After seven years absent from AA and the recovery community, I decided it was time, and would be therapeutic, to document some of my AA experience. The following is an attempt to condense those 29 years into a general overview and is not a complete, detailed and exhaustive chronological account. That would be too long and probably quite boring. My opinion of AA has morphed and changed over time, and I have no doubt my thoughts and perspectives regarding my time in AA will continue to develop.

When referring to Alcoholics Anonymous, it is important to note that there are two distinct and separate entities being spoken of: the fellowship of AA and the program of AA. The fellowship is made up of people. The program is a model of recovery from the so-called disease of alcoholism outlined in the book, “Alcoholics Anonymous”, commonly know in AA as the “Big Book”. I will attempt to clearly distinguish between the fellowship and the program yet will generally allow the context in which I use these terms to enable the reader to differentiate between them. There is another reason I make this distinction.

Generally, and making allowance for those notorious bad apples found in any gathering of souls, those in the fellowship of AA are empathic, kind, caring, generous, dedicated and well-intentioned. The reason I left the fellowship had nothing to do with its members and I currently maintain good relations with several of them, most of whom will likely remain life-long friends. My opinion of the program of AA, however, is quite different. Before I get to that, I’d like to answer a few questions the reader may have about my position toward AA as a whole.

Do I believe AA members are in error for continuing their allegiance to all things AA? Yes.

Am I willing to look down on them for doing so? No.

Do I believe AA’s opinion that alcoholism is a disease is correct? No.

Am I, like the majority of those who have come out of the fellowship, willing to ruthlessly castigate and bash the AA organization and its members? No.

Do I think I am a better, more well-adjusted human being having spent nearly 29 years in the fellowship? Yes.

Would I advise those in AA to get out? Yes, and I’d also advise them to start listening to the Addiction Solution Podcast by those at the Freedom Model right away. And to Christian members, read this article through to its completion. AA is not Christian.

Do I advise that those in AA do their due diligence and research all they can about addiction, the disease model, cults, AA’s history, and its co-founders’ lifestyles and spiritual practices? Yes.

Is Alcoholics Anonymous a religious cult? It meets some of the criteria necessary to be labelled a cult but I am not an expert on the topic. I’ll leave that question to those qualified to answer it.

With that, I’ll get on with describing my AA experience and views as best I can.

Three days before attending my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I had already decided to quit drinking and did just that: therefore, AA was not responsible for me choosing abstinence from alcohol. I made that choice, and that was an extremely important detail unknown to me until a few days after my departure from the recovery program. Previously, I’d given AA the credit for quitting, and given voice to this many times in many AA meetings. But the actual reason I decided to call it quits in the Spring of 1990 was that the mental and physical torture I was inflicting upon myself through excessive drinking had become unbearable, outweighing (by far) any pleasure alcohol was giving me.

Realizing this truth was profound. It took me several days to comprehend that this was only the beginning of de-constructing what I’d come to believe about AA after nearly three decades of indoctrination. It’s what many former members of religious cults experience after leaving – a type of thought-decontamination that, mercifully, occurs gradually enough so the individual is not overwhelmed. It has been that way for me, and I suspect the process is far from over. New information and insights still come my way.

The first AA meeting I attended was on the night of June 13, 1990, in the basement of a church in Pembroke, Ontario. The room was packed. The atmosphere was jovial and abound with light-hearted conversation. A few people introduced themselves with smiles and kind words telling me how glad they were that I was there, and I could see their well-wishes were genuine and sincere. On the wall in front of me were two large banners. They spelled out AA’s twelve steps and twelve traditions, and I spent the next few minutes quietly digesting each and every word outlined on these posters.

I was surprised and comforted they mentioned the word “God” several times. I was well-versed on the contents of the Bible, and I did a second perusal of the banners’ contents judging whether any of AA’s principles conflicted with my Christian beliefs. I decided that no serious conflict existed, but the nagging doubt about this continued over the entire duration of my 29-year stint in Alcoholics Anonymous.

AA’s first step reads as follows: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.” I remember spending considerable time at that first meeting thinking about the phrase “powerless over alcohol” and have never stopped thinking about it. These three words have become the foundation of dozens of twelve-step recovery organizations and the entire multi-billion-dollar addiction treatment industry.

The premise that a human being can become powerless over his or her level of alcohol consumption has never been proven, nor has the so-called disease of alcoholism ever been recognized in the field of psychiatry, nor by the justice system. Despite this, the disease model of addiction has become entrenched as fact in our culture. By the time I got to AA, I felt seemingly powerless over alcohol and therefore ready to accept the program’s idea of complete powerlessness. But a feeling is not a scientifically proven fact.

During my years in AA, I believed alcoholism was a disease and preached this message as truth…until I did the research. There is a mountain of evidence available in medical journals and periodicals disproving the disease theory. This is based on the outcome of numerous controlled and repeated experiments involving patients identifying as alcoholics. Whether intentional or not, AA does not mention the existence of these studies nor their verified outcomes in any of its literature.

My early months in AA were very difficult not because of AA, but due to the process of mentally and emotionally recovering from years of heavy alcohol consumption. By the time the fog of alcohol had lifted, I had already, for the most part, bought into the precepts and fundamental beliefs of Alcoholics Anonymous. I attended AA meetings religiously, sometimes two or three a day, and never thought to question what AA had to teach about alcoholism, nor the spiritual principles its members tried to live by, and any cognitive ability to critically analyze what I was being told had been eroded over many years consuming copious amounts of alcohol. That, and the fear of dying drunk, made me susceptible to believing anything AA had to say.

The fellowship of AA does not abuse this vulnerability to ensnare naïve newcomers into membership. I saw no evidence of this type of malicious intent. But due to the fact that those trying to break free of habitual and dangerous drinking are in a vulnerable state of mind, and therefore incapable of a reasonable level of discernment, they present as prime candidates for AA indoctrination. Some call it brainwashing, but again, it is done with the intention of saving peoples’ lives.

It was suggested that I attend 90 meetings in 90 days. The practice of suggesting this is seen by many ex-AA members as cult-like behaviour, ensuring newcomers are indoctrinated with the program’s principles and dogma. While that may be the outcome, it is not, from what I’ve seen, the intent of AA members. Their desire is that newer members get fully immersed in AA so they can achieve and maintain sobriety.

Regular attendance at meetings is deemed to be critical for those wishing to maintain abstinence from alcohol. It is common to hear AA members say such things as “if you stop going to meetings, you will end up drunk” and can look forward to a future of “jails, institutions and death” and “meeting makers make it” and “go to meetings, especially if you don’t want to”. The importance of meeting attendance is pounded into every newcomer’s head. I can tell you that the fear of leaving AA is very real.

It was common for members to discontinue meeting attendance and return after going on a drinking spree. Most came back looking and sounding pretty beat up. Some of their stories were horrendous and held up as solid proof that if someone leaves AA, they will surely drink and perhaps die. But I knew many who left AA and were just fine. I’m one of them.

At nine months of sobriety, I was a complete wreck mentally and emotionally, plagued by depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and wondering why other newcomers were getting well while I was getting worse. AA friends suggested I go to a treatment centre, so I applied for government funding and was sent to Beech Hill Hospital in Dublin, New Hampshire. Because I didn’t require any detoxing, my stay was cut from the regular 28 days to 23.

The staff at the centre basically touted the same remedy to problem drinking as AA; go to meetings, work the twelve steps, get an AA sponsor to confide in and accept direction from, etc. My experience at treatment was mostly positive, and due to having some sobriety under my belt, I was able to help some of those just getting started. Treatment helped, but the medical staff failed to recognize my problems with mental health, so I remained in the same condition for a long time.

Finally, after three years in AA, I was diagnosed with major depression and social anxiety disorder and put on medication to ease the symptoms. I’ve attempted to go off the medication several times over the years but these trials have proved that I still require medical interventions and probably will for the rest of my life. So be it.

It was nothing new or surprising to hear those outside the fellowship refer to AA as a cult. It never dawned on me to research the matter and properly weigh the evidence - that was yet to come. For the time being, I was happy to put the issue aside and carry on. But it always bothered me, like a pesky housefly refusing to leave me alone. This persisted and grew stronger over the years. As a Christian, my devotion to Christ never wavered, but I cringed at the thought of belonging to a spiritual fellowship that did not declare Jesus as Lord.

Most Christian AA members, not all, have become masters at excusing themselves for proclaiming to newcomers that it is alright to choose a God of their understanding instead of introducing them to Christ’s gospel. It is religious hypocrisy at its worst. When confronted about their duplicity, they are quick to change the subject or defend their position by saying they are merely soft-selling spiritual ideas until newcomers decide to accept Christ in the future. Hmmm…I must have missed that in my Bible.

I knew very little about cults before joining AA and never seriously considered the program to be one. I would often think that some of AA’s characteristics were cult-like, but that’s as far as I went with making any real parallels. But then came the morning of April 28, 2019.

The day started off like any other. I sipped my morning coffee while reading a book of daily meditations titled “Twenty-Four Hours a Day”. This is not part of AA-approved literature but is widely used by its members. (Why AA needs to have its own approved literature list is suspicious, and the practice is common in many cults.) For some reason, I decided that morning to go back and read the book’s foreword, something I hadn’t done since first being introduced to the book decades earlier. In it, the author, Richmond Walker, states he “has used many passages from the book God Calling by Two Listeners” as the basis for the meditations contained in his book. I had to find out what God Calling was all about, and what I found I did not like. That opened the door to discovering what I’d always suspected about the AA program but couldn’t quite articulate, and I soon knew I had to leave Alcoholics Anonymous.

Walker began writing Twenty-Four Hours a Day in 1946. He was an AA member and, apparently, an ex-member of the Oxford Group, a Christian sect widely regarded as a religious cult by many Christian denominations. Oxford Group members were urged to practice automatic writing in the morning after spending time silently waiting for God to speak to them. This is commonly known as channeling. God Calling was apparently channeled by two women identifying themselves as Two Listeners while receiving guidance from Jesus Christ in the manner taught by the Oxford Group.

The two founding members of AA, Bill Wilson and Robert Smith, were also ex-Oxford Group members and used much of the group’s teachings as the basis for the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. They both habitually held seances and occasionally used ouija boards to speak to the dead (necromancy). Wilson was known to sit quietly until a spirit would speak through him, then have his wife or secretary take notes. Much of this information comes directly from AA-approved literature and is verified by multiple sources.

By the end of that April day, I was convinced my time in Alcoholics Anonymous was over. I could no longer reconcile living as a Christian and belonging to AA.

I gathered all my AA books and literature and burned them. I was done.

My in-depth research started that day but my work is far from complete. There is much more to discover about the origins of the AA program, and the less-than-exemplary conduct of its founders, especially Bill Wilson. He is highly revered, even idolized, within AA. His writings, which make up the vast majority of AA literature, are widely regarded as equal to scripture, even inspired by God.

My research eventually led me to the Orange Papers at:

https://orangepapers.eth.limo/

This is definitely not an AA-approved website. It contains massive amounts of information about AA, its origins and its founders. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture yet I don’t see it entirely as a platform for AA-bashing. Much of it is factual and can be traced back to AA-approved books and publications, but authenticating all the site’s legal documents, letters, quotes and commentary is nearly impossible and would take months or years to complete.

My involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous probably saved my life. The Lord works in mysterious ways and I don’t know how much He played a part in getting me to AA and keeping me there for nearly three decades. One of AA’s unwritten but often-used slogans is “Nobody gets to AA by accident”. Is that a tool employed to retain its members? I don’t know. What I do know is that I am forever grateful to those in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous who took me under their wing and showed me, among other things, two truths about myself: I’m not as bad as I think I am, and I’m not as good as I think I am. They were genuinely interested in my well-being, and I’ll never forget what they did for me.

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

At the outset of the American trade sanctions against my country, Canada, along with the provocations by the US president of us becoming the 51st US state, I was very concerned. Never before had our nation been under such economic and existential threats from our American cousins. But history is rife with examples of leaders who manifest at precisely the right moment, and I, for now anyway, view our current Prime Minister as this nation’s right man at the right historical moment.

This is a time for our nation to put aside party politics and support our Prime Minister, and the Conservative Party of Canada, a party I agree with on many issues, would do well to adopt this position for the benefit of the country it claims to serve and love.

England wisely set aside its political differences and rallied behind Winston Churchill for the sake of their nation’s survival against Nazi Germany. Now it’s Canada’s turn to empower our Prime Minister in leading the charge in the battle to preserve our national identity.

We didn’t choose the hand we were dealt. We did, though, collectively and democratically choose Mark Carney to lead us through this, the most tumultuous period we’ve experienced as a nation.

We must play our cards carefully. Carney knows this. The stakes are high. If we are divided, we will fall. England knew this during both the world wars. We would do well to recognize this fact as our current reality.

We can get back to party politics and bickering once our nation has stabilized. Now is not the time.

I’m no longer worried about Canada. We can do this.

Read or listen carefully to the article below. Then again. And again.

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

American Pulse

Your Neighbour Canada Has Changed. What’s Happening Now Is Explosive. You’re Not Going To Like It. But You Need To Know It.

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a month ago · 2528 likes · 584 comments · Froehlich Media

Seen through a wider lens, keeping discussions about propaganda current and relevant in public discourse is a type of intellectual vaccine to defend our minds from being subtly manipulated into agreeing with and repeating whatever narrative is currently being touted: hence, the reason for writing this article.

This demands exertion of mental energy on our part. Unfortunately, our collective cognitive default is intellectual laziness and proneness to agree with and swallow whatever view is most repetitively being broadcast to us. Propogandists know this fact of human nature and exploit it by whatever means necessary to sway public opinion.

