About Tim Trudeau

Posts by Tim Trudeau:

The hour of hoar frost

The hour of hoar frost
Crisp and cool
Freshly frozen frosty foliage.  

A painted picture. 
A portrait. 
A portrayal. 
A personification, 
Of bountiful bliss.

The morning is such a precious time.
I’m so seemingly susceptible,
To see,
So willing to accept,
The gift.

Gifts in perfect packages.
Frozen lakes and fuzzy frost
For as far as the eye can see
Forever…

Covering this place,
This place I call home.
What a blessing,
To see.
To see this morning
The way…

A painted picture 
Of crisp soft whites, 
Fresh frost 

It’s so easy to see,
So easy to receive,
A gift.

My eyes, liquid shinny pools, 
Of bliss.
My eyes like liquid lakes,
Soft and full,
Receiving.
This hour,
This hour of hoar frost.

Hello

Hello, it’s me.
No, not so much glee.
But free.

More melancholy.
Melancholy is my mood.
That melodic melancholy-ness.
This is my bliss.

I enjoy a cry.
To feel.
This is what moves me.
Being moved.

You see,
I see,
You.
Well, I try.
I do.
It’s hard,
To see,
But I do.

There is a cost,
To see.
There is a burden, to know.
To carry the weight of all the pain and loss.
To carry the weight of knowing our capacity.
Our capacity to hurt and harm.
Our capacity,
To love.
To long for love.

I carry bountiful bliss,
And boundless understanding.

To rectify the anomaly of seeing
Both the beauty and the pain,
I see.
The pain in the beauty.
The beauty in pain.
I see.

I live in a state of glee and turmoil,
I suffer and survive.
I profess purely,
Without adulteration.
I stand before you naked.
Barren and bereft.
Blissful and bold.

I see you; I see me.
I see,
My contradictions
My pride
My anomalies
My hypocrisies.

I stand before you broken.
Perfection.
In perfect brokenness.
I stand,
Seeing.

You see,
I died long ago.
It’s through death I see.
It’s through death,
I see.

A blind woman walking on the highway

A blind women walking on the highway.
Her white cane stretched out.
Looking,
Stretching to see.

Cars swerving left,
Veering right.
Heads turning.
Yet, no one,
Stopped.
No one is stopping.

A blind woman walking on the highway.
Process that…

It was rush hour.
I personally saw at least a dozen cars,
Dodge and weave.
And continue their drive.

I’m sure there were dozens before.

When I saw her,
I was talking on the phone with my wife.
Startled, I blurted,
“There is a blind woman walking on the highway!”
“What!?”
I swerved from the left lane into the right.
Slamming on my brakes,
Throwing my phone to the floor,
Leaping from my car,
I was sprinting before I could process what was happening.

I vaguely remember looking over my shoulder,
Recognizing this mass of humanity,
In their automobiles,
Bearing down upon us.

I see.
Bright eyes seeing,
Surprise,
Surprise, is what I see!

She was startled
As I took her soft arm and silky blouse in my hands.
“Sweetie, you’re in the middle of the highway.”
“Oh, that isn’t good!”
Her body shaking,
Electric.
Or was it my body, that was electric and shaking?

At that moment, it was just the two of us.
Just the two of us,
Walking.

Rush hour…
Where were the others?
Why were we alone?
Amongst this sea of humanity.
They could see…
Cars swerving left,
Veering right.
Heads turning.
Yet, no one,
Stopped.
No one is stopping.

“Where do you want to be?”
“The bus stop,
I just had a job interview.”

How did she get to where she was?
Through a wide grassy median?
Across a frontage road?
A blind woman walking with her white cane.
If you saw her,
You had to know.
She wasn’t where she wanted to be.

A blind women on the highway…

A space of a car was all that was between us and my car.
Our only defense.
My car, which I left peculiarly parked in the right lane,
On the highway.

Her porcelain white skin and long red hair,
This young woman.
She is so brave.
Imagine…
Can you?

I didn’t know where the bus stop was.
Looking left and then right.
Searching,
Trying to maintain my composure.

“I’m looking for the 17.”
Then I saw a small sign beneath a stop sign.
A block or so away.
It was no more than twenty inches square.
Five, maybe six feet off the ground.
No bench.
No place to stand.
No wonder, I thought.

We walk off the highway.
Through the thick grassy median.
Holding her a bit more tightly as we walk through the long grass and weeds.

