Almost every morning I stand on the Zuivelbrug (a bridge) and look for birds and faraway people. It’s a ritual.
A huge weeping willow tree is part of the vista. Sometimes birds sit near the top.
Last night a fierce storm passed through Gent.
Today I saw this …
(Sigh)
The end of a life, a glorious green one that no doubt has touched many people … such as me. I’m sad.
Was it yesterday I wrote “All things must pass”? Indeed.
***
I’m reminded of the song Bonny Portmore – “a traditional Irish folk lament that mourns the destruction of Ireland’s ancient oak forests, specifically the loss of the Great Oak of Portmore (an enormous ornamental tree in County Antrim that fell during a windstorm in 1760)”.
Beyond the wind was human commerce … and greed. Many forests in Ireland were cut down to supply wood for shipbuilding.
Listen to the sorrow in the voice of Megan Walsh, who was then a member of Celtic Woman.
Lyra Belacqua is a character in Philip Pullman’s two trilogies His Dark Materials and The Book Of Dust. Her journey with us starts when she’s a baby. I’m reading book five in the series – The Secret Commonwealth. Lyra is 20.
I love Lyra. And I love what she gives to the world. She speaks the roller coaster of life that all of us feel.
Gradually as Lyra watched she found her mood lifting. She’d hardly been aware of feeling anxious, but that was because anxiety was everywhere, built into the very molecules of the world, or so it had seemed. But now it was disappearing, like heavy grey clouds thinning and dispersing and finding their great banks of vapour drifting into wisps that wafted away into invisibility, leaving the sky clear and open.
The street below her was saturated in Dust. Human lives were generating it, being sustained and enriched by it. It made everything glow as if it was touched with gold. She could almost see it. It brought with it a mood that she hadn’t felt for so long that it was unfamiliar, and welcomed it almost apprehensively: it was a quiet conviction, underlying every circumstance, that all was well and that the world was her true home, as if there were great secret powers that would see her safe.
(It’s a word that still defies my brain: Dust. According to powers beyond me, it’s “a cosmic, conscious matter that acts as a physical manifestation of human consciousness, self-awareness and knowledge”.)
***
Lyra’s moments often lead to entirely different moments. Just like you and me.
About two weeks ago, a big portion of my bedroom ceiling collapsed, waterlogged after a heavy rain.
Yesterday morning, after another diabolical rain, I spent four hours filling and emptying eighteen buckets of water that came from above.
Today a repair guy named Eli inspected the scene, looking for a leak on the terrace of my upstairs neighbour. No doubt some defect in the structure of our building, I thought.
At the front of my neighbour’s terrace, there is a metal channel that was full of water. Here’s a photo, looking straight down to my terrace. The channel is empty in this pic.
Eli went downstairs to my place. The end of the pipe leading from up to down was clogged with leaves, and the bottom tube of my sofa was wedged into the hole. He moved the sofa and pried out the leaves.
Et voilà! A torrent of water
So … no building defect
Just a tenant defect, in the name of Bruce
I’ve lived here for about four years
And I’ve never checked the pipe
***
This is where the laughing part is allowed. Less joyfully, the responsibility and the cost of my ceiling repair is mine. As it should be.
Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese monk who inspired spiritual awakening in his students and a more loving world for the rest of us. He died in 2022.
He was known to his devotees as Thầy (Vietnamese for “teacher”). One of these people is Kaira Jewel Lingo. Her words on the 100th anniversary of his birth have touched me.
Kaira is helping me see one way to make a difference in my local world, and in the global one.
Will it be wise words?
Will it be loving words?
Will it be giving financial support?
Will it be a hug?
Perhaps all of these. But Kaira pointed elsewhere …
One morning we were traveling from one city to another, and I boarded the bus full of misery, utterly dejected. Thầy was sitting in the front row, as he always did, to make sure the driver stayed awake and that we would all be safe. As I reached the top step, I lifted my gaze and our eyes met.
Thầy was looking at me most intently, with a compassion and love so huge I felt it physically. I had never seen that depth of kindness in someone’s eyes before, especially directed at me. It was as if a great being were looking at me through a magnifying glass of unconditional love. The look was so focused that it burned away my attachment to my story and the seductive hooks that kept me bound up in the small self. It was a moment of grace, and it took my breath away.