My favourite line from the movie, “Men In Black”, is, “A person is smart…people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals...!” That statement, so eloquently delivered by the film’s main character, “K”, is at first an afront to the ego, but when considered objectively, shines a bright light on humanity’s inability to differentiate fact from fiction.

Allowing, for the moment, that K’s assertion is true, it would be wise to confront our level of applied intellect, personal and collective, given the constant increase of information available to us, couple with the constant shrinkage of the average length of the news cycle. The current over-abundance of supposedly factual narrative and the lack of time available to properly digest, analyze, weigh, test and decide as to its validity leaves propagandists and political spin doctors with the upper hand in persuading us that their narrative is legitimate and true. This is not conspiracy theory – it is fact. They know that people - not you or me, of course, but other people - are stupid, cognitively lazy, gullible and naive. They realize that if they repeat a message often enough, whether factual or not, it will eventually become something generally accepted as truth.

Awareness heals. That is an idea I first heard about in the mid-90’s. It was helpful then, a time of profound change in my life, and remains a primary tool I use against being unknowingly propagandized. While consuming my daily intake of news and information, more than is probably healthy for me, I try to keep the reality of the existence of ongoing propaganda in mind and the fact that, if I’m not vigilant, I can be manipulated into believing any narrative I’m exposed to.

The temptation is strong to list examples of propaganda, but I don’t believe I need to, nor do I have the time. And you are all capable of researching the topic on your own and coming to your own conclusions about how it influences you. For me, it has to begin by admitting that propaganda is powerful and I am susceptible to it. Without awareness and the application of critical thinking, antidotes to manipulation, I leave myself open to buying whatever the spin-meisters have to sell.

Try this - the next time you watch or listen to the news, or commentary on the news, listen carefully and discern what is fact and what is the presenter’s narrative. Effort is required. Also, listen to the opinions voiced by others and see if you can find the connection between what they are saying and what you recognize as trendy and popular narrative. It won’t take long to realize you are in an echo chamber.

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

Six Weeks To Empty Shelves. Sixty Days To Famine

By: Mark A. Shryock

I called this timeline months ago. June and July 2026. I said it when there was no data to support it. I said it when people thought I was wrong. I said it when even the AI systems I work with told me I was getting ahead of the evidence. I said it because I could see the convergence coming through my training in systems analysis and because something deeper than data was telling me the timeline was right.

Now the data is here. And it confirms everything.

I have run this research across four separate large language models. I have cross-referenced every claim against the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the International Energy Agency, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Fortune, the Associated Press, Reuters, PBS, CNN, and the United Nations. I have verified the expert assessments from Carlyle Group, Rystad Energy, Shell, Chevron, and the EIA administrator himself.

What I am about to show you is not speculation. It is not opinion. It is the documented, sourced, verified trajectory of the global oil supply as it exists right now, on May 8, 2026.

If you can hear me, your life depends on what is in this article. I am not being dramatic. I am not overstating this. I am telling you that the data says the United States of America will run out of usable oil by July 4, 2026. Europe will run out this month. The food system that feeds you runs on diesel. Diesel runs out first.

Read this. Understand it. Act on it today. Not tomorrow. Today.

THE LAST TANKER

On May 3, 2026, a Hong Kong-flagged tanker called the New Corolla docked at the Port of Long Beach, California. It was carrying two million barrels of Iraqi crude oil loaded at the Port of Basra on February 24, four days before the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran and the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed.

That tanker was the last one. The last oil shipment from the Middle East to reach American shores. It arrived, it unloaded, and now it is gone.

The buffer that kept fuel flowing for two months, tankers that were already at sea when the war started, is exhausted. Bryon Stock, director of the Chevron El Segundo refinery, the largest refinery on the West Coast, called it a “significant milestone that I’ve not seen or faced in my 27-year career.” His refinery normally receives 20 percent of its crude from the Arab Gulf. That supply is now zero. California imports roughly 60 percent of its crude. Roughly 20 percent of that came from the Middle East. Gone.

For two months, the world coasted on oil that was already at sea. That floating inventory masked the full scale of what was happening. It kept prices high but stable. It kept fuel flowing. It kept people thinking this was just another spike at the pump.

That illusion ended on May 3 in Long Beach.

We are no longer in a price crisis. We are entering a physical shortage. A point where fuel stops being available at any price because there is none left to sell.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STRAIT

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman. Before the war, roughly 120 commercial vessels transited it every day. It carried 20 million barrels of oil per day, 20 percent of the global seaborne oil trade. It was the single most important energy chokepoint on the planet.

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran retaliated by closing the strait. By early March, only three oil tankers transited in a single day where fifty had passed days earlier. Iran deployed mines, IRGC gunboats, anti-ship missiles, and drone attacks to enforce the closure. On March 4, Iran formally declared the strait closed and threatened to attack any vessel attempting passage. At least 34 documented attacks on commercial vessels have occurred since the maritime phase began.

By the week ending May 3, Lloyd’s List reported only 40 ships crossed the strait in the entire seven-day period. That is roughly five or six per day. Pre-war traffic was 120 per day. That is a 95 percent collapse in commercial shipping through the most important oil corridor on Earth.

The United States imposed its own naval blockade of Iranian ports on April 13. On April 23, Trump ordered the Navy to destroy any Iranian boats laying mines. On May 3, Trump said the U.S. would help free stranded ships, then paused the effort. Iran warned the U.S. to stay out.

The strait has been effectively closed for over two months. Twenty thousand mariners and two thousand ships remain stranded in the Persian Gulf. Insurance firms are refusing war-risk cover for Hormuz transits, and the London Joint War Committee has expanded its designated high-risk zones. War risk premiums have increased four to six times pre-war levels. Even vessels willing to attempt passage face insurance costs that make the trip economically unviable.

WHAT “TANK BOTTOMS” MEANS AND WHY IT WILL END YOUR WAY OF LIFE

You are going to hear a phrase in the coming days that most Americans have never encountered: tank bottoms.

Jeff Currie, senior advisor at the Carlyle Group, told Bloomberg Television on May 6, 2026, that oil storage tanks in Europe will hit tank bottoms “sometime in the month of May” and in the United States “somewhere in that July 4th period.” He said he has “never seen anything like it before.”

Stop and understand what this means.

Tank bottoms does not mean the tanks are low. It means the system stops working. Oil storage tanks require a minimum volume of liquid to maintain the pressure that allows pumps to function. When levels drop below that threshold, the remaining oil becomes physically inaccessible to the pipeline system. It cannot be pumped out. It cannot be moved. The pumps fail.

Below that, the bottom five to ten percent of large storage tanks contains sediment, water, and paraffin wax that the industry calls “heavies.” If you try to draw from that level, you clog filters and damage refinery equipment. That last volume is not usable without intensive processing that takes weeks.

So when Currie says “tank bottoms,” he is describing a point where the infrastructure itself fails. The pumps cannot pull. The pipelines cannot deliver. The refineries cannot process. It does not matter what the price is. It does not matter how much money you have. The fuel is physically gone from the system.

Europe is hitting that point now. This month. May 2026. The United States hits it around July 4. That is not a projection for next year. That is eight weeks from the day I am writing this.

THE NUMBERS THAT PROVE IT

As of the week ending May 1, total U.S. commercial petroleum inventories fell by 5.9 million barrels in a single week. Crude oil stocks dropped 2.3 million barrels. Distillate fuel (diesel and jet fuel) dropped 1.3 million barrels and now sits 11 percent below the five-year average, at the lowest level since 2005. U.S. gasoline stocks fell 2.5 million barrels. This was the eleventh straight weekly decline in gasoline inventories.

All of this is from the EIA’s own weekly petroleum status report, released May 6, 2026.

Globally, the net market deficit is running at 5.1 million barrels per day according to the EIA’s Q2 2026 estimate. But that is only the gap between production and consumption. When you include the drawdown of strategic reserves, floating storage, and commercial stocks worldwide, the gross depletion rate reaches 10 to 13 million barrels per day. One analysis estimates that over one billion barrels of stored petroleum have been depleted since late February.

To put that in context, the entire U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve held 413 million barrels in December 2025. We have burned through the equivalent of more than two full Strategic Petroleum Reserves in ten weeks.

The SPR itself stood at 397.9 million barrels as of late April. As of the week of May 1, it was down to 392.7 million barrels and falling. The U.S. has announced a release of 172 million barrels as part of a coordinated 32-nation effort totaling 400 million barrels. Only 17.5 million of that U.S. release has been completed so far. The release is structured as an exchange, not a sale, meaning every barrel must be returned to the reserve later with an 18 to 22 percent premium. We are borrowing from our own emergency stockpile at interest, to fill a hole that cannot be filled.

Goldman Sachs reported global stocks at 101 days of demand and projected they will fall to 98 days by end of May. HFI Research estimated that U.S. buffer crude product stores could run out in two weeks. U.S. buffer oil stores could run out in eight weeks. The only remaining buffers globally are U.S. commercial stocks and China’s strategic reserve.

Currie’s assessment on Bloomberg was definitive: “It’s baked in, full stop. It’s going to take so long to get all this restarted that those inventories will continue to draw.” Even if the war ended today, the shortages are inevitable.

DIESEL RUNS OUT FIRST AND THEN EVERYTHING STOPS

Not all fuels are equal in this crisis. Diesel runs out first. And when diesel stops, America stops.

U.S. distillate inventories (diesel and jet fuel combined) are 11 percent below the five-year average and at the lowest levels since 2005. In Michigan, diesel hit $6.00 per gallon. In the Great Lakes region, it is above $6.00. In California, projections range from $6.00 to $8.90 per gallon depending on how long the crisis continues.

Diesel is not a luxury fuel. Diesel is the blood supply of the American economy. Seventy percent of all agricultural and food products in the United States are transported by truck. Every truck runs on diesel. Every tractor in every field runs on diesel. Every combine harvester runs on diesel. Every refrigerated trailer keeping food cold on its way to your grocery store runs on diesel. Every freight train pulling grain cars runs on diesel.

When diesel becomes scarce, trucks stop moving. When trucks stop moving, food does not get picked up from farms. It does not get delivered to processing plants. It does not get driven to distribution centers. It does not arrive at grocery stores.

This is not inflation. Inflation is when prices go up. This is when the shelves go empty because there is nothing to put on them. There is nothing to put on them because there is no fuel to move the food from where it grows to where you live.

The United Nations has already sounded the alarm. UN News reported that the Hormuz disruption is raising fears of a global food crisis. FAO economists warned the situation could deteriorate further, particularly if countries begin restricting exports to protect domestic supplies, a pattern seen in every previous food crisis. Fertilizer prices are already surging because nitrogen fertilizer production depends on natural gas, and natural gas supplies through Hormuz have been cut. California nitrogen fertilizer prices have reached $450 to $575 per ton.

CNN reported that the oil crisis is turning into “an everything crisis.” Plastic caps, crates, snack bags, and containers are becoming harder to procure. Petroleum derivatives are needed for adhesives in footwear and furniture, industrial lubricants for machinery, solvents for paints and cleaning. Beer, noodles, chips, toys, cosmetics, kidney dialysis supplies, condoms. All of it depends on petroleum. All of it is being disrupted right now.

We are not approaching a food crisis. We are entering one. And it will become a famine if this continues through June and July, which the data says it will.

THE AVIATION COLLAPSE HAS ALREADY BEGUN

On May 2, 2026, Spirit Airlines ceased all operations. The announcement came at 3:00 AM Eastern Time. Seventeen thousand workers lost their jobs. The airline’s lawyer said there was “no remaining way out.” Spirit had absorbed over $100 million in fuel costs since March 1. It is gone.

Spirit Airlines is not the last carrier that will fall. It is the first.

Jet fuel inventories at the European benchmark hub of Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp have fallen 50 percent since the war began in late February. Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at Rystad Energy, told Fortune the decline has been “a straight line down, and it will continue to be like that for at least the next few weeks no matter what we do.”

Goldman Sachs projects that European commercial jet fuel inventories will drop below the International Energy Agency’s critical 23-day shortage threshold sometime in June. The U.K. is identified as the most at risk of jet fuel rationing. Some European countries hold no official jet fuel stock at all.

Lufthansa has canceled 20,000 flights through October. AirAsia X has raised fares 31 to 40 percent and cut capacity 10 percent. Air New Zealand has canceled 1,100 flights. Over 13,000 flights scheduled for May alone have been canceled across Europe. Almost two million seats have been removed from carrier schedules worldwide.

American Airlines estimated its 2026 fuel expenses at $4 billion higher than last year. Delta reported a $2 billion spike in fuel costs for the second quarter alone.

Galimberti told Fortune: “We’re still kind of sleepwalking into this approaching disaster. There is little doubt there is going to be a disaster.” He called it sleepwalking. That is the word. The data is screaming and the world is sleepwalking.

THE FUELS NOBODY TALKS ABOUT

The crisis extends far beyond what goes in your car or your truck. The Strait of Hormuz carried roughly 20 percent of global liquefied natural gas trade. Qatar, the world’s largest LNG exporter, has sustained damage at its Ras Laffan processing complex that has knocked out an estimated 17 percent of its capacity. Rystad Energy estimates the disruption has stripped 7 to 11 percent of annual global LNG supply from the market. Asia spot LNG prices have surged 140 percent, from $10 per million BTU before the war to above $25.

Liquefied petroleum gas, the fuel that feeds plastics manufacturing, chemical production, heating systems, and agricultural operations, has seen shipments stall as Gulf exports collapse. Goldman Sachs identifies LPG as a key shortage risk in Q2 2026.