It seemed quiet in that moment.

We cross the frontage road and walk to the bus stop.
Likely overcompensating, I take her hand and put it on the sign post.
“This is the bus stop.”
“Is it headed to Minneapolis?”
From what I can gather, “Yes, yes it is. Are you ok?”
“Yes… thanks.”

When I head back to my car,
I see it in the right lane.
Parked at this odd angle.
Bewildered,
I walk to my car.

The looks of confusion.
The looks of frustration.
The looks you’d expect to receive if you left your car parked
The way I did.
On the highway,
During rush hour.

With my dad’s recent death,
I’ve been listening to his music.
This week, it’s Gordon Lightfoot.
The Wreck Of The Edmond Fitzgerald.
I have it on repeat.
There is a line that catches me…
“Does anyone know where the love of God goes,
When the waves turn minutes to hours?”

Isn’t that the question?
When faced with the unthinkable,
The unimaginable,
We ask,
Where has the love of God gone?
In the song, it’s the searchers,
See?

Sometimes with so much blood on the ground.
I feel,
I feel…

Like… I’d like to
Lift up the world,
And hold it tightly.
I want to hold you,
Tightly.

Where has the love of God gone?

It’s you…
You’re it.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I’m always comforted by realizing that there are so many helpers ~ so many caring people in this world.”
~Fred Rogers

Ashes

We put my dad’s ashes in the river today.
I’ve known that’s what he wanted for years.
But the execution…
The act.
To see the ash move into the water.
A cloud.
An etherial representation.
Such sacred symbolism.

The ash, powdery soft with a touch of grit.
So…to set him free.
Release him…

He is gone.
We know that. I know that.
But it was us who held him.
Who hold him.

The spreading,
The ritual, was rich with metaphor and meaning.
An emulsion.
An evolution.
From one thing to another.
It happened before our eyes, my eyes.
The ash, a cloud that dissipated, as it drifted down river.

Do you see?
This is what we all are.
Adrift along the river.

It can be so easy.
And sometimes, so hard.
But the river will take you… home.
It will take you home.

My father, this mighty, mighty entity.
Was… one with the river.
Is… one with the river.
Is the river.

Process that for a moment with me…

I lived on the river,
We lived on the river.
We never woke up to the same river.
Ever.
It is ever changing, ever evolving.
This thing, that my dad is now one with, is gone.
It’s hard to say it was ever there in the first place.

This is life.
We attach to ideas
And identities.
We see ourselves as omnipotent.
Looking towards legacies.

Yet,
We are the river.
A song, so to speak.
An essence not to be contained.
Only appreciated,
Pondered,
And, reveled.

The Butcher

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.

The world

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…

Soundtrack

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.

Rhythms, ripples, and waves

Today I was with my father as he passed.
It’s the rhythm that struck me.

Balance abounds.
For every yin, there is a yang.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

My son turned two in May.
Birth, a cycle of increasing rhythms.
The first contractions were wide spread.
Contractions that increased in frequency.
Contractions that increased in intensity.

A rhythm, a wave, that tightened and heightened.
My wife’s body opening.
The intensity increasing.
Starting with soft, subtle sounds,
Shifting into exhausting cries.
When the birth was near,
There were growls of unmatched depth and intensity.

My son’s head crowning in conjunction with the cries.
The birthing rhythm pushing and pulsing.
The energy heightening
Coming to a crescendo.
Culminating into one final energetic pulse, a peak.

There was a brief moment of silence,
Then this gasp, his first breath.
Accompanied by my son fiercely announcing his arrival.
His call to the world.
A deafening declaration.
I’m here!

Birth, the culmination of a wave that reaches its peak.
And folds into itself.
Erupting into a chorus of cathartic cries.

Death, is the yin for that yang.

Life has rhythms.
Rhythms we often don’t spend time focusing on.
The rhythm of breath,
Our life blood,
And the energetic pulses emanating throughout our nervous system.
A symphony of waves working in unison.
Waves we ride upon and in.

When the end is in sight, the waves reveal themselves.
The rhythms seemingly out of synch.

Startled, I recognize them.
They are not the rhythms I recall.
It’s unsettling,
And hard to watch.
Yet, it draws me in like little else.
I can see the wave stretching,
Disappearing…
My primal self knows what this is.

