Celebrating Dusty

As well as being Easter Sunday, this past Sunday, April 16, was the 78th anniversary of the birth of the late, great British pop/soul vocalist Dusty Springfield (1939-1999).

My interest in and admiration for Dusty is well documented here at The Wild Reed, most notably in Soul Deep, one of my very first posts. Other previous posts worth investigating, especially if you're new to Dusty, are Dusty Springfield: Queer Icon, which features an excerpt from Laurence Cole's book, Dusty Springfield: In the Middle of Nowhere; Celebrating Dusty, my 2013 celebration of Dusty; and Remembering Dusty, my 2009 tribute to Dusty on the tenth anniversary of her death.

And, of course, off-site there's my website dedicated to Dusty, Woman of Repute (currently only accessible through the Internet archive service, The Way Back Machine).

My website's name is derived from Dusty's 1990 album Reputation, and as I explain in Soul Deep, it was this album that introduced me not only to Dusty's music but also to her life and journey – much of which resonated deeply with me. Indeed, my identification with aspects of Dusty's journey played an important role in my coming out as a gay man.

In celebrating the life and music of Dusty at The Wild Reed this year, I share a video of Dusty singing one of her many hits from her '60s heyday, "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself." It's followed by an excerpt from Patricia Juliana Smith's erudite and insightful essay, "'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me': The Camp Masquerades of Dusty Springfield." This essay is from the 1999 anthology, The Queer Sixties, and looks at how Dusty "paradoxically expressed and disguised her own unspeakable queerness through an elaborate camp masquerade that metaphorically and artistically transformed a nice white girl into a black woman and a femme gay man, often simultaneously."

While today it seems a truth universally acknowledged that the "Swinging Sixties" was an era of great sexual license that liberated everyone's libido from the restraints of bourgeois morality, the sexual freedom the decade brought forth was primarily for he benefit of hetero sexual males. Although this now mythologized neo-romantic revolution also garnered heterosexual women and, to some lesser extent, gay men more sexual emancipation than they had previously known, in the years before Women's and Gay Liberation, those who were neither male nor straight remained at best nonentities and at worst monsters, particularly in the masculinist and generally homophobia world of rock music. One of the great pop culture icons of the British Mod music and fashion scene was, nevertheless, a lesbian, though few of her fans – many of them sexual outlaws themselves – were completely aware of Dusty Springfield's "bent" sexuality.

Through a metamorphosis stranger than most fiction, Mary O'Brien – a proper, middle-class, British Catholic girl of Irish descent, who was somewhat unsocialized and seemingly destined for a career as a librarian – became the flamboyant Dusty Springfield, the idol of a cultural movement that, ironically, had little to do with her own existence. In the fantastic Mod ethos of swinging London, however, one generally could be almost anything, no matter how extreme or incongruous, except oneself – particularly if one's own true self were queer. As a result, Dusty Springfield paradoxically expressed and disguised her own unspeakable queerness through an elaborate camp masquerade that metaphorically and artistically transformed a nice white girl into a black woman and a femme gay man, often simultaneously. In doing so, this individual, who had placed herself outside mainstream British society, subverted fixed ideas of identity by assuming the personae of two oppressed and excluded groups. Thus, consciously or otherwise, Dusty Springfield blurred the distinction of race, gender, and sexuality just as she did those between life and art and those between reality and artifice.

. . . In January 1964, a seemingly new and unknown voice became a frequent presence on American airwaves. "I Only Want to Be With You" was among the flood of recordings released in the United States in the first wave of the so-called British Invasion spearheaded by the Beatles; it was, in fact, the first recording of this period by a British artist other than the Beatles to reach the American Top Twenty. This was not, however, Dusty's first American musical success.

Two years earlier, as a member of the Springfields [right], her brother's traditional folk/country combo, she enjoyed a Top Twenty hit with "Silver Threads and Golden Needles," which showcases her distinctive voice in a brief solo passage. Despite the Springfields' high visibility and popularity in Great Britain, they remained, after this isolated success, nameless and faceless to American audiences and were therefore virtually forgotten by 1964. Consequently, the greater part of the audience who acclaimed "I Only Want to Be With You" quite understandably failed to make the connection.

Unfamiliar, then, with the identity and appearance of the androgynously named singer, American listeners formed various misconceptions about her nationality, her race, and even her sex. The initial impression of Martha Reeves, lead singer of the 1960s Motown girl group Martha and the Vandellas, is typical: "When I heard her on the radio, I just assumed she was American and black. Motown signed up nearly all the best talent at that time, and I remember being a little surprised to find she was with a different label – and I was absolutely astounded when I finally saw her on TV."