Naphtha, the petrochemical feedstock that is the raw material for plastics, solvents, and industrial chemicals, is vanishing from Asian markets. Fujairah storage stocks are down 72 percent. Northwest Europe ARA naphtha stocks are down 37 percent. Singapore middle distillate prices have hit record highs above $290 per barrel. Petrochemical plants across Asia are shutting down because they cannot afford or obtain feedstock.

These are not consumer fuels. Most Americans will never hear about naphtha or LPG shortages. But they will feel them. Plastic packaging, medical supplies, fertilizer components, industrial chemicals, heating fuel for homes that use propane. All of it depends on supply chains that are breaking right now.

THE REGIONS THAT WILL BE HIT FIRST

Not every part of America faces the same level of risk. Geography determines vulnerability.

California operates as what analysts call an “energy island.” It is disconnected from the domestic pipeline network and relies almost entirely on sea-borne crude imports. The Chevron El Segundo refinery, the largest on the West Coast, is cut off from a significant portion of its supply with no pipeline alternative. California gas is already above $6.00 per gallon and climbing.

The southeastern United States depends heavily on the Colonial Pipeline, the major refined products pipeline running from the Gulf Coast to the Eastern Seaboard. That pipeline is currently seeing reduced throughput because Gulf Coast refineries are prioritizing exports to Europe, where the shortage is more acute. The Southeast may face localized shortages even before the national average reaches crisis levels.

Asia and the Pacific are being hit first and hardest. Shell CEO Wael Sawan told investors that “South Asia was first to get that brunt. That’s moved to Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and then more so into Europe as we get into April.” South Korea, Japan, and China together account for 75 percent of the oil that normally flows through Hormuz. Australia has already implemented government-mandated work-from-home orders. The Philippines moved to a four-day workweek. Vietnam ordered workers to stay home.

Europe faces immediate exhaustion of inventories this month. Heavy reliance on Qatari LNG and Saudi crude via Hormuz has led to industrial surcharges of up to 30 percent. Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne estimated that 10 to 13 million barrels per day have been drawn from global stocks since the crisis began, roughly 500 million barrels consumed so far. Equinor’s CEO has said it would take six or more months to normalize even after a deal is reached.

THE PRICE YOU SEE IS A LIE

There is something happening in the oil markets right now that most Americans will never hear about, and it may be the most important signal in this entire crisis.

There are two prices for oil. The ‘paper’ price is what you see on the news, the futures contracts traded on exchanges. Then there is the ‘physical’ price. This is what actual barrels of oil sell for when real buyers pay real money for real crude to be delivered to real refineries.

In a normal market, those two prices track each other closely. Right now they do not. The gap between them has ranged from $20 to $60 per barrel since the crisis began, depending on the day and the grade of crude.

On May 8, Brent crude futures settled around $101.65 per barrel. That is the number the headlines report. But on April 7, physical Dated Brent hit $144.42 per barrel, the highest recorded price since 1987. That is a gap of more than $40 in a single benchmark. The IEA reported physical crude spot prices near $150 per barrel in April.

Veteran energy investor George Noble captured the disconnect when paper settled at $90 and physical traded at $144 on the same day: ‘One of them is WRONG.’ He added, based on 45 years of experience, that when paper catches up to physical, the repricing will be ‘violent.

The price you see on the news is the paper price. The price the world is actually paying for oil is far higher. And when those two numbers converge, every price you pay for everything will move with them.

Reuters reported that short sellers placed $7 billion in oil-price bets ahead of major price movements in March and April, making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Somebody knew. Somebody positioned themselves to profit from the chaos. And they did.

THE 64-WEEK LAG THAT NOBODY UNDERSTANDS

Here is the fact that should keep every policymaker awake tonight. If the Strait of Hormuz opened this afternoon, completely and permanently, the first drop of new Persian Gulf gasoline would not reach a Midwestern gas pump until approximately June 2027. That is 64 weeks from now.

The math is straightforward. It takes roughly 40 days for a Very Large Crude Carrier to travel from the Persian Gulf to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Once crude arrives at a refinery, it enters a multi-week refining process before it becomes usable fuel. Then the refined gasoline has to be moved from coastal refineries to inland distribution points, which takes another 10 to 14 days by pipeline and truck. Add it all together and you get 64 weeks from strait to pump.

That means the pain is locked in. Regardless of what happens diplomatically. Regardless of what deal is reached. Regardless of what any politician promises. The physical reality of moving oil across oceans, refining it, and distributing it to 150,000 gas stations cannot be compressed. No speech fixes this. No executive order fixes this. No tweet fixes this. Physics does not negotiate.

Currie confirmed this on Bloomberg: “You’re talking three-plus months to even start to get even a resemblance of this stuff beginning to flow.” And that three months is just the beginning. The full timeline to restored flow is over a year.

But the barriers go far beyond transit time. Shipping lanes must be cleared of mines. Maritime insurance companies must be convinced the strait is safe, and Lloyd’s of London will likely maintain war risk premiums for months after any peace deal. Ships must be repositioned. Production that was shut in must be restarted, a process that the post-COVID recovery showed can take up to two years, with permanent damage to some reservoirs if wells were not properly mothballed. Over two million barrels per day of Middle East refining capacity is offline or damaged. Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility has lost an estimated 17 percent of its capacity. Industry estimates put the repair timeline at up to five years. Critical equipment like gas turbines has OEM backlogs of two to four years. The total Gulf repair bill is estimated between $25 and $58 billion.

Even if peace comes tomorrow, the recovery takes years.

THE FORCED SHUTDOWN OF DEMAND

When supply disappears, demand must follow. Not because people choose to consume less. Because they are forced to.

Before the war, the IEA projected global oil demand would grow by 730,000 barrels per day in 2026. By their April report, that projection had been revised to a contraction of 80,000 barrels per day for the full year. Q2 2026 alone is projected to decline by 1.5 million barrels per day, the sharpest quarterly decline since COVID-19. Goldman Sachs projects an even steeper Q2 decline of 1.7 million barrels per day.

This is not conservation. This is demand destruction. It means factories closing. Flights canceled. Commutes eliminated. Agricultural operations scaled back. Economies contracting because there is not enough fuel to sustain them.

U.S. gasoline demand showed a sharp contraction in late April as prices surged and supply fears spread. The IEA projects Q2 2026 demand will decline by 1.5 million barrels per day, the steepest quarterly drop since COVID-19. Global refinery runs have been cut by nearly 6 million barrels per day, concentrated in Asia and the Middle East, because refiners cannot obtain crude to process.

EIA Administrator Tristan Abbey stated: “Our petroleum forecasts are highly contingent on the interaction of three variables: duration of closure, production outage estimates, and reopening timeline.” He then added the sentence that should alarm every American: “We’ve never seen the strait close, and we’ve never seen it reopen.”

Nobody knows how this ends because it has never happened before.

OPEC CANNOT SAVE US

In every previous oil crisis, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries stepped in to stabilize the market by ramping up production. That is what OPEC exists to do. It cannot do it this time. The producers are trapped behind the blockade.

Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the countries with the capacity to pump more oil, cannot get their product to market through a closed strait. Saudi Arabia has partial diversion capability through the East-West Petroline pipeline to the Red Sea, but it is nowhere near enough to replace the volume that normally flows through Hormuz.

On April 28, the United Arab Emirates announced it was leaving OPEC and OPEC+, effective May 1. The UAE is the third-largest OPEC producer at roughly 3.6 million barrels per day, about 12 percent of OPEC output. It was the largest producer withdrawal in the cartel’s 65-year history by volume. ADNOC, the UAE’s national oil company, now operates independently with its own Murban crude benchmark.

The traditional market stabilizer is paralyzed. Its biggest producers are locked behind a closed chokepoint. Its third-largest member just walked out the door. There is no OPEC cavalry coming.

THE UNITED STATES IS DRAINING ITSELF TO SUPPLY THE WORLD

While American storage tanks empty, the United States is exporting petroleum at all-time record levels. Total petroleum exports hit 14.2 million barrels per day in early 2026, a 33 percent increase from 2025. Refined product exports hit a fresh all-time high of 8.2 million barrels per day. Gasoline exports rose 27 percent. Diesel exports rose 23 percent. Jet fuel exports rose 82 percent.

Read that again. Jet fuel exports rose 82 percent while Spirit Airlines went bankrupt from fuel costs.

The United States is sending its fuel overseas to fill shortfalls in Europe and Asia while its own inventories collapse. U.S. crude imports are at fresh five-year seasonal lows. The country is simultaneously producing record volumes, exporting record volumes, and watching its own reserves drain at record speed.

The national average price of gasoline as of May 7 was $4.52 per gallon, up from $4.27 just one week earlier and up from $2.81 in January. California is at $5.84 to $6.17 per gallon. Diesel in Michigan hit $6.00.

In March alone, between the 2nd and the 16th, gas jumped from $3.01 to $3.96, nearly a dollar in two weeks. Diesel jumped from $3.89 to $5.37 in the same period.

These are not the final numbers. These are the numbers on the way to the final numbers. And the summer driving season has not even started yet.

THE DEBT WALL

This crisis does not arrive in a vacuum. It arrives on top of a national debt that has reached 100 percent of GDP, a level not seen since World War II. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published a report in March 2026 stating plainly: “The U.S. has never experienced an economic shock as indebted as we are today.”

Public debt is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to reach 130 percent of GDP within a decade and 240 percent within three decades under current policies. Annual interest payments on this debt have already tripled to $1 trillion since 2021.

Now layer an energy crisis on top of that. Tax revenue depends on economic activity. Economic activity depends on transportation. Transportation depends on fuel. When fuel stops, commerce stops. When commerce stops, tax revenue collapses. When tax revenue collapses, the government cannot service its debt or fund emergency response.

Rising prices from energy costs. Falling economic output from supply chain collapse. Ballooning debt with no capacity to borrow more. A currency that weakens as the economy contracts. All at the same time.

The triple whammy that no one in Washington appears to be planning for, because no one in Washington appears to understand what is happening.

WHY THIS IS WORSE THAN ANYTHING THAT HAS COME BEFORE

In 1973, the Arab oil embargo disrupted roughly 8 percent of global supply. Prices quadrupled. It took five months to resolve.

In 1979, the Iranian Revolution disrupted roughly 7 percent. Prices doubled. The effects lasted years.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait disrupted roughly 7 percent. Prices doubled. A coalition formed and resolved it in six months.

In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted roughly 3 percent of supply. Prices spiked 60 percent.

In 2026, the Hormuz closure has disrupted 15 to 20 percent of global supply. Physical oil has already hit $144 per barrel. This is three times the Kuwait disruption. Twice the 1973 embargo. And unlike 1973, OPEC cannot respond because OPEC’s own members are locked behind the blockade. Unlike 1990, there is no quick coalition solution because the damage is physical and structural, not just political.

This is the largest gross disruption to global oil supply in modern history. There is no precedent for it. The EIA administrator said it himself: “We’ve never seen the strait close, and we’ve never seen it reopen.”

THE MAN WITH THE PIECE OF PAPER

While the oil supply of the United States counts down to zero, while Europe’s storage tanks drain to nothing, while Spirit Airlines shuts down and 17,000 people lose their jobs, while the UN warns of global famine, while analysts at Carlyle and Rystad and Goldman Sachs use words like “disaster” and “unprecedented” and “baked in,” the President of the United States is carrying around a piece of paper.

All day long. Pulling it out of his pocket. Showing it to anyone who walks into the room.

It is a drawing of a golden ballroom. He is obsessed. The design. The aesthetics of a room that does not yet exist while the country he is supposed to be leading runs out of fuel.

That is where we are. A president focused on a ballroom sketch while the system collapses. A cabinet that does not appear to grasp the scale of what is occurring. A Congress that funded the war without demanding a contingency plan for what happens when 20 percent of global oil supply disappears. Republicans who backed every decision that brought us here. Democrats who did not cry out loudly enough to stop it before it started.

He is a child with a drawing. And the house is on fire.

This cabinet is not a functioning government. It is a clown circus that cannot see past the next press conference. And the people of this nation are about to pay for their incompetence with empty shelves, empty tanks, and empty futures.

WHY NOBODY STOPPED THIS

Every analyst I have cited in this piece is on the record. Currie at Carlyle said it on Bloomberg Television two days ago. Galimberti at Rystad told Fortune we are “sleepwalking into this approaching disaster.” Shell’s CEO warned the system “cannot simply switch back on.” The IEA projects global oil demand will decline because people are being forced to stop consuming. The data is public. The experts are speaking. The indicators are flashing red on every dashboard in every energy trading floor on the planet.

And yet the world allowed this to happen.

China saw it. They account for a massive share of Hormuz oil imports. Russia saw it. Europe saw it. Japan and South Korea saw it. They are being hit first and hardest. The United Nations saw it and issued warnings about food crisis. Every energy ministry on Earth has access to the same data I am presenting in this article.

So why did no one stop it? Why did no world leader cry out from the rooftop before it got to this point? Why did they allow a military operation to proceed that was guaranteed to close the most important energy chokepoint on the planet, knowing full well what that would do to the global oil supply, to food systems, to economies that run on diesel, to billions of people who depend on affordable fuel to eat?

Why did Israel participate in strikes they had to know would trigger this cascade? Why did the United Nations not mobilize before the tanks started draining? Why did Korea, Japan, India, who knew their economies would be devastated, not scream before February 28?