It’s the breath…
This is what I focus on.
His chest decreasing in elevation.
His breath becoming weaker.
Subtler.
Stretching.

My father’s people, we are all gathered around.
Touching him,
Holding him,
Ushering him,
Absorbing him.
Taking him into our being.
We see each other.

I recognize the singularity of it all.
My left hand on his chest holding his heart.
My right hand holding his arm.
Completing an energetic circle.
I watch his lips,
And the subtle movement of his mouth.
Our family unified
In ways that are beyond words.
Moving with this subtle wave,
A wave that’s hardly a ripple.
It was so subtle.
The end feigning.
Life, fighting.
The gaps, the troughs, so subtle.
That’s where the silence was.
The deafening quiet
As we all waited, gripped and transfixed.
Searching for that subtle sign.
When his breath would reemerge, it was strangely startling.
As though the breath were an interruption.
These breaths, they were breaths like no other.
This wave stretched so thin,
So thin…

Then…
There was the silence.
The deafening silence.
As his essence pixilated into eternity.
I saw his body empty.
The silence was that of a wave that was no more.

These waves, they’re connected.
They begin and they end.
The wave we ride into life,
That of a warrior!
And the wave we ride out of life,
So subtle that that it’s barely a whisper.
A whisper that falls into silence.

Sweet silence and absolute surrender…

 

Surging Steam

Surging steam,
Pouring from my car.
That awful sweet stench.

My car over heated while on the way home.
Home from where?
Well, that’s a story.

I had two sisters who passed away thirty years ago this coming January.
It was a complex relationship.
We share the same father,
But we have different mothers.
With this sort of thing…
There is so much pain,
So much hurt
Our mothers, who were once friends, are no longer.

When they died, I didn’t stay in contact with their mother.
I meant to…
But the contempt and complexities,
They were just too great.

Three weeks ago, their mother contacted me.
She said, “I have some things for you.”
“Things,” she told me, “the girls would want me to have.”

Today was the day I met her.
I knew meeting with her could create conflict.
It would dredge up uncomfortable histories.
Histories that some in my family would prefer to remain untouched.

This meeting was a high wire act.
An event with multiple facets and potential pitfalls.
But the potential for healing,
And growth…
That likely wouldn’t present itself again.

We met at her home.
A house I’d been to many many times before.
But not once in thirty years.
So much had changed,
Yet this little pocket of the world was untouched by time.
Their bedrooms,
Which I knew so well,
Remained relatively unchanged.
I remembered them being so much bigger.
Memorabilia, which I recognized, hung on the wall.
Their prom pictures on the shelves.
A traumatic time capsule.

Our meeting was surreal,
As though no time had passed,
Although it had.
I was no longer a boy,
And she was no longer young.

We spoke freely.
We both shared things.
Some things she didn’t remember.
Others I didn’t know.

I expected tears,
There were none.

She was kind and generous.
She gave me pictures,
Pictures of the girls.
With me and without me.
She gave me pictures with my mom and the girls.
That surprised me.
She gave me a picture of my biological father, holding me.
This was years before anyone knew he was my father.
I left with pictures of family I’ve never met or known.
I left with their names, addresses, and phone numbers.
I left with books.
Books given to the girls by an aunt, I was long told, was not nice.
I left with a table and chairs
Made for the girls by their grandfather.
Our grandfather.
One chair,
Hand painted by my sister.

She called me family.
But not before telling me there was schizophrenia
In this new family of mine.

I left with a monstrous picture of my ex father-in-law
In a large wood frame that was 24”x 36”.
How she got that, is a whole other story.
Circular convolutions, not worth the time to tell.
That picture,
That lay atop everything in my packed car.
The weight of it all…

With my car filled with this charged memorabilia,
I drove off.

I had thought about taking pictures of their bedrooms.
I wished I had.
Yet, I was glad I resisted.

I thought about what I would do with these things.
I thought about these new family members.
What would it be like to meet them?
I thought about the consequences of choosing not to.
What would we say?
Where would I put them in this politically charged family?
In a dizzying daze, I drove.

And as often happens,
When your teetering on the edge,
You get pushed.

What a metaphor…

It was rush hour.
It was hot.
My thermostat was pushing closer to red.
The stress was building.
Then…
Steam rolled out from under my hood.
Liquid pouring to the ground
As though my car were weeping.
Weeping from this burden.
This great weight.
This horrid history.

