God is a Girl, and Her Name is Denise

In this blog post we are going to look at my wife, Denise (aka Dee, aka DeeDee, aka Deny, aka Deny Mack, aka Little Bird, aka Li’l Hottie), and discuss how it is that she became known to me as God. This is a very long blog post, so be sure to grab a coffee or tea first. Maybe some popcorn too! Maybe read it over a couple or so days. I think it is well worth the read.

In case you are wondering, when I told Denise that she had risen to the height of God, was even better than God, she gave me the stink eye like you wouldn’t believe and said “no thanks” in a very loud and definitive way (well, in her typical soft and loving way, I should say 😊). She said that she was definitely not God, or God-like, and that if it was even possible for her to be so, she didn’t want the job and the pressures that would surely come with the title. I know that reading this blog post she will cringe every time I refer to her in that way, or some other similar way. So, please don’t think that my beautiful wife is in any way full of herself and thinks of herself in this way. In truth, she is a very mild mannered and humble example of a kind and loving person.

Before we move on, note that any discussions I have about God in this blog post are not intended to show disrespect for anyone else’s beliefs or belief system, and who or what they choose to call God. In addition, what I have to say on the subject are only my beliefs and are not intended to be taken as an attempt to convert or sway anyone else. To make it clear, I will never judge another person for their beliefs, unless it means they are harming others in name of those beliefs, as we have seen throughout history with religious wars. On the other hand, I will not accept anyone judging me for my beliefs. In the end, you don’t have to worry though, as my beliefs are not too far off in the twilight zone. 😊 You will also note as you progress through this blog post, that Denise and I have some very significant differences in our beliefs, and we still get along marvellously.

In my book, Reflections, I shared a lot about my changing beliefs over time. Below summarizes, very briefly, those changes.

1. I was raised as a Catholic. I was taught about a God who was to be feared, which led to endless feelings of self-hate and shame.
2. Once I joined Al-Anon and began my recovery, I came to believe in an unconditional loving God, an idealized grandfather of sorts. I still looked at God as some sort of deity.
3. Further along the journey, I came to doubt the existence or need for a God and believed that man’s collective goodness enveloped the universe and offered hope and support in some ethereal way. I also came to find that science could explain much regarding the mysteries of life.
4. At some point I came to accept that even science could not provide all the answers, and that if there were a God, it was in the form of a creator, someone/something that brought the universe into existence but then left it to unfold as it would, whatever that looked like. If I were to believe in a God at this time in my life, it would essentially be to believe in that creator, and that life is, indeed, a miracle, with the unfolding left to us and nature. In that way, those that need to believe in a God, can take comfort that the universe is a beautiful thing, and that God might very well be thought of as a long lost special relative, cherished but no longer within physical reach.
5. At this point in life, I do not believe there is a God at all or a need for one, I think that if we start to assign all the wonderful things that get assigned to “his” doing, then what does that say about all the awful stuff that happens around us or the prayers that never get answered? This is a rhetorical question.

Over the years, Denise and I have had many discussions about our belief systems and how they have changed. I have said many times that I am the type of person who requires real proof. As I have jokingly said to Denise, if I were to believe in a God, she/he/it/they would need to appear physically from a puff of smoke in my living room and offer me a big bag of money to help ease my suffering for me to believe. 😊 As for faith, I have faith in the people around me. For instance, I may take it on faith, and the diploma on his wall, and the place where he practices, as the proof that my doctor has taken time to learn his trade and that he/she will treat me accordingly, and I will be cured from ailments as they rise. I will even let him/her operate on me, if need be. With regards to God though, I cannot tell of a single time that God gave me what I required at any point, without first convincing myself that is God working through others. I simply don’t believe that! As it happens, everything I have ever needed has been given to me by fellow humans, and so often by Denise alone.

Denise and I came to a point in our relationship, when I said that although I know she is not my higher power, nor a god, she, as well as many other people, were very much what I would consider God-like. They do so by doing all the things I always expected God would do. When I am suffering and I need comfort, God is nowhere to be found, Denise is! I can share with her and receive real comfort from her, even a loving embrace if I need it. Others will say, well that is God acting through her, or she is one of “his” angels. I say no, that it is Denise doing it, doing it based on her own growth and development and her decisions made throughout her life. Why would I give a God that atta-boy, when I can clearly see that it is coming from her, or in the case of the doctor I mentioned who went to school for years and years to become said doctor. Why not give Denise, or the doctor, the credit for having done the work and, in Denise’s case, having her life saved by said doctor when she had a cardiac arrest? Another rhetorical question, so no need to answer me. You can most certainly answer the questions for yourself, but I do not need to know your answer.

Just to reaffirm, I do not fault or question people who have alternate views, if that is what helps them function.

Some might say that my views of how I have used God are just metaphors, or concepts created to help people understand these things. Perhaps they are, but, when push comes to shove, I simply want a true and physical (earthly) interaction, and I have only ever seen that with people. What they show me is real, something I can see, feel, and embrace as my belief system!