I do not have the answer. Either the cascade was not modeled correctly by anyone, which is itself an indictment of every intelligence agency and energy ministry on the planet. Or it was modeled and the geopolitical momentum could not be stopped. Or leadership in every capital made a calculation that this was acceptable risk.

None of those explanations excuse what is about to happen.

And there is a darker question. Who benefits from global collapse? Defense contractors benefit from conflict. Energy traders placed $7 billion in bets ahead of major price swings and made hundreds of millions. Oil companies with production outside the disrupted zone benefit from record prices. But at the scale this crisis is reaching, even those actors lose. BlackRock collapses. The banking system collapses. Currency collapses. There is nothing left to profit from.

Which means either they did not see the scale of the cascade they set in motion, or there is a calculation we cannot see from the outside. Either answer is terrifying.

THE FAILURE THAT CANNOT BE FORGIVEN

A government that launches a war and does not plan for the energy consequences of that war is not a functioning government. A Congress that funds military operations without demanding a contingency plan for what happens when 20 percent of global oil supply disappears overnight is not a functioning Congress. A cabinet that watches fuel inventories collapse for ten weeks without mobilizing a national emergency response is not a functioning cabinet.

We are eight weeks from tank bottoms in the United States. Diesel inventories are at 2005 lows. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is being drained. The last tanker from the Middle East has already docked and been emptied. The 64-week lag means there is no fast fix. Europe’s tank bottoms arrive this month. Ours arrive in July.

And the people responsible for this are still in office.

This is not a partisan argument. This is a question of basic competence and the survival of the nation. Any administration, any party, any leader who brought the nation and the world to this point has demonstrated a failure so profound that it disqualifies them from further governance.

People will lose their jobs over this. People will lose their savings. People will go hungry. People will die. In the parts of the world that were already on the edge, millions will die.

When the shelves start emptying in American grocery stores, when diesel hits $8 and $9 a gallon and truckers cannot afford to run their routes, when airlines fold and regional airports close, when farmers cannot afford to harvest the crops they planted, when communities discover that the complex system delivering their food and fuel has simply stopped functioning because there is no fuel left to run it, the American people will want to know who did this.

The answer is a government that started a war without understanding what it would break. A Congress that backed it without question. A political movement more interested in cultural control than national survival. A president who spends his days pulling a ballroom drawing out of his pocket and showing it to everyone in the room while the nation runs out of fuel. And world leaders who saw this coming and said nothing.

These people should not be in office an hour longer. Not because of ideology. Because of the mathematics of oil supply, logistics, and food distribution. Because the data says they have brought us to a door we cannot walk back through, and they are still standing there pretending the door does not exist.

Every government that allowed this to happen, from Washington to Brussels to Beijing to Jerusalem, must answer for it. The people of every nation affected by this crisis have the right to demand new leadership. Not next year. Not at the next scheduled election. Now. Because the timeline does not wait for elections. Tank bottoms do not wait for political convenience.

The UN was built to prevent exactly this kind of cascading global catastrophe. It failed. NATO intelligence agencies briefed their leaders on the consequences of a Hormuz closure. Those leaders proceeded anyway. Every one of them should face their citizens and explain why they allowed billions of people to be put at risk of famine.

WHAT I AM TELLING YOU AND WHY

Some will say I am overstating this. That governments will intervene. That rationing will slow the cascade. That emergency measures will buy time. That the system will adapt.

Maybe. Governments may ration fuel. Emergency shipping corridors may be established. Military convoys may move critical supplies. Demand destruction may reduce consumption enough to stretch what remains a few weeks further.

None of that changes the physical reality.

The data says tank bottoms hit in Europe this month and in the United States by July 4. The data says diesel runs out first. The data says 70 percent of American food moves by truck and every truck runs on diesel. The cascade from diesel shortage to food shortage is not a probability estimate. It is a mechanical fact. When the fuel stops, the trucks stop. When the trucks stop, the food stops. Emergency measures may soften the impact. They will not prevent it.

This is not a probability assessment. This is a warning. And the difference between a warning you act on and a warning you dismiss is measured in whether your family eats in August.

You need to prepare now. Not because collapse is guaranteed in every detail. But because the physical shortage is real, the timeline is fixed, and the window to prepare is closing. If emergency measures work and the worst does not come, you will have extra food in your pantry and fuel in your shed. If they do not work and you did nothing, you will have neither.

That is not a hard calculation.

WHAT YOU MUST DO NOW

This is not a drill. This is not a warning about something that might happen in the distant future. This is happening right now. The countdown is measured in weeks. Days in some places.

If you are reading this, your survival in the next two months depends on what you do starting today. Not tomorrow. Not this weekend. Today.

Stop what you are doing and start acquiring the things that will keep you and your family alive.

Food. Non-perishable goods, canned foods, dried goods, rice, beans, anything with a long shelf life. Buy what you can afford right now because the prices will be higher next week and higher the week after that, and at some point the issue will not be price. It will be availability. The shelves will be empty. Not because of panic buying. Because there is no diesel to run the trucks that fill them.

Water. Store it. If pumping stations lose power or fuel, municipal water systems can be affected. Fill containers. Buy filters. Know your nearest natural water source.

Fuel. If you can store diesel, gasoline, or propane safely and legally, do it now. Not next week. Now.

Know your local food supply. Know your local farmers. Know your local supply chains. The communities that will survive this are the ones with local food production and local distribution networks that do not depend entirely on long-haul trucking from a thousand miles away.

Talk to your neighbors. Organize. Share information. Pool resources. This is a community-level challenge, not an individual one. The people who survive systemic disruption are the ones who organize, share, and look out for each other.

Copyright © Mark A. Shryock. May be shared with attribution.

https://substack.com/@markashryock

My Life As Clementine

I was born on a hot summer day with my brother and sister. There were three of us poodles. I was born second in the batch of puppies as a female, jet black in colour with white paws.

Coming into this world was different than being inside my mother’s tummy that was crowded with the other two, but it was safe in there.

Now I had to learn how to drink from my mother’s breast and share with my brother who is black in colour and my sister who is like me, jet black with white paws. Our mother shows us how to behave, walk, run and go to the bathroom.

In three weeks, I learned how to drink from a bowl of milk and eat a little bit of puppy food. Our owner had to train us how to go to the bathroom outside.

When my sister, brother and I are old enough, we will get adopted.

Before people came to see us, we got a bath and had our hair done so we were presentable.

In the afternoon, there was this couple with a small girl named Kate, age 8, with blond hair, blue eyes and a flowery dress on. I went to Kate and started sniffing her hand. This calmed her. I then nudged her hand to pet me. Her child-like hands petted me. I was in my glory. It felt good to get a rubdown and I rolled over on my side for a belly rub. She picked up my chubby body into her arms laughing and cuddling me. I barked in joy.

Her parents petted me and picked me up. I licked them in the face to tell them I love them and want to go home with them. This family took me home in their car. On the way home to my new place, I got to sit beside Kate in the back seat of the car. Kate put her arm around me.

When we got to the house, I could see it was big. The yard was huge with lots of space to run and play with Kate. I was so excited, I peed myself.

Kate and I walked together into the house. I saw a dog bed and blanket for me. I was thirsty so Kate gave me some water in my bowl and some puppy food. She had a drink and a snack, too. After that she showed me her bedroom where she sleeps, then we went outside to play.

She would throw a stick for me to fetch and I would bring it back to her. Then she had a stroller and put my chubby body into it and pushed me around down the street. I couldn’t figure out why I was in there. Well, I didn’t have to walk, anyway.

It was time to get ready for bed. I had to go outside and do my bathroom business before we could call it a night. I settled into my dog bed and blanket. I was exhausted from playing and being in my new surroundings. Then I realized I would never see my brother, sister or mother again. I had a tear in my eye. I am alone in this new family.

Kate’s mother came and sat beside me, petted me and talked to me. That made me feel better.

The next morning, the sun was rising. I woke up and needed to go outside to pee so I barked at the door hoping my family would hear me. Then came the man of the house. He let me outside. I felt so much better after my peep and poop. I got to stay outside by myself for a while to look around in the yard.

There were flowers, lots of trees, and different kinds of bugs and birds in the trees. I found a small house. It had a blanket in it. I sniffed and slowly walked toward it. Nothing came at me so I went in. I decided to sit in there curled up with my head at the opening to watch the birds fly back and forth from the tree to the ground.

Then it was breakfast time. I got a little bowl of milk, some puppy food and water. While I was eating I listened to my new family talk about the day. Then Kate said, “I need to give my puppy a name.” In my mind I was hoping it was a good name. As a family, they decided my name would be Clementine. My name is Clementine. I like my name.

Kate had to go to school today, so Kate’s mother, Joan, stayed home with me during the day. Joan put my leash on and we went for a walk around town. We met some other ladies and she showed me off to her friends. They adored me. I barked with joy. I got lots of loving kisses and belly rubs. Then we went home.

Kate came home from school. I was so excited to see her. We went to her bedroom. She changed her clothes then had some homework to do, so I sat beside her until she finished it.

Kate’s father, George, came home for supper. Supper for both of us was ready.

After supper, George took me outside for a run on my leash. We didn’t go too far. I am just a puppy still. When we got back I was tired so I went to my dog bed to rest.

As the years went by, Kate got older and had boyfriends come to the house. I was always with Kate and her friends. They love me.

As I matured, I became a purebred adult poodle. That means I can sell my babies for cash because of my papers stating that I am a purebred poodle, and I have to mate with a male purebred poodle.

I was in heat, going out of my mind with hormone changes in my female dog body. My behaviour changed to clingy, irritable and affectionate. Then comes along Tim the male poodle trying to woo me. At first he was annoying. Then he let me be.

After a while I thought Tim was handsome so I went to him and we had good and loving sex.

Being pregnant was interesting, and also scary.

It was time to give birth to my babies. It was a long process. Kate was by me side for comfort and praying for me. She was looking after me while I was giving birth to 4 beautiful puppies, two male and two female.

I love being a mother to my children. It was sad when my children were ready to leave to their new lives. I wish them well.

One day, the sun was shining through the living room window keeping me cozy and warm. Kate was sitting in the recliner beside me in the warmth of the living room. Kate had her Bible out reading out loud for me to hear.

Kate read from Ephesians 6:10-19 about the Armor of God. After Kate read the passage, she said, “Clementine, do you know what this means?” The she told me.

“The message from this passage is that we are not alone. God is with us. We can fight the battles with spirits of darkness in this world and be strong with God by our side, having spiritual protection and authority because God supplies the armor. So put on your armor and sword. We can stand firm on our feet against evil forces with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the Gospel of peace, the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit. This is the word of God.”

Kate and I spend quite a bit of time together while she reads her Bible to me and explaining what the passages mean.

After Kate graduated and left for college, I was left behind with her aging parents. I was starting to get old, too. I didn’t run as fast as when I was a puppy. I still enjoy going outside and laying in the warm sunshine in the backyard.

This is still a great way for an old girl to retire in life.

by Pauline Holliday

It may be helpful to read (or re-read) Parts 1 and 2 of this essay series before reading this one. Also, I recommend you watch (or re-watch) the speech given by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as it was a type of catalyst and milestone in the current and dramatic unfolding state of geopolitics, the likes of which have not been seen since before World War I.

World War I? Don’t you mean World War II? No, I don’t.

The current global order may have been solidified in 1945, but the seeds were planted long before that, particularly in May, 1910, at the death of King Edward VII of England. This is clearly outlined in the opening chapters of Barbara W. Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Guns Of August. Edward had been, more or less, keeping Europe from all-out war.

Other factors were holding back the dam of armed conflict in Europe, but Edward’s well-earned respect within European royalty, his diplomatic skills and personal charm were essential in keeping petty grievances among the great powers from escalating into a worldwide kinetic struggle.

On the first page of chapter one, Tuchman, speaking of the historic consequences and gravity of Edward’s death, asserts, “…on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”

The old world was collapsing, and it would not be until two horrific world wars were fought that a new world order would emerge and solidify, and I am convinced we are in a time akin to 1910 - right now. The world’s news media, both mainstream and alternative, are filled with articles and videos pointing to this.

On February 17, 2026, the news outlet Russia Today (RT) published two sobering pieces that reflect the historic shift currently under way in geopolitics, and the direction two of the world’s great powers, Russia and Great Britain, have chosen.

(RT is widely viewed by western democracies as a platform for propaganda by the government of Russia, but much of its content is factual and gives the world a window into the thinking processes and views held by prominent government advisers and decision-makers. To ignore this would be foolish.)

The first article is an abridged version of an essay recently published in the Russian foreign-policy journal, “Russia In Global Affairs”, written by Professor Sergey Karaganov, the honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow.

Here are three paragraphs from Professor Karaganov’s essay that succinctly capture the essence of what he is calling for:

“Military doctrine must be updated. At the expert level, we should abandon the outdated notion that ‘there are no winners in a nuclear war.’ This dogma has helped make a NATO-Russia clash conceivable”.

“Our strategy must change fundamentally. The objective is to accelerate the United States’ withdrawal from Europe. The method is firm deterrence. The task is to defeat Western Europe’s current elites, who see Russophobia as their last political lifeline.”

“The current phase of the West’s conflict with Russia may be nearing its end. It has dragged on longer than necessary. The principal reason is a lack of determination to employ active nuclear deterrence. This is the only mechanism capable of resolving the “European problem,” which has once again become an existential threat to our country.”

