This past Thursday, March 6, was the 78th birthday of Kiki Dee, one of my favorite female singer-songwriters.
Kiki’s currently on tour in the U.K. with her longtime musical collaborator Carmelo Luggeri.
Today at The Wild Reed I celebrate Kiki and her music by sharing a track from her 1970s’ heyday, “How Glad I Am,” a remake of the Nancy Wilson hit, “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am.”
Kiki Dee recorded “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am” in 1964 with an arrangement – by Les Reed – based on the Nancy Wilson recording: Dee then remade the song as “How Glad I Am” in 1975, with an uptempo bluesy arrangement, and this version – produced by Gus Dudgeon and credited to the Kiki Dee Band – was issued that spring as the follow-up to “I’ve Got the Music in Me,” reaching No. 33 in the UK and No. 74 in the US. The Kiki Dee Band version also charted in the Netherlands (No. 16) and Flemish Belgium (No. 30).
Kiki Dee is an English singer known for her soulful voice and versatile career spanning over six decades.
Born Pauline Matthews on March 6, 1947 in Little Horton [a ward in the City of Bradford Metropolitan District] and raised in Bradford, West Yorkshire, she developed a passion for music early on and was signed to Fontana Records in the 1960s.
Dee gained recognition as the first British female artist signed to Motown’s Tamla label, but her major breakthrough came in the 1970s after signing with Elton John’s Rocket Records. Her first major hit was “Amoureuse” in 1973.
Dee is best known for “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” her 1976 duet with Elton John, which topped charts worldwide. Kiki continued to release solo music, blending pop, rock, and soul influences, with hits like “I’ve Got the Music in Me” amd “Star.” Throughout her career, she worked with artists like Dusty Springfield and performed in musical theatre, starring in Blood Brothers in the 1980s.
Still active in music, Dee continues to perform with longtime collaborator Carmelo Luggeri, embracing a more acoustic sound.
Kiki Dee’s legacy as a pioneering female artist in British pop remains strong.
Renowned political activist and author Ralph Nader’s analysis of President Trump’s address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress is both sobering and insightful.
[Trump’s speech] was a declaration of war against the American people, including Trump voters, in favor of the super-rich and the giant corporations. What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises – a rerun of his first term – boasts about progress that don’t exist. In practice, he has launched a trade war. He has launched an arms race with China and Russia. He has perpetuated and even worsened the genocidal support against the Palestinians. He never mentioned the Palestinians once. And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza.
But taking it as a whole, what we’re seeing here defies most of dictionary adjectives. What Trump and Musk and Vance and the supine Republicans are doing are installing an imperial, militaristic domestic dictatorship that is going to end up in a police state. You can see his appointments are yes people bent on suppression of civil liberties, civil rights. You can see his breakthrough, after over 120 years, of announcing conquest of Panama Canal. He’s basically said, one way or another, he’s going to take Greenland. These are not just imperial controls of countries overseas or overthrowing them; it’s actually seizing land. Now, on the Greenland thing, Greenland is a province of Denmark, which is a member of NATO. He is ready to basically conquer a part of Denmark in violation of Section 5 of NATO, at the same time that he has displayed full-throated support for a hardcore communist dictator, Vladimir Putin, who started out with the Russian version of the CIA under the Soviet Union and now has over 20 years of communist dictatorship, allied, of course, with a number of oligarchs, a kind of kleptocracy. And the Republicans are buying all this in Congress. This is complete reversal of everything that the Republicans stood for against communist dictators.
. . . And where are the Democrats? I mean, look at Senator Slotkin’s response [to Trump’s address]. It was a typical re-run of a feeble, weak Democratic rebuttal. Just like the Democrats in 2024, which led to Trump’s victory, she couldn’t get herself to talk specifically and authentically about raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare, cracking down on corporate crooks that are bleeding out the incomes of hard-pressed American workers and the poor. [Democrats] can’t get themselves to talk about increasing frozen Social Security budgets for 50 years, that 200 Democrats supported raising, but Nancy Pelosi, when she was speaker, kept them from taking John Larson’s bill to the House floor. That’s why they lose. Look at her speech. It was so vague and general. They chose her because she was in the national security state. She was a former CIA. They chose her because they wanted to promote the losing version of the Democratic Party, instead of choosing Elizabeth Warren [or Rep. Summer Lee] or Bernie Sanders, the most popular polled politician in America today. That’s who they chose.
