Freedom Meditation / beginning with "... we carried you in our arms on Independence Day ..."

Come to me now, you know we're so alone

And life is brief

-- Bob Dylan and Richard Manuel  ("Tears of Rage," late 1960s)

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My heart is not weary, it's light and it's free

I've got nothing but affection for all those who've sailed with me

-- Bob Dylan ("Mississippi," 2001)

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I feel the holy spirit inside

See the light that freedom gives

-- Bob Dylan ("Crossing the Rubicon," 2021)

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Last night as I was beginning to drift into sleep, I heard something like gunshots and then realized that someone in my neighborhood felt compelled to celebrate the 4th of July early, knowing full well that fireworks are illegal inside city limits.  I remembered the 4th of July in 1972 when my friend, Roger, a non-combatant Navy veteran,  24 years old at the time, said, "Why do they do this? It sounds like war.  Some of us who have lived through war are traumatized by what sounds like gunshots."  Tears of rage, tears of grief.  Roger killed himself on his 50th birthday in December 1997, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, and friends who loved him.  He was fond of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, fond of this song:

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old-fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee
If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

For like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, "you must not ask for so much"
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, "hey, why not ask for more?"
Oh, like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

(Leonard Cohen)

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"... Well I got a hammer

And I got a bell

And I got a song to sing

All over this land

It's the hammer of justice

It's the bell of freedom

It's a song about love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land ..."

(Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, 1949)

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And then there's the possibility of Interdependence Day.  

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We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

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Sending love near and far.  Today and always.

B.D. first appeared in Doonesbury in 1968, the year that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated / Melissa Wheeler first appeared in 2007 / Melissa running for office in 2018 / Revisiting August 28, 1963

Listen.

Thank you to robin andrea for bringing us all back to the events of 1967-1968, as we experience the events of  2018 and see what hasn't changed and what has changed.

Remembering August 28, 1963:



In the past 24 hours, I was struck by the thought that a person who practices nonviolence could not with good conscience be President of the United States, given the store of nuclear weapons that our military is prepared to use at any moment.  The President of the United States must accept the title of Commander in Chief of the Military.  A sobering awakening.

Nonviolent persons continue to serve in the United States, many of those persons serving in obscurity as well as in the public eye. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out strongly against war but not in judgment of soldiers or anyone else as fellow flawed human beings.  It's time for me to read Strength to Love again.  No easy answers from Martin Luther King, Jr.   No demand that everyone follow him on his chosen road as a Christian doing his best to practice nonviolence.  He was not self-righteous.  He was a Christian in the truest sense of the word.

The Rainbow and Sacred Grief and Fierce Grace and Reconciliation After Death and Our Golden River and The Beloved Community

Thank you to Robert at The Solitary Walker, for posting the following from D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow on his Facebook page.  It is a bit of synchronicity that I read this passage this morning, the 9th anniversary of the death of the man that I met when we were 17 years and whom I loved, mostly from a distance, for 42 years and with whom I have found reconciliation and peace through his death.  When R and I were 20 years old, he was drafted and spent the year in Vietnam, and I spent the year waiting for him as well as participating in protests against the war in Vietnam.  One of the things we did after he returned was to go to a protest against the war, during which Joan Baez sang. During the time R was in Vietnam, I read The Rainbow.  It was this passage that engaged my full attention all those years ago:

'And then, in the blowing clouds, she saw a band of faint iridescence colouring in faint colours a portion of the hill. And forgetting, startled, she looked for the hovering colour and saw a rainbow forming itself. In one place it gleamed fiercely, and, her heart anguished with hope, she sought the shadow of iris where the bow should be. Steadily the colour gathered, mysteriously, from nowhere, it took presence upon itself, there was a faint, vast rainbow. The arc bended and strengthened itself till it arched indomitable, making great architecture of light and colour and the space of heaven, its pedestals luminous in the corruption of new houses on the low hill, its arch the top of heaven.

And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.'

Most of you are familiar with my story.  Today I need to tell it again and see how far I have come this past year.

These last few months have been an unexpected and particularly difficult part of my grief journey, which began in 1971 with R's return from Vietnam and the violence that led to our separation and my inability to accept that the physical separation was permanent, until his death in 2008.  Although the book, Ambiguous Loss:  Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (recommended to me through a community grief support group in 2008) was immensely helpful in acknowledging my grief, a turning point came in the last few weeks as I was reading a book called Sacred Grief:  Exploring a New Dimension to Grief, by Leslee Tessmann. 

Sacred Grief.  "Fierce Grace" was the way Ram Dass spoke about it. Patti Smith has some healing thoughts about it here, and I thank Sabine for posting that just when I needed to hear those words spoken out loud by a woman who has survived many losses.