His intentional use of the phrase, “once again become an existential threat”, cannot be seen as anything else than a reference to the carnage Russia experienced in both WWI and WWII, and it is obvious that Russians are re-thinking their military doctrine, including a much more robust “active nuclear deterrence”, to avoid an all-out war with NATO. Given the tone of Karaganov’s essay (which would likely have been green-lighted by the Russian government prior to publication), I would not be surprised if the Russians soon test one of their nuclear devices, telegraphing to the world that it is prepared to use them if necessary.

The second article, “Britain Cozies Up To China”, is best summarized in its opening paragraph:

“When Keir Starmer arrived in Beijing for a visit in late January, he did more than revive a diplomatic ritual. He stepped into a rapidly reshaping global order in which Western capitals, unsettled by geopolitical volatility and economic fragmentation, are recalibrating their China strategies in real time.”

While reading this article, Mark Carney’s recent speech to the WEF was front-and-centre in my mind. He said out loud what other world leaders were thinking and probably whispering amongst themselves in private conversations. Keir Starmer’s visit to China, the first by a British PM in over eight years, can only be seen through the lens of the current state of rupture, as Mr. Carney called it, the world finds itself in.

The global order is broken, and not temporarily, but permanently, requiring what sports teams refer to as a re-build. Canada and Great Britain are just the first in a long line of nations to send their leaders to China, recognizing it as the world’s most stable trading partner, a position once held by the United States.

The global south has been pivoting eastward since the inception of BRICS, and now many Western nations find themselves having to do the same, and history teaches us that such enormous global shifts are extremely dangerous. The world’s current reigning hegemon is showing no signs of graciously acquiescing to the will of lesser powers without a fight, and the world’s lesser powers are not going to be bullied into giving up their sovereignty without a similar fight.

We’ve seen this movie before. It started in 1910 and ended in 1945. Most of the actors remain the same – some have changed. The last movie ended with a nuclear bomb. This one may start with one. God help us.

Below are links to the articles cited above.

https://www.rt.com/news/632690-sergey-karaganov-western-europe/

https://www.rt.com/news/632693-britain-turns-to-china/

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Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

I was born in the 1940’s, my beginning as new house. I was a house that brought joy, happiness, sadness and health.

People bought me in different times of their life.

As a house, people that own me took care of me for most part of my life. They look after my outside appearance by mowing the lawn and look after the trees, and painting my outside body.

People enjoy having B.B.Q. Kids playing in the yard. Having families visiting in my landscape.

People really care how I looked in my young foundation. When I stink they washed me. As a house would shine after my wash and my soul was better. Then I was able to keep them from sickness. As young house, I kept my single and families comfortable.

I had children running around my walls. As their families got bigger they moved on to another house. I had dogs and cats, too. They were interesting creatures.

I gave them shelter from mother nature. A place to call home. Place of comfort.

When they soak in the bathtub, I wash away stress, troubled souls and cleanse their bodies.

When the people cook and bake inside my foundation, it smells so delicious. And sometimes they burn something, then this noisy thing would go off. People would wave a tea towel below it to stop the noise.

As a house, I see things no other person would see, like pain, suffering, joy, happiness, dying souls, struggling souls with self or the world or suicide. I saw death in my foundation - that was sad for my soul.

As I aged, people who own me started not to care about my appearance anymore. They are too busy making a profit off of me.

My outside appearance started to fall apart. My foundation started to crumble that my body as a house sat on. It started to shift and move. My body started to crack as mother nature comes in what was my secured foundation no more. I started getting rabbits, mice and my neighbour cat from my crumbling foundation. People that own me try to fix my foundations with batted insulation.

That worked for a while but didn’t work. I started getting lots of mice in by body and making me sick. The sewer started to leak inside my basement floor, too. Anyone living in me was also getting sick. I didn’t want this middle-aged male that was living in my foundation body to get sick. But I couldn’t help it. This male didn’t look after me very good, either. I know he was not well but he left me unclean.

He had a family to help him but he refuses that – I don’t know why.

As a house I couldn’t stay well anymore. I was dying and my soul as a house was gone.

The male left me with his personal belongings. As a house I wish the male a better future and health without me. I know he will.

As I am house, sitting alone with mice running around my foundation, destroying my soul. I wish they would let me rest now. Let a new house have my spot now.

Farewell.

Written By Pauline Holliday

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

Some moments in life are so powerful, you don’t just remember them — they permanently rewire something inside of you. And strangely enough, one of those moments hit me one morning in a medieval town called Sarlat in the South of France... and I don’t think the coffee was spiked.

It was early 2006, and my wife Cathy and I were in Sarlat — this beautiful medieval town that has been preserved to look like when it was built in around the 1400s but somehow has a perfectly modern café every ten steps. We were travelling with close friends, trying to catch our breath after a few difficult months.

In October 2005, Cathy’s mom — Nana, as our boys called her — was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was the sweetest, gentlest woman you could ever imagine. Always beautifully put together, always soft-spoken, always present. She spent countless hours at our home, involved in every part of our boys’ lives, and was deeply connected to Cathy.

The cancer moved quickly. Too quickly. We lost her on December 11th, two months after she was diagnosed. I was asked to sing Schubert’s Ave Maria — in Latin — at her funeral. This meant many hours of practicing until my brain turned into one giant syllable. There were extra-long showers in the basement – and a family thankful for the invention called headphones. But I did it... and somehow didn’t forget the words.

The months after her passing were incredibly hard for Cathy and when a work trip took a friend and I to France, we collectively decided to have Cathy and my friend’s wife, a close friend of hers, join us after for a much-needed escape. As we drove south through little villages, Cathy found peace visiting every church we passed — quiet, sacred spaces that seemed to help her breathe again.

Then came Sarlat.

We were sitting at a small table, across from a church, the smell of cinnamon buns and bacon in the air, cappuccinos in hand in a bustling square — people everywhere, conversations bouncing off old stone walls — when a travelling gypsy band wandered in and began to play. It wasn’t a big deal... until it was. They started playing Ave Maria.

No words. Just instruments.

The moment the melody began, everything else — the noise, the movement, the entire square — went completely silent. It was as if time paused. Cathy and I froze. All four of us looked at each other, seemingly experiencing the same moment and we simply... broke. Not in a painful way — in a different way. A powerful way. Tears came without hesitation, as if they’d been waiting for a place to land.

It felt like Nana had found us. Like she reached straight into that square to say, I’m here. I’m okay. And you’re going to be okay too.

It was the single most powerful moment of my life — a reminder that love doesn’t disappear. Sometimes it just shows up in a medieval town in France, brought to you by a random gypsy band.

Nicholas Harrison

I was perplexed. It was obvious that the wooden post had been deliberately detached from the drapes and re-attached in a disorderly fashion, making it necessary for me to re-align the post and drapery before returning them to their former position.

I checked on my son. He was asleep in his bedroom but awoke after a light touch to his arm. Asking him about the drapes, he seemed confused, then followed me to see for himself. I asked him if he took the drapes down for some reason, and as I expected, he said he had nothing to do with it. Then, we went to the kitchen where we were faced with yet another mysterious sight.

A gift basket, which I had intended to give to a friend, had been sitting on the kitchen table since the night before. It held an assortment of goodies; sweets, nuts, fruit, the regular fare, wrapped in cellophane with a pretty bow on top. That’s how I’d last seen it when I left for work. But now, still miffed by the scene on the living room carpet, my son and I were amazed to see that the thin plastic exterior that covered the basket had been sliced and shredded. No items had been taken, and the basket had not suffered any damage, but something sharp had been precisely wielded with vertical strokes to cause the wrapper to be left in tatters. But how could this be? The doors were locked all day as my son slept, and he assured me that no one else had entered our home.

This was not the first time my son and I had experienced strange goings-on in that house. We would often come home late at night to find that the basement light was on. Soon, we started making absolutely sure it was off before we left, only to find it on when we returned. Also, the door to the basement would often be ajar in the morning even though we both made sure it was completely closed the night before. These occurrences were so common that we hardly made mention of it after a while. Neither of us were scared by these things, just intrigued.

We moved into the house after it had sat empty for a year since the landlady’s mother had died within its walls. Whether her mom’s ghost was still residing there when we moved in, I do not know. We didn’t see or hear anything that would point to any other-worldly presence, nor did we observe items moving on their own, but we sure did have our share of peculiar, unexplainable events. These would likely fall under the category of poltergeist-like activities, but nothing close to what’s portrayed in the movies.

One late afternoon, we returned home to find the kitchen window had somehow been broken, and a fist-sized hole was at its centre. At first, we thought a bird must have flown through it at a high rate of speed but could find no avian carcass or feathers anywhere. We then suspected someone had thrown a big rock through it, but found no rock, either.

After a few moments, we noticed that no glass was on the window’s inner edge, nor in the sink below, nor on the kitchen floor. And then things got really strange. We went out the back door, and there, directly below the kitchen window, were shards of sparkling glass strewn on the back porch, meaning that whatever caused the hole in the window did not come from outside, but inside. Someone or something with considerable strength had caused our kitchen window to be smashed from the inside-out. We thoroughly searched the porch, the adjacent patio and back lawn, and could find no rock or projectile anywhere near the house. This baffling spectacle revealed no logical explanation.

Both doors to the house had been locked all day. That’s how we found them when we arrived home, and no signs of forced entry were detected anywhere. The kitchen window was broken from within, as evidenced by all the broken glass being found outside. No rock or physical instrument was found that could have caused the window to break and burst outward in such a way. How it happened remains unknown.

We live in a world full of unexplained events and encounters. I’ve always been interested in paranormality and parapsychology. I enjoy reading others’ stories and listening to podcasts about our supernatural universe, but that’s as far as I go with it. Watching from a safe distance seems wise. I don’t want to invite any trouble from the unseen realm.

We moved out after only 3 or 4 months due to some unresolved rental issues…nothing to do with the strange encounters. Once moved out, I asked the owner if she noticed anything strange going on inside or outside the house since her mother died, and she said she couldn’t think of anything. I told her about the kitchen window incident and a few other things, but she didn’t seem interested in hearing any of it.

This was not my only brush with odd events and things I can’t explain, and I may write about these in the future. Let me know in the comments section if you’d enjoy reading about them.

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

Since Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s return from his trade mission to China and historic speech to the World Economic Forum, relations between Canada and the US have deteriorated, with the US president now threatening a 100% tariff to be imposed on all products imported from Canada if its new trade deal with China goes ahead. Whether that includes items covered under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) is unknown at the moment, but if so, Canada’s economy would be severely damaged.

I am certain Mr. Carney knows both the inning and score in this geopolitical game of Canada-US relations. His resume includes being at the helm of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England. Both these tours of duty demanded highly developed skills of economic and political strategizing, employing a non-emotional, rational approach to solving relationships at the international level. He will need to make full use of all his executive talents to navigate the current situation in which Canada finds itself.

After being asked how he felt about Canada’s trade mission to China, the American president seemed quite happy about it, even congratulatory. Apparently, he has now had time to more deeply consider the ramifications of the trip, especially when coupled with the contents of Carney’s WEF speech - that Canada has taken the lead and set the example among US allies by looking eastward to form and strengthen trade relations that would mitigate the impact of harsh American tariffs.

Remember Carney’s words while in China: “I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the new world order.” A man of his stature does not make a statement like this in haste, nor in ignorance of the powerful signal it sends. This was a clear and concise message to the world from a former head of two international banks that we have, for better or worse, like it or not, entered into a new reality in which trust, commercial trade and capital investment has pivoted from the global west to the global east, predominantly China.

Pundits were quick to say they would not be surprised to see the US tear up the CUSMA deal before it reached its upcoming negotiations, and if the threat from the American president of a 100% tariff being placed on all Canadian products comes to fruition, it would amount to the same thing – CUSMA would be dead, and launching an appeal to the World Trade Organization would be futile on Canada’s part.

One of my Substack subscribers commented that every Canadian citizen ought to watch our PM’s speech to the WEF attendees in Davos last week. I agree. It’s contents have shaken up the world and, more ominously, put Canada in the crosshairs of the current American president’s wrath.

(A link to the speech is included in my most recent essay, New World Order - Part 1, for your convenience.)

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

January 24, 2026

At this year’s World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in a speech lasting a little over fifteen minutes, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced his country’s intention to openly and aggressively resist the actions of a great world power and invited the world’s middle powers to join him.

A few days earlier, Mr. Carney, speaking in (and referring to) China, stated, “I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the new world order.” His words did not go unnoticed. Eyebrows were raised, and reporters were quick to ask follow-up questions, leading to further comments from the PM on the realities of the current state of geopolitics. He alluded to the notion that developing coalitions with other nations is now preferred to further reliance on multilateral organizations like the World Trade Organization to settle international trade disputes.

Mark Carney’s trip to China was about much more than electric cars and canola. It was a not-so-subtle message to the world that a once-stable and recognizable world order has been, in his words, “ruptured”, and what was unthinkable a few months ago has occurred – the world’s middle powers, led by Canada, are pivoting eastward.

The world order was destabilized years before the first shots of World War II were ever fired. Are we there again? It is a frightening thought. Canada, by way of its leader, has made clear that a new reality, a new international framework, a new world order, is being constructed. Assuredly, those wishing the status quo to remain are not happy, and strong resistance, even retaliation, are to be expected.

