confessional extolling her sins to Father Mahoney. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it’s been one week since my last confession”. Father Mahoney would sigh quietly as Kate listed her litany of sins. “I overslept by ten minutes last Tuesday, I undercooked the roast beef, and instead of putting it back in the oven I covered the blood with gravy, I cursed when the vacuum broke down, I was feeling tired last Wednesday so I put off washing the clothes till the following day” and on and on it went. For her penance, Father Mahoney suggested she needed to get out of the house and go for a long walk. Kate grudgingly accepted the penance.

Now here she was. Her three eldest children had left home as soon as they could financially, and were renting an apartment together. Maggie, the youngest, was failing her grades and didn’t care, Steven at fourteen was constantly at loggerheads, telling her to keep out of his life. Andrew, the love of her life at twelve, was no bother, constantly having his head stuck in a book. Her husband was spending more and more time at the office, and she was worried he was cheating on her.

Am I sacrificing my life for my family, she thought, or am I fulfilling my deepest desire to sculpt my family into the image I have created for them. The perfect family. The family of my dreams. She bowed her head and asked God to give her strength to discern his will.

She recalled a conversation she had with Father Mahoney. He was quoting from St.John of the Cross, “equal love and equal forgetfulness”. Love your children, your family, and your friends when you are with them, but when you are not with them, forget them and concentrate on the now.

Have I created a prison for myself, have I been incarcerated in a place of my own choosing, is there a way to escape, or have I sentenced myself to a life of solitary confinement? Kate sat in the back pew of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and pondered the direction her life was taking.

I waited patiently, at the designated meeting place by the Trevi Fountain, in Rome, the Eternal City, for news of my thirty-year search for the Veil of Veronica, a Christian relic sought by countless antique collectors, like myself.

Roberto, my treasure hunter extraordinaire, strode purposely toward me and spoke softly, ” the object you seek is valued at $25 million, cash only, and you are to meet with the owner at midnight with the cash in hand, in room 306, NH Collection Roma Giustiniano, don’t be late”.

Midnight found me tapping furtively on the door of 306, which was immediately opened by a silver-haired, well-dressed gentleman, who graciously smiled and invited me in, inquiring if the bag I was carrying contained the price for the veil.

I opened the bag to reveal the cash, ” how do I know the cloth is authentic, I’m not handing over this much money without proof of the cloth’s authenticity”.

The elderly gentleman smiled in understanding, and grasping my right shoulder he produced a knife and slid it easily through my ribs and into my heart.

I was in a crowd watching Jesus struggling with the cross he was carrying, he staggered to his knees, and a drop of blood from the thorns piercing his brow fell on me, and I awoke alone to see the money and the gentleman had disappeared and the Veil of Veronica draped over my chest.

The devil appeared in the form of Mrs. McKenzie, at least that’s how it appeared to Father Lassiter, as he eyed the goodies on show, and felt his appetite quicken.

“Mrs. McKenzie, may I remind you that we are in the Advent Season, and this should be a time of fasting as we await the birth of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Mrs. McKenzie, as plump and round and as sweet inside as her mince pies, replied ” Save the fasting for Lent, Father, Advent is a time of rejoicing for the babe to be reborn in us all. I will not contemplate the suffering of Christ at Advent, for this is not a season of suffering but joyfulness.”

Mrs. McKenzie had worked as a cook and housekeeper for thirty years, caring for four Carmelite Religious, who in turn cared for a congregation of 2,500. She saw the priests come and go every seven years, each with their own idiosyncracies, and each dealing with spirituality in their own unique way. She was not about to give up her favorite pastime, baking, or her favorite time of year, Christmas, for anything or anyone.

Father Lassiter continued to try and persuade Mrs. McKenzie to curb her penchant for baking and join him in fasting till Christmas Eve. She in turn refused to budge an inch.

” Let me march alongside the Little Drummer Boy to the stable in Bethlehem in my own way, and I would take it kindly if you could march out of my kitchen and beat your drum elsewhere”, regaled Mrs.McKenzie.

At that moment the bell buzzed on the priory door and Mrs.McKenzie hastened to answer. Standing at the door was Billie, pale of face, dark smudges under his eyes, running nose, thin as a twig.

“Hello, Mrs.McKenzie, my mom sent me around to ask if we are on the list for Christmas hampers this year. She said it’s been a hard year, food prices have gone up so much, and she just wanted to double check”

Mrs.McKenzie extended a hand and beckoned Billie inside seating him at the Kitchen table. She absentmindedly snatched a paper napkin and took a swipe at his nose with one hand while pouring milk into a pot with the other. Washing her hands, she placed three shortbread cookies and a mince pie in front of Billie.

“Here, Billie, get that down you while I make some hot chocolate for us”, cooed Mrs.McKenzie. Having made two piping hot mugs of hot chocolate she reached for the bottle of spiced rum, which she was using to flavor the dried fruit spread in a tray on the counter, and poured a liberal portion into her hot chocolate. She then settled down at the kitchen table with Billie.

Father Lassiter, taking in the scene, used that opportunity to secure a mince tart and spirit it away out of sight as he strolled to the door.

Mrs.McKenzie’s, her eyes glinting, missing nothing that happened in her kitchen, smiled contentedly to herself.

We do like to play little games with ourselves, after all, they do say, if you always pretend to be good then in the end even God will believe you.

I glanced in the bathroom mirror and became a little agitated, noticing my halo was becoming more and more tarnished, I gave it a little shift to the left which lent it a more whimsical look, just to prove I wasn’t perfect.

Going for my daily walk I tried to avoid Mrs.Peabody by crossing over to the other side of the street, but she spotted me, and so I was forced to smile and voice pleasantries, thinking, what a boring, pompous woman you are.

Now there was someone I would never try to avoid, as Mary and Jack came into view, I have never understood what she saw in him, I guess some guys are just born lucky, I gave them a huge smile as they walked by, glancing back to get a view of Mary’s exquisite behind and shapely legs.

I felt a bit peckish so decided to stop off at the bakery, where I chatted politely with the baker while purchasing three chocolate-filled croissants, noticing dowdy Mrs. Jones with her little brat looking wistfully at the baked items, which they couldn’t afford, I hurridly exited and headed home where I hungrily wolfed the croissants.

That night glancing in the mirror I noticed my halo was even more tarnished than this morning, and I failed to understand why, as I had been very careful to be extra polite to everyone I had met that day.