So, as long as the Democrats monopolize the opposition and crush third-party efforts to push them into more progressive realms, the Republican, plutocratic, Wall Street, war machine declaration of war against the American people will continue. We’re heading into the most serious crisis in American history. There’s no comparison.
For Democracy Now!’s complete interview with Ralph Nader, click here.
Perhaps for some it might seem a strange text to be reading during the Christian liturgical season of Lent. After all, isn’t Sufism the “mystical branch” of Islam?
While it’s true that Sufism has undoubtedly achieved a beautiful, unique, and profound flowering within Islam, its foundational truths have been embodied by women and men from the earliest days of humanity, and it exists today both within and beyond Islam. As expressed in the cultural milieu of Islam, Sufism is known as “classical Sufism,” while outside this milieu the term “universal Sufism” is often used.
I’ve come to recognize and understand Sufism as but one name for that great underground river of mystic thought and experience that wells up in and through all of humanity’s religious and spiritual traditions. This perspective mirrors that of poet and Rumi interpreter Coleman Barks, who notes that the Sufi Way is not religious but instead the “origin and longing inside religiousness.” (1)
Accordingly, Sufism is not a doctrine or a belief system but rather a tradition of enlightenment, a way of life that emphasizes love as the path to an ever-expanding realization of ourselves and our relationship with the Divine Presence, the Beloved One. This transforming and liberating realization takes place within and through our individual and communal journeys and leads us to recognize and celebrate God within all aspects of creation. The mystic, after all, is open to the sacred in all things, and Sufism, as Doris Lessing once wrote, “is always, has ever been, evolutionary in spirit and action.” (2)
For quite some time now I’ve been drawn to the teachings on universal Sufism promulgated by Inayat Khan (1882-1927). In particular, I appreciate Khan's emphasis on God as “the Beloved.” He writes, for instance that:
The person who makes God his Beloved, what more does he want? His heart becomes awakened to all the beauty there is within and without. . . . When a person arrives at this realization, then he, so to speak, lives in the presence of God; then to him the different forms and beliefs, faiths and communities do not count. To him God is all-in-all; to him God is everywhere. If he goes to the Christian church or to the synagogue, to the Buddhist temple, to the Hindu shrine, or to the mosque of the Muslim, there is God. In the wilderness, in the forest, in the crowd, everywhere he sees God. (3)
Indeed, it is because of the deep universality of Khan’s life and work that I’ve come to understand myself as a Sufi. That being said, I generally prefer to define my path rather than myself in spiritual terms. Accordingly, I describe my spiritual path as “mystico/prophetic.”
Reading the signs of the times, Nolan says, is prophetic work, and such work was integral to Jesus’ spirituality. We know this because Jesus recognized and spoke out against the oppressive assumptions, practices, and structures of the social and religious establishment of his time. He “turned their world upside down,” Nolan reminds us, and “the conflict that this created became so intense that in the end they killed him to keep him quiet.” (4)
Jesus was not only a prophet, however; he was also a mystic, a person who longs to experience oneness with God. Because he was both mystic and prophet, Jesus, says Nolan, was rooted in a “mystico-prophetic spiritual tradition,” one embodied by the Jewish prophets who came before him and which lives on to this day in those whose perspectives and actions provide a powerful example of “prophesy and mysticism forming an inseparable whole.” (5)
Vilayat Inayat Khan, son of Inayat Khan, reminds us that Sufism, like all mystical traditions, seeks first and foremost to awaken us to our oneness with God (6); or, in the words of Marianne Williamson, to align us with the “living light.” (7) Meditation, which involves cultivating stillness, plays an important role in this type of awakening and aligning.
At its deepest level of meaning, Lent is all about rediscovering what is essential and thus renewing our commitment to awaken to and align with the Christic consciousness, the divine light longing to be manifested to the world in and through our lives. This Christic consciousness is, in the words of Sufi writer Kabir Helminski, “the current of love that runs throughout all life, the unity behind all forms.” (8)
With all this in mind and heart, I hope you will agree wth me that a book about the mystical path of Sufism is indeed appropriate for Lent. The section of Khan’s The Awakening of the Human Spirit that I’ll be highlighing in this year’s Wild Reed Lenten series focuses on “the alchemy of happiness” and "the dance of the soul.”