Hopefully it now makes sense why I think that my wife is better than God, and why I might consider her my higher power. If that hasn’t convinced you perhaps this next lengthy part of the blog post will.

In the last blog post, I discussed the book called The Prophet, and mentioned that it had many chapters where the author shared lessons related to life and the human condition. As I was preparing that blog post, I thought that another blog post about Denise, my prophet, was in order. I began to ponder that in depth, and I decided that I would interview her, in much the same way the people of Orphalese interviewed Almustafa before his departure. I asked Denise if she would be interested in letting me interview her, unscripted, asking for her brief thoughts on the topics that were written about in The Prophet. I let her know before I discussed the project that the correct answer would be yes. 😊 Wouldn’t you know it, after I pitched the project proposal, she said yes. LOL! I am so glad she did as her wisdom shone brightly and brought me to tears of joy on occasion, as I listened with all my heart! Below in italics is what Denise had to say, the order is based on the table of contents in The Prophet, and the format is based on the book’s layout, more or less.

Denise, tell us about love.

Well, to me, love is the meaning of life, and my reason for existence is to love. I think that love is like a pebble dropped in the water, and I am the pebble. I begin with loving myself, and then it ripples out from there, and the ripples just keep on going. So, my goal in life, my purpose in life, is to love myself first, which is not always easy, and then, even more importantly, to love others, as I believe my higher power, my God, loves me unconditionally and forgivingly, and so on. That’s love to me. Love is life!

Denise, tell us about marriage.

Marriage is an institution… LOL! (Whenever Denise or I say the word marriage, we are reminded of the sermon in The Princess Bride movie, and we mimic the priest that is performing the ceremony, voice and all.) Seriously though, marriage is a partnership between two people who are brought together in many different circumstances, sometimes by love, sometimes by happenstance, sometimes by fate, sometimes by God; and then when they enter into that marriage, they become a partnership, a team that vows to care for one another and love one another throughout. To me, marriage is not a walk in the rose garden, well actually it is a walk in the rose garden, but there’s a few thorns along the way. It’s not always happy and it’s hard work. It’s a decision to commit to going through those difficult times together and enjoying the good times and working through the bad times. So, it’s a teamwork partnership, and like the original prophet says, I believe there should be spaces in your togetherness. I don’t think it should be a codependent relationship, it should be a healthy, loving and balanced relationship.

Denise, tell us about children.

Well, sometimes hamsters eat their young for very good reasons. 😊 Seriously, children for me… I mean… I think there are lots of people who choose not to have children and that’s their decision and their choice, but for me, having children is just one more ripple in that pond of love, its someone else to share love with, someone else to love and care for, someone else to experience pride and joy in, someone else to experience sorrow and struggles with; and to celebrate with when they overcome challenges. I need to remember that I don’t own my children, that they are children of God and I’ve got them for only a little while to love and treasure, but I don’t control their lives. And that’s hard for me sometimes because I like to manage everybody’s life so that it’s all happy. I also need to remember that just as I have a God who is caring for me, my children also have a Higher Power who cares for them.

Denise, tell us about giving.

Giving is an interesting concept for me. I have had many times in my life when I haven’t had things to give, nor have I had money to give, and I’ve wanted to give. But all I’ve got is myself and my friendship, and my acceptance, and my listening ear. Sometimes in the past, giving was an expectation. That I needed to share, that I needed to give, without caring for myself. But through life and through life’s experiences, I’ve now learned, or I am learning, that it’s okay to give to myself. To put my own oxygen mask on first, and to give when the Spirit moves me to give. So that I’m doing it for the right reasons and I’m not giving out of a sense of obligation or a sense of guilt or a sense of responsibility. Sometimes when I see people struggling on the street, I feel moved to give to them and I don’t have much, but I, you know, give them $5, or buy them a sandwich, or whatever. Other times, I don’t give because I’m not in the headspace where I feel like I am giving for the right reasons, and I don’t want to give out of guilt or a sense of responsibility. So, giving has to come from the heart. It has to be moved by the Spirit. It has to be for the right reasons, and it has to be done without any expectation of any certain kind of response. It has to be done without expecting a thank you. It has to be done without strings attached. It has to be done just for the right reasons. So, if I give my daughter a book that meant a lot to me at some point in time and I find out that the book has been drawn in or coloured on, or whatever, I have to let that go because when I give it, I give it without expectation. Same with money. If I’m giving $5 to someone, it’s not up to me to judge what they’re going to do with it. You know, lots of times people will say, oh, they’re just going to go buy more drugs! Well, that’s their story. That’s their journey. That’s not my place to judge what they do with it; I just give for the right reasons and that’s that. I think I’m a pretty giving person for the most part, not that we’re doing my inventory or anything. 😊

Denise, tell us about eating and drinking.