The painting at the top of this post was painted by me in 1999 soon after learning that R had been diagnosed with throat cancer and was recovering from a major surgery to his neck and throat.  We had not seen each other for 13 years at that point and had not talked for 9 years.  He had a lifelong struggle with drugs and alcohol and anger issues and for my well-being, I needed to keep a healthy distance from him, but something prompted me to call his mother in December of 1999.  It turned out that he had moved back in with his parents because of the cancer.  His mother handed the phone to him. The painting is titled "Reconciliation Dream."  

R's cancer returned in 2001 and went into remission again in spring of 2002, at which time he began to use drugs and alcohol again, and I had to distance myself from him for my own well-being.  

After having a brainstem stroke in September of 2007 as a result of alcoholic drinking, R spent the last 8 months of his life in a VA hospital.  I would not have known this except that, once again, I was prompted, against my better judgement, to contact his sister, who told me that she knew that he would love to hear from me. Two months before R died, I dreamed that we were connected forever by a rainbow, although we could not touch each other in a physical way. In the distance between us, a rainbow was created.  I wrote him a letter, in which I related the dream.  His brother, whom he asked to read the letter to him, said that R was deeply moved by my dream of us. 

In the last week of R's life, I drove from Washington State to be with him in the ICU at VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California.  Because he had MRSA, I had to wear a face mask, hospital gloves, and a protective gown when I visited with him.  I could touch him but only through hospital gloves.

Words and music by Pete Seeger

Sailing down my golden river
Sun and water all my own
Yet I was never alone

Sun and water, old life givers
I'll have them where ere I roam
And I was not far from home

Sunlight glancing on the water
Life and death are all my own

Yet I was never alone

Life for all my sons and daughters
Golden sparkles in the foam
And I was not far from home

Sailing down this winding highway
Travelers from near and far
And I was never alone

Exploring all the little byways
Sighting all the distant stars
And I was not far from home

Sailing down my golden river
Sun and water all my own
Yet I was never alone

Sun and water, old life givers
I'll have them where ere I roam
And I was not far from home

Yet I was never alone
And I was not far from home

From my self-published book, in which I put together, soon after R died, my paintings and poetry from the previous 42 years: 

"Both of us sustained war wounds.  Something in us died young.  We were not alone."

I know this for sure today.  We were never alone.  There is a beloved community that Martin Luther King, Jr., envisioned.  It continues to grow, despite all odds.

(As I was finishing this post, the phone rang.  It was my old friend, Yom, who came from Vietnam with the first wave of refugees in 1975.  I was one of the first people she met after arriving in Bellingham.  She sustained war wounds, too, but went on with her life in a way that I was unable to do.  We met in a factory, here in Bellingham, where we both did industrial sewing.  I felt an immediate connection with her because we were the same age and had been deeply affected by the Vietnam War.  The man she had loved had died when his throat was slit by a Viet Cong.  She just happened to call today.  We talk every few months.  She has been happily married for many years.  She and her husband adopted a baby Vietnamese boy who is now a thriving American teenager.  There is much joy in her life as a wife and mother and gardener.  She continues to work part-time after retiring. I am grateful for her friendship. This day has been filled with synchronicity, beginning with the quote from The Rainbow on Robert's Facebook page. Astonishing that Yom would call today of all days.)

Christmas Eve meditation / There is Something, and everything is possible

"You undoubtedly know that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a progressive Christian and champion of civil rights and the social gospel. You may also know that he spoke out against the Vietnam War, harshly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and questioned the capitalist system that produced poverty. But do you know his theology?

Right up until Dr. King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to support striking sanitation workers, the civil right leader worked--not as a secular activist but as a Baptist minister--to awaken the conscience of a nation. What was the meaning of Jesus for Dr. King? Did he see Jesus as divine? How did he interpret the Bible?"

(from the Tikkun article ,"King's God:  The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," by Robert James "Be" Scofield)

Transcript for the speech above:  A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967)

Then I got to thinking about Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers' connection with the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr.:

And Bob Dylan and Santa Claus:

And the Sufi dancers at the end of this video that was released the same year by Bob Dylan:

And Nelson Mandela.

And Chief Seattle:

"Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of  our people."

And Rosa Parks:

"God has always given me the strength to say what is right ... I had the strength of God and my ancestors with me." (from The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks)

And I remember the words of an elderly Jewish woman who was a friend of mine, "I don't have to be a Christian in order to be moved by the life of Jesus."

I have no religious affiliation, and I am not Buddhist, atheist, agnostic.  I am among those who can relate to what an elderly atheist friend of mine said in her last years -- that she didn't believe in a traditional God, but that she did experience, in her heart, Something that had brought peace to her in the last 14 years of her life.

"... And to see you're really only very small / And life flows on within you and without you..."

(George Harrison, from "Within You Without You")

"... the possibility that there might be something significant in the little things around them."

(from A Winter Walk, by Tolbert McCarroll)

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible."

(From Going Home:  Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk)