Saturday October 2, 2021
Today happens to be my old schoolmate David Bryson’s birthday. It prompts me to venture deep into nostalgia.
Our childhoods were so different from anything anyone might experience today, that occasionally I have to write my memories down. Otherwise, I fear, the day may come when I won’t believe them myself.
For one thing, we went to school in India. In one of the hill stations where the British Civil Service and other expatriates fled to escape the heat and humidity of an Indian summer.
Ours was Mussoorie, which shared with Simla the benefit of being closest to the capital of British India, New Delhi.
The school was – and still is – Woodstock, 7,000 feet up in the foothills of the Himalayas. Expatriates from North America favoured it for their children’s education, because it taught an American curriculum. If the parents ever got sent home, their children could theoretically transfer directly into a North American education system without losing a year.
It was also a boarding school. In Canada, think of the infamous residential schools for indigenous children. Unless our parents came up to the hills for a holiday, we children lived the entire school year in dormitories.
Unlike the residential schools, though, I don’t recall ever suffering violence or abuse. There was discipline, certainly – but never malice or cruelty that I can recall. Punishment typically consisted of memorizing a poem, chosen at random from the library.
The school believed in the virtues of memorization. Multiplication tables. Chemistry formulas. Soliloquys from English literature. And Bible verses. At dinner, the headmaster would wander among the tables, pick a table at random, and demand a verse.
I found, and practiced, the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.”
So did we, when hit by bouts of homesickness. But weekly letters, and occasional packages of chocolate and cookies, eased the pain.
Amazing freedom
When I think back, I’m astonished at the freedom the school granted us. This, in a world where tigers still roamed free and pythons hung from tree branches. Even so, older students could go for week-long hikes into the remote fastnesses of the highest Himalayas. Younger boys could roam free, most of the day.
David and I played marbles on the dorm playground, unsupervised. Or spun tops, endlessly. In season, we collected horse chestnuts, strung them on strings, and took turns trying to smash other boys’ chestnuts.
Or we trekked through the forest down to the sports field, a miniscule triangle of flat earth dug out of the hillside and levelled. We ran races – the 100-yard dash took up the full width of the field.
We practiced the broad jump, and then discovered we could jump much farther if we leaped off the edge of the field. A good running jump could land us 30 feet down the slope.
In the dry season, the boys collected beetles. Three-inch long rhinoceros and stag beetles. We kept them in our pockets, to scare the girls with.
In the monsoon season, we collected leeches. The leeches balanced on their hind ends on leaves, poised, waiting for a warm body to pass by. One of us collected a record 23 leeches on a hike, but I can’t remember whether it was David or me.
Leaving home
We were a multi-cultural group. About half white, the others mostly brown. Of all religions. The Christians included everything from fundamentalist to Quaker; the others Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Parsee… No Chinese kids in my time – they came later, after the Communist revolution drove wealthy Chinese families to seek safer fields.
There were accidents and injuries, inevitably. One boy in my class got hit on the head by a rock falling down the hillside. It gashed his scalp to the bone. One girl slid down a slope slick with pine needles and off a cliff. She died.
Bigger boys bullied smaller ones by pushing them into beds of stinging nettles, growing wild. Fortunately, the remedy was always at hand – a plant with big leaves like rhubarb. Rubbed on nettle stings, it anesthetized the pain.
David and I both left India shortly before Independence. His father was a civil magistrate, mine a missionary; both felt it was time to leave, for differing reasons.
David and I thought the other had continued at Woodstock. We didn’t discover that we had both left the same winter until we met again by pure chance on a back-country camping trip in Banff National Park, 50 years later. But that’s another story.
Happy birthday, David. Soak yourself in memories!
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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
My column last week was not, I regret, as well thought through as I would like. Nevertheless, you readers made some useful connections with it.
