Last Tuesday at the Inaugural Prayer Service in the USA, Reverend Mariann Budde looked down from the pulpit into the eyes of Donald Trump.  What came next was truly speaking truth to power:

Let me make one final plea, Mr. President.  Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.

In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.  There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.  The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals.

They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation.  But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. 

I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.  And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. 

Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.  May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people.  Good of all people in this nation and the world.

Amen

***

Responses to Mariann’s words came swiftly:

A Radical Left hard line Trump hater [who] brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way.

I support Bishop Budde’s gospel message of unity at a time when our nation continues to be so deeply polarized.  Her heartfelt appeal to President Trump to show mercy toward the stranger and the vulnerable is not partisan politics, but the genuine witness of a pastor for her people.  Our people.  The people.

The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.

The prophetic voice we desperately need right now

The only message Bishop Budde delivered through her unwelcoming and hypocritical words to the President was that the Episcopal Church’s motto of ‘All Are Welcome’ apparently doesn’t apply to the majority of Americans who voted for Donald Trump.

She is a valued and trusted pastor to her diocese and colleague to bishops throughout our church.  We stand by Bishop Budde and her appeal for the Christian values of mercy and compassion.

[The cathedral was] taken over by gay activists.

I commend her for appealing directly to the President, asking him to recognize the universal Christian principle, shared by many other faiths, that we are all God’s children.  Instead of taking this to heart, Trump responded with cheap personal insults – once again rebuking the principles of love, mercy and compassion.

The bishop used her sermon to target Trump and his policies.  The homily is supposed to be God’s words to the congregation, delivered through the minister.  Congregants expect to hear from heaven.  Instead, what was delivered could have been written by the Democratic National Committee.

Rather than disparage one of the most respected women in spiritual leadership in this country, it would be more appropriate for President Trump to reflect on her message of empathy, understanding and inclusion.

Blasphemous

What would Jesus think of Rev. Budde’s sermon and her pleading with Trump for compassion towards those who are in need or who are different?  That is what real Christians need to ask.

The Bible warns against false prophets, who are described as people who appear to be good but are actually harmful.  The Bible says that false prophets are dangerous and should be avoided.

It seems power and greed of our politicians are taking many churches away from the teachings of Jesus.  Humility and treating everyone equally are going by the wayside and judgment and a hardness are taking their place.  Those who are the most self-righteous in their Christianity are not really Christians at all.

I’m offended that she abused the pulpit to deliver her personal, partisan message to the President, rather than seeking God’s face and delivering His words to the entire congregation.

For Christians across the nation, the choice is clear: to follow the path of fear and exclusion or to embrace the Gospel’s call to love boldly, act justly and stand with the marginalized.  Bishop Budde chose the latter – and in doing so, she spoke for the majority of U.S. Christians.

Her platform as a religious leader demanded, to say the least, a more nuanced approach.

Hear me, you who devour the needy and annihilate the poor of the land!  (Amos 8:4)

She was given a great honor today, a chance to unify America around a Christian message at the dawn of a new administration.  Instead, she disgraced herself with a lecture you’d hear on CNN or an episode of The View.

I’ve heard people call her a “shrill, shrieking, lesbian feminazi”.  It’s absolutely baffling.  Did we listen to the same sermon?

Attended national prayer service today at the Washington National Cathedral during which Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde insulted rather than encouraged our great president

She’s a woman with short hair in a position they think only a man should hold, and she’s in an affirming church.  Drawing from their very limited knowledge about the world, and I cannot emphasize enough how truly limited that knowledge is, those three things tell them she must be a lesbian.

Shame on you Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde for your totally inappropriate disgraceful un-Christian behavior.

It is hatred against women that’s provoked such violent responses.  It happens any time a woman’s words go viral, especially when attached to a pulpit.  We have to reckon with the ways this country and its men hate women.  We women live with that hate daily.

***

Reverend Budde laments “our tendency to jump to outrage and not speak to one another with respect.”

“I don’t feel there’s a need to apologize for a request for mercy”

Last week during my cello lesson I wore a splint on my right thumb as I played.  Because of arthritis, it’s the only way I can hold the bow for any length of time.

After about twenty minutes of playing (on and off), I felt my thumb escaping me … weakening, loosening.  The quality of the sound was falling away, the bow grinding on the strings. 