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

January 21, 2026

Instruct me, oh Lord, that I may have thy wisdom and understanding to best serve you and the people in my life. I am bringing all my cares and difficulties to you, Jesus. You said I can bring my burdens to you, and you would walk with me every step of the way in this life. So, today, I bring you all my worries and cares. Help me, Lord Jesus, improve my relationships with the people in my life. Guide my thoughts, words and deeds, oh Holy Spirit, bringing them into alignment with your will. When I stray from your path, oh Father, return me quickly to your ways. Soften my sometimes-stony heart, oh Lord, by whatever means necessary. My Father, who is in Heaven, hallowed be your name; your Kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give me this day, oh Saviour, my daily bread and forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me, for yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Mend any relationships in my life that are currently soured. Grant me the desire to bring the peace you have given me into all interactions with your children down here in this much-troubled domain. Help me help others. Take from me whatever stands in the way of living according to the words you spoke, oh Lord, during the time of your earthly visitation. Keep providing me with the thirst to read your Bible, for you are the provider of both the thirst for your Word and the quenching it brings. I stand on your promise that you will never leave me nor forsake me; yes, me, a sinner. Please give me the desire to do likewise with those in my life, whether they be foe or friend. Give me the strength I need to give of myself, my time, my possessions and my money as directed by your Spirit that dwells within me. Keep me free from fear and greed, filling my earthly vessel instead with faith in your Son, Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords. Amen.

“…Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” Revelation 22:20

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

October 21, 2025, was my 62^nd birthday. Not that I was born 62 times, just that it’s been celebrated 62 times, or 63, if you count the day of my birth.

Technically, we only have one birthday, that is, the day we were born. As was the case with the births of my siblings, my parents first celebrated my birth on the actual day of my birth. A year later, they celebrated my birth a second time on my first birthday, which wasn’t really my (birth)day at all - that was a year earlier: therefore, the most recent 21^st day of October was the 63^rd time the day of my birth was celebrated. The age written on my most recent birthday cake should have been 63, not 62. But I’m still only 62 years old…hmmm.

So, I am now officially 62 years old. That’s 744 months, 22,630 days, 543,120 hours, 32,587,200 minutes, 1,955,232,000 seconds. That’s almost 2 billion seconds…no wonder I feel old.

Birthday celebrations are really a celebration of life. Unfortunately, someone went and changed the word “funeral” to “celebration of life”, meaning I’ll have to wait until I die before I can celebrate my life with family and friends, which isn’t really fair, if you think about it. I’ll be dead at my own “celebration of life”. This cannot stand. Therefore, I hereby declare that I desire to receive a good old-fashioned funeral after I die, and that while I’m alive, any future celebrations of my life are to be held on the anniversary of my birth, commonly referred to as my birthday. (This means I’ll have to re-write my will, but at least some of it is firmly entrenched, for now, on Substack.)

And what about conception? Is the day we were conceived in our mother’s womb not the day we were born? That would make me even older than my driver’s license indicates and, more importantly, opens the door to endless moral and theological debates about when life begins.

My belief is that God began to physically create me at the moment of my conception and formed me in the womb in order to officially be birthed approximately nine months later. Then, I believe, He birthed me a second time, or rebirthed me, spiritually speaking, into Christ, some years later. In my human mind, limited as it is, that’s the best I can come up with from what I’ve thus far discovered in the Bible. You’ll have to discuss the matter with God, not me, to settle the matter for yourself.

Anyway, June 10, 1990, is the day I believe God made my spiritual birth as a Christian official. I also believe that I was always a Christian. I cannot prove these two things, but I believe them. But what I know is this: back on that particular 10^th day of June, I was profoundly changed, and knew my future was not going to be the same as my past – that my thoughts, words and actions would be henceforth brought into obedience to God, not by me, but by Him, and on his timetable. I had nothing to do with it. God had orchestrated and set into motion an inexplicable change in my being.

In the wee hours of that June morning, in a state of extreme inebriation following a drug/alcohol binge that began the night before, I admitted to a drinking buddy that I was doomed. (I used another word, but you get the idea.) I left his apartment and staggered home through the dark with heavy rain and wind that made the trek that much tougher. I fell a few times into the mud, causing my skin and clothes to match the mess in my soul. But this was only the beginning of that difficult day. I spent the next 10 to 12 hours crawling from bedroom to bathroom while my body expelled the last traces of alcohol poisoning. I thought I would die, but God had other plans.

Late that evening, I called a friend who was a member of a 12-step recovery organization. Three days later, I joined, too, and even though I eventually left, I don’t regret joining. It changed my life.

Whether June 10, 1990, was the day I was born anew (or born again, as Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about in John 3:3), or it happened earlier in my life, or some time in eternity past, I do not know, but I know I now reside in the Kingdom of Heaven and always will. I know that.

Something happened to me that day which I can’t explain, and I know it wasn’t my doing. I believe I was born anew deeper into Christ, however that works. My faith in God existed before, but after that, it was a whole new ball game. I didn’t suddenly become perfect, and remain far from it to this day. But God seemed to want to know if I was really serious about my faith in Christ, His Son, or just going to carry on…stuck in disobedience, calling myself a Christian but not behaving like one. What was my choice to be? Change or drink myself to death?

Harkening back to my introductory note on believing and knowing, I don’t know if on that day, that particular June 10^th, I was given my last chance to have my name included in the Lamb’s Book of Life, but I believe it was fast approaching. I also don’t know if that stands up theologically, but I believe it’s close.

(If you enjoy the content I provide, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.)

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

I strongly recommend that you read, review, or at least glance back at two of my previously published essays prior to reading this one. They are:

“Intuition, Wisdom, Understanding and Humility” and “Being An Introvert”

Even if you are a regular subscriber, I think it would be helpful to consult them to answer questions that may arise in your mind about how I came to the conclusions I’ve arrived at, especially the role personal experience played in getting here. Opinions don’t arise in a vacuum. These two articles, when seen as prequels to this one, give additional context and information to better understand that which I’m trying to convey.

Aloneness

Being alone by choice for extended periods is scoffed at by many, and as an unplanned circumstance, it is widely pitied. The former is often met with ridicule, mistrust, misunderstanding, sometimes being antagonistically and contemptibly labelled as navel-gazing, a wasting of one’s time, or worse, a mental disorder. The latter is often seen as a state of existence requiring repair, companionship, advice, compassion, consolation, or prayer that the situation be corrected.

Our euro-western culture celebrates a wedding; a coming-together for the purpose of, among other things, love, procreation and belonging, and is rightly, correctly, portrayed as a positive event for the individuals involved and humanity as a whole. A deliberate choice to not get married and not procreate, however, is seldom, if at all, met with the same favourability and revelry as newly minted matrimony. (Have you ever been to a non-wedding?)

Whether at home, in the schoolyard, the college classroom, or the workplace, the one known as the loner can expect a rough ride. Standing silent and alone, he/she will likely be selected as favourite targets by bullies and abusers. Parents and teachers often suspect something is wrong with the lad (as I once was) who prefers solitude over large groups, wondering, “If only he could come out of his shell and be more like the rest of us (extroverts), he’d do so much better. We need to get him some professional help.”

Children and adults presenting as loners and/or introverts may or may not be exhibiting symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD, or ongoing abuse of some kind, and jumping to these conclusions without some modicum of investigation may do them more harm than good. This is tricky business, even for mental health professionals. Merely suggesting the presence of mental illness may lead a person into a long and unnecessary period of self-doubt, fear and low self-worth. Contrarily, ignoring signs and symptoms entirely is never helpful, but the situation must be approached delicately, with careful consideration. Consultation with a trained mental health practitioner, if possible, would be a great starting point. (I speak to these topics with confidence as a mental health professional, counsellor, and one having my own difficulties with clinical anxiety and depression most of my life.)

I think we can all agree, then, that the idea of togetherness and human accompaniment is held in a much more positive light, and considered to be healthier, than the notion of alone-ness. So, let’s move on.

The Wilderness Of The Mind

I have spent the vast majority of my life alone. As an introvert, this is to be expected, and as a shy, anxious, sometimes-depressed, often-awkward, child and the lone male sibling in a family of seven souls, this outcome could be banked on from the start. I’m not speaking here about loneliness…at least not yet…but being physically alone in the wilderness of my mind. The gifts available to us in solitude are priceless and beyond number, (I can’t count that high), but I’d like to refer to some of them, not through an intellectual lens, but an experiential one. Before that, though, I’d like to share some thoughts on the word, “wilderness”, as it pertains to the mind, or soul; that mysterious space inside all of us where we exercise thought.

I was surprised to find that the word, “wilderness” is broken down into the following three syllables, wil-der-ness, and not wild-er-ness. The word’s syllabification obviously resulted from much scholarly consideration by those originally tasked with the translation and deconstruction of words, but I would have preferred wild-er-ness, which would make “wild” the root word of wilderness. After all, the wilderness is indeed wild, and the wilderness of the mind can be equally uncivilized, uncultivated and undomesticated.

There is even a type of psychological treatment known as Wilderness Therapy, also known as outdoor behavioral healthcare (summer camp, basically), and is believed to be beneficial because it is delivered in a group. Its goal, among other things, is to improve the quality of interpersonal relationships. It could be argued, conversely, that leaving someone alone in the wilderness for two or three days would, or could, improve one’s relationship with self and others. Then again, it might have the opposite effect and drive them further into the insanity it was intended to free them from.

During times spent alone in our minds, when likened to time spent alone in the wilderness, we are free to be wild and untamed. The privacy we enjoy in our souls (minds) while apart from others is unmatched. In there, we’re on our own. Nobody, no other person, can fully share that space with us…not fully, anyway. It is sacred to the inhabitant. Our words and actions may partially expose or dimly reflect its interior, and what it’s like to reside there, but not even those who have walked the metaphorical mile in another’s shoes have anything close to a partial understanding of what it’s actually like while alone in our heads.

Solitude And Loneliness

I know what it is to be lonely. The pressing weight of loneliness was most acute during my years as a single parent. There was no cure or remedy. It didn’t vanish when the phone or doorbell rang, and I’d had enough experience with alcohol and other drugs to know that turning to them would only be pouring gasoline onto my particular fire of despair. My queen-sized bed was comfortable yet had no full-time queen, only infrequent visitors. My marriage had long-since died. Attending my son’s extra-curricular activities and Christmas concerts on my own was torture. Watching couples enjoy their child’s performance reminded me that I had lost one of my most cherished dreams – to be a father in a healthy and functioning family unit. I am convinced that God hates divorce because he hates, among its other devastations, the intense loneliness it brings. Adam needed his Eve. Thankfully, those days are behind me, and I no longer fear being alone. I now know that solitude is not an antecedent to, or cause of, loneliness.

Solitude is not our enemy, but a dear friend, not a harsh schoolmaster, but a loving and wise teacher.

Gifts From Time Spent Alone

To conclude this essay, my intention was to list the many blessings and benefits one can expect from solitude, whether by choice or circumstance, and sharing some personal and anecdotal evidence in favour of this. But I happened upon something much better than anything I could come up with. (Besides, this article is already long enough.) So, I’m going to leave you with this – a short film, a great gift, methinks, to anyone still resisting or afraid of solitude, and unaware of its countless contributions to a better life.

You can view, “Why Solitude Promotes Greatness – The Benefits Of Being Alone” at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMBQVrX61dE

I think you’ll find that it’s a good investment of the mere fifteen minutes and nineteen seconds it takes to watch it. And who knows? You may even watch it twice.

(If you enjoy the content I provide, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.)

Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

“a period when you are estranged from someone (no longer friendly with them), or the fact of no longer being friendly: a feeling that you do not understand someone or something, or do not have any connection with him, her, or it.”

A damaged relationship between a parent and child is painful not only for them, but also those not directly involved. Friends and family members are affected vicariously by knowledge of, and close emotional proximity to, the situation. I can give first-hand account of this due to knowing and having known several people experiencing this type of heartbreak. It is difficult to watch.

Losing a meaningful connection with a friend or loved one is painful, whether it is short or long-term. But what about a falling-out with God? What does that look like? How does it feel? Does it have any effect on daily living? Can it be permanent?

I first heard the phrase ‘estrangement from God’ while listening to the online Bible study, Morning Manna. The hosts were taking a close look at the 12th chapter of Proverbs, and although the actual phrase does not appear anywhere in scripture (as far as I know), the concept is manifestly implied from Genesis to Revelation. As the hosts of the episode provided commentary on their selected Bible passage, I recalled the times I’ve experienced a rupture in my relationship with God, and even periods of feeling no connection with Him at all.

In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis starts out with the premise that there exists a law of just and moral behaviour common to, and active within, everyone. A sociopath devoid of conscience may be the exception, but for the rest of us their exists an innate practical knowledge of fair and just behaviour that is at play long before we are taught anything about fairness and justice. A young tot will clearly demonstrate this knowledge after receiving a much smaller piece of cake than his sibling or having someone bud in front of him in a classroom lineup. This law is pervasive and instinctual, as if it had been written within our very hearts. (Romans 2:15)

The point Lewis makes is that we are all aware of this law and recognize (feel) when we are in opposition to it. The discomfort, or guilt, may not last long, or may last a lifetime, depending on the severity of the offense. It is not uncommon for murderers to turn themselves in as a means of escaping the burden of guilt incessantly weighing upon them, and for children to tearfully admit to their parents that it was indeed them who stole the dollar from Dad’s dresser drawer.

As a work of Christian apologetics, Mere Christianity asserts that our Creator, God, is responsible for implanting this moral law into the human heart, whereas the humanist explanation proposes the theory of natural law as:

“a philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason…that certain rights and moral values are inherent in human nature and can be understood universally, independent of enacted laws or societal norms.” - from Wikipedia

I agree with much of the philosophical view of the moral law, but not the assertion that it is “discoverable through reason”, as if some type of intellectual exercise is required on our part before the law or a guilty conscience is activated. As a child, both were in operation long before I was able to identify them by way of reason.

