SAINTHOOD revised

WHEN DO THE SAINTS

COME MARCHING IN?

A Commentary On Sainthood;

What It Is And What It Ain’t.

By Izzy Ess Of Saintliness

Monsignor Nicholas had died.  His mourners were but twelve, enough to have six pall-bearers and 6 walkers who wring their hands in shows of grief when they don’t even know who he is.  Rumour had it that the Holy Father was quite generous and liked to give small gifts to everyone at Christmas time.  This was much like Monsignor Valentine who liked to send out messages for Love when all about him was but Hate and Lust,                                                                                                                                                                   Revenge and Sloth, Anger, Gluttony and Greed.  Monsignor Valentine picked the Ides of February to send out his missives and drew a heart so simply with single stroke or cut that it became the heart we all know so well, as in “I {Heart} NY!”  Of course, the real heart is not shaped like a Valentine’s heart; it is globular and looks much like a puppy’s head with two small ears bending forward, the “auricles,” the ears, even though the heart does not have ears!  And, the heart is really a central structure which has grown forward and enlarged normally to fall to the left.  The dog and horse who spend most of their time up on four legs, have a central heart which falls forward, rather than to the left.  Most birds have anatomy so similar to mammals except that their hearts tend to fall to the right, instead of to the left.  I believe that a bird‘s circulatory system is a mirror image of a mammal’s featured by a forward flopping of its developing heart to the left, whereas the bird’s, is to the right, eh?

Nicholas and Valentine were beatified and later promoted to Saints, by the Cardinals at the Vatican who decided that they had performed miracles which could be documented.  Personally, I don’t know what the evidence of miracles was, but I’m always re-assured that there are stringent rules for evidence of miraculous activity.  I’m assuming both St. Nicholas and St. Valentine had cured some folks of their fatal illnesses or had caused the sun or moon to change its course across the skies or had done something which could be substantiated as a miracle.  As far as I know, no miracles have been as spectacular as the ones attributed to Our Saviour, Jesus, who regularly restored sight in folks who were blind, and brought dead folks to life, even after they’d been dead for some time, like Lazarus, his kin.  Jesus was reportedly able to quell storms, walk on water and multiply breads and fishes to feed a multitude instead of only one or two.  Perhaps we don’t see as many miracles as we used to since in this modern age we have cameras and all sorts of recording devices which show the truth of things which would not allow for fudging of the truth to simulate a miracle.  I suppose it could be done because of the old adage that has been changed.  It used to be said that, “Cameras never lie!”  In the face of air-brushing and lighting tricks, it can now be said that, “Cameras always lie!”  I’m guessing the truth is somewhere in between…

Whatever, Valentine and Nicholas are now established Saints which makes me wonder why, though Jesus did perform many miracles, He is never designated as a Saint, as far as I can tell.  I’ve heard Jesus referred to as Our Saviour, The Only Son of the God of Abraham and to a once mortal Man who made the extreme sacrifice to save all the rest of us from damnation and perdition, when the Second Coming comes.  In another area, most kids think of television as a miracle.  Most adults have no idea how broadcasting works, so they must also think that it is miraculous to be able to see a football game being played in New York City on their screen, in their home, when they live in Seattle.

I’m very curious about most things, especially those that seem miraculous.  As a kid, I opened all my sister’s doll’s heads to see how they open and close their eyes when you lie them down or sit them up.  I was given a valuable original Edison Dictaphone machine.  My curiosity about how the tubular recording device was spun at the exact same speed as other such machines, which would allow for accurate sound reproduction, was satisfied when I found a device called a regulator, which explained how the speed of recording could be standardized from machine to machine.  I didn’t need a “miracle” to explain the regulated speed of the recording and reproducing machines.  Electronic devices are not as easily opened and analyzed.  It does appear miraculous that internet and television, radio and video games exist and operate without so much as touching them, at all!

It may perhaps be the opposite of miraculous that in this day and age of television and electronic media, thousands of people are still killed in genocidal cleansing raids and border skirmishes, without public knowledge, until it is much too late to stop the killing and annihilation of helpless men and women and children.  Do the murderers feel that they are invisible or invincible, or do they feel that no one will discover the mass graves and evidence of atrocities and evidence of the identity of the murderers?  And what of the witnesses that hear the screams and see the deaths of innocents?  Do they think that they don’t need to stop the atrocities because the authorities will find out sooner or later and punish the perpetrators swiftly and appropriately?  Do they think they are safe because they have been given special dispensation from some unknown hero who will miraculously protect them?  I don’t know!