Well, I’ve often said about myself that I eat to live, but I don’t live to eat. What I mean by that is that I appreciate good meals, I appreciate immensely the meals that my husband makes for me every day. I appreciate good food and eating well but left to my own devices I probably wouldn’t prepare meals to the same extent. I would eat what I liked – enough to live. You know, I’d probably eat salads and fruit. I don’t think a lot about food in between meals, but that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate them, like I said. Drinking – I often forget to drink enough water, although I am getting much better as I get older. I love my cup of tea in the morning, it starts my day. It’s a habit that I’ve had for many, many years and it’s a comfort, a comfortable way to start my day. But I don’t think I’m addicted to it. I could survive and change habits if I needed to, but I don’t want to. I think that we’re very fortunate to be born where we were. I think I’m very fortunate to live when I live and where I live, and to have access to food and drink when there’s so many people in the world that don’t have access to even those basics; and I try to remember that. I try to give thanks for my food. Before I start to eat a meal, and certainly as I’m eating it, and afterwards, I give thanks to the hands that prepared it and I give thanks to my higher power who makes it possible. Lots of times when I’m driving back home by myself, if I’ve been in the grocery store, even if I haven’t been in the grocery story, I’m thankful. So, although I don’t think about what my next meal is going to be, or what am I going to eat, I do think about the fact that I’m fortunate and blessed enough to be provided with food and drink. I think that there are people who struggle with drinking, in particular, and if they have that personality that is of a more of addictive nature, and they just can’t seem to get enough. I think about my mom, and I think about how that need to try to fill that hole with alcohol just didn’t ever get filled. I’m grateful that I don’t have that particular struggle. So, eating and drinking – I love it, and I’m grateful!

Denise, tell us about work.

I have some thoughts about work. I was very fortunate to have a career, actually more of a vocation than a career. It was not just a job to me, I felt like I was doing God’s work. My work was teaching, working with children, working with adults, working with other people, and every day I came home, and there were some days that were very, very difficult, very draining, but every day I came home, and I felt that I had done what God wanted me to do that day. So, my career, my vocation, was critically important to me, I don’t want to rate what was the most important thing to me, but it was right up there with my husband and my daughter in terms of what was important in my life. And when I was unable to do that job anymore, that work, due to health issues, I found it very, very difficult to adapt. I found it very difficult to find purpose and meaning in life. Now, when I think about work, and purpose and meaning and so on, I think about what I said earlier about love, and doing small things that I can do for other people as a sign of love. I still like to make a list every day of tasks to accomplish; it helps me to feel productive even if the tasks are small; and I like to be able to go to bed at night feeling that I’ve done something that my higher power would be proud of. Work was a big part of my life!

Denise, tell us about joy and sorrow.

Two sides of the same coin is the first thing that comes to my mind, but I don’t know that I can articulate what I exactly mean by that. I think that in life there are events that can bring us great joy. The birth of a grandchild, a marriage; I don’t know, so many events that can bring us great joy, and on the flip side, those same events can sometimes bring us great sorrow because, for example, with the birth of a grandchild, you can think about all the things that they have yet to face in their life and as they struggle, as you watch them struggle, it can be sad and bring sorrow. I don’t know though, to tell you the honest truth, I mean, I’ve had periods of sadness and depression, but sorrow and joy seem like such extreme words. I think I’ve been blessed. I don’t think I’ve experienced great sorrow. You know, I mean, I was very, very sad when my mom passed away and in the months and years after that, but even at that point in time, like even amongst the sadness, there were moments of joy. So, I don’t think that joy and sorrow can be separated. I think that life is both joy and sorrow. Sometimes at the same time, and sometimes from one moment to the next. I remember my mother-in-law asking me after she went to her brother’s funeral in the morning, and felt great sorrow, and she went to Daniel O’Donnell’s music concert that same night and laughed and cried tears of joy. And she said to me, how can you feel such sorrow and joy all at the same time? I said I don’t know, I guess you have to be Irish. 😊 But I think that’s just life. I think life is joy and sorrow, every day.

Denise, tell us about houses.

Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is I’ve never experienced living in my imaginary dream home with the picket fence, the veranda, and the fireplace. All that sort of stuff! I’ve lived in many, many different houses and once I became an adult, I vowed that no matter where I lived, whether it was a rental apartment or a basement suite or a mansion, I would make it home. I would do that by decorating with things that meant a lot to me. Putting pictures of family up and around. Trying to have things as nice as I could. Keeping it clean and making it a welcoming place to be, and of all the houses that I’ve lived in over the years, I think I’ve managed to do that, and have been happy in whatever house it was. Do I still long for that dream home? Sometimes, but I’m also content and grateful for the homes that I’ve had. I’ve never been homeless; I’ve never been without a home, or a house, and I’m grateful for that. To me, houses are less important than homes. The house is just the structure, and yes, I like to have nice surroundings, but, you know, we’ve lived in some places that were old, but we still made them home. And we’ve also been very fortunate to have a new home many times in our life, and I’m grateful for that. It’s not the house, it’s the home! A house is a house is a house. It’s who I’m with and where I’m at that makes it a home. It’s making sure I have my family and my things around me. So, there you go! But if you’re listening, higher power, I still wouldn’t mind a fireplace!