In one biographical account, it is stated that C.S. Lewis turned from atheism to Christianity by way of critical thinking. His thought process and internal arguments led him to conclude that faith in nothing made no sense, had no basis in reason, and gave no satisfactory explanation for the existence of the moral law nor its effect. One day, alone on a bus, apparently, he decided to become a Christian. Since then, his fiction and non-fiction works have given the world many treasures of Christian literature.

I’ve had a great deal of experience with God’s law, before and after becoming a Christian, and I can report that the first consequence for me when I break the law, along with guilt, is the awareness I’ve damaged the relationship (connection, contact, radio signal) between me and my Creator. As my human parents were quick to forgive me when I disobeyed them, so too is God quick to forgive me when I transgress His moral law.

How this all works is a mystery to me, but I am convinced that God’s Holy Spirit lives within me, and it is He who disciplines and corrects me when I fail to obey the Father’s will for me. But the negative effect on my conscience is not the only consequence. The Lord works in mysterious ways and they include allowing (or orchestrating) bad outcomes resulting from bad behaviour. Some call it karma. I call it reaping what we sow.

I remember one time marching up to the desk of my boss and absolutely losing it. F-bombs freely flowed from my lips along with accusations of unfairness and incompetency. It didn’t stop there. I soon had opportunity to continue my tirade in front of my fellow employees. I was ruthless, and morally out of line. But it wasn’t long, thankfully, before my sanity returned and I was humbly apologizing to him. Why? Because guilt had set in and the peace of God had left me. (I’m convinced that both cannot reside in the same person at the same time. When one is present, the other will flee. That’s just how we we’re built.)

Anyway, I patched things up with my boss and forgot about it until circumstances arose reminding me of my unruly performance. After a few months, I put my ex-employer’s name on a list of work references, knowing he would shower any potential employer with rave reviews as to my good character. But I guess he wasn’t quite over the sting of my little outburst. At my next job interview, I was asked about my problem with anger as cited by one of my listed references. I didn’t get the job.

Our actions have consequences. I quickly revised my list of references.

As part of His teachings, Jesus expounded upon the Ten Commandments, giving insight into their full meaning. In Matthew 5:28, for example, He equates the sin of adultery with looking at a woman lustfully. “…That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

I remember first reading this passage and inwardly thinking, uh oh, I’m in big trouble. As I grew in my faith, though, I realized this teaching had much more to do with my need for a Saviour than simply pointing out my lustful tendencies. Some guilt remains within me as a result of my lustful ways. I think that’s a good thing; a reminder of sorts if/when my mind begins to wander down the crooked roads it once traveled.

Earlier, I posed the question whether estrangement from God could become permanent. It disturbs me even to consider such an outcome possible. And I’m not talking about damnation or the doctrine of endless and eternal punishment. (I make my views known on this topic in my essay, False Doctrine Of Eternal Punishment.) I’m referring to the possibility of God permanently turning His face from me in this lifetime.

Paul the apostle in his letter to the Romans confronts this issue head on. The first chapter contains the following two fragments: “For this cause, God gave them up unto vile affections”, and “God gave them over to a reprobate mind…”. Whether implicit or explicit, Paul’s message here is that, at some point, God gives sinners over to their desired sin: that there is a time at which God gives the sinner what he/she most desires, and walks away. (Could this be the essence of untreatable addiction?) I’ve had certain friends and acquaintances that I’ve had to walk away from. It wasn’t easy but needed to be done in the best interest of me and my loved ones. That’s not to say my reasons are anything close to why God would give anyone over to their chosen path of destruction, just that I’ve had to do the same. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” Isaiah 55:8

I’ve probably focused too much on the negative consequences we can expect from disobeying God’s laws and not given enough attention to the positive results of abiding by them. One reason for this is that language fails to express how much peace, that peace which is beyond all human understanding, I’ve experienced when living according to God’s ways. There aren’t enough superlatives within my grasp to adequately describe it.

The joy of knowing God’s love and peace, when He really pours it on, leaves me speechless. It is a blessing this is not my constant state of being. I’d never get anything done.

The other result of keeping the law is that when I do, things tend to go smoothly. My needs are met. Things work out. Circumstances improve.

My life is not void of difficulties common to most of us, but past experience reminds me that my Father in Heaven is involved in the details of my life…always, and His promise to never leave me nor forsake me is always kept, no matter how dark things seem. I don’t always get what I want, but I always get what He wants for me, and that’s a much better deal.

Estrangement from God is not what God wills for me or anyone else, nor is it His way of punishing us every time we stray from what we know to be right and good. It is an outcome; a result, not a punishment. He doesn’t disconnect from us…we disconnect from Him. He has clearly laid out what is expected of us in order that our relationship with Him remains intact and workable, even when we stray from His path.

Relationships are contracts. Now and then it is necessary and wise for parties to remind each other of the agreed-upon terms of the contract, lest the relationship fall apart, and estrangement becomes permanent. I continue to read and study the Bible regularly because I enjoy it, and to remind me of the terms necessary for a peaceful and loving relationship with the Lord my God.

That’s your dial-a-sermon for today.

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Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

Michelangelo’s David, Melville’s Moby-Dick, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa are considered masterful works - masterpieces, yet none are classified or referred to as being perfect. In fact, as I studied the origins of the word masterpiece, I was struck by the absence of any allusion to the idea of perfection.

A masterpiece is judged to be so by masters of the craft - elders considered worthy to make such a pronouncement, yet they never refer to such works as flawless. This is ground they tend to avoid, and for good reason. We, being imperfect beings, know that nothing we create will be absolutely perfect, nor are we suitably equipped to judge any work of art free from blemish. Some items, or works, come closer to perfection than others, but none reach that level. Artists and composers, architects and builders, at some point during the creative process have to say, “That’s good enough”, and walk away.

As a creator of essays, or articles, or whatever they are, I, too, have a tendency toward perfectionism, and it’s not a bad thing…nay, it is essential. Writing in my personal journal or texting a friend is nothing like composing an essay. The former requires almost no editing while the latter fully depends on it. That is where the vast majority of my time and energy is spent during my quest to compose a perfect literary work. The goal is both noble and unattainable, which makes it a fertile breeding ground for unhealthy mental obsession. The adage about the thin line between genius and insanity is spot-on. But enough about that.

Now, within this imperfect work, the one you are reading, my focus will not be on classical works of art. Thousands of volumes critiquing and celebrating works of artistic excellence can be freely accessed in this, the information age. My attention instead will be on a specific trio of much lesser-known creations: a hat, a roof, and a coffee table. But first, I’ll introduce you to one of my favourite books that does indeed consider the concept of perfection, or more to the point, imperfection.

Released December 1, 1993, less than two months after my son’s birthday, and about a year into my marriage, The Spirituality of Imperfection would eventually fall into my hands when I was becoming increasingly and painfully aware of just how imperfect I was as a husband and father. Its authors, Katherine Ketcham and Earnest Kurtz, set out to make the case that to be human is to be imperfect. A brief online description of the book includes the following:

“I am not perfect” is a simple statement of profound truth, the first step toward understanding the human condition—for to deny your essential imperfection is to deny your own humanity.

This was not new information to me but a timely and much-needed reminder that my tendency toward perfectionism was doing me much spiritual harm. I will, at some point, re-read this book, allowing its pages once again to speak to my soul about how normal and okay it is to be a flawed human being. I’m not qualified to deem the book to be a masterpiece, but I do consider it a great work of spiritual literature.

(We now conclude this interruption and return to regular programming.)

My neighbour recently invited me over for an evening by the campfire with friends and family. Soon after I arrived, I noticed that her cousin, whom I’d met earlier in the day, was wearing a uniquely woven hat. After asking her about it, she took it off, turned it inside-out, and put it on again. She proudly told me the story of it being specially made for her and how it could interchangeably be worn with a wool-like or, conversely, blue denim exterior…two hats in one. Its stitching seemed intentionally asymmetrical and random, although the result was not crude in any way. It was an imperfect masterpiece. That’s the most accurate description my mind could come up with to describe it, and over the next few days, I thought of a few other items that had recently arrived in my life that fit into that category. My new roof was one of them.

A friend of mine, Jake, is a master carpenter. As with any trade or discipline, there are those who are sufficiently talented at their craft, consistently doing great work. But then there are the masters who belong to a class, a higher class, within their chosen field. (Or perhaps the field chooses them.) I am not qualified to give a detailed account of what makes them masters, but I know when I’m looking at something built by one of these higher beings. I am taken aback in awe and inwardly ask, “How did a mere mortal make this?” My friend belongs to that higher class.

Anyway, I recently hired my talented friend to re-shingle my roof which had been badly damaged by one of many storms that battered my little prairie village this past Spring. It came in from the east with ferocious winds and heavy rain, proving to be no match for my roof’s brittle tiles that had long passed their best-before date. Jake and his assistant, a novice to the trade who happens to be the love of his life, worked diligently for several long, hot summer days changing what was once an eyesore in my neighbourhood to a really spiffy looking rooftop.

Since then, I’ve spent a few long moments proudly gazing upon my newly installed roof, thinking of and appreciating the hard work my two friends put into the project, and the level of craftsmanship and expertise Jake carries within him to complete such fine work. Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely! Is it perfect? No, and I’m sure my friend would be the first to point out its imperfections. But at some point, he declared the work worthy of his approval.

His fine work had extra benefits: an array of leftover wood, nails and woodscrews which would become the building blocks of my very own imperfect masterpiece…a coffee table.

As an additional source of income, I offer my friends and fellow village dwellers the service of taking whatever they perceive as junk to the local landfill for disposal. But sometimes, as another old adage alludes to, their junk becomes my treasure. Old bird houses and feeders are the most common items to come home with me, but recently I redirected the top of an old coffee table from its intended destination, the dump, to my backyard. Along with the leftovers from the roof construction, I now had the necessary ingredients to build what would become a not-too-shabby piece of living room furniture (pictured above).

I had no real plan. My talented friend would have painted an image of the final product in his mind before measuring or cutting anything. But being of limited talent and propensity to achieve great works of carpentry, I was left to winging it, strategizing as best I could, and hoping for a modestly respectable outcome.

Although never being nominated for any handyman-of-the-year award, I do own an assortment of tools; a hammer, saw, measuring tape, battery-operated drill, angle grinder, many woodscrews and nails of varying shapes and sizes, and a medium-sized toolbox where I keep most of these things. Others are inadvertently dispersed within junk drawers or upon a few closet shelves, leading to unnecessary and frustrating delays spending time looking for items needed for what would otherwise be quick household repairs.

I built the coffee table on my back deck, using its edges and handrails as makeshift sawhorses. It was clumsy work, but I managed. The end result was a rather unique looking and very sturdy table ready for some light sanding and a single coat of dark wood stain. I was satisfied with the finished product after a few small touch-ups, and although its flaws are numerous, it has that certain rustic quality one would find in an antique furniture shop or local garage sale. It is quickly recognizable as handmade, and perfectly imperfect; an imperfect masterpiece, much the same as we humans, the topic I’ve been aiming at all along

I only know of one perfect human – He, being God, was flawless in character, but as for the rest of us, we cannot make that claim after indulging in any amount of honest self-evaluation. I’ve read about so-called ascended masters but never met one. (I guess that’s because they’ve ascended…somewhere.) And I don’t think I’d enjoy their company, nor do I think they’d enjoy mine. I am most comfortable among humble folk. They are my best teachers. If pride truly does goeth before the fall, the implication is that humility, or being teachable, is a path to success.

This period of focus on things perfect and imperfect hasn’t led to any great epiphanies but has reminded me to continue cutting myself some slack, a lot of slack, when dealing with my human frailties, weaknesses and flaws. And we are all flawed. Some are more flawed than others. A poem I once read included this little gem of wisdom: “We need to keep a graveyard for the faults of our friends.” Some of my friends’ plots will end up being bigger than others. Mine will be quite large. So be it. But I’m not keeping score, nor am I qualified to do so.

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Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

Empathy: identification with or vicarious experiencing of the emotions, thoughts, or attitudes of another

Vicarious: felt through imagined participation in the experience of others

The topic (title) of this essay primarily emerged soon after publishing my most recent article, “Love In A Pan”, but also as a result of receiving (from a dear sister of mine) a video of one of my favourite authors, Dr. Gabor Maté, being interviewed by Mel Robbins.

Before going any further, I strongly suggest the reader watch the above-mentioned interview in its entirety here:

or here:

By watching it, you will not only better understand the material I’m about to cover, but it may drastically, deeply and profoundly change your life. I was first sent a short clip of this video beginning at the 34:45 mark and was immediately thirsty for more.

In that clip, Dr. Maté states, among other things, the following: “No siblings grow up in the same house…no siblings have the same parents…no siblings have the same family…no siblings have the same childhood…”

Have you ever had a conversation with one of your siblings about your views and opinions of how well or not-so-well your mother and/or father were as parents, only to find yourself looking at your sister/brother as if they were raised on a different planet? I have. And Dr. Maté gives some clues as to why: “birth order – parents don’t relate to the first child the way they do to the second child…there are gender differences…the parents’ relationship may be in a different phase…the parents may be in a different economic situation…each child will evoke a different response from their parents…children grow into different temperaments – they experience the world differently…”

If these were the only informational gems contained in this interview, I would have given it a five-star rating. These facts were known to me, but only at a subconscious level – the way Dr. Maté describes these discrepancies among siblings is succinct, spot-on, and made them clear and easy for my conscious mind to understand and readily apply to my own family experiences. And then the interview goes on to explore the uncomfortable issue of trauma. The dialogue between Robbins and Dr. Maté goes deep into what all of us, without exception, require for a better life: healing from our emotional wounds. Nobody is exempt from this need.