The message was:
You’re not in control.
Stop.

With little choice,
I sat in the searing sun
Forced to sit,
I sat…

Memento Mori

Memento Mori

I was driving down the highway.
Perfectly content.
Captivated by my idealized ideations.

On the right, woods.
On the left, a cement median.
It was rush hour.
Traffic was moving swiftly.
The rat race was on and I was blissfully bewitched.

In the distance, I could see something moving along the median wall.
I couldn’t quite make out what it was.
Until, I could.

A mother duck with her ducklings.
She looked frantic.
They were scurrying east looking for a way past this insurmountable wall.
Instantly, I was awash in anxiety.
The flurry of solutions that flew through my head all ended similarly.

To stop in the middle of the highway would ensure nothing.
They would no more likely flee to me than a fox.

I slowed,
But with all the cars,
I was past them in a flash.
I strained to see them in my mirror.
But, they disappeared into the distance in mere moments.

I desperately looked for a break in the wall where they could pass.
There was nothing for a mile.
With those little legs…

I reflected on my beautiful two year old.
How helpless,
And careless.
How sincere and bright.
And yet, how fragile.
I saw in those ducklings, so much.

Sitting with this sort of thing is distressing.
It’s the witnessing.
The utter futility.

I wanted to reach out and scoop them up.
I wanted to save them.
I wanted to save them all.

Yet, there it is.
It’s the re-remembering.
Memento Mori ~ Remember death.

A meditation on mortality.
Through the lens of death,
What really matters to you?

See

See

Do you see?
Do you choose to be?
Do you recognize me?
Wanting to flee?
Will you walk in the rain with me?
Life…
False security.
Sweet death
Precious life.
Dancing in the rain.
Raising my arms to the heavens.
Sweet tears of grace
Pouring down my face.
Oh god
How powerful the embrace…
Beaming
Teaming
Screaming.
Overwhelmed with…
Meaning.
Shining.
Death today
Yes… ok.
Life another day
I’ll seize the day.
Yes…
Always
Yes.

I see

Life

Life
Strife
Cornered but free
Searching yet done
Rejected and honored
Wanting and waning
Hungry yet full
Fulfilled and tormented
Awake yet asleep
Enlightened
To nothing

Gotta?

Gotta?

Do you really?
Should you…
Really?

Needing…?
Expecting…?
This that.
Feeling so
Inadequate…
Loosing control?
Needing to know.
Having to steer.
Our greatest fear?
Wanting to let go.
What if I do…
Will it be clear?

Don’t fear.
Take a chance…
Glimpse ambivalence.
All effort is ignorance.
Effort is the wrong direction
We’ve lost our connection.
Look and see
This cosmic unity
I say this with impunity
You’re a piece of this greater whole
You’re here to play a role

Right and wrong?
Conceiving imperfection?
A flaw in the human condition.
Volition?
Look at this cosmic coalition.
Step away from this flesh-ly
Identity
It’s no calamity.

There are planets evaporating this very moment…
Atonement?
All we have is this moment.
There’s Destruction beyond conception
Disregarding intention.
Matter hasn’t gone anywhere.
It changed its form for you to wear.

You can’t remove yourself from divinity.
Divinity can’t be removed from you.
You are that which you hate
That which you love.

Life is a circle
Mirroring the whole.
Death is a necessity
Pain is written into our biology
Ignoring our ideology
Keeping us from eradication
Our Biological annihilation.

The universe will be perfect with or without humanity.
Again it’s no calamity.
We don’t like this story.
We don’t want to hear
This story.
We want our
History.

We believe our biology
Will survive by our ideology
This is delusion-ality.

Your spirit?
Inseparable from unity.
There is purpose in divinity.
There is balance in this immensity.
Most definitely.

Worth the query?
Our story?
Life to death
Creation to termination.
No-thing to infinity
Everything is divinity.
Future is delusionality.
Form isn’t reality.

Spiritually?
You are…
Undeniably
Inextinguishably
Unabashedly
Divinity.
Honestly.

Gotta?
Really…?