Denise Cheke in her Early Twenties – Photographer Unknown

Denise, tell us about clothes.

There’s an old saying that says clothes make the man, or clothes make the woman, or whatever, and I’ve had a different relationship with clothing at different times in my life. Growing up relatively poor my clothes were outdated, didn’t fit, were hand me downs, and I never felt that they reflected who I wanted to be. They made me feel, or I allowed them to make me feel, poor and less than. That was another one of those things that I vowed when I was younger, that I would grow up and have nice clothes. I’ve never been able to afford the clothes that I would like to have, but I have made a point of, whether I’m thrifting, or if I’m buying new clothes on sale, I’ve made a point of trying to look my best at all times. I still have a lot of baggage around clothes and around my appearance, and I still struggle with envy. I envy other people who go out shopping, you know, who have thirteen pairs of running shoes; and then the wise part of me goes, even if you could afford it, would you really want thirteen pairs of running shoes? What would you do with them? You don’t need more than one or two at the most. So, clothes are a very interesting topic for me. I could do a whole fourth-step inventory just on that issue alone and my relationship with clothes, my relationship with my friends’ clothes, my daughter’s clothes. As I said, I try to look the best I can, but I still struggle. Somehow that whole “clothes make the man” is rattling around in my head, that somehow you are more important, more worthy, if you have expensive clothes. That’s my baggage, and I don’t know that you’ll necessarily want to share this with anybody else in your blog post.

Denise, tell us about buying and selling.

An interesting topic. I’m not sure that I have a whole lot of personal thoughts on buying and selling? I mean, I think, in the global sense, our economy, and certainly our Western world, depends on buying and selling products and commodities, etc. I’m certainly part of that, that whole economy in the sense that I buy and sell. I don’t do a lot of selling, I don’t do well at selling, I’m not a salesperson. I’d sooner give things away if I don’t need them. But I have tried to sell a few things over time. I think that, in our world, at least in our Western culture, there’s maybe too much emphasis on buying and selling, acquiring more, selling to get better; and you know it can become a vicious cycle that people use as a means to avoid looking at themselves in a deeper way; or you know, they get caught up in that cycle of buying and selling. So, I think we have to be cautious, I think I have to be cautious, and not buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, without stopping to think – do I really need this, or do I really want this? Not just buy things for the sake of buying. So yeah, as far as selling goes, I’d much rather give things away then try to get a small pittance from someone.

Denise, tell us about crime and punishment.

There’s far too much crime in our world, mostly committed by desperate, unhappy, addicted, troubled people who are struggling. I think that there needs to be consequences for crimes committed, but I’m not sure that “punishment” is the effective consequence. I think that’s a very tricky slope, and we can’t have just one size fits all – if you do this, if you do that, you know – it can’t be an eye for an eye kind of system. In my mind, I don’t think that gives the people who have committed the crime an opportunity to be rehabilitated or to make restitutions if they’re able to. I do think that there are situations when crimes are committed, and people are, for whatever reasons, mentally ill or so messed up with addictions, that it’s not safe to let them out of prison. And so, the consequences of that crime should fit that crime, but I don’t think it should necessarily be punishment. In my mind, punishment is like beating them, or whipping them, or isolating them or, you know, different things like that. On the other hand, I don’t think that they should be treated like kings and queens in prison, as a result of committing crimes. So, it’s a pretty deep subject and I’m not sure that I could summarize my thoughts about it in a short period of time.

Denise, tell us about laws.

I’m certainly glad we live in a society where there are laws, laws to protect us, laws to guide our behavior, laws to keep our society orderly and functioning to the best of our ability. I’m not sure I agree with all laws that are made but I’m grateful and I trust that the people that we’ve elected to our government are making laws and have made laws with our best interests at heart overall. I think that I personally try to obey the laws to the best of my ability, even when I don’t necessarily agree with them. I’m not sure I like the law that says that I have to drive 30 kilometres an hour all summer through the school zone, but I understand that there are still kids playing around those areas, even though school is out. So, the law is there to protect them, and so I follow the law. I’m glad that we don’t live in a lawless society or a country where the laws are made by dictatorships or by drug lords, and so on. Or where the laws are constantly changing, and you don’t know from one week to the next what’s allowed and what’s not. So once again, I’m grateful to live where we live, and to have the laws that we have that I think are designed for the good of us, for the most part.

Denise, tell us about freedom.