Clare Neufeld got hooked by my reference to “Pastafarianism.” “You got me running around, searching my volume on World Religions,” he wrote, “feverishly searching for ANY reference to Pastafarianism, BEFORE I would read a single line further. . . Rastafarianism, yes. The former, no reference, except online.
[JT: Google it!)
“Significant points made in the article notwithstanding . . . I first thought it to be a piece of humour. Well done . . .”
Sandy Hayes “enjoyed your column showing how religious ‘rights’ are used to justify what people want or do not want. I have read the Bible several times, coming to the conclusion that one can find anything they want to adhere to in order to defend what they want. I know many who embrace a particular religion, but also have the common sense (which is not very common!) to still accept various things that science has stated and proven-beyond a reasonable doubt!”
Tom Watson cited a parallel to the house church founded to seek a tax exemption:: “In 1969, Walter Tucker founded the ‘Church of the Universe’ in Puslinch Township near Guelph. The church used marijuana as a sacrament, and promoted nudity as a demonstration of human honesty. In 1994, legal entanglements forced the closing of the premises. As far as I know, there were few members beyond Tucker and his brother. Basically, it was Tucker's ruse to be able to use marijuana freely, in a time when that wasn't possible.”
I had asked if Jesus would qualify for a “religious exemption”: Isabel Gibson replied, “I assume you mean Jesus as the Christian we see him as, rather than the Jew he was (and self-identified as, as far as I know).
“I suspect he would not have sought a religious exemption, instead ‘rendering unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's.’ Our question today, perhaps, is whether we're happy with how many things we've given over to Caesar to manage and direct.”
Jean Skillman: “I just read a piece in the Economist about the illiberal left. I have had many conversations with my spouse, who is more conservative than I am, about freedom of expression.
“The Economist article is also concerned about freedom of expression. Without it, democracy suffers, any group suffers. The naysayers, the doubters, the person who is that ‘yes but’ voice in the meeting, they take on a very important role, that of making us more impetuous people slow down and consider another point of view. I think that is helpful. But I want the naysayers to respect my freedom of expression too.
“Anti-vaxxers have been with society for centuries, have tried to block small pox vaccination, measles vaccination and others less famous in medical history. I think they have views based on wrong information, based on feelings (which are important but not enough to subvert public health). Vaccination does save lives. Avoiding and refusing vaccination does result in avoidable deaths. The tragedies of unvaccinated people on their death beds asking for vaccination is a tragedy.
“Although I believe those dissenting voices should be heard and not suppressed, I also think that they need to be vigorously opposed. I do not believe that having a voice means violent dissent, however. Blocking sick people at hospital doors from getting health care is violent. Voices like yours are part of the opposition to the dissenting anti-vaxxers, and I am happy to support your opposition.”
James Russell had a story about dissenting voices: “The balance between rights and obligations gets tricky when questions of personal belief vs a non-specific ‘general’ good arise.
“There’s a guy I’ve given a few bucks to sometimes. Holds out a paper cup outside a local coffee shop. In brief conversation, seems a simple but convinced fundamentalist Christian. Saw him at the mall today (mask-less) and asked if he had a mask, thinking to buy him one if that was the problem. Got told instead that I had no right to ask him about his personal medical conditions or problems, quickly backed up by another unmasked fellow who claimed he ‘taught the medicals’ and that vaccines would kill me. Mall cop told me later that he could not remove anti-maskers who claimed medical reasons for being without masks, nor challenge anyone to provide a certificate.
“I suspect that there is an element of ‘getting your own back’ among the anti-maskers. They find themselves pushed everywhere by folk with money, law, position, and certificates. But religion and the cult of individualism gives them ground to stand on and say, ‘Screw you!’ What might undercut that position would be actually providing more of these people with homes, food, access to sanitary facilities, useful work and companionship.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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POETRY
And for those of you who like poetry, I tried to send out a new poem, but the server I use rejected it. No reason given. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the poem itself that’s would offend a spam filter, but something did. So if you’d like to read that poem, please check my webpage .https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry And i you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.