I'll start by just saying how my column came to be known as... Rote Writer. I longed to share something more than just a smile; though some smiles I've shared have lasted longer than an Irish mile. My column came to me after reading an editorial. It bothered me so I wrote a letter to the editor. Here it is in its entirety. "I write in response to the editorial in the February 22, 2008 issue of What's up Yukon by Darrell Hookey titled: 'A Church for the Rest of Us.' The title and theme of the editorial mirrors the Seinfeld television episode called 'A Festivus for the Rest of Us'. It comically depicts the Costanza family fed up with Christmas as the holiest holiday. Today folks are fed up with royalty too or anything untrue. So stay true to you and let the restrictive reigns of religion be ripped apart by reality. Let reality replace religion. And to avoid another religion resurfacing... let each person speak for themselves in this so called and coined 'Church of the Self'. Though if the editor checked he would see its been used many times before, even biblically. Lets avoid cultivating a cult by avoiding avarice, entitling titles or using words that take away individuality like; our, we or us. Any phrase incorporating the word lets shall be acceptable though not let's. It's a contraction for let us and that's a no no. Though here I say it's okay. Let's hold these three words as the new rule, the highest tenet: I don't know. Let's say anyone, as in atheists who say there is no God and believers who say there is a God; don't know one way or another. So let's say 'I don't know.' Let's say Rote spent years studying the world's religions, philosophies and ideologies; he also delved into Darwin, Dawkins and the Dark before clarity came. It came to him in a wild moment after sitting still for some time. He meditated daily for years searching for the universal will-thinking without thought. Let's say Rote found what all spiritual seekers seek at night with his white fanged wolf/coyote cross Micmac. The two were true to the north; nestled in the northern lights, north of sixty, night after night. It happened one night while the two were having fun fighting, frolicking; howling at the moon... making snow angels during a deep freeze of minus forty on frozen Marsh Lake in Yukon Territory. It was momentous and synchronous as would be the Second Coming. It came to him like a celestial event as sure as there was one occurring for comets Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake did dawn upon what was divinely drawn. Rote realised not knowing is knowing… and the more you know… the less you know. Only ignorance insists it knows. Rote knows! He knows knowledge is knowing the now. Now let's say Rote has a column in syndication that deals with the real called Rote Writer. Let's say the column answers all the angst believers and nonbelievers feel. The column gives them something more than the empirical or biblical dust to dust. With the same thrust lets keep it simple by entrusting these Three Tiny Treatises as the building blocks for the Church: A bubble began, The life of I am, A Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, Joined with other S.C.U.B.A. suspending the stratus. ~ Gravity forms all, Big and small, From foot to flower, To root and shower. ~ All thought, However taught, Comes to naught, So go by what you know, And need to know, And let the rest go.