I think with freedom, and again I sound like a broken record, that I’m grateful that we live in a country with as much freedom as we have to practice religion, to voice our feelings about the government, to celebrate events; you know, to recognize the diversity the country has and is becoming. But I think I’ve always thought that with freedom comes responsibility. With rights come responsibilities. So, I have the freedom to express my opinion about, as I said, a decision the government has made, or a decision that my neighbor has made – but I also have the responsibility to not infringe on their freedoms. And so, you know, freedom, is not just a free for all. You know – that anybody can do whatever they want because we have freedom. I think we have to recognize that with that freedom comes responsibilities to others, to our society and to ourselves. When I think back to the Freedom Convoy situation in Canada a couple of years ago during COVID, I initially thought that they were stepping over the line and demanding a freedom that they that didn’t necessarily have, but I’ve come to think about it more in the sense that they were suggesting that they didn’t want vaccines to be government dictated and that they had the freedom to choose whether they wanted to put the vaccine in their arms or not. The more I think about it, the more I think, yeah, they were right. They had a right to protest because, although I chose to have the vaccine, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted it to be mandated, telling me that I had to do it, if I didn’t believe in it for personal reasons. So, freedom is a broad topic, and it comes with lots of ins and outs, but I would say that we live in a free country and I’m grateful for that.

Denise, tell us about reason and passion.

Off the top of my head nothing comes to my mind, and yet if I pause to think about it just for a minute or two, I would define reason as thinking and acting with common sense. So, how that relates to passion? So, for example, I might be passionate about the environment, and I might be passionate about protecting all creatures in the environment. And yet, if my passion for that particular subject is infringing on someone else’s freedom to live their life, say, for example, I live in the city and I’ve got a backyard full of 50 chickens. Reason would tell me that that’s not an okay thing to do, and that if I’m that passionate about raising chickens that I should probably consider moving to an acreage because we have to be people of reason. We have to think about our decisions and think about our actions and how they’re going to impact others and ourselves. We can’t let passion, as important as it is, to be passionate about topics and so on, we can’t let that passion override reason. That’s all I got!

Denise, tell us about pain.

Before I begin to tell you about pain, I have to make a comment. I think it’s quite cute how you start each of these little ditties with “Denise, tell us about…” You’ve been practicing that in your mind for weeks and waiting, waiting to do it! 😊 I answered by saying that I was trying to be like the people of Orphalese, when they were questioning Almustafa in The Prophet. 👍

Pain, I don’t like it, but I try not to complain about it. I think there are many different kinds of pain and I think that all people experience pain. Be it emotional, psychological, physical, mental. I think that pain is part of life, and it’s what we do with it, and how we handle it, and what we learn from it, that makes all the difference in the world. I’ve experienced pain, and like I said, I don’t like it, but I’ve tried most of my life not to complain about pain because I don’t think that focusing on it is healthy, I think focusing on it gives it power, and I think that if I focus on the pain that I’m experiencing, whether it’s emotional or physical, I think it becomes the bars on a prison cell and it begins to control me, not that I can control pain necessarily, I can’t necessarily control what’s happening to my body or to my mind, but I can control my attitude towards it; and so, I think that what we need to try to do is learn from our pain. So, you know, if I’ve been in a bad relationship and I’ve suffered pain, maybe I’ll do something different next time. I’m not sure if that works with physical pain, but I guess it does too. When I think about my broken arm and it hurt like the Dickens, but you move through it and then you just live with it; and you try to, I try to, just accept it and carry on. The other thing about pain is I think that we, as a society, as a people, need to recognize that the actions of other people that we can’t understand are often because they are in pain, of whatever kind. And so, you know, if somebody’s really miserable to me at the grocery store, maybe they’re in pain and I don’t know what their pain is, but we all experience pain and so I to try have a little bit of compassion for other people’s pain. I’m saying this because I have a lot to learn about having compassion for other people’s pain. I tend to think, oh, just get over it, quit complaining, and I’m not always compassionate or patient with other people’s pain. So, this is an interesting topic, obviously I talked for damn near 5 minutes. 😊

Denise, tell us about self-knowledge.

I think that self knowledge is the key to recovery and the key to healthy living. Coming into Al-Anon, I didn’t have any self knowledge. I had no idea of who I was, what made me tick, what I thought, or how I felt. I think that growing in recovery, and becoming aware of myself, is what allows me to function in a dysfunctional society. I’m not saying I’m perfect at it, by any stretch of the imagination, but if you don’t know yourself, if you don’t know what’s making you do what you do, or why you’re acting the way your acting, or why you’re saying things the way that you’re saying them, then you can’t change and you can’t grow, and you can’t improve. So, to me, self knowledge is the key, that awareness, and once you become aware, then you have a choice. Then you can decide, well, am I going to stay like this, or I’m going to try and do something different. So, self knowledge is crucial and critical. To ourselves, awareness is critical.

Denise Cheke in her Early Twenties – Photographer Unknown

Denise, tell us about teaching.