I had to keep walking past him to my seat, but inside myself I had stopped completely. I was changed. His brief look opened up a moment of timelessness in the midst of the pressures of worldly time, a moment of well-being and wholeness right in the midst of suffering.
That look transmitted to me a deep desire to look at people in that way, with boundless compassion and love that, without any words, can relieve suffering and inspire great confidence and joy.
A fellow just walked by the window, supported by two canes. He looked younger than me. And my mind started flowing …
Perhaps a cane is in my future. Even a walker. And how about a wheelchair?
When I think of “Who am I?” I see an unencumbered human being, thoroughly vertical, brimming with life. Perhaps I should widen my view to include varieties of physical deficit. For this pain, this ache, this stumble do not define the spirit that I am.
The man outside the window is my brother. I’ve never met him, and I probably won’t. But I know him. And “there but for the grace of God go I.”
I walked into a small church today. There were marble stairs up to where a priest sat. A slow line of people lingered between ten and thirty seconds with him and then walked down on the other side. It was a very short ceremony … person after person.
I sat a couple of seats from the aisle which most people used to walk to the back of the church, and then out into the sunlight.
There was silence throughout the space. At the entrance, we were asked to keep cell phones in our pockets.
During my time, two experiences came and grew:
1. I meditated with my eyes closed
To the recorded music of a choir chanting … and to the rhythm of footsteps
2. I blessed the human beings walking by with my eyes open
Many decades ago, a phrase visited me and decided to stay …
Love them all
At least two hundred faces came near. I loved each one. Since I was at a slight angle to the passers by, very few of them noticed my gaze. Even fewer made eye contact. That’s okay.
Young/old, short/tall, skin light/medium/dark, happy/not so much. I left no one out.
I walked out of the sanctuary after an hour or more … smiling in my heart. Whether those folks realized it or not, I was with them. They were in me.
It’s a lovely and sad story penned by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. Gord died in 2023 … but he is timeless.
The song has lingered in the back of my mind for years. Recently it’s been whispering …
Please, Bruce, bring me out into the light of day. Have my words drip from your mouth in the presence of other human beings
Okay. I’ll do that.
“Home From The Forest” is about a lonely old man, scarcely noticed by the upwardly mobile crowd rushing past him.
I sing songs so I can feel what the people in them are feeling … and to have the audience feel that too.
Old
Poor
Alone
Here’s Gord:
Oh the neon lights were flashin’ And the icy wind did blow The water seeped into his shoes And the drizzle turned to snow His eyes were red, his hopes were dead And the wine was runnin’ low And the old man came home From the forest
His tears fell on the sidewalk As he stumbled in the street A dozen faces stopped to stare But no one stopped to speak For his castle was a hallway And the bottle was his friend And the old man stumbled in From the forest
Up a dark and dingy staircase The old man made his way His ragged coat around him As upon his cot he lay And he wondered how it happened That he ended up this way Getting lost like a fool In the forest
And as he lay there sleeping A vision did appear Upon his mantel shining A face of one so dear Who had loved him in the springtime Of a long-forgotten year When the wildflowers did bloom In the forest
She touched his grizzled fingers And she called him by his name And then he heard the joyful sound Of children at their games In an old house on a hillside In some forgotten town Where the river runs down From the forest
With a mighty roar the big jets soar Above the canyon streets And the con men con but life goes on For the city never sleeps And for an old forgotten soldier The dawn will come no more For the old man has come home From the forest
***
In three weeks, I intend to sing this song at an open mic session in Gent. On to memorization …
Huh? Those words don’t make sense together. Or so I’ve said.
Perhaps there’s something new here. Actually there’s no “perhaps”. A light is shining that has never before brightened my life.
I’ve had several ongoing conflicts with my landlord. When I dial his number, I’m scared. When I write an e-mail … same. As I await his response … again.
Up until today.
The current issue is the money he’s owed me for months. I woke up this morning dreading how Chapter 23 of this ordeal would unfold. And then …
I found myself smiling. I leaned forward. I was excited about the immediate future: hearing his voice and mine on the phone.
What!?
This does not compute
This isn’t me
Except that right now … it is. Strange. Bruce Kerr rubbing his hands together in anticipation of a battle. No fear. Instead being eager.
How did this arise in me? There was no conscious decision to be brave. It’s a mystery that leaves my mouth lolling open.