In one of my favourite books, “Davida,” by Chiam Potek, an old Jewish, Eastern European man keeps repeating that “Jews” are being murdered in Eastern Europe and no-one hears the screams.  He repeatedly checks the ears of his American relatives to try and find the little birds that are chirping and drowning out the screams of helpless, captured, enslaved Jews as they are being systemically exterminated and murdered without anyone stepping up and objecting or trying to stop the heartless murderers.  In another book or movie about the torture and murder of herded Jews, a man listens to an account of three or four murderers who hang a Jewish prisoner from a tree in winter time and pour water on him until he freezes to death, and yet the hundreds of Jews that are watching with horror do nothing to stop the atrocity.  The man asks the story teller, “How many Jews were there and how many Germans were there?” as if to establish that hundreds of Jews could have overwhelmed the few German murderers and overwhelmed them, but no one stepped forward and objected.  No one led an uprising which surely would have stopped the murderers by sheer force of overwhelming numbers, perhaps a 100 to 1 majority of captives over jailors.  Yes, it might have meant the death of a few more Jews, but surely it would have stopped, even temporarily, the murder of a few hundred Jews that seemed to be helpless under the horror of the situation.

At the famous Nuremberg Trials, where German after German testifies that he knew nothing about a plan for mass extermination of the Jews.  Almost all of them arrogantly insist that they were just following orders from their leader, Adolf Hitler.  Adolf Eichmann went to far as to declare that the trial itself was illegal and that the “rules of war” meant killing was “normal!”  Adolf Eichmann was a famous German lawmaker under Adolf Hitler.  He insisted that no laws were broken under the law.  He insisted that a soldier that follows orders, must be applauded, not singled out and called a criminal.  The German lawyers for the high ranking Nazis consistently felt that the trial itself was illegal.  Luckily, the Americans were not about to declare a mistrial or allow the proceedings to deteriorate because of technicalities about whether or not the proceedings were ethical.

In the long history of civilizations on this Earth, perhaps going back a million years or more, there have always been border skirmishes and territorial disputes.  Capturing of enemies has probably been the norm.  Some torture and mutilation of enemies has probably occurred.  The systematic extermination of large populations seems to be a modern phenomenon.  Even the allegoric expulsion of the Jews from Egypt was not associated with mass murder, although it seems to have been threatened.  The Angel of Death allegory was supposed to have represented the death of all first born baby boys of Egypt, a way of suppressing the lines of succession to the leadership of Ramses II.  The murders were not carried out by men but by agents of the Hebrew God of Abraham.  Even the Egyptians that were drowned in the Red Sea “parting and re-parting” phenomenon was done by Moses under the direction of his God.  In the desert, the Egyptian Jews complained about the hardships of living in the desert when they had such posh lives back in Egypt.  While Moses, their leader, was atop Mount Sinai receiving first hand rules of behaviour from God, Himself, the discontented Jews melted Egyptian gold to make idols and worshipped them; this was totally against the wishes of Moses who was taking down the new laws which included, “Thou shalt have no false idols!” or something to that effect.  Moses was so upset, apparently, that he smashed the tablets of the Ten Commandments and ran back up the mountain to ask his God about how he should proceed.  God issued a simple command: “Kill them all!”  So, apparently, Moses, Aaron, Jethro, Miriam and perhaps others, took up their swords and killed the 3000 complainers in their sleep.  As far as I know about Biblical History, this is the first instance of ethnic cleansing carried out, allegorically, in the Name of God, the Creator, who presumably foresaw the whole situation.  Moses could then continue, under the influence of his God, the inscription of the other 613 Rules and Regulations, under which the Jews must act and live, for forty years in the desert, or else face disfavour by a Jealous God, which meant the threat of death, or exile, which was tantamount to death.