In it…

In it…

Serendipity
Synchronicity
An apple seed to an apple tree
Try as it might
An orange it will not be.
It’s all a mystery to me.
How do we know?
Where is the flow?
Do we create it?
Can we go with it?
Having to grow with it.
Needing to know it…
No.
Let go of it.
Don’t try to control it.
Surrender to it
Be it
See it
Don’t flee from it
Experience the glee from it
Then you will see it.
What is it?
Straining to see through a blinding snow.
We’re not to know.
As subtle as a breeze
As vast as the seas
It wants you to be…
Are you striving to see?
It’s not meant to be.
We aren’t meant to know.
Let it go…
If you want to know
You are not in the flow.
Pay attention…
Don’t be blinded by the subtlety of its petition.
Feel the connection.
It wants you to play.
You can start today.
Keep your eyes on the horizon.
Look and see
It is all around you.
Constantly offering itself to you.
Inciting and restraining you
Ying-ing and yang-ing you
Ping-ing and pain-ing you.
The message can be subtle.
Or like a hard hit to the head.
A quiet mind of integrity will see…
Believing with sincerity
You will see with clarity
Witnessing with inner-honesty.
A cork on the sea
Mirroring the waves
Steady in the calm.
Tossing and turning
Rising and falling
Moving with its calling.
Do not fight.
You cannot, not be what you are…
Surrender to the direction of least resistance.
Experience your divine existence.
Learn to listen without resistance.
Be what you are.
You’re quintessence…
Brighter than a star.

In it…

Evil

Evil

There exists the purest of evil, which has infiltrated our political structures, religious institutions, and the world’s cultures. Evil so pure and so prolific that it may shock even those who are subtly aware. If you have become aware, you know the trauma and coldness your heart encounters. For most who get a glimpse, their minds recoil in revulsion and utter disbelief; putting up walls to protect themselves from the unthinkable.

This evil disguises itself within structures in subtle ways; ways so cunning, you may be shocked by the darkness that lurks at its foundation. People stand before us, wolves in sheep’s clothing. They stand at the highest level, often times levels higher than are publicly acknowledged or for many publicly known. The evil is ancient; often times with deep-rooted family ties. The evil is masterful in disguise and able to divert attention from itself by hiding within structures and institutions that it has utter and total disregard for. The evil is designed to make you think it is something other than what it is. It cloaks itself in ideologies, which it easily sheds when the institution or structure is stained beyond repair. The evils desires you to misunderstand what its true nature is, where it lies, or its real intent. The structure only acts as a diversion and façade, and if need be, a scapegoat.

The evil is hardly worth pointing out. In fact, acknowledging it only bolsters its sway. I speak of it only so that you may know that I am aware of its existence. I do not underestimate its prolific power and control.

Our gut reaction is often times to fight against this evil, to point at, and persecute those we believe to be proliferating this evil. They are not who you think they are. The individual is not the evil; they are a byproduct, they are tips of a flame from a deep raging fire.

Distraction from good is what it seeks. Distraction from love is what it seeks. It wants you to believe you are alone and separate and misunderstood. It wants you to believe you are not special. It wants you to take without remorse, to kill without question. It wants you absorbed in media, believing what you are told. It wants you competing against each other. It wants you to believe in your political and religious ideology. It wants you to fight against the people that stand on the opposite side of you and to hate them. It wants you to dehumanize them. It wants you to fight against your fellow man.

Understand this evil doesn’t have a political ideology; it doesn’t have a religious affiliation. Its desire is to separate you from your fellow man, to not see them, to not empathize with them, to not stand with them. It wants you to fight against them. It wants you to lose your temper. It wants you to yell, and scream, and fight. It has prepared for this. It planned this; this is what it desires. It wants us to stoop down to its level and wants you to devolve, not evolve. Any action from the people stemming from anger and hatred will be used against us. It will be used to bolster the idea that those around you are dangerous and uncontrollable, and that you need to be protected from your fellow man. It wants you to be an unwitting slave. It wants you to cower in fear. It wants you to lie down willingly and submit.

What is absolutely imperative to understand is the only control it exerts is the control you allow it to exert.

There is one thing to do, one action that counters this evil, one thing that stops this evil, one thing that it has absolutely no control over, and that is to act with a selfless heart, to love, love without question, love without judgment.

Just love…

There is nothing in the evils arsenal that can stand up to this.

How do you hold your beliefs?

How do you hold your beliefs?
Firmly?
Sanctimoniously?
Are you a dogmatic Democrat?
Are you a righteous Republican?
Are you a religious zealot?
Are you so science minded that there is no room for spirit?

Hold your beliefs like a baby bird.
Yes, cherish them.
But hold them tenderly.
If you hold too tight,
You’ll squeeze the life from them.