Teaching. Ah, a word close to my heart! Teaching, if we’re talking about teaching as a profession, I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to be a teacher and to influence, hopefully in a positive way, the lives of young people, and the other people along the way. I think a teacher is, in the professional sense, I think teachers are born, not made. I think you can go to university, and you can get a teaching degree and you can get into a classroom, but that does not make you a teacher. Some people have the gift for teaching, and others don’t so much, and sadly some of them stick around anyway because they think it’s a good job and they just carry on. Teaching in the general sense, I think is done best by sharing experience, strength and hope, and modeling. Modeling the behavior that you are trying to teach. You know, if you want to teach someone to be kind, you have to be kind to them, you have to show kindness. If you want to teach somebody to, even things like be optimistic, then you have to share optimism with them. So, I think teaching in that broader sense is done through attraction rather than promotion, as we learn in Al-Anon. But teaching as a profession? Again, that’s the way, the best way to teach, but it’s a different sense, in that you’re not just teaching behaviors and values and morals, although hopefully you’re teaching those through your actions, but you’re also teaching content which requires a specific skill.

Denise, tell us about friendship.

Oh wow! I think it’s vital in life to have at least one good friend that you can trust to have your back and you trust to walk the journey with you, and that you can trust to share pretty much whatever you need to share without judgment and so on. I think that there are different levels of friendship and it’s important or good to have friends at different levels, for example, that one or two close, close friends; others that you enjoy doing things with, others that you have a common bond with, others that you only see occasionally, but you pick up where you left off; others that have come and gone through your life, but have impacted on you. There’s just, you know, friends… Friends are the brown sugar on the porridge of life!

Denise, tell us about talking.

Talking is an important part of a relationship, or part of life, but I think that lots of problems in life are caused by miscommunication when talking is, you know, something that’s been said has been misunderstood. I think that the other half of talking is listening and that’s just as, or more important, than talking. You know the adage; God gave us one mouth and two ears. We should try to balance the amount that we talk with the amount that we listen. I think that it’s important if you’re having a heart-to-heart talk with someone to try and clarify what they’re saying to make sure that you’re understanding, and to try to listen with an open mind and an open heart, and not just be sitting there waiting for the next chance to jump in. There are lots of other ways of communicating but talking is one of the gifts that we’ve been given by the Creator. I think other animals communicate with one another, but they don’t talk in the same way that we do. They don’t have the same capacity for that. Yeah, I think talking is important, but so is listening.

Denise, tell us about time.

Time is a really bizarre concept or construct! When you’re younger, time seems to stretch on forever, and that makes sense in that if you’re five years old, one year is 1/5 of your life, so it seems like a very long time. But the older you get, the smaller that percentage is, and the quicker time seems to go. So now, I often say I get up on Monday and when I go to bed, it’s Friday. That’s how fast a week feels like it goes, which is okay, but if I stop to think about it, I could get myself quite depressed because that means that I have considerably less time left than what I would like to have; and so I really want to make sure that I try to enjoy, and live each day as fully as I possibly can because I don’t have as many left. I don’t focus on that, because I could get quite sad, but it’s an awareness at the back of my mind. But the other thing about time is it’s just such a bizarre thing. You know, something might feel like it happened two years ago, and really, it was five or ten or twelve years ago. It’s a slippery one, you can’t pin time down, it just keeps going, and you just got to keep staying in the moment, I guess.

Denise, tell us about good and evil.

Well, I’m not really sure that I believe in evil, in the sense that I don’t think there is a devil or an archangel or somebody making us do evil things. My creator, my higher power, my God, created us for good, with love, and then gave us free will. I think that the “evil” that happens in the world is done by men and women who have lost their way in the sense that they’re hurting, they’re making bad choices, they haven’t been given the choices in life that others have been given. You know, I don’t think God, my God, causes wars or causes tsunami’s or, you know, any of the things that people say are bad versus good. But I think that certainly bad things happen. But I just don’t know that I believe in that – Oh, he’s evil or she’s evil, or you know, that we can judge people as either good or evil. I also think, and I might be naive and living under a rock, who knows, but I also think that there’s far more good in the world than there is evil. But I think that the day and age that we’re living in, with the information age and the technology age, I think we are made aware of evil, and it’s magnified in our world; so that we’re more aware of it and more focused on it. But I just believe more in good than evil, and I think we, I think again, what we focus on, is what we see. You know, if we’re looking for evil, if I’m looking for evil, I can find all sorts of it all over the city, all over the world. But I’d rather think about the little old lady at the theatre that helped me out the other day and was so kind; and you know, she’s not going to get any news coverage, but she just made my day! So, I just don’t know, good and evil, interesting concepts.

Denise, tell us about prayer.