I’m guessing there were mass graves at Jericho and other cities that resisted the Jews as they marched toward the Promised Land.  When they were defeated by the Babylonians, the Jews were enslaved but not systematically killed.  In fact, there are many instances where enslaved Jews rose to very high positions within the Mesopotamian and Babylonian and Persian countries to which they were dispersed after Solomon’s temple was destroyed and the Ark and the Covenant that God made with the Jews was either lost or destroyed.  Some believe that the Sacred Scrolls were actually read and used by the future Iranis and Iraqis, Syrians and Lebanese to write their own set of laws which would eventually show up in the Moslem Koran.  After all, Esther became the Queen of Persia while Daniel and Mordechai became Prime Ministers, just as Joseph had risen in the ranks from slavery to be the very powerful Minister of Agriculture in Egypt, a reason to think that the Egyptian Jews were wealthy and powerful, living in the Land of Nod, the most fertile part of Egypt, the Nile Delta part of the Fertile Crescent, I believe.

Within the Book of Esther in the Old Testament, a singularly peculiar part of the Hebrew Bible, which may have been written by a Persian Jew, there was a Persian prime minister who paid in silver pieces for the murders of Jews.  It was a surreptitious bounty paid by Haman, who was a Minister for Xerxes, the King of Persia, who was having marital problems.  Mordechai, the ward and uncle of Esther, a very young Jewish harem girl, approached Esther and told her of the danger that the Jews were in, and asked her to approach the King and tell him that his Minister was having Jews killed for a bounty of silver pieces.  At the risk of losing her own life, Esther confronted Xerxes and told him of what his minister was doing.  Xerxes became angry, apparently, and had Haman executed and replaced him with Mordecai and married Esther so that she became his Queen.

I’ve been speculating recently, that the other story of a teenage harem girl who becomes the Queen of Persia, Scheherazade, is so similar that they may have been the same.  In the Legend of Arabian Nights, Scheherazade spins a tale that keeps her from being murdered by a Sultan who is accustomed to having a young virgin brought to him each evening for his sexual pleasure, only to have her killed in the morning so that a new teenage girl could be made available for the Pasha, for the next evening of pleasure for him.  The Sultan is so enthralled by the stories, that he keeps her alive for 1,001 nights to hear the continuation of the fascinating tales she tells.  He falls in love with the young virgin and makes her his Queen.  The stories are distinctly Arabian, and are familiar to all of us as Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Sinbad the Sailor.  Of course, the phrase, “Open Sesame!” is known to just about everyone as the secret command used by Ali Baba to open his secret caves for the safety and the storage of his ill-begotten treasures.der of

Is it not the time for the saints and saintes to come amarchin’ in?  After the unreasonable murder of tens of millions of Allies and perhaps thrice as many enemies of the Allies, isn’t it about time!?  Where are the Saviours of Humanity and the Flora and the Fauna of this Lower Firmament of Ours?  Are there any?  If there are, NOW’S THE TIME, EH?  PLEASE!  We all have the destructive power to wipe the entire planet clean a thousand times over!  Polio has been re-introduced.  Who’s responsible for the new release of polio viruses?  Why aren’t the perps being punished and identified.  Japan’s waters are now laden with deadly radioactivity.  Stop it, now!  Rockets can be made to fly in all directions now and all are loaded with deadly weapons of mass destruction!  Hey, wait!  I’m innocent.  Everyone is innocent and vulnerable to all those agents.  Why aren’t the folks who are listening to all the other leaders, doing something about it?  Why are the leaders still willing to play chicken with the rest of us?  Why haven’t the laden rockets pointed at everyone been destroyed, once and for all?  Why haven’t we emasculated all the leaders with fragile egos?  WE KNOW WHO THEY ARE!  THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE!  WHAT GIVES?  Is money and property still the driving force for all the leaders?  Is paranoid schizophrenia still the most successful personality of all the leaders?  Is hypervigilence de rigeur to be a world leader?  Why haven’t we applied the best there is to offer in terms of cognitive and behavioural modification?  And, where are Jesus and Gabriel when you need them?