Walk gently with your eyes on the horizon.
What’s underfoot is not meant to undermine.
The landscape will always change.
Be fluid and flexible.
Resilience requires adaptation.

It is the supple tree that will survive the storm,
And seed the future.

Counting time…

Counting time…

I was married to my ex-wife for sixteen years.
We were together for seventeen.
Curiously,
I throw that number around like a badge of honor.

I’m remarried now.
It hasn’t been long.
Maybe five years?

Do you know what’s disturbing to me?
I can’t remember,
How long I’ve been married, that is.
I never seem to remember,
Anymore.

Then I had a thought.
Counting time is a symptom of something.

Think about it.
Let’s bring it back to childhood.
When you were doing your thing, whatever it was, you were lost in time.
Right?
For me it was playing in the river.
But when I had to mow the lawn?
Time?
It came to a screeching halt!
Or, when I’d get grounded.
However long it was, it would drag on.
I was hyperaware of every moment.

This has continued to be true throughout my life.
When I didn’t like to read, I’d count the pages.
I’d always know how many until the end.
When I fell into reading, the pages disappeared.
I read, and read, and read.
Books piled high.

So what’s happening today?
Time has lost its meaning.
I’m not counting.

But I got caught up with the idea that I should,
Count that is.

You know the story.
They were married for fifty years!
Wow, that’s amazing!

Why? Why is that amazing?
Should it be amazing?
It would only be remarkable if you viewed marriage as suffering.
Now, suffering for fifty years…
Yes, that’s remarkable.

But to be with your best friend,
Time becomes meaningless…

Reconciliation

Reconciliation

George W. Bush,
I’d never seen anything like it.
Posturing himself as the simple guy.
The east coast elite, Yale grad.
I thought that was as bad as it would get.
Projections limited by personal perspective.

Today, my conservative friends tell me,
“Now you know how we felt when Obama was president!”
Wow…

Anyway, while I was driving to work a while ago,
I was listening to the news and heard about fighting in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Rival militias were fighting.
That’s what stopped me.
Rival militias?
Think about that…

I understand the general idea. I’ve heard militias referenced over the years and understand the second amendment and our right to a well regulated militia…
But, in all my life, I’ve never known a militia member.
Have you?
They almost seem folkloric… to me.

I’ve always assumed there are militias.
I figured they were prepared.
Maybe some more than others.

This is a tidbit from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

“The number of Patriot groups, including armed militias, skyrocketed following the election of President Obama in 2008 – rising 813 percent, from 149 groups in 2008 to an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012. The number fell to 1,096 in 2013.”

Wow, wow, wow!
We’ve got militias!
MOUNTAINS of them!
I had no idea!

Ok… the point is, the possibility for us to further devolve into a state of utter chaos is… I don’t know…
Plausible, maybe even likely?

So, getting back to the idea that I never thought it could get this bad, the point is, it can get much worse.
Much worse.

Immaculee llibagiza, a Tutsis, was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. There were roughly 800,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans killed in roughly 100 days.
Most of the killing was done with clubs and machetes!
That’s wildly beyond my comprehension!
As many as 10,000 people beaten and chopped to death, per day,
Every day,
For 100 straight days!
This was done face to face, with bodies piled high, while awash in pleas of wild desperation.
Shameless slaughter…
The most efficient, industrialized slaughter houses in the United States today can only kill 5,000 to 6,000 cattle per day.

To survive, Immaculee was hidden in a 3 foot x 4 foot bathroom with 7 other Tutsis women for 91 days. It was a Hutus priest who hid them, pulling a wardrobe in front of a bathroom to conceal the door. The bathroom was so small, only one or two of the women could sit at any given time. The priest was only able to scavenge food for them from the garbage can. Their survival demanded such silence, they were unable to flush the toilet.
Process that…
7 women in a 3’x4’ bathroom for 91 days.
She was 65 pounds when she came out of hiding.
She lost much of her hair and had open lesions on her body.

Her family members were killed by people she knew,
Her neighbors and community members.
When the killing stopped and the Tutsis regained power, she was asked to condemn and judge the Hutus.
She was expected to curse and spit on them.
Defying expectations, she did the unconceivable.
She chose forgiveness.
The Tutsis were unable to forgive the Hutus,
Or her.
She was spurned,
The pariah.
Imagine the pressure and temptation,
To conform, to hate.
Imagine her fate,
And loneliness?

