I’ve loved this painting since way back in my Canada days. It shines.
The waves about to crash … the eyes of the dolphins … and O the aquamarine!
Here in Gent, I wanted to see all this every day, to have my breath disappear again and again. But the depth of the beauty often escapes me as I brush my teeth.
In a perfect world, the majesty would flow to my eyes effortlessly. But in my bathroom it requires conscious thought to see the waves. Unless I back up some, the roar of the water remains hidden under a cupboard.
I don’t feel like writing today but four days ago some anonymous person did. She or he told us about Sinéad O’Connor.
I’ll give you the highlights:
Her childhood was brutal. Physical abuse. Emotional trauma. A mother who hurt her. A system that failed her. By age 15, she’d been placed in a Magdalene asylum – institutions where “troubled” Irish girls were sent to be reformed, punished and hidden away.
***
The music industry took one look at her and had notes. Lose weight. Grow your hair long. Wear dresses. Smile more. Look feminine. Be marketable. Sinéad’s response? She shaved her head. Completely bald.
***
Sinéad O’Connor appeared with a shaved head, ripped jeans and combat boots. No apologies. No explanation. No compromise.
***
A woman’s voice – not trying to be pretty or palatable– just furiously, desperately honest. Songs about abuse. About anger. About surviving. About refusing to be broken.
***
The music video was revolutionary in its simplicity: Sinéad’s face. Tears streaming down her cheeks. Nothing else. No dancers. No special effects. No elaborate sets. Just a bald woman crying and singing about loss with such raw vulnerability that it destroyed you.
***
She got death threats. She didn’t care. At the 1991 Grammys, she refused to accept awards. Refused to stand when the national anthem played. People called her ungrateful. Difficult. Crazy. She kept going.
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She performed an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War” – changing the lyrics to be about child abuse rather than racism. Then, staring directly into the camera, she held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II. She tore it in half. “Fight the real enemy,” she said. The audience sat in stunned silence. The backlash was immediate and brutal. Her records were steamrolled by bulldozers on radio station parking lots. The Catholic Church condemned her. Fellow musicians denounced her. Her career in America essentially ended overnight.
But here’s what most people didn’t understand at the time: Sinéad was protesting the Catholic Church’s systematic cover-up of child sexual abuse. This was 1992. Years before the Boston Globe investigation. Decades before the world would fully acknowledge what the Church had done. Sinéad knew. She’d lived it. She’d survived it. And she refused to stay silent – even knowing it would destroy her career. Even knowing the world would hate her for it. She was right. About all of it. But she paid the price anyway.
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For the next decade, Sinéad released music that barely anyone heard. Performed for audiences that barely existed. Was dismissed as “crazy”, “unstable”, a cautionary tale about what happens when you don’t play by the rules.
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She struggled with mental health. With trauma. With a world that had punished her for telling the truth. But she never apologized for tearing up that photo. Not once. Not ever. “I’m not sorry I did it,” she said years later. “It was brilliant.”
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She never stopped being exactly who she was. A woman who refused to be anything other than exactly who she was. Who shaved her head when they told her to grow it. Who spoke truth when they told her to stay silent. Who tore up the photo when they told her to bow down. Who paid the price and never regretted it.
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Sinéad O’Connor’s story isn’t just about music. It’s about the cost of telling the truth before the world is ready to hear it. It’s about being punished for being right. It’s about choosing authenticity over acceptance, even when authenticity costs you everything. She was told to be pretty. Be quiet. Be grateful. Be normal. Instead, she was Sinéad O’Connor. Bald. Furious. Honest. Uncompromising. Right.
Yes, I’d like my dreams to be full of meandering paths bordered by flowers, but it ain’t always so.
I’d like photos of me to show grace and kindness, not the fury of the kid you see here, but it ain’t always so.
I guess I’m all of it, including both my public sweetness and my private agonies.
The black part showed up overnight. I was standing on a slight hill. Below me a tiny cat (a kitten?) was running full speed, chased by a huge tabby … from my right to left.
Then again, coming left to right. I stepped down the hill and drew back my leg like a football player (soccer). The kitten saw the movement and sidestepped out of the way.
I followed through, and my foot caught the big cat square in the forehead.
Much of the unknown, of the “beyond”, has shown up in my mind lately. I welcome the wayward, the tilted, the upside down.
Sometimes I shake my head in response. Often I nod.
Exhibit A
My Polar watch keeps track of my sleep. The total for the past five nights is 48 hours … that’s nine-and-a-half per snooze. Huh? Unheard of in this body. I remember some virtually sleepless nights when I was a teacher. Such contrast.
Yes, I’ve been sick with some sort of virus, and the organs need to repair. But this elongated slumber?
Exhibit B
It’s a dream remembered from last night. I’m looking at the doors of a car. The colour is robin’s egg blue … and it overwhelms. And right in the middle of this glory is a large patch of pink, complete with outlined circles and spreading tree branches. The whole story took my sleeping breath away.
Exhibit C
A simple and sad question:
How could millions of American women vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 US election?
Mark Kelly is a Senator in the US Congress. A leader in governing, in guiding the future of the country.
The President of the USA has a vision for the future that places himself at the centre. Mark sees all the American people in that location.
He has courage:
Everybody needs to wake up. The occupant of the Oval Office is ignorant to the Constitution and has no regard for the rule of law … I will not be intimidated by this president. I am not going to be silenced by this president.