Prayer for me is a little bit like thinking, and it relates a little bit to the whole concept of talking and listening. My form of prayer has changed a lot over the years. I used to pray for things, specific things, as though God was Santa Claus and would bring me whatever I asked for at Christmas time. But I gradually developed a different understanding of God. When I pray now, it’s often very simple and very constant. I try to take time in the morning to connect with my higher power, to reconnect, to refocus, and I do that by reading a short reading or two and then I try to sit for a few minutes and meditate, as people talk about, and that’s the listening part, but that doesn’t generally work very well for me because my brain is just on the go right away – but I pray all day long. When I’m pulling into a parking spot, I thank God. I say thanks for not making me run into the curb, not that I think God does that, but you know, thanks for keeping the curb away from my car. You know, I use two words all day long – thanks and help, and when I make that conscious contact in the morning, I ask for God’s will for my day, and I ask for help to do God’s will during the day. When I screw up, I say sorry, so I guess that’s another one of my constant prayers. Thanks, help, and sorry. The listening part of it for me comes more in seeing rather than hearing. When I see the little miracles, when I experience the little miracles, or the moments of joy, or the kindness from a stranger or the butterscotch on my ice cream that makes me feel like I’m in heaven, you know that’s me listening to my higher power, because that’s my higher power saying, “See, I’m here.” You know, it’s okay! Or if my daughter is struggling and I get three or four phone calls where she’s in a state of angst and pain and then I get one where she’s worked her way through things and she’s seeing things in a different light. That for me, is my God saying, “see, I’ve got this, it’s under control,” you know, like, “I’m with you and it’ll all be okay and that’s my will.” So, that’s my listening, it’s being open, open to the miracles, and open to the answers that come in all sorts of strange ways. So, I could talk for a lot longer about prayer because it’s very near and dear to my heart, but that’s enough.

Denise, tell us about pleasure.

For me, pleasure is closely connected to love and sharing, receiving love and sharing love. I take pleasure in things that most people take pleasure in; you know, a good meal, a walk in nature, a sunny sky, all those kinds of things. But for me the most pleasure is sharing a good laugh with Don or going for a drive and just sitting in comfortable silence. Or having my granddaughter, for the first time ever, in her ten years of life, curl up with me at the library and read me a story. Those are the things that bring pleasure to my life. I think people often look, maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that in our world, people often look to outside things to bring them pleasure. You know, if I get a new jacket, that’ll bring me happiness, that will make me happy, that’ll bring me pleasure. It can, and it certainly does, but it’s short lived, and it’s not the same as the pleasure that comes from the love of friends or family, or strangers, or whoever. That’s a much deeper pleasure. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moments that I’ve shared with Don or with my family that have brought me great pleasure.

Denise, tell us about beauty.

So much in our society, in our world, says that beauty is skin deep, but to me, beauty comes from within. It’s the person that’s inside that is beautiful. Although, I mean, I certainly can recognize an attractive person, a person that’s attractive in my eyes, but that’s a very subjective kind of beauty. To me, beauty is seeing happiness in other people, seeing the joy that someone’s experiencing, feeling the warmth of love and nature. When I say things like, “it’s a beautiful day,” I mean…. Well, when I was teaching at St. Volodymyr school, I taught with a lady, Mary Ann Nicholson. When I was in her classroom in the mornings she started every morning with her students with, “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad,” and that just makes me think of beauty. We’re surrounded by beauty if only we see it. We just have to see it…. I love that saying, I still use it almost every day. Beauty is all around us if we just keep our eyes open for it!

Denise, tell us about religion.

Well, just a few moments ago I said that I didn’t really believe in evil, and I do believe what I said, but I think that much “evil,” and I’m using air quotes to say that, has been done in the name of religion. I think that there is a vast difference between faith and spirituality, and organized religion. I’m not suggesting that all organized religions are bad or that people shouldn’t have their religious beliefs, but I think that like anything, there are people that take those beliefs to the extreme and become fundamentalists, or they lose sight of the good that they believed in; and then they start wars, and they abuse children, and they disallow women to have the rights of an adult. So, I think that lots of bad things are done in the name of religion; Oh, Allah told us to do this, or God told us to do this or whatever; and I just don’t believe that! I take my religion with a grain of salt. I take what I like from it, and I leave the rest. I have my own spirituality, which is my own relationship with the God of my understanding, of the higher power of my understanding. There are some things about my religion that I absolutely adore. I love the music and I love the rituals, and I love the wisdom that is often shared. I love the community feeling. But I don’t love the fact that individuals within that religion have done horrible things over time. And again, I guess that’s not really the religion that is doing it, it’s the people within it, but, somehow, religions seem to attract extremists in some sense. Power and control.

And finally, Denise, tell us about death.