Victim mentality, another of my essay topics (titles), is briefly covered in the interview, but only as something to avoid, as its effects are psychologically incapacitating on the path to mending the distress cultivated by trauma.

My first exposure to Maté’s work was after happening upon his book, “When The Body Says No: The Cost Of Hidden Stress”. It’s title had me hooked enough to buy it, or borrow it, I don’t remember which, and reading it led to a new outlook on every aspect of my life, solidifying in my mind just how fragile we humans really are in relation to our modern stress-filled lifestyles. But an even more important take-away from the book and the Mel Robbins interview was how dramatically they’ve changed my perception of empathy toward self and others.

Empathy and vicariousness are interchangeable to a great extent. The two occur simultaneously. Both are present and at play within healthy relationships as a means and outcome of their application. I’ll unpack that a little.

Before entering into the fields of mental health, addictions and grief counselling, I attended a day-long workshop called Vicarious Traumatization (VT), and I’m glad I did. The cumulative effect of VT behaves much the same as grief, which I briefly address in my essay, “Little Deaths”. It piles up within us like thin pieces of rice paper until reaching critical mass, at which point we can take on no more and need to disengage from listening to things that upset us.

My most memorable experience with VT came after listening to a male client, a father, who had just left the hospital after visiting his young child. He sat in my office and conveyed to me through words and tears the fact that his five-year-old daughter was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was inconsolable. There was nothing for me to do but listen, and cry with him…which I did.

Although it was mid-morning, my workday came to a sudden stop. I had surpassed my ability for empathy and was vicariously traumatized by what the young dad had told me. Luckily, and thanks be to God, a priest at a nearby Anglican church was able to see me right away. The counsellor needed counselling…the empathic one required empathy. My VT training had kicked in and, thankfully, I knew what to do.

VT can happen to us, within us, while listening to or watching the news. The trauma vicariously builds within us until we’ve had enough, or too much, and we need to shut it off. Our capacity for empathy has run dry. It will refill itself eventually, but for now, we’re done.

The session with the young father turned out be the beginning of the end of my full-time career as a grief and crisis counsellor. I still have occasion to put on my “helper” hat both personally and professionally but don’t wear it as long as I used to. Reading this account of the young dad and his daughter has likely, to some extent, caused a small amount of vicarious traumatization within your own heart. This is natural, and very human.

Watching the Dr. Maté interview evoked within me a desire to take a new and closer look at the quantity, quality and sincerity of my empathy toward myself and others. On any given day, I may fail miserably or succeed tremendously at putting myself in someone else’s shoes and have compassion for them, no matter what they have said or done. I am often reminded to “love one another” by the Master of my soul because He knows it requires effort on my part. I’ve been on the receiving end of verbal abuse and expletive-laced assaults in my life and my mind usually forms one of two familiar thoughts; either it’s “go to hell” or “I have no idea what’s led this person to behave like this”. I thank God that the latter usually wins out before any response passes my lips…usually. (I’m Irish, after all, and my bad temper can erupt quite quickly under certain conditions.)

Watch the interview, then let me know what you think and/or what feelings it aroused. If you are negatively affected by its contents, share your thoughts and feelings with someone you trust. Vicarious traumatization is a real thing and may be triggered due to the subject matter.

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Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

This essay’s title came to me via text message from one of my sisters after telling her of my neighbour’s kind gesture of sending me a small tin container of yummy homemade sweets. This love offering came to me on the third of three difficult, stressful and disturbing days. Once the pan of goodies was placed into my hands, the emotional dam broke within me, and I spent the next few hours sobbing, shedding tears of grief, gratitude, love and joy.

Three Days

Thursday: My day job is dangerous. It involves transporting railroad crews long distances to and from their many destinations to ensure the trains keep moving on (and off) schedule. Much of my time is spent in the driver’s seat of my company’s van on two-lane highways doing 100 KPH, or 60 MPH…same thing. A plethora of potential dangers are present during these trips. Deer, antelope, moose, elk, fox, cayote, skunk, porcupine, construction zones, and oversized, slow-moving farm equipment are commonly encountered during these excursions. And then there’s my time in the rail yards where I am trained and certified to assist rail crews while they move multiple locomotives and cars (some of them by remote control) along intertwined tracks connected by multiple networks of rail switches. Safety is paramount for everyone in these yards. Untrained personnel cannot legally enter them.

On Thursday morning, a newly hired driver with my company approached my van and said he had been dispatched to assist a crew in the rail yard. I asked him several questions, including; Have you been taken on a tour of the yard? Have you been trained to work and assist crews in this yard? Have you been trained to work in any rail yard? Have you been trained how to communicate with railroad personnel using your two-way radio? Have you ever used a two-way radio? He answered “no” to all my questions. I told him not to enter the yard, no matter who instructs him to do so. Without going into details, an unsatisfactory and equally dangerous solution was worked out and executed by our company’s management, one that stands in opposition to items clearly laid out in both company policy and the existing labor contract.

I’ve never found it necessary to file an official union grievance against an employer, but this involved a possibly life-and-death situation – a safety violation so serious that my ethical/moral compass could not allow it to go unchallenged. After a few stressful hours of worrying about the possible consequences that may endanger my continued employment if I took action, I filed the grievance. Damn the torpedoes. My Thursday ended up being emotionally disturbing, exasperating, maddening, taxing and tense, but tomorrow would be better…right?

Friday: I decided to take the day off to recuperate from the prior day’s tumult. As I sipped my morning coffee, two phone calls arrived which ultimately led me into a different day than I was expecting, putting on my “professional grief counsellor” hat, and attending to a client at a local residential addictions treatment centre. A short time later, I arrived at the centre and sat in the presence of a father while he received a phone call from one of his sons telling him that his other son had passed away the night before, and that those responsible for his death were in police custody. The father crumpled beside me on the small wooden bench we shared. I have no words to explain the depth of his agony.

I was then tasked with escorting him to a nearby town where he met his brothers who took him the rest of the way home. It was a tough day for all involved.

Saturday: I was drained of energy and work was out of the question…another day off had begun. The morning coffee tasted very good. The phone rang. My son was in crisis. A situation beyond his control required immediate attention. I phoned one of my dear sisters and asked her to take the reigns. She did, as I was unable in any way to do so.

She called me back a little later with news that the situation had been resolved, and that my son was okay. I began to cry tears of joy and gratitude with my sister at the other end of the phone. Then, a knock at the door. The man from next door held a small tin pan of pastries in his hands. My neighbours had known I’d had a few trying days, and this was their way of showing they cared.

After our call, I sent my sister a picture of my gift, and she replied with the following text message: “Just what the Doctor ordered. Love in a pan!” And voila, my next essay had a title.

I had thought of naming it “Little Deaths – Part Two” but seeing as it involved an actual death, I knew that would not do. A man had lost a child…not a little thing at all.

Please take care of yourselves, your friends and loved ones. Know your limitations. We are all fragile beings, no matter how rough and tough we may pretend to be. God bless us everyone.

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Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

I once knew a man while living in Ontario who outwardly presented to be happy and positive all the time…not just some of the time, but all the time. He projected a false identity, one that told the world, “I’m happy and my life is perfect.” But his eyes told a different story, betraying his constantly smiling face, revealing the mountain of sadness and grief within him which he ignored and kept hidden from others. He lived a lie. He’d constructed a mask for the world to see. It served him well…until one day, it didn’t. Before moving to British Columbia, I learned that he was placed in a psychiatric ward suffering from severe depression and suicidal ideation. He had crashed.

We must deal with our grief, or it deals with us.

It’s well and good not to “sweat the small stuff”, but foolish to completely ignore it all, and dangerous to deny its existence. There must be a balance. Unwanted and unexpected losses will come our way. Then what? We can pretend to be emotionally bullet-proof for a while, but undealt-with grief doesn’t go away. It is stored within us, slowly piling up over time like layers of rice paper, until eventually reaching critical mass, as with my friend in Ontario. He took the adage of “not sweating the small stuff” to its extreme, then the dam burst, and the weight of his concealed internal sorrows were too much for him to bear.

One of my best friends, and wisest teachers, introduced me to the concept of little deaths. The idea is simple yet profound. Little deaths are events, losses and/or circumstances that cause feelings of sadness and pain much like those experienced when an actual death has occurred. They include things like losing your job, being betrayed by a friend, retirement, aging, sudden illness, your house burning down, divorce, having your car re-possessed, sudden onset of illness, or a host of other calamities we hope never happen to us.

My friend presented the idea to me while I was going through a little death of my own - the sudden end of a love relationship. To be blunt, I got dumped. I had fallen in love and got stung…badly. I was shattered. But upon hearing my friend’s explanation that I’d experienced a little death, I felt strangely comforted. This seemingly innocuous two-word phrase deeply resonated with me, and in the midst of all the pain, somehow enabled me to better cope with the heaviness of the situation.

Recognizing my loss as a type of death validated what I was going through. Something akin to death had occurred. No person was dead, but something had died. Something had ended that I didn’t want to end. News had come to me that I didn’t want to hear. A circumstance had been thrust upon me that I did not want to accept, and it demanded that I grieve it, fully and completely.

Unfortunately, our little deaths don’t get funerals. There is no ceremony. People don’t gather with us to share our grief for a few hours. It is a lesser form of death, yet potentially devastating, just the same. And viewing life’s sudden difficulties and losses as little deaths, or types of deaths, has helped me along when tough times and dark days have unexpectedly arrived. I hope it helps you, too. It has become a handy item in my emotional toolbox.

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Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy

Assuming clouds are denser (heavier) than the air they travel in, why don’t they fall to the ground? Wouldn’t the laws of physics demand this?

Neither my friend nor I could recall the details taught to us in elementary school, explaining how water evaporates and rises into the sky to form clouds which, when heavy enough, rain some of it back to the ground, so we didn’t dare go into all that. We knew heat had something to do with them getting up there in the first place, but couldn’t remember being told how the clouds remained suspended far above. His son was smart enough to ask, but he asked the wrong people.

One day, I was driving along in my work van listening to an interview on the radio. I have no idea what the topic was, but remember the guest asking, “How many holes does a straw have?” The question seemed stupid at first, but as it bounced around in my head, the complexities involved in coming to a correct answer began to hurt my brain. I soon picked up two of my coworkers and we quickly ran out of interesting things to talk about, so I shared the question with them. For the next forty-five minutes (no kidding), they ferociously debated this matter. It was thoroughly entertaining, especially when one would convince the other to see things his way, only to pause and announce he had changed his mind, and begin arguing for that which he, just moments before, forcefully argued against. This happened a few times. Back and forth it would go.

So, what say you? How many holes does a straw have?

Every straw has an entry and exit point, but even these change when you take it out of the cup and flip it around. Nevertheless, let’s pretend a straw is lying on a table before us. We first need to define what a hole is, which sounds silly; everyone knows what a hole is, don’t they?

The straw has two ends…are they both holes? If they are, then a straw has two holes. But wait: is what we’re calling holes actually doors or portals to a hole? Is the actual hole not the space between the two entry points? (Are you feeling tired yet?) If so, a straw has only one hole, and two ways of getting to it. But what about a hole in a wall? We wouldn’t look at it and tell someone, “There’s an entry point in my wall that leads to a hole”, would we? Of course not. We’d say, “There’s a hole in my wall.” We avoid holes in the ground because we don’t want to fall into the…hole, the space that the entry point (the hole) leads to. (Oh bother.)

If you think a straw has two holes, one on each end, you haven’t pondered the issue deeply enough.

Depending on how you define what a hole is, you may conclude there are three holes in a straw; the two entry points, plus the space in between, the hole through which the liquid travels. Or, you could say the straw has no hole at all because there is nothing but air to pass through when the liquid enters or exits at either end. In this case, a straw is but a passageway, having no holes at all. There is no hole in the air at either end of a straw. In other words, there is nothing physical to create a hole in at either end, except the material the straw is made out of, which would mean the straw has no holes, yet is itself a hole, meaning a straw only has one hole…itself…with two entry points commonly known as holes, which means it has three holes. You get the idea.

Be sure to raise the issue at the next dinner party you attend, then sit back and enjoy.

Questions are fun…or can be, depending on the mental wellness of the person being asked and their current stress level. I once asked a pharmacist if there was such a thing as non-drowsy sleeping pills. She was quite young, probably fresh out of pharmacy school, and it took everything in me to keep a straight face while awaiting her answer. Finally, after some deep contemplation, she replied, “I don’t think so.” I can’t be blamed for having a little fun at the poor dear’s expense. After all, I was bored from waiting so long in line for my prescriptions, and when I am overly bored, my mind will wander, sometimes devising gags to be played; harmless fun. But my self-made entertainment was not over.

I knew that she was fully aware what my three prescriptions were for. They were all mental health related. One of them is commonly used to combat, among other things, delusional thinking. (It is also prescribed for anxiety disorders, which was why I was taking it. But she didn’t know that.) Her training would lead her to assume I probably suffered from some type of psychosis, including having delusional (false) beliefs, so I could not resist posing my next question. I asked, “Do you realize that I am the executive director for the Canadian Mental Health Association?” Her answer? “No. Your total comes to $68.34. How will you be paying?” She’d had enough.

For someone so young, her way of handling the situation was brilliant, and she obviously had no way of knowing that I was indeed, at the time, the E.D. at the local CMHA branch in Kamloops, BC. (I somehow held that position from 2003 to 2007 - four very eventful years. But that’s a story for another time.)

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Daniel (Murphy) Kennedy