The fabric of their community was being torn apart.
Their souls starving.

Consumed with rage and revenge.
Their anger was destroying them.

It was ten years later that Immaculee was asked to come home.
They wanted her to teach them to forgive.
She was the ambassador.
Radical forgiveness was the path.

Here in the United States, we have the privilege of saying this is, or was, the worst.
With little insight of what the worst is.

Partisanship has been the path of the past,
Persistently divisive.
This will get worse if we choose to let it.

Imagine forgiving the person who killed your father, your mother, and siblings.
Imagine forgiving the people who killed your cousins, clergy, and community members.
Imagine showing them compassion.
Imagine helping them.
Imagine loving them.

This is what is happening in Rwanda.
It’s called the forgiveness project.
If the people of Rwanda can find forgiveness,
We can find forgiveness!

We, me,
We’re the only ones,
Who will,
Who can.

Forgiveness is not synonymous with apathy.
Forgiveness allays us of the burden of hate and anger.
As we advocate for compassion and the expansion of our collective consciousness, our vision will be cleared.
Radical forgiveness is the path.

Evolve…

What’s your favorite place you’ve traveled?

Someone recently asked me, “What’s your favorite place you’ve traveled?
I said, “I’ve come to a point where I realize that if I close my eyes, spin the globe, and stick my finger on some random place, that would be the most beautiful place in the world.”
She looked perplexed.
She didn’t want this philosophical answer.
This philosophical lesson.
It was a simple question and she wanted a simple answer.
It’s interesting. Simple answers seem beyond me sometimes.

I could have said anything.
Rome came to mind.
Then I remembered Lauterbrunnen.
But, then there is the superb sweetness of home…
Then I thought,
Would any of these answers do justice to what I’ve come to realize?

Beauty is what you decide it’s going to be.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
Right?

It’s what you choose to see that will dictate what it is that you see.
It’s that simple.

Which brings up an old adage,
Wherever you are, there you are.
So,
If you seek to see beauty in everything,
It doesn’t matter where you are.
You’ll be surrounded by beauty.
It’s finding the beauty in everything you do.
It’s recognizing that beauty comes from within.
Beauty is not an externalized experience.
Beauty is not a place or an event.
Beauty is a state of mind.
Beauty is a state of being.

You are and you are not.

You are and you are not…

If I have two apples and I buy two more, I now have four apples. This is a quantifiable fact with a measurable and repeatable result…

…As long as we agree to look through a specific lens.
And there’s the catch.

At a subatomic level, the apple’s essence ceases to be. You can’t even be sure what you’re observing will be what and where you think it is. The very essence of an apple can’t be pointed to with any sort of predictability or accuracy.

Now, is it necessary to look at all things at a subatomic level? No, but it’s equally silly to ignore that the very essence of everything is not quantifiable.

“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”
~Albert Einstein

There’s a tale told in Zen:

Before enlightenment, mountain is the mountain and water is the water; in enlightenment, mountain is not the mountain and water is not the water; after enlightenment, a mountain is really the mountain and water is really the water.

This is the complexity of a reality, where we encounter dualism and singularity simultaneously. This is what I’d refer to as oneness. A notion which simultaneously engages the complexity of dualism and the simplicity of singularity.

So what’s the point of this rambling?

In my last blog, I attempted to introduce the true self.
It’s an important realization.
But there is a further complexity.
That of your subjective material self.
Which is also true.
Your externalized projections are true.
Your ego is a thing.
The way I perceive you is true.
And the way you perceive me is true.

All the while, our egoic perception remains not true and no-thing.

Our understanding of our no-thing-ness may seem relatively useless in our day to day lives. You don’t need to operate from the standpoint that nothing around you exists. This isn’t the point. The point is understanding that there is no separation between you and what you desire or despise. This is a fundamental shift. This leaves you understanding that you are whole and complete.
It leaves you understanding that there is no, “out there.”
It leaves you understanding that there is no “other” to blame or become.

I’d argue that this is the single most important realization a human being can make.
So, that’s it.
But that’s a big thing, isn’t it?
It changes everything.

So, relish in your duality perception.
Because duality does exist.
But so does singularity.
So does oneness.
That also exists…
Simultaneously.

You are and you are not.

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© Tim Trudeau 2024
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