I don’t know what I believe about death. I know what I want to believe. I know what beliefs comfort me, but I don’t know about death, or more about the afterlife, I guess it is. In terms of death, I think that we die when we’re meant to; and whether we commit suicide, whether we have an assisted death, assisted medical death, or whether we die in an accident, or whether we die unexpectedly in our sleep, I don’t think the circumstances of our death are of our choosing, even when it appears that they are. I think that we die when we’re meant to die. My hope is that there is a life after death that’s very different from this life. I don’t expect that I will get to the afterlife and learn to play bridge and hang out with my mom at dances. But I hope that there is a communion of souls, or saints, as one of our prayers says, a Communion of Saints, a forgiveness of sins, and life everlasting. I hope that there’s that. If I think about my own death, I’m not ready for it. I know I don’t have any control over it, but like a wise woman said to me not too long ago, it’s the leaving behind that I don’t want to do. I don’t want to miss the joys and I don’t want to miss the possibility of great grandchildren, and I don’t want to miss the possibility of seeing my grandchildren, my granddaughters graduate from school, and getting married, all those things. But I know that I have no control over that, and that as long as I focus on life, living life while I have it, then I’ll be okay. In the afterlife, if there is one, and if there isn’t, well, then that’s that, but I’ll have lived well and hopefully live on in the memories of others; and maybe that’s all the afterlife is, is living on, maybe that’s what the everlasting life is, it is living on in the memories of others until eventually there are no others to remember you. I don’t know. But I don’t think that people who choose to decide their own death date are necessarily choosing that. I still think that there’s the hand of God in there helping them make that choice for whatever reason. I don’t think they’re going to be punished for it, or anything like that. I still think that the hand of the God that I love is in there, and that there’s a reason why they go when they go; and maybe that reason is for us to learn something from! But I’m not ready to go yet, not for a long time, and I do spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about death, sometimes in terms of how I will cope with the death of my husband, how will I cope with the death of my mother-in-law, how will I cope with the loss of this person, or that person, and so on. I guess that’s just a natural part of getting older, so I think about it a little more because it’s a little closer than it was in earlier days. Although it’s never very far around the corner in a sense. Anyway, death is not the end, it’s just the beginning of a new chapter.

To end the formal interview, I want to say how happy I am that I had the idea to ask Denise to participate in this blog post project. Although, I have learned all this about Denise over our forty years together, it was nice to hear it all again in this fashion. I think that she even liked the idea of it. We were able to get the recordings done in less than a day, if you can believe it! I am so proud of the person Denise is, and the wisdom she has. As I have told her more times than I can count, when she speaks, it is like listening to a choir of angels, a very beautiful song! Since these answers were acquired by recording Denise at the time, I will make a point of keeping the recordings in a safe place so when Denise is gone, and those down the line wonder what she was like, these recordings can be listened to, and they will know of her beauty and wisdom, they will know the wonders that were/are her!

Just so you know, that although I think Denise is a shining example of what I think of as God-like, I will end this blog post with two stories from Denise’s past, that I find so cute, and show her as human as all of us. Let’s do it in the same format. 👍😊

Denise, tell us about courtship.

Well, this is a story less about courtship and more about me being Miss Independence, and just about getting myself into trouble. Near our farm there was an old fellow, well, he was old to me. He was probably 40, and he was widowed, and he had two young daughters. He was friends with my dad and used to spend a fair bit of time at our house drinking coffee and shooting the breeze. One day, shortly after I had turned 18, but before I left home, I was particularly mad at my mom for trying to control me and I said in great sarcasm, “I’m 18 years old, I can do anything I want! I could marry old Bill here if I wanted to!” Nobody paid much attention, except obviously old Bill, because the following Sunday he showed up at our farm in a very old white shirt, obviously a going-a-courting shirt, and dress pants. He came and asked my father if he could take me out on a date and start courting me so that we could get married. I thought, that’ll be a frosty day in hell! 😊

Denise, tell us about graduation.

The memory of that day brings nightmares to my mind. Grade 12 graduation, of course, I haven’t had a boyfriend through all of high school and so I have no graduation date. My father comes to the rescue because some neighbors down the road had a son who was a year younger than me. Clarence was his name. Dad asked them if Clarence would be my graduation date. Obviously, they said yes, although I think he was probably pretty reluctant, he was about as reluctant as I was. Anyway, I had all the dreams of grade 12 graduation that most girls do. I saved my money and ordered myself a dress out of the Sears catalog and thought I looked pretty darn good, but I wasn’t really looking forward to this particular date. He showed up to get me and he was wearing red Fortrel pants and cowboy boots that were covered with cow manure; and he stunk to high heaven. I immediately took one look at him and turned around and ran upstairs to my bedroom and said I’m not coming down. Eventually with a lot of cajoling, and finally my girlfriend Kathy begging me to come down because she wasn’t too pleased with her particular date either, I came down. We stood in front of the fridge and Mom took a picture of us. It’s a famous picture in our family because I’ve got a scowl that would kill a cougar, and I’ve got my arms crossed, and I’m just flaming mad. You can see it coming off me and he just thought it was great. However, the ending of the story takes place about a year later when he graduated and didn’t have a graduation date. So once again it was arranged that I would be his graduation date. He had gone to a small-town school, very conservative, very normal. I showed up in the most bizarre hippie outfit I could find, a blue jean skirt, a denim skirt, with a ragged bottom, and a peasant top with necklaces coming out my ears, and flowers in my hair, as hippy as I could possibly get; and then to top it all off, and I’m not too proud of this part, I was old enough to go to the bar and he was not. So, I went to the bar with a bunch of his friends and basically deserted him. So that was my retaliation, and I’m not proud of that part, but revenge felt sweet for a few minutes. …. Don’t include that last bit about the revenge and the bar bit in the story! Oops! sorry Dee! 😊

Donald B. Cheke – August 19, 2024