Tunesday : Tomorrow Never Knows

Tomorrow Never Knows

(Lennon-McCartney) Performed by The Beatles

Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream
It is not dying, it is not dying

Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void
It is shining, it is shining

Yet you may see the meaning of within
It is being, it is being

Love is all and love is everyone
It is knowing, it is knowing

That ignorance and hates may mourn the dead
It is believing, it is believing

But listen to the colour of your dreams
It is not living, it is not living

So play the game "Existence" to the end
Of the beginning, of the beginning
Of the beginning, of the beginning
Of the beginning, of the beginning
Of the beginning, of the beginning

For this week's Tunesday post, my mind is trying to pull together a few different ideas, so here's hoping it will all make sense in the end. Using a Beatles song isn't unusual for me - I became a teenaged Beatlemaniac long after the group broke up - but I'm posting this particular song because of Michael Pollan's most recent book (How to Change Your Mind) and what it says about the psychedelic experience and the nature of reality. But to start with the mundane: my Easter weekend.

I was delighted that Mallory decided to come home for the weekend, even with school not quite finished; some papers yet to write and some finals yet to study for. The girls might technically be women by now - at 19 and 22 - but I'm grateful for any time we can all still spend together; and if that takes filling their Easter baskets and watching them hunt for chocolate-filled eggs, I'm happy to oblige.

I had heard that the Anglican priest who was a friend to my inlaws (they enjoyed services at his small church and Father Bill renewed their vows for their 50th anniversary) was retiring after the Easter service, so despite none of my little family of four really liking him personally, I proposed that we drive Granny and Grandpa back to London to attend - they haven't been back since they moved here in October, and it seemed like the right thing to do. To reiterate: Granny is not only suffering the dementia of Alzheimer's, but her body is weaker all the time - not being able to walk very far, needing help to get out of a chair - but just like with her mind, the failings of her body don't seem to bother her much: she lives in the moment and takes what comes, so she saw no reason why she wouldn't be up for this trip. So, as always, to get to this church, we needed to park across the street just down from a busy Y-intersection - with cars coming from every direction, but the crosswalk too far from the parking lot on one side and the church on the other to imagine getting Granny to hobble along and back that far, we played a dicey game of Frogger with Dave on one elbow and Kennedy on her other (Granny was slow but steady, doing fine until she couldn't quite seem to raise her foot onto the small curb at the other side). Getting into the church made everything worthwhile - all of the white-haired parishioners were delighted to see the inlaws, and there was much hugging and handshakes, smiles and inquiries. There are some truly ancient looking people in this small and dwindling congregation, but none of them looked as frail as our Granny; everyone had obvious concern behind their smiles. And they also had kind words for us - everyone from Father Bill down thanked us for bringing the old folks back for this service, and that was rather my secondary reason for going - to demonstrate to their old friends that we are here to care for them now and that they made the right decision to move closer to us.

The service itself was annoying in all that ways that Father Bill can make it so - pompously self-serving and basically anti-traditional. He started by instructing "the occasionals" (instead of his regular attendance of less than twenty people, Easter Sunday brought out something closer to forty, including us) that all were welcome to receive communion at the rail ("Unlike some other churches with their uninclusive rules"), and that if someone didn't want the wine, they could just cross their arms over their chest and receive a blessing instead ("The Bishop says that isn't the same thing, but God does, and only one of them is right"; as though Father Bill has a more direct line to God and His wishes than the Bishop?). His sermon was about Christian witness - that wearing a cross and putting a fish on your car isn't as important as the way that you conduct your life (which is a good message) - and then morphed into a lecture on how acting righteous isn't limited to the Christian faith (true) and that you don't even need to believe in God to do the right thing (which is also true, but a strange message for the holiest day of the Christian calendar; but that's the direction of the Anglican Church these days, I guess.) I was surprised that Granny wanted to go to the rail for communion, but we all went up and received our blessings. I was also surprised that when we were instructed to give each other the sign of peace (which to a Catholic like me means nods and handshakes), the congregation started moving around, going pew to pew to hug one another - that was very nice, and especially for the inlaws. (Also shocked to see on the program that Granny is one of the people they regularly pray for under "sick or suffering": they didn't know we were coming, but there was her name, so it's probably there every week; and while Dave and I were half-afraid that she would be offended to read her name or hear it read out as "sick or suffering", I think it all went over Granny's head.)