And then the hand and bow slipped off the strings entirely, migrating below the bridge (the wooden piece that holds the strings away from the body of the cello).

Oi!  What was that?

My friend and fellow cellist Anja told me about an attachment for the bow with an indentation for the thumb.  Apparently it’s worked for a lot of players. 

Yesterday I had an appointment with Naomi, my occupational therapist.  She tested my thumb … “It’s getting weaker.”

(Sigh)

No … Is the end of me playing the cello looming in the near future?  That would make me so sad.  Perhaps I’ll just kiss my thumb a lot.

***

On the other hand, I had an appointment with my eye doctor this morning.  She tested and tested, and showed me an image of an extra layer on my retina.  “We may have to remove it someday, but not now.  There are risks, and the benefits pale in comparison at the moment.”

“However … your cataracts are growing, and sooner or later, I’ll need to operate so the clouding of your lenses can be eliminated.  We can do it soon or leave it for a year or two.”

And then the words that shook my world …

“Your vision will be much improved”

“Maybe you won’t even need glasses anymore”

***

“What?!”

I’ve worn glasses for 60 years!  Ever since an evil French teacher put a test on the board rather than on paper.  And there I was sitting at the back of the room.  Toast.  The jig is up.  “I’ll have to wear glasses!”

So perhaps my face will be unencumbered by plastic and glass in a few months.  The body … better!

***

Rising … falling

The mystery of living

I just spent two delightful hours with my dear neighbour Dirk, enjoying the breakfast he had prepared for me.  The food, though, was a small part of the story.

Our conversation soared and dived through the joys and sorrows of two lives.  It was real.  It was love.

I don’t know how to do “small talk” and neither does Dirk.  It’s a skill I happily do without.  For without the soul infusing our words, why do we bother speaking?  It’s an empty shell of what could be in the precious moments we share.

At one point, I mentioned that I’m here on the planet to write.  And not a diary.  I want to touch people with my stories.  Because life is a concert hall, not a closet.

I post just about every day on Facebook and Jetpack.  Usually I get zero or two likes and zero or one comments.  So I don’t know if I’m reaching other human beings.

Dirk’s response?  “It doesn’t matter how many.” 

And he told me a story …

He was a theatre director and once presented the play La Forza del Destino at La Monnaie, a performing arts centre in Brussels.  About 1000 people were in the audience.

At the end was a standing ovation.  I don’t know if it was true or “sort of”, where folks look to see what their neighbours are doing before standing.

Dirk talked to little groups of theatergoers in the lobby as the hall emptied.  Much appreciation came his way, of the polite variety.

And then a couple in their 80’s, balanced with their canes, came forward.  The woman’s eyes met Dirk’s and she said “That was so beautiful, Mr. Tanghe.”

Her husband beamed and said “You’ve made our day.”

***

That moment was many years ago

The director remembers

And three days were made

This morning I spent most of two hours steeped in confusion.  It was my Music Theory class at Poel.  My previous understanding of rhythm was obliterated.  It felt like an assault, so deeply not knowing.  Add in my low understanding of Dutch … and there was despair.

My friend Jan sits beside me and does his best to translate but he too was struggling at times, and needed to focus on the teacher’s words.  Jan so much wants to help me.  I’m grateful.

And then …

In the middle of countless “Huh?!” moments, another overwhelm flooded me.  I loved my classmates … all eight of them.  I felt their beauty as they too scribbled notes and sometimes shook their heads within the mystery of music.

The jagged knife and warm bath joined in my mind and what came was truly beyond.   The brightness of life closed my eyes.  So much joy … so much pain.  And the joy was winning.  How can this be?

All nine of us are heroes of the best kind.  Dealing with life’s tumults as best we can.  Trying so hard to understand.

I don’t know how I kept doing the exercises and writing down the concepts.  I was gone … whereabouts unknown.  And accompanied.

***

As we were packing up, I was transported back to another group – a three-week wilderness experience in an Outdoor Education course in Alberta, Canada.  Two teachers and maybe twenty adult students.  We hiked beyond trails, canoed rivers sometimes wild, used our compasses in orienteering exercises to find Point B from Point A.

Some of our time in the mountains was in a group of four.  Hypothermia hit some people hard.  It may be that the actions of the three of us saved the fourth person’s life.