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The soul is called in Sanskrit, in the terms of the Vedanta, atman, which means happiness or bliss itself. This does not mean that happiness belongs to the soul; it means that the soul itself is happiness. Today we often confuse happiness with pleasure, but pleasure is only an illusion, a shadow of happiness; and in this delusion a person may pass their whole life, seeking after pleasure and never finding satisfaction. There is a Hindu saying that humans look for pleasure and find pain. Every pleasure seems happiness in outward appearance; it promises happiness, for it is the shadow of happiness. Just as the shadow of a person is not the person, although it represents their form, so pleasure represents happiness, but is not happiness in reality.
According to this idea, one rarely finds souls in this world who know what happiness is; people are constantly disappointed in one thing after another. That is the nature of life in the world. It is so deluding that if a person were disappointed a thousand times, he would still take the same path, for they know no other. The more we study life, the more we realize how rarely there is a soul who can honestly say, “I am happy.” Almost every soul, whatever their position in life, will say they are unhappy in some way or another, and if you ask them why, they will probably say that it is because they cannot attain to the position, power, property, possessions, or rank for which they have worked for years. Perhaps they crave money and do not realize that possessions give no satisfaction; perhaps they say they have enemies, or that those whom they love do not love them. There are a thousand excuses for unhappiness that the reasoning mind will make.
But is even one of these excuses ever entirely correct? Do you think that if these people gained their desires they would be happy? If they possess all, would that suffice? No, they would still find some excuse for unhappiness; and all the excuses are only like covers over a person’s eyes, for deep within is the yearning for the true happiness that none of these things can give. They who are really happy are happy everywhere, in a palace or in a cottage, in riches or in poverty, for they have discovered the fountain of happiness that is situated in their own heart. As long as a person has not found that fountain, nothing will give them real happiness.
NOTE: Each post in this series is accompanied by Sufi music. Today it is an instrumental piece called “Love Is the Bridge Between You and Everything” from the YouTube channel Buddha’s Lounge’s RUMI Spiritual Music Live Stream. I find this music perfect for times of meditation and prayer. Perhaps you will too.
Podcaster Sabrina (“Sabby”) Salvati recently shared highlights and offered analysis on last month’s Workers Strike Back conference in Seattle. If you have 40 minutes to spare, her video segment below is well worth watching.
Following are some online comments in response to Sabrina’s segment on the Workers Strike Back conference.
• Thanks for the coverage. I attended the conference and was truly inspired and motivated. I encourage everyone to become a member of Workers Strike Back as this powerful movement is going very far, hopefully it will unite the socialist and eco-socialist left to form a new populist political party of the left that will directly challenge the corporate and corrupt duopoly. It was great seeing and talking to so many of my fellow Greens from across the nation who were at the conference. There is a huge sense of unity among this movement.
• I attended and it really was amazing, I drove with my son and friends and met Kshama Sawant and Chris Hedges, I had a wonderful conversation with Chris outside. . . . Down to earth people who are on the frontlines of exposing and opposing the rich and their two parties.
• Gosh! Chris Hedges sounds as though he knows what he’s talking about. Small wonder he was excommuniacraed from corporate media!
• Chris Hedges is a courageous and decent man full of empathy, same with Dr. Jill Stein, a lovely woman. Kindness and empathy is something truly lacking in our society.
• Here in Olympia WA the Republicans and the Demorats have done their very best to destroy single family housing and increase rental housing by changing zoning laws. This is called “middle” housing and used to be called “missing middle” housing. This policy destroys homeownership for first time buyers as the single family housing becomes rentals and/or become demolished in favor of high priced rental housing. Also, Democrats here have consistently voted for tax abatements for LUXURY HOUSING in DOWNTOWN Olympia.
• Both parties feed at the same trough!
• Germany just had its national election. Germany has four major political parties, and at least four minor parties. The U.S. has two parties that represent a diminishing percentage of the public.
• I was there and the day was inspiring. We need solidarity on the left. I also hope that we add to our work getting proportional representation.
• The Democratic establishment will never ever change. Having said that, I wonder if there are Democrats who could switch over to the Greens or become Independent. I for one would love it if Democrats like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar became Greens while in office. That way Greens would have seats at the federal level and would make things far easier for the building of a pro-labor movement.
• Sabby frequently reminds us that she is supports neither Republicans or Democrats. Got it. What I’d like to know is is she in total lock step with Jill Stein? If not, where does she disagree with her. I’m not sure everyone agrees with 100% of any candidate’s views. So Sabby, what are your critiques, if you have any, of the people/party you do support? As an example, look at Marc Lamont Hill who’s a member of the Green Party; I’ve frequently heard him express his displeasure with aspects of the Green Party.