Ah, so many hard question and so many easy answers.  Certainly, 99.99% of people can overwhelm 00.01% of the world’s people who have their fingers on the trigger buttons.  How many black boxes can there be, eh?  Jesus tried it all by himself and eventually recruited over 25% of the world’s population.  Mahatma Ghandi tried it all by himself.  Both Martin Lathers tried it with a modicum of success at great personal expense, even the ultimate sacrifice, like Jesus’.  When I was a teenager, I thought about it.  I had the Messiah Complex and it made me a doctor and I helped a lot of people see the errors of their thinking because, eventually, I became a Psychotherapist, a Canadian General Practioner Psychotherapist, a Family Physician Subspecialist in an Association of Physicians, about 500 of us, across Canada, formalized with a charter of sorts, for the last 10 years of my active practice of medicine in Welland, Ontario, Canada.  I believe I helped a lot of people, individuals and families in my city.  I might even have stopped a few intelligent, hypervigilant or paranoid folks from having influence over innocents, but I’m not sure.  Intelligent, hypervigilant leaders do not seek out psychology practitioners because they are sure that being a powerful leader is their right, no matter how many folks are harmed by the incidental collateral damage that it causes.  Besides, they recognized that they had charisma and they used it.  I had no such glowing charisma.  Like most other people, I have plenty of congenital and acquired fears and uncertainties that need hard work to accept and modify in order to keep from harming myself and others and to keep from being influenced by folks who are always 100% certain that how they think is absolutely correct and that others ought to think that way or else be pushed out of the way, on their careers that entail increasing power and influence, money and assets and the use of their charismatic certainty for self aggrandizement.  Some rise very quickly to political and personal positions of power as CEO’s and political bosses, even Premiers and Presidents.  Fortunately, some are benevolent and have healthy insights into their charismatic powers.  Unfortunately, some are psychopaths and sociopaths.

Some time ago, I read a very important set of books by Riesman, who studied “Conformity.”  They were entitled, “The Lonely Crowd,”  and “The Face In The Crowd,” I believe.  He was able to construct normal distribution curves for conformity in the population at large.  In the centre of the bell curve were those who conformed 100% within their populace group.  In both directions, people who were less and less conforming in their thinking processes were distributed in a mathematical formula that is very familiar to statisticians.  The first standard deviation was 63% of the entire population and the second standard deviation encompassed 97% of the entire population.  Thus, only 3% of the population were truly non-conformists.  The highly successful 1.5% at one end contrasted with the highly unsuccessful 1.5% at the other end.

Riesman describes a highly successful non-conformist as a psychopath or sociopath who has learned to act as a conformist while being totally self-absorbed as a non-conformist.  He, if it is a he, is “cool” and highly attractive to most women who like a cool guy who is successful.  He usually dresses in very expensive suits or sports clothes, drives a very expensive car, and is the President or CEO of a successful company.  Or, he is the President of a Country or Premier of a Province.  He is evidently capable of making big decisions about the fates of other folks in a way that adds assets or power to his own coffers or those of his shareholders, or both.  In government, he would be the one in command of the armies of civil servants and/or military personnel and has no problem making decision which would impoverish the civil servants or put the army in harm’s way for his and his country’s benefit.  For example, Cheney defended strongly and benefitted tremendously from taking over the Oil industry of Iraq by his erstwhile company, Halliburton.  He claimed innocence in shooting his best friend in the face during a “hunting accident,” and publically defended all of his influence in the Bush administration as a strong move for America even though it cost everyone some ten trillion dollars of his hard-earned money that were demanded in taxes, putting the entire country at risk for bankruptcy.  And, nothing has deterred him from speaking and writing about his successes and the successes of the Bush administration, of which he was the obvious kingpin, the seemingly uncharismatic vice-president, behind-the-scenes leader of the USA, demanding very high speaker’s fees and royalty rewards, when his office was vacated, when President Obama and his Vice-president took office, with a 7 trillion dollar national debt, as opposed to the 3 trillion dollar surplus that the highly charismatic and benevolent Clinton and Gore had accomplished during their eight years in office.  And, I won’t even discuss the highly questionable election results manipulated by Florida’s Governor, Jeb Bush’s vote-tallying shenanigans that should have been a Gore success, rather than a failure, or the relationship between Bush and his class-mate, and secret fraternity brother and oil magnate, Osama bin Laden.   The real truths may never be revealed.

President Obama was emasculated by the majority Republican Senate and House and recently caught with his pants down spying, as his allies do, on his allies around the world.  His Obama-Care Health Programme may survive the Republican onslaught, but certainly not with that name, I believe.