And the teachers definitely saved my life.  What was I doing signing up for a canoe journey and not being able to swim?  My partner and I missed our leader’s signal to pull into a riverside campsite, and there I trembled, facing the huge waves of a rapids.  “I’m dead.”

We were thrown out of our canoe.  I grabbed the gunwale and tried to keep water out of my mouth.  And then there were hands, and me trying to breathe on the shore, and a night full of dark dreams.

Back in town, our last day, and a written exam, since this was a university credit course.  I remember many of the questions being difficult, and me fretting about failing.

And then …

A 1980 overwhelm.  I looked at the faces of young adults furiously writing … and loved them.  I was lifted into the stratosphere of Thank you, my beloveds.  I remembered all the giving and receiving and blessed my friends of the wilds. 

Another period of being gone, of giving thanks for the kindness in us, of wanting all my classmates to be supremely happy.

***

So I reflect

On the gifts I have been given

And those I give

In my days, I look for people with light in their eyes, people with “juice”.   Those who are alive in their lives.

Sadly, I also meet folks who seem drained, dry, with mouths that just won’t curl upward at the corners.  I’m sad for them.  Has life merely become a list of events, as simple as eating and showering, leading slowly to death?

(Sigh)

Intermission

As I tap this screen in Izy Coffee, a small dog bounded up on the couch and nestled on my chest.  Now it’s licking!  I let doggie moisten my face a bit before turning away.

And now we settle, Moxy warm against my side.  For a bit I pet his head.  And now my hand is resting on his back.  He seems happy.  Me too.

Then Moxy’s master Tommy calls him … and the couch is mine alone again.  Coming … going.  Such is life.  I need to feel the moments between.

End of Intermission

Now, where was I?

I’ve just finished a novel – “The Subtle Knife” by Philip Pullman.  He’s a fine storyteller and creator of characters.

He’s introduced me to Spectres:

Spectres came from the void between worlds in the multiverse.

[They’re] attacking post-pubescent humans and eating their soul, leaving them as a mindless shell.

It’s similar to a vampire feasting on blood.

I wonder if there are Spectres on Earth, taking the essence from some fine human beings.

Here are some quotes from the book:

1.  In some lights they were hardly there at all, just visible as a drifting quality in the light, a rhythmic evanescence, like veils of transparency turning before a mirror.

2.  She felt a nausea of the soul, a hideous and sickening despair, a melancholy weariness so profound that she was going to die of it.  Her last conscious thought was disgust at life: her senses had lied to her.  The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal and lassitude.  Living was hateful and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe, this was the first and last and only truth.

Thus she stood, bow in hand, indifferent, dead in life.

3.  One or two blank-eyed soldiers glanced up briefly, but found what they saw too hard to remember, and looked away again.

“Lassitude”.  I feel like looking it up in the dictionary.

A condition characterized by lack of interest, energy or spirit

May that condition gently float away from those of us who have it

So we may give

Number One

The Soup Lounge by the Zuivelbrug bridge is full of deliciousness.  And the coolest thing about it is an employee named Glenn.  We’re both philosophers and usually have something silly to say to each other.  And occasionally deep.

I was walking by and there was Glenn inside, eating a sandwich.  I pulled an imaginary sandwich out of my pocket and started chomping down.  He laughed.  He put his sandwich behind his back and out front again.  I followed suit.

I can’t remember the next thing he did but I know I copied it perfectly.

Then he pretended to throw the sandwich into the air.  Me too.  I winged mine way up high and there I stood on the cobbles, hand out, waiting for it to come down.  When I finally caught the see-through nourishment, I noticed a woman standing near, smiling at my athletic achievement.  Glenn inside was also grinning.  So we were three.

***

Number Two

A new restaurant has just moved in, two floors down from my apartment … Bento House.  Husband and wife plus father and mother have worked so hard for the last two months to get ready for the grand opening.  Two glass doors installed at the entrance – so lovely.  Plush chairs at brown tables with sweet reddish-brown placemats.

In the early evening, as I climbed the stairs to my apartment, I looked through the doors and saw emptiness.  Everything neat and tidy and vacant.

Sitting at a corner table was dad, his head bowed.  His face was a mask of pain.  And my heart ached for the sadness I witnessed in the face of a human being.  My body had stopped and so had time. 