• This was an amazing conference. If you haven’t listened to the whole thing, it is worth your time. Join, join, join!
Image: Port Macquarie's Shelly Beach – Tuesday, March 4, 2025. The heavy seas and grey skies are due to Cyclone Alfred which is expected to make landfall tomorrow night, possibly around Brisbane and/or Northern Rivers Country, about 500 km north. (Photo: Michael J. Bayly).
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
I want the peace of God.
The peace of God
is everything I want.
The peace of God
is my one goal;
the aim of all my living here,
the end I seek,
my purpose and my function
and my life,
while I abide where
I am not at home.
I was heartened to see the Palestinian-Israeli film No Other Land win for best documentary feature at last night’s 97th Academy Awards.
The film follows the struggles of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta to stay on their land amid home demolitions by the Israeli military and violent attacks by Jewish settlers aimed at expelling them.
The film was made by a team of Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers, including the Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, both of whom are prominently featured in the film.
Following is a segment from Democracy Now! highlighting Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham speaking at the Academy Awards ceremony after the announcement of their win.
Said Basel Adra:
Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honor for the four of us [Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor] and everybody who supported us for this documentary.
About two months ago I became a father and my hope to my daughter [is] that she will not have to live the same life I am living now. Always fearing. Always fearing settlers’ violence, home demolitions and forcible displacements that my community Musafer Yatta is living and facing every day under Israeli occupation.
No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist, as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.
Said Yuval Abraham:
We made this. We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together, our voices are stronger. We see each other, the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end. The Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed.
When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law, and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control. There is a different path. A political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people.
And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. And you know: why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe. There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living. There is no other way. Thank you.
Last month Basel Adra was interviewed by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Juan González. It’s a well-worth watching segment and one that features No Other Land’s trailer in the first five minutes.
That we fail to live up to our human commonalities, to the better angels of our nature, is tragic and usually evil. That we dehumanize others is horrifying. Because we are supposed to know better. We DO know better, and we are less than we can be when we fail to see that those universal values apply to all. Except, some people truly do not have the capacity to know better.
Yesterday, in the oval office, Zelensky, with intention, exposed not just the petty, slimy, venal failures of America, but the failure of those who lead America not just to care for humans but to comprehend universal human assumptions. Everyone around the world saw it. They saw that Americans consciously chose (I know it wasn’t all of America, but in the sad shitty ways we have to choose) people who do not understand or acknowledge the existence of these fundamentally human things.
Let’s be clear. Every American president has committed war crimes and caused inexpressible harm – no one gets through the office without mass murder, and some are worse than others. Every American president became monstrous.
It is horrifying when someone who knows what it is to love their child or their country betrays that – signals that some group or other country’s population suffering is not the same as their own, as Biden did in Gaza, as the Bushes did in Iraq, as Reagan did to AIDS victims, as Clinton did to Black people. That is when people do evil. Being a president of a country, means that you by definition have put the interests of some people ahead of others, and it enables that evil.
But recognition of universality is also how you can sometimes leverage humanity for justice. It is appalling and horrifying that one has to have a gay or disabled kid, or have someone spell out that your babies don't matter to you more than the babies being bombed or starved.
It is a different kind of horrifying when you realize that the folks running your country do not understand what it is to be human AT ALL. That fundamentally it is they who are utterly dehumanized, who lack even the most basic underlying shared assumptions, that there is nothing to leverage, because the idea that people have inherent worth or that there are things worth more than your own individual life and comfort and wealth are simply alien ravings from a different species.
Trump, Vance etc. are not making arguments about changing the structure of American and European relations and focusing on American self-interest over multilateral interest. They are not dividing humans into beloved and sacrificeable. These are terrible things to do, and they are things that humans do when they descend into evil.
Trump, Vance and Hegseth are another thing – they are showing us that they either consciously reject or, more likely, are unaware of universal human capacities and passions. You can't appeal to their love for their own children (or spouse, in Vance’s case, as he’s already praised racism against her), or call upon the things they would sacrifice for, even if they are not the same things that Zelensky values, to provide a commonality, a shared acknowledgement of humanity.
On some level, of course, this isn’t a shock. We knew that fascism depends on a fundamental dehumanizing of almost everyone, we knew that Donald Trump has more in common with Lord Farquard than people who were prepared to die for their principles or their nation.
But what Zelensky did yesterday was make something fully public that we’ve heard said, but not seen in the same way – the fact that while their vices are fully human and on full display, there is no human ground on which to build an appeal to.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