In Canada, we have had some charismatic psychopaths of our own, and will continue to have them, apparently.  Premier Mulroney deliberately caused the defeat of his majority Conservative party, in favour of getting his best man ousted, Jean Charest.  Luckily, Charest saw the writing on the wall and demoted himself to Provincial politics in the other party, the Liberals.  He has successfully lead the people of Quebec for more than 20 years despite strong inside forces which want Quebec to be a separate country and other forces which want Quebec to be less Liberal and more Conservative, and more in line with Harper’s Federal Government.  Harper, a rather wishy-washy Premier of Canada, has aligned himself with the Conservative governments of many foreign countries.  He has just signed a free-trade agreement with China, I believe, and has similar policies with most successful countries.  He has successfully fought to keep Canada out of the Global Warming issue, allowing most Canadian companies to pollute the earth and water openly, and rapidly.  Harper’s pet “high horses” are scented cigarillos which he believes are unhealthy and urges their withdrawal from the marketplace.  He has not checked the facts as shown by large insurance companies, such as Metropolitan Life.  People that smoke cigars and pipes live two years longer than everybody else, all things being equal.  Our most hopeful leader for the future of Canada was cut down by ill-health.  Jack Layton was extremely charismatic and popular as a very liberal New Democratic Party leader who attacked the huge difference between the country’s poor and the country’s rich.   He led his party to be the natural opponents of the majority conservative Harper government and might have become the next Canadian Premier, high on preventing destruction and abuse of Canada’s bountiful natural resources and wondrous beauty.   Those that took over the leadership of the NDP try to imitate Layton but don’t come close in charisma and leadership qualities.  Within the struggling Liberal party that was once lead by the highly charismatic Elliot Trudeau, is his son, Justin Trudeau, who has the name but not the power of his father to make him successful.  Elliot Trudeau, in 1968, was part of one of the most dramatic instances in Canadian History when the Federation Liberte de Québec, the FLQ, started a revolution by killing a Federal Cabinet Minister in an attempted coupe to take over the Government of Québec and the Country of Canada.  Elliot Trudeau instituted Martial Law and took command of the Military and the Country and quashed the leadership of the FLQ, which has never fully recovered.  Incidentally, 1968 was the “Year of the Revolution” all over the world, including the Chicago Democratic Convention Riots, the Watts Burning, the invasion of Prague by the Russians and the Kent University killings of four students by a young cadet of the US National Guard.

In these broad sweeps of history, I have probably made many errors, if not in spelling, then in facts and details, from my memories of the events.  After all, I was not privy to any insider information.  I learned everything from newspaper accounts and books and I have a tendency to guess about things that actually happened,  I also like to tell dramatic stories.  I apologize, in advance and I welcome any comments which would set me straight.

One or two more thing about psychopaths, I’d like to add.  The unsuccessful 1.5% of non-conformists are in jail for major crimes, in institutions for major mental disorders or are easily recognized as misfits by their haircuts and dress and destructive behaviour and their modes of transportation and their inability to communicate with anyone except themselves.  They are generally very intelligent and may have had a huge amount of formal and street education.  There’s another good author about successful psychopaths who writes informatively and entertainingly and briefly in two books, “Up the Organization,” and “Further Up the Organization.”  The author’s name, I believe is Robert Townsend as he describes his experience with making Avis number two to Hertz.  In one section, he describes how to judge yourself to be number one material when the number one person of your company resigns or is transferred elsewhere.  If you judge yourself as number one and another person is chosen, he suggests you resign immediately and go somewhere where you will be number one.  Townsend poses three questions to ask yourself to show that you can make decisions without regard to the safety of others but merely in your own and your stock holders best interest, even if it means laying off 30,000 people and ruining their lives or making $30,000,000 by buying a company, dismantling it, selling off the land and assets and destroying the careers of thousands of people.  Townsend is thereby lauding psychopaths and sociopaths by suggesting that their success depends on their pathology and makes them highly successful leaders of the business world and with women and their families.  The book itself was a bestseller and strongly devastating in its implications.