There was coffee and cake after the service, and we stayed as long as the old folks wanted to - and they had a nice time visiting, even if Granny couldn't quite keep up a conversation. Like usual, Father Bill tried to seem cool by telling some quasi-dirty joke to Dave (something about the size of his organ, har har) and eventually, we needed to get back across that road and to the car (uneventful but painfully slow and helplessly tying up traffic). We drove out to the sugar shack to get some maple syrup (had a nice visit with Carol, who is always lovely to us), and then to their old house to pick up some mail from a neighbour (Grandpa stood in the doorway with Bruce, gabbing for the longest time, while Amanda ran out and sat in the backseat with Granny, giving her all the neighbourhood gossip that she misses; Granny just smiled and nodded and was delighted to be talked to), and then we went to see JoAnne - finally back to her nursing home after a second broken hip, the 91-year old was obviously more mentally with it than her 77-year-old cousin; our Granny. (Granny twice commented on the orchids in JoAnne's window, each time as though for the first time, and when we left, Granny said, "You look so much better than the last time I saw you", which is what she must have thought was the proper thing to say at a post-hospitalisation visit, but since the last time she saw JoAnne was before Christmas - long before the broken hip - it came off as curious; I saw concern pass over JoAnne's brow, but she smiled warmly, which is JoAnne's lovely way.) Dinner, dropped the old folks back at their house, and then home again, where we four finished off Easter by watching the live performance of Jesus Christ Superstar (starring John Legend and Sarah Bareilles) from NYC, which was phenomenal. 

And so why Tomorrow Never Knows? I have so many thoughts bundled in my mind right now - I was fascinated by Pollan's book and the journeys he took into the metaphysical realms; with Granny's mind and body failing her (which would represent my first and closest brush with mortality), I would love to believe that something survives death (which I'm not sure I do). And then Father Bill's rambling sermon - which seemed to downplay the Resurrection; the point of Easter and Christian faith - makes me wonder what he, himself, believes; and if a priest (even an Anglican one) preaches against the necessity for tradition or even faith, what's the point of any Christian church? (Although, watching the inlaws be welcomed back into their community as they were answers that question.) Even Jesus Christ Superstar - focussing as it does on Judas' disbelief in his friend/teacher's divinity - ties into all this. So, with all this swirling in my mind, I had an interesting experience last night.

I was watching Ancient Aliens (don't judge; I've explained myself on this before - it's not that I believe in ancient alien contact but I enjoy the quasi-reality format of the show and get a satisfying twinge of superiority whenever they veer into whackadoodle territory), and it was a new episode from this season about the Ark of the Covenant and a theory (attributed to Sigmund Freud) that King Tut's brother Tuthmosis III was actually the Biblical Moses; that it was he who led the Israelites out of Egypt, taking the Ark of the Covenant (which the show claims was an advanced weapon built by aliens; whackadoodle) with them. This is all routine enough for this show - some real history, some questionable archaeology, some geographical visuals that make me say, "I'd love to go there" - but then it made a left turn; saying that they believe at some point the Ark was plundered by the Knights Templar and whisked away to Nova Scotia. So I should explain why that made me sit up and take notice:

I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail when I was a teenager, and when I did, I had the most remarkable experience: when the author first started talking about the Knights Templar, I had a rush of intense experience (it wasn't a flashback or an out-of-body type thing, just an intense identification with what I was reading) and I could swear that in the moment, I heard the pounding of hooves and sensed my mouth filling with the grit of swirling dust and felt my heart hammering in my chest. When I later described this to my friend Curtis, he reckoned I was probably a Knight Templar in an earlier life - which I liked the idea of, but recognise that it so unlikely (and falls into the trap of people only believing that they were "important" in earlier lives, Napoleon or Cleopatra, instead of the more likely farmer/peasant/slave that we all might have been) - and I went on to read many more books about their history. I was, therefore, one of those who were offended by the ripoffery of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code when it came out (Aha! the point of me using that picture up there!); how dare he essentially make fiction out of the exact same storyline that Michael Baigent et all had painstakingly researched for Holy Blood, Holy Grail! The Knights Templar are mine, not mass market pulp!

But while Baigent (and the copycat Brown) eventually place the Ark of the Covenant in France (or maybe, ultimately, Ethiopia), Ancient Aliens proposed that the Knights Templar brought it to Nova Scotia in the fourteenth century, burying it in a boobytrapped pit on Oak Island that I was told (and another show on the History Channel explains) is rumoured to be the resting place of a hoard of gold buried by the notorious pirate, Captain Kidd. I wasn't overly interested in the similarity between the curse stones discovered at both King Tut's tomb and in the Oak Island pit (each will claim seven lives before giving up their treasures!), but when the show started talking about the evidence that the Knights Templar met with the local Mi'kmaq people in what would become Nova Scotia, that gets my attention - my paternal grandfather's people were Mi'kmaq; I am of the Mi'kmaq. That is in my blood - no quasi-mystical, past-life reincarnated explanation required; what if there's Knight Templar in my blood as well?

Yes, yes, I suffer from magical thinking and I know better than to get my straight-up history from Ancient Aliens, but this was a serendipitous time to have seen this episode and it tied everything together - the failings of the body, the dwindling of organised religion as an answer to the big questions, the resurgence of psychedelics, a proposed meeting between my fantasies (the Knights Templar) and my realities (my Mi'kmaq blood) in the distance past - and who knows what to make of it all as it swirls and tumbles in my mind?

Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream

It is not dying, it is not dying