A Story About Healing for Easter.
I had a beautiful dog I raised from birth. He was an Alsatian Labrador mix. One day his esophagus stopped working. My vet told me to put him down. He said, “If you want a second opinion take him to the Vet College in Guelph.”
Guelph had him for a month. They said, “No dog in this country has survived with what he has. You’d best put him down.”
I said, “What about outside this country?”
They said, “Two in The United States did.”
I said, “Then one in Canada will.”
It was a long, arduous trial. My dog had lost so much weight he looked like a walking skeleton. When I took him for walks people screamed at me for abusing him. If I tried to tell them what was happening with him they refused to listen. I stopped trying to tell them.
After six months my dog had regained his weight. One day as I was preparing his food I heard a voice in my head that said, “I am all right now.”
He was. One in Canada had.
St. Paul wrote, “Three things are important: Faith, Hope, Love.”
Those three things are all that matters.
Silly people dismiss faith. Let them.
I personally know the power of faith, hope and love.
Whenever I went to a church people told me not to come back.
In an article published in THE TORONTO STAR in 1980, David Beard, the owner of the pivotal store CINEBOOKS, said, “Reg Hartt is under-financed, overworked and snubbed. We should be paying tribute to him.”
I am not under-financed. I have Faith. If we love what we’re doing it is not work. I am not over worked.
For decades forces in Toronto have been doing their worst to bring harm to me. This has been documented in THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Canada’s newspaper of record.
Like the Pharisee and Scribe in Jesus’s parable of THE GOOD SAMARITAN people who should have helped have crossed the road.
That’s fine.
In 1968 I began to study the Wilhelm-Baynes edition of THE I CHING, a Chinese oracle that was old when Confucius was young. It teaches that unless learning and doing are wed both are dead.
In 1968 Jane Jacobs, the author of THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES, came into my life. Meeting her caused me to be reborn.
Dopes: Wonderful school teachers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-8WF_Ke1_8
Incompetent by time we are prepared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUQYpbqHXE4
In 1968 Judith Merril, the mother of modern SF, came into my life. J. G. Ballard called her, “The strongest woman in a genre created by ineffectual men.” Judy had come to Toronto be part of Rochdale College. She explained the Rochdale idea. There were no teachers. Each Rochdalian was to be their own teacher. Learning and doing were wed. Judy added, “We only really learn in conversation after sex.”
In 1968 I moved to Ottawa where I lived for a year with my father’s brother, Douglas Hartt who was Director General of Public Works Canada.
One night I went to a meeting of a metaphysical society. The place was filled with over a hundred people. A woman began to speak. As she did I looked around at the others there. When a man seated by the exit door caught my eye on him he faded from view. I kept an eye on that spot. I saw him two more times before the break.
I went to the woman who had been speaking. I told her what I had witnessed. She said, “Wait here.” Then she left the room. She returned with a photograph. She said, “Is this the man?” I said, “It is.” She said, “This is the caretaker. He died yesterday. Where you saw him was his favourite place to sit during our meetings. You belong here.”
I spent a year there.
After the death of one of my cats I adopted a cat who looked a lot like him. Problem was the new cat was traumatized. His fur was matted. He bit, clawed, hissed and scratched. I took him to a groomer She said, “I have only met one cat I could not groom.” I left him with her.
When I got home the phone rang. She said, “I have met the second one.”
I brought him home. He had bitten me three times. Each bite was worse than the other. On the third bite I said to him softly, “You know, it is okay.”
He melted. The cat from Hell had found Heaven.
From that moment he spend every second close to me.
“Be my rabbi (teacher),” a man said to Jesus. Jesus replied, “You have one teacher, the Father. Let no one call you teacher.”
Leo Tolstoy, author of WAR AND PEACE, said, “We can walk with Jesus or with the church. We can’t walk with both.” The Church in Russia said to Tolstoy, “Don’t come here.”
I’m with Leo.
When people speak evil of another they show themselves for who they really are.
They are vipers.
Jesus said after his resurrection, “These are the signs by which you shall know I am with you. If they give you any deadly thing it will not harm you. You shall handle serpents (children of the serpent). When you lay your hands on the sick they shall recover.”
These signs are true.
Jesus said, “As they have done to me they will do to you.”
THE TURIN SHROUD bears silent witness to what was done to he whose image it bears.
He sweat blood. He was bruised in the face. His beard was plucked. He was beaten over 122 times with a Roman flagrum. His body was torn open by the lash. On his head was placed a cap of thorns. He was forced to carry a crossbeam. On his shoulder is the mark from the cross. On his knee is the bruise from when he fell. On his hands and feet are the wounds from the nails driven through them.
Say it is a fake if you will. It is not.
If you are a photographer look at the image on the Shroud. I can see from light and shadow on the body this is a picture of a man not lying flat on a stone slab in a tomb. No. It is a picture of a man suspended vertically in space.
THE SHROUD OF TURN is a snapshot of the moment a carpenter from “buttfuck” (the word Thomas Cahill wonderfully uses in DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS) Galilee opened his eyes in the Resurrection.
Who better than a carpenter to build a house for GOD (some say stonemason)?
Three things matter: Faith, Hope and Love and the greatest of these is Love.
Yes, LOVE is the greatest.
Without Love I am dead.
In his first letter John writes, “You have no need that any man should teach you.”
This is true.
Drop by The CineForum/The Public Enemy.
Love lives here.
We have one teacher: the Father. Don’t call me teacher.
You can call me friend.
–Reg Hartt 2026–04–04.
From the way light and shadow hits the body I can see this corpse, frozen in rigor, is not lying flat on a slab. It is suspended upright in a space and time. It is Eternity melted in an instant.