Yes, I believe it’s time for the Saints to come marching in.  Yes, I believe that there is hope for Mankind, if sociopathy and psychopathy are not the models of behaviour of our leaders who are so self-centred and unaffected by decisions that kill and destroy the happiness of everyone else, in general.  Yes, I believe that a special island be reserved for the very intelligent, unremorseful leaders, so that they can live happily ever after without affecting the rest of us.  Yes, I believe there is such a thing as a benevolent leader who looks out for the common folks who are defenseless, otherwise.  No, I don’t believe that “Atlas Should Shrug!” as Ayn Rand proposed in her many conservative literary efforts, and radio broadcasts. Yes, I believe we shouldn’t abandon all poor people just because they are poor and have little hope for improvement, nourishment, security, health care and education.  Yes, I believe what Jesus suggested about loving your neighbour and turning the other cheek.  Yes, I believe it is time for a kind of “Second Coming,” where all people have a chance at personal happiness and a long happy life with like-minded individuals and families.

Yes, I believe it’s time for the Saints and Saintes to come marching in, hopefully accompanied by good music, dancing and joyfulness.  OK, I believe I’m being somewhat Pollyannaish.  I don’t think it’s necessary that we return to horses and wagons, but I think it is a better alternative to a BMW in every driveway.  Perhaps I have a mistaken idea about what it’s really like to be an Amish or a Mennonite, but the one’s I’ve met are pretty happy and have a satisfying life.  The bounty and beauty of Canada and many other countries need protection and we can’t do that without giving up polluting and destructive businesses and processes.  I think the native Americans were doing a much better job than the immigrant Europeans and others who are bent on remaking their environment to suit themselves.  I think Aboriginals all over the world have a true respect for natural flora and fauna.  In fact, I believe they worship the spirits of the trees and animals as if they were natural parts of their life-styles.  They do not cut down millions of oxygen supplying trees to make parking lots and paved highways.  Walking was the predominant way to get from place to place.  Canoeing and rafting do not pollute.  Smoke signals are relatively safe long distance communication.

Polyannish?  Yes, Mea Culpa!  I really don’t need a computer to write or paint.  I could satisfy my creativity by imitating the Neanderthals who drew whole histories and natural images on cave walls.  Structures made of fitted stones still stand after thousands of years.  I believe i and my loved ones would do very well in such a structure with running pure water for drinking, wine and honey for sustenance, and relaxation and simple instruments for making music and dancing.  Baking bread on a hearth and making wine and beer from grains and grapes are part of my heritage.  Aren’t they part of yours.  The two Hebrew prayers that I remember from my childhood were Blessed Art Thou, Creator of the Universe for teaching us how to make wine and for bringing forth bread from the earth.  As many of you have done for years, these are the prayers of the mealtimes, the places of worship, and the gathering of folks around a fire in the evening to tell our stories and listen to our legends with the elders who have lived successfully, happily and healthfully for many years.  A little tobacco and a little coffee help, as well.

And, music!  Music is God-given and essential.  I have often thought that the oldest history starts, “In the Beginning there was Music, and the Music was God!”  Animals have words.  People have music.  The entire Pentateuch was written to be sung!  It has no vowels but it does have musical notation.  And, there is laughter and dancing, tambourines and drums, and the joyful songs of Moses, David and of Solomon.  There are Angels playing harps and Gabriel blowing his horn.  There is the blowing of the ram’s horn to welcome the harvest and the new year.  There are the morning prayers of the Ojibwa to get the sun to rise.  There’s the flying Hora and the other dances to celebrate and bless the new man and the new women of the tribes when they come of age.  Its music to this author’s mind and the lovely music is heard all day long on the Classical Music station from Buffalo and the Jazz station from Toronto.  It is inspiring, tranquilizing, spiritual and it makes me more intelligent and creative.  It makes me feel as one with nature and my fellow travelers.

So, Saints and Saintes, it’s time to come and make sanity the byword instead of insanity.  It’s time to destroy all weapons of mass destruction.  It’s time to bring in the leaders who will respect nature and not destroy it.  It’s time to worship the land and the trees and the creatures, and the plants, which share this Firmament with us, on the land, in the air and under the water, and were created before Mankind was born.  I believe we all should flourish and multiply as the Creator first conceived of us in Gardens of Eden, everywhere.  Now, is the time!  Now, before we have done irreparable damage and raised already the carbon dioxide levels to heights that have NEVER been seen before on this Earth, our only Earth.

AMEN AND HALLELUJAH!

THE END

© izzy sommers, md

Welland, Canada

November 5, 2013

The Day I Stopped Driving My Car