There is danger in the air. As Glenn Carr says on Facebook:
Time Zones are so crazy In Denmark, it’s noon In Canada, it’s 6 am In the USA … It’s late 1930s Germany
Mark is both embraced and reviled. Here’s a hug from Ginger Kimbrell:
Please keep up the fight! Our whole country needs you and others with your knowledge and experience to help us become what we have stood for since our Constitution was written
And from an unknown poet:
Sit like a mountain Sit with a sense of strength and dignity Be steadfast, be majestic, be natural and at ease in awareness No matter how many winds are blowing, be intimate with everything and sit like a mountain
I’ve slept for eleven hours two nights in a row. This has got to be a world record for me. There’s not much oomph in the bod but I wanted to put something out into the world today. So here goes …
The photo is of Donald Lopez Jr. He’s a professor of Buddhism at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. My antennae are always up for good teachers.
First of all, a note about vocabulary:
“In Buddhism, sutras are sacred scriptures, considered records of the oral teachings of Gautama Buddha or his close disciples”
Donald had an assignment for his students. In his words …
The second paper topic pointed out that Buddhist sutras were written for centuries after the death of the Buddha, with anonymous authors attributing their own words to the Buddha, thus allowing the Buddha to address important issues of the time, sometimes in the form of prophecy. Using the literary style of a Buddhist sutra, the students were asked to compose a sutra, setting forth what the Buddha might teach those living in America today.
What a cool task to present to young minds! The article I read didn’t give examples of student sutras but I bet there was a lot of spiritual energy flowing from student to prof within computer files.
My brain is mush, as is my body. I slept eleven hours last night and some more today. Wayward, floating, wide open spaces … sounds transformational but actually it’s some type of virus.
(Oh … this is going to be a short post!)
This weekend is a Zoom retreat for the Core group of the Evolutionary Collective – six hours a day. If you subtract for breaks, it’s about four-and-a-half hours of focusing. On the words of the teacher, on the words when people share in the large group, on the words of my partner when we’re doing a practice.
I just didn’t have it. Sentences drifted off into the ether, with their meanings invisible to me. My mind floated away as well. All I could do was “be with” my fellow members as best as I could, and silently love them.
But the sun was setting on Bruce …
This afternoon I decided not to attend the retreat today. Four more hours would be beyond my grasp. It was a good decision. I’ll listen to the recording this week.
I woke up mid-afternoon from a long slumber. I had closed the blinds. And this is what I beheld:
I mentioned Darlene Cohen a few days ago, that she had insights about pain that I decided to share only when I had some. (This is not a photo of her)
Be careful of what you ask for!
The body isn’t working well right now. Some virus has leaked the air out of my tires. I’ll spare you the details. It’s not extreme but it is a dis-ease.
And so it’s time for Darlene and me …
Here’s what she has to say:
We must penetrate our anguish and pain so thoroughly that illness and health lose their distinction, [allowing] us to just live our lives. Our relief from pain and our healing have to be given up again and again to set us free from the desire to be well. Otherwise, getting well is just another hindrance to us … another idea that enslaves us, like any other achievement. Healing ourselves is like living our lives. It is not preparation for anything else, nor a journey to another situation called wellness. It is its own self; it has its own value. It is each thing as it is.
Okay, this is difficult. The content of Darlene’s message is clearly a challenge. But so is stringing thoughts together when my head is woozy.
I understand, Bruce. Now write
“To set us free from the desire to be well.” It sounds crazy, but it’s pointing me to the moon. Am I willing to go there?
Is Darlene asking me to accept my current disorientation for the rest of my life? On one level, I’m doing what I need to to have health return, such as taking an effective medication, drinking lots of fluids, etc.
She’s not suggesting that I don’t take action. She’s asking my eyes to see illness and health through a wider lens: simply life events, ones that we all face. To hold them in a far bigger universe, to feel the space around them.
I’m back to wondering how I’m creating these words. Wouldn’t it be better to write this stuff in a few days when I’m feeling better? No.
Getting well as an “achievement”, more of the ego doing its thing. How strange.
Just a glimpse now … a world beyond the horizon of health.
And a disclaimer: my current health problem is not large. How would Darlene show herself to me if right now I was in excruciating pain?
This is Natalie Hampton. Years ago she had a deep problem. She felt the pain of it and didn’t stop there. She acted.
Seventh grade.
Natalie Hampton walked into the cafeteria holding her tray, eyes searching for a place – any place – to sit.
Every table was taken. Groups laughing, talking, locked inside their own worlds. She already knew how this would end. She’d tried before.
The rejection was instant. Loud. Public. So she sat at an empty table in the corner. Alone. Again.
Have you been there? I sure have. And I’ve been on the other side of things too. Once my emotional maturity started showing up, I became a welcomer for the alone ones.
Back to Natalie. She created an app called Sit With Us, finding a way for teens to link up online, and at the table. Brilliant! And talk about viral …
Messages arrived from everywhere – Morocco. Australia. England. The Philippines. France.
Kids who’d been eating alone finally felt seen.
…
Today Sit With Us operates in 30 countries. Natalie – now in her mid-twenties – remains CEO.
Now kids everywhere can open an app, find a table, and sit down knowing they’re welcome.
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