September 1, 2017 | Tim Trudeau

26 Sep 2017

The butcher.

There was so much that I didn’t understand, until I did.
What does grace look like?
Does it look like good ground beef?
Does to me.
What a silly thing, but it’s all right there.

My cousin Mike and I were trying to dissect it a few years ago.
What made it so good?

Integrity, that’s it.
That’s what made it so good.
That’s what made him so good.

How many times did he say,
“Timmer,
I just follow the golden rule…”

It was so simple for him.
If you knew him, you know.

We all had a home with him.
If you were in need, you were needed.

The ground beef?
Just the right amount of chuck.
A bit of beef fat.
Then, the secret ingredient.
This was then mixed and ground,
And wrapped,
By hand.

How many people did he help?
How many second chances did he give?
How many people did he choose to love that didn’t show him love?
How many people did he teach?

That is the thing.
This is what he did.

Have you heard of a bodhisattva?
It’s a folklorish figure.
A person who is able to reach nirvana,
But delays doing so,
Out of compassion,
In order to save suffering beings.

They’re hard to see sometimes.
They disguise themselves.

Not knowingly…

They wouldn’t tell you that’s what they are,
Because they wouldn’t see themselves as that.

They are the humanitarian who never uses the word.
They are the leader on their hands and knees,
With dirt under their fingernails,
And calluses on their hands.
Their pockets inside out.

What he touched, he made better.
If he touched you, you’re better because of it.

I wish I could tell you a story.
He did something for someone,
Just weeks before he died.

They will never know.
Nor would they ever suspect.
An act of remarkable compassion.

His final lesson to me.

His path to peace was to build you up.
His path to reconciliation was to pick you up.
His path to resolution was resolve.

13 Sep 2017

A friend sent me this question.
A question that appeared in his social media feed.
If you could rid the world of one thing, what would it be?
He was intrigued by the commentary the question inspired.

It’s about what you’d expect.
Liberals, conservatives, Trump, Obama…
And it devolved from there.

Here’s the thing,
To rid the world of anything, is to rid the world of everything.
Do you see?

Without a yin, there is no yang.
Without black, there is no white.
Without good, there is no evil.

That thing you hate is you.
That thing you abhor, you actually adore.
Wait, what?

Your thing is nothing without its opposite.
Your declared truth is nothing without an antithetical adversary.
To say “I love this” is to say “I hate that”.
Your devout declaration requires that abomination.
It’s all the same thing.

Heads and tails?
Take one away,
And the coin is gone.
See?

The tension is the tool.
It’s what we use to declare and define.
You can’t say this, without that.
It’s the that-ness, that defines the this-ness.
The tension.

If you don’t want evil,
Don’t declare something as good.
Declaring goodness requires evil.
Just as the declaration of evil manifests goodness.

So, if that is true…
Do you perpetuate evil to manifest more goodness?
Of course not.
But people would have you believe the opposite.
See the slight of hand?

If you don’t like something, stop being its opposite.
Stop the declarations.
Anything less only manifests more of what you abhor.

Goodness doesn’t rid the world of evil.
Goodness is evil’s twin.
They live together.
Duality is divisive.
Let the urge to declare pass.
Accept something simpler.
Purer.

Namely,
You are that…

5 Sep 2017

There was always music playing
At my dad’s home.
On the boat.
While on our road trips.
A soundtrack
While we were together.
This is what we did.
We spent our time together.

My dad is gone now,
But his soundtrack lives on.
Each song transporting us back
To a time,
To a place.

When he took his last breath,
We were all there.
It was as though the show was over.
The story.
The lights had come up.
The theater was empty.
Just dust on the floor.

Stupid death.
It’s what we would say,
When the bouts of tears would come.

For years these songs held special meaning.
I didn’t pay much attention, though.
It’s hard to explain.
We were still in it, see?
The show, that is.
While gripped in theater, it’s hard to see, sometimes.
It’s hard to know your seeing something… so special.
It’s hard to see, when you’re seeing.
Hind sight, what a thing.
But a good show, we come back to those.
We reminisce, we remember.
The smell, the song, the moment…

I’m not entirely sure when we played the first song.
Likely the night he died.
It would have been about one or two in the morning.
A perfectly warm, summer night in Florida,
Under the shade of darkness.
I searched for a song and pushed play.
We all looked up,
Agasp…

These melodies,
They enveloped us.
The response was instantaneous.
A sweet high,
A connection,
To a time.
To a place.
A place and time that only we knew.
Our family.

My sister had said something that hit me hard,
As we stood by his side ushering him toward the abyss…
“Look at us.”
“Look who is standing here.”
“None of us are of him, yet he loved us all the same.”
The adopted daughter.
The step son.
The bastard.
Family isn’t blood.
Family is soul.

What a surreal thing.
We cried for days listening to those songs.
I’ve never cried so much in my life.
Tears of absolute euphoria.
Tears of jubilant joy.
Tears,
Beckoning bliss…

Stupid death.

Monthly Archives: September 2017