***

And there we have it … the full span of experiences

We are lifted.  We are crushed

We laugh.  We despair

Hugs please

On Monday, March 17, it looks like I’ll have the opportunity to sing three songs in the café of Minard in Ghent.  The not-sureness is since Hanna, the MC, is on vacation and not accessing her e-mails.  Fingers crossed.

I want to exude love onstage.  Sure, I’d like to hit all the right notes and words, but that’s secondary.  If I touch the audience in song number one, can there be a cumulative effect as I sing two and three?  I wonder.

Yesterday three songs exploded nicely in my head.  They’ve resided there for months and years.  The first is love of a place, the second love of a person, the third love of an activity.  Different destinations … all love.

I don’t know any of these.  And I’m fine with that.  A lot can be accomplished in eight weeks.

The first one is Bonny Portmore.  It’s a castle surrounded by trees, especially one – the ornament tree.  And it all disappears.  A song of lost love.

All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying “Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?”
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground

Number two is You Can Close Your Eyes.  Love as gentle and sweet, an adoration of the beloved one.  Time stands still in the presence of the other.

So close your eyes
You can close your eyes, it’s all right
I don’t know no love songs
And I can’t sing the blues anymore
But I can sing this song
And you can sing this song when I’m gone

And then there’s If It Be Your Will, a prayer to the Divine.  Something you love doing … Will it continue or will it end?  There will eventually be a last time when I sing.  Please, may it be a long way off.

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you

From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

***

I have a lot to look forward to

A friend of mine was having a bad day yesterday … not sleeping, some people being mean to her, laptop woes.  I said I’d pray for her.

I was heading to the gym, and a brand new thought entered my mind:  “I can pray for her while I’m on the cross-trainer machine.” (Also called an elliptical)

Huh?!

In words I have come to love … “Why not?”  I usually ride the elliptical for thirty minutes.  It’s good for my heart and my knees.  And so I began.

The machine has all sorts of stats I can refer to during the ride, such as speed and calories burned.  For the very first time in my athletic life I didn’t look at them.  So strange. 

For the first ten minutes or so my mind was a jumble, flitting between an image of my friend’s face and the unseen numbers.

Then my whole body started to loosen.  My mind too.  And who knows what else.  My prayers began seeping out.  The urge to look down at tiny screens melted away, ever so slowly.  The arms still pumped back and forth.  The legs rotated as my feet sat on their pads.  But my energy output was … softening.

After twenty minutes, with my heart rate climbing (I could feel it.  I didn’t look!), the prayer for my friend was as wide as the sky.  I saw us hugging for a long time.  I could feel her heart beating against mine.

I was physically very tired at the end.  And … my heart was both thumping and soaring.

***

Hours later I was meditating at home.  I figured my friend could use some more praying.  It was a long and sweet session in my dear meditation chair.  I heard her name and blessed her. 

There came the moment when the slowly undulating stillness moved into unwavering stillness.  I could feel love flowing unimpeded from me to her.

So far pretty normal in my meditative life

And then …

!

My friend disappeared.

I disappeared.

The stillness was of a nature that I’ve never experienced before.  It was shining.  It was stretched out beyond the beginning and ending edges of life.  All had stopped.

And then the words:

Love loving Love

No longer two human beings.  Nor longer on the surface of this planet.  No longer with language and purpose and quick thinking.

Love loving Love

***

I’m asking myself if I should be saying this stuff.  I imagine that many of you have never meditated.  Maybe some folks are saying “What is this guy talking about?”

Well, so be it.  But who would I be if I didn’t talk about what is real and true?  If I let the shoulds of life guide me?

I know …

Just a shell of Bruce

I prefer the bigger fellow

I didn’t write this.  Thank God someone did.  I was lifted in the words … and I still am.  Thank you, dear writer, dear Tina and dear Edwin, for inspiring me.

Parts of the message stay with me, shining a light on what life can be if we commit to going there.

Bold print mine …

When Tina Turner left her first husband – who was also her boss, captor, and brutal tormentor – she snuck out of their Dallas hotel room with a single thought in her mind: “The way out is through the door.”

From there she fled across the midnight freeway, semi-trucks careening past her, with 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket.  As soon as she decided to walk out that door, she owned nothing else.

When she filed for divorce, she made an unusual request.  She didn’t want anything: not the song rights, not the cars, not the houses, not the money.  All she wanted was the stage name he gave her – Tina – and her married name – Turner.  This was the name by which the world had come to know her, and keeping it was her only chance to salvage her career.

Things could have gone a lot of ways from there.  She could have labored in obscurity for decades, maybe making records on small labels to be prized by vinyl connoisseurs in Portland.  She could have stayed in Vegas, where she first went to get her chops back up, and worked as a nostalgia act.  And, of course, given what she had been through, she might have … not made it.

What happened instead is that Tina Turner became the biggest global rock star of the 80s.  I’m old enough to barely remember this, but if you aren’t, it was like this: The Rolling Stones would headline a stadium one day, and the next day it would be Tina Turner.  A middle-aged Black woman – she became a rock star at 42! – sitting atop the 1980s like it was her throne. 

She managed this because of whatever rare stuff she was made of (this is a woman whose label gave her two weeks to record her solo debut, Private Dancer, which went five times platinum).  Because she decided to speak publicly about her abusive marriage and forge her own identity, and in doing so give hope and courage to countless women.  And also because – in a perhaps unlikely twist for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee – she had her practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism, to which she credited her survival.  She remained devout until the end.

Tina’s second marriage – to her, her only marriage – was to Edwin Bach, a Swiss music executive 16 years her junior.  Of him, she said, “Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame.”

In 2016, after a barrage of health problems, Tina’s kidneys began to fail.  A Swiss citizen by then, she had started preparing for assisted suicide when her husband stepped in.  According to Tina, he said, “I don’t want another woman, or another life.”  He gave her one of his kidneys, buying her the remainder of her time on this earth and perhaps closing a cycle which took her from a man who inflicted injury upon her to a man willing to inflict injury upon himself to save her from harm.

Born into a share-cropping family as Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, she died Tina Turner in a palatial Swiss estate: the queen of rock ‘n’ roll; a storm of a performer with a wildcat-fierce voice; a dancer of visceral, spine-tingling potency and ability; a beauty for the ages; a survivor of terrible abuse and an advocate for others in similar situations; an author and actress; a devout Buddhist; a wife and mother; a human being of rare talent and perseverance who, through her transcendent brilliance, became a legend.

***

Amen

I believe we are all made of stuff that isn’t so rare

I celebrate us

Before I get into symbols, I have news.  My grief of yesterday is gone!  I’m so happy to say goodbye, even knowing that the future may bring it back to me.

I looked up “old” in the dictionary: “having lived for a long time”.  Well, yes, that’s me.  Not as old as someone of 90 years, but the shoe still fits.

My choice is whether to say “I am old!” or “I am old.”  The second one, please.

I lost about a day in my sorrow.  As a younger man, I remember donating many days or even weeks to the woes I was creating in my mind.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  If I linger submerged in the swamp, I’m not available to other human beings.  I can’t love them from the goo.

And love is who I am

***

Now … the symbols.  Here’s the first one:

For years, I’ve seen the arrow as me.  I pour my energy into people, one at a time as the moments of the day unfold.  When I’m in a 1-1 conversation, life in the background disappears.  I see only her or him.

Of course the arrow is really two-pointed.  I receive so much beauty from other human beings.  Still, from my end, I’m immersed in one other person.

I meditated for a long time yesterday.  I checked my watch as I returned to “normal life” … one hour and forty-three minutes.

*Pause*

Hmm.  Why did I include the length of time?  Is that just pure ego speaking?  >  Oh, Bruce, be quiet.  Forget the analysis.  Let it go.  >  Okay.

*Return*

During the time in my meditation chair, images came and went, including the arrow.  At one point it began morphing into a circle, with many arrows flowing outwards:

And then the quiet voice … “This one, Bruce.”  Plus another word: “Radiate”.

And there I was, in the unwavering stillness, letting the circle fill me.  “This one.”  Even when I’m with one person.  Fill the room.  Fill the world.  Have love float from the centre in all directions, reaching souls everywhere, even as I’m physically only with you.  And allow me to see the far wider you that stretches to infinity.

Even during the peace of this meditation moment, my eyes, closed as they were, opened wide beneath the lids.

I am shown, day after day, the bigness of life.  There is a rolling wonder that carries me.  Sometimes I see it, sometimes not.  Symbols such as the circle with arrows help a lot.

What does “radiate” mean?  I have a good idea, but perhaps Webster has a finer one …

Clearly emanating a strong feeling or quality through their expression or bearing

Yes … I’ll do that