“No dog in this country has survived with what he has,” said the vet at Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, Ontario where I had taken him after my vet recommended I put him down.
His name was Reefer.
He was born in my home. He had picked me.
The muscles in his esophagus had stopped working.
He could not swallow his food.
He became a walking skeleton.
I said, “What about outside this country?”
“Two in The United States did.”
I said, “Then one in Canada will.”
One in Canada did.
Three things are important. They are Faith, Hope and Love and of these three the greatest is Love.
That is from St. Paul: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013%3A13&version=NIV
It took a long time, six months, for him to get well.
When I think of it now, that is not such a long time.
But it seemed long in the beginning as everything does when we start.
When I walked him people gave me Hell for not feeding him.
I stopped trying to tell them what had happened to him, that he had lost that weight while he was away from me in the hospital.
Gradually, slowly the weight returned.
There came a day when he looked at me and I heard a voice in my head that said, “I’m okay now, thank you.”
“Are you,” I said.
He was.
As I was writing this one of my cats jumped up on my desk. He made it clear he wanted to, had to plop himself down between my keyboard and my computer.
My first thought was, “I’m working.”
My second was, “What are you talking about? This is your real work.”
That cat, his name is “Askhim,” is normally aloof.
When he’s not it’s always good to take the moment to savor his company.
One of the men who lives with me was part of Occupy Toronto.
I had filmed some of it with 3D cameras I had just bought. He came here for a program I did on it.
We talked. I learned he was homeless. I moved him in.
As a child he grew up in foster homes after his mother was arrested.
It was not a good experience.
Sometimes he has nightmares about it.
He’s been here a long time now, a few years, again, not long when I really think about it.
One of my favorite films in Charlie Chaplin’s THE KID (1921).
Most who see that don’t know that Chaplin himself knew the Hell of being placed in a workhouse when he was 7 after his mother had been arrested.
My friend’s nightmares are getting farther and farther apart.
I love his company.
Right now I’m reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ANTIFRAGILE which I got from him.
My sister watched me go to school for two years. Finally, her time came.
She was filled with joy. It was the start of a great adventure.
She played with the niece of the principal. The niece lived across the street from us.
We were dirt poor. The niece’s family came from money.
I said to my sister, “Say, ‘hello.’” when as we neared the school we saw the principal.
At noon when I went to bring her home her face was red with tears.
She had been taken to the office where she was given the strap for having said, Hello.”
My late friend Lance Ingleton ( https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?n=lance-ingleton&pid=133773521 ) grew up in the West Indies. He had been befriended by a family of rich white folks from America who treated him as one of their own. He thought that he was until one day he was asked not to come around for a while as company was coming from America.
There is nothing worse than “GOOD” folks with money doing “good.”
The “good” lasts only until they leave.
Some get bitter when they leave.
The best reject their good deeds.
The best are self reliant.
Lance organized Reggae Concerts. He designed his own posters. He always used golden rod colored paper.
He was always being told to get professionals to design his posters.
I said to him “Do that and they will look like all the rest. No one will see them. You love doing them. Stick to it. It’s a signature.”
We met when I was posting flyers for my own programs. “Will you help me?” asked Lance.
“Sure,” I said.
The first time he gave me a whopping stack of paper. I put them all out. Lance came by. “You got any posters left?” he asked.
“Not one. They are all out,” I said.
He smiled the most wonderful smile.
There is a Beer Store across the street. He went over, picked up twelve. We talked. He shared his life. That’s how I learned of his youth experience.
Through Lance I was introduced to the world of Reggae Music which I love.
When he died my heart broke.
It was a long way to the Funeral Home.
“He loved you,” said Lance’s wife as I met her for the first time.
“I love him” I said.
How could I not? He was a great man.
Faith, Hope, Love…without those we don’t have a life.
Faith gives us the courage to continue when it seems all Hope is lost.
Love gives us the power to heal ourselves and others.
Love, as Paul says, is the greatest.
I hear a lot of nasty things about people.
People hear a lot of nasty things about me.
With me I prefer to turn the other cheek.
It may sometimes take me a moment but I do.
I adopted a cat named Zorro.
He was in bad shape when he came here.
He clawed, bit, hissed, scratched. My hand puffed up from his bites. I had to get medication.
He needed grooming badly. The groomer said, “I have only met one cat I could not groom.”
I left him with her.
She called as I walked through the door of my home. She said, “I have met the second one.”
The third time he bit me I said quietly, “You know it is okay.”
He looked at me perplexed. Then a switch clicked inside.
Now he spends every moment near me. He has found a place where he is safe.
Most folks when they say they have Jesus in their heart make me want to get away from them.
That’s because I have his ideas in my heart.
The ones about turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, do good to those who do evil to you.
I like those ideas because they involve self possession, tasking control not of others to make them behave the way I want (that can’t be done) but taking control of myself to be the best I can. That I can do.
Some days I fall. We all do. I get back up again determined to do better.
I found the same ideas in other sources.
They are good ideas.
The main thing is that people who come into my life often come troubled. They find themselves healing themselves here.
I don’t do it.
I just provide an environment where that can happen.
Not all, of course, get healed.
Lourdes, France is a place where people go to get healed.
Not all who go there get healed.
Luis Olivari, an Italian atheist, communist whose body became crippled, was dragged to doctor after doctor by his wife. Finally, against his will, fiercely against his will, Olivari was dragged to Lourdes.
Olivari became an atheist because the bad example set by so many who called themselves Christians made him despise Christianity. He became a Communist because Communism is Christianity without God.
As he was being prepared to be taken into the water Olivari heard a blind boy praying for a miracle in the next tent.
As he was being carried into the water Olivari said the first prayer he had said in a long time. Olivari said, “God, if you exist, please heal the blind boy.”
The blind boy was not healed.
Olivari was.
He was healed because he prayed not for himself but for someone else.
So, too, it is with me.
When I pray that my enemy be healed s/he may or may not be healed.
I am healed however of the anger, hatred and desire for revenge their deeds give birth to in me.
By praying for them I become whole.
I feel the great joy that comes from that peace which passes all understanding.
In that sense I don’t have Jesus in my heart.
I have become Jesus.
I have also become The Buddha for all that.
I have become every great mentor the world has ever known.
I have reached the ultimate goal.
I have myself become the mentor I have all my life been seeking.
Don’t come to me to be your mentor.
You, too, become the mentor you have been seeking.
It’s a new day dawning.
I have never forgotten the moment my dog looked at me and I heard in my head the words, “I’m okay now you know.”
He was.
I know from experience the fruits of faith, of hope, of love.
These are not just Scripture to me.
They are the words of life internal forever eternal bubbling up from the clearest, deepest, purest possible spring.
They are life.
St. Peter, St. Paul and the rest never once said, “I have Jesus in my heart.”
They did say, “I follow a dirt poor carpenter from the boonies who dropped his aitches when he spoke. His name was Jesus. He has the words of life.”
I’m a dirt poor man in Toronto who has done his best to live the man’s ideas.
Why? Because I have never found a carpenter who better knew how to build a house.
I am the house he is building.
So, too, are you.
I am myself the way and the life.
Become the way and the life in yourself.
I am. We are.
“Before a man’s name can become great it must first be destroyed.” — THE I CHING.
My name has been destroyed.
We tear down the old house to build a new one.
I am building a new house.
God bless.
— Reg Hartt
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