Springfield's name and husky timbre, however, led some less astute listeners to imagine that the tenorish female voice that made her first hit so compelling was that of a young – and probably black – man. Lloyd Thaxton, host of a popular Los Angeles television teen music program in the early 1960s, awkwardly confessed to her on the air that he had expected his guest, whom he had not seen before the show, to be male. As gauche as this statement may now seem, his error was not completely unreasonable. Recordings by black male rhythm-and-blues singers who had adapted the high tenor voice of gospel music to a secular format – and who frequently bore non-gender specific names (e.g., Smokey Robinson, Frankie Lymon, Garnet Mimms, Jewel Akens) – were relatively common during the late fifties and early sixties.

Springfield's fascination with America soul music and identification with black female singers provided the foundation not only for her vocal disguise but also for the visual masquerade that eventually made her a role model for British drag queens. Publicity photos of the Springfields taken before her metamorphosis show a red-haired Dusty in high-collared, full-skirted gingham dresses embellished with starchy cravats and voluminous petticoats, a countrified version of the quintessential nice (i.e., repressed, artificial, and asexual) white "lady" of the Cold War era. While visiting the United States with the Springfields in 1962, she discovered the various black girl groups then popular and eventually adopted not only their vocal styles but also their fashion sensibilities. The high beehive hairstyles, heavy mascara, and false eyelashes favored by the Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Marvelettes soon became Dusty's own trademark – and a sign of her complete break, in late 1963, with the Springfields and what she later called "that happy, breezy music" with which she "[wasn't] at all comfortable."

Above: Dusty with the Ronettes in 1964.

. . . Within two years of her liberation from the restrictive pseudo-femininity to which she was subject as the lady singer of the Springfields, she was, ironically, compelled to assume the role of an "unnatural woman" once again, only now in a more elaborate and glitzy mode. In doing so, she took as her role models the most unnatural "women" of all. By 1966, Dusty Springfield impersonations had become standard fare for British drag queens – while Dusty, in turn, impersonated them: [Dusty biographer Lucy] O'Brien notes that "her own image was becoming more outrageous and difficult to control. She took tips from male drag queens, learning what kind of mascara lasted longest, and how to apply the heavy eye shadow. 'Basically, I'm a drag queen myself!" she said later." Springfield learned far more from drag queens then mere cosmetology. To succeed in gaining a wider audience while retaining her earlier following, and to blur the distinction between reality and projected fantasy, she assumed the drag queen's epistemology of camp, a philosophy best articulated by none less than Oscar Wilde: "We should treat all the trivial things of like very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality." In this manner, the marginality of the lesbian became a joke the outsider herself controlled.

– Patricia Juliana Smith
Excerpted from "'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me':
The Camp Masquerades of Dusty Springfield"
in The Queer Sixties
pp. 105-113

Here she comes
Here she comes
Ribbons flying from her half-forgotten hair
Look at her run
See what the world and love have done
See all her faces
See all her faces

Look in my eyes
That she is me
I can't disguise
See all her faces
Ah, ha, see all her faces

– From Dusty Springfield's 1970 recording
of Jim Lacey and Jeff Alexander Ryan's "See All Her Faces"
(released on the album of the same name in 1972)

Above: Dusty at around the time of the recording of her two Atlantic Records albums Dusty in Memphis (1969) and A Brand New Me (1970) The former is widely considered her masterpiece.

Above: A promotional photo for Dusty's third (and final) album with the U.S.-based Atlantic Records label. The album, which had the working title of Faithful, was recorded in the early part of 1971 but shelved shortly thereafter. It was eventually released as Faithful in 2015, forty-four years after its planned release was shelved. (For a review of Faithful, click here.)

Above: Dusty performing in 1971.

Above: A promotional shot for Dusty's 1978 album, It Begins Again.

Above: A beautiful portrait of Dusty which was incorporated into the artwork of her 1979 album, Living Without Your Love.

Above: Dusty performing at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1984 as part of Anne Murray's CBS-TV special, Sounds of London. (For a video footage of Dusty's contribution to this broadcast, click here. For Anne Murray's recollections of Dusty, click here.)

Above: Dusty in 1989, two years after her international smash hit with the Pet Shop Boys, "What Have I Done to Deserve This," and a year before the release of her acclaimed Reputation album.

Above: A portrait of Dusty used to promote what would be her last album, 1995's A Very Fine Love. Dusty died four years later of breast cancer. For more about this album and to view the video of Dusty's last single release, "Roll Away," see the previous Wild Reed post, Time and the River.

For more of Dusty at The Wild Reed, see:
• Soul Deep
• Celebrating Dusty (2013)
• Dusty Springfield: Queer Icon
• Remembering Dusty
• Remembering Dusty – 11 Years On
• Remembering Dusty – 14 Years On
• Classic Dusty
• Classic Dusty II
• Classic Dusty III
• Classic Dusty IV
• Classic Dusty V
• Something In Your Eyes
• The Other "Born This Way"
• Heat Wave
• No Stranger Am I
• Time and the River
• Remembering a Great Soul Singer
• A Song and Challenge for 2012
• The Sound of Two Decades Colliding
• Dusty Springfield: "Wasn't Born to Follow"

Related Off-site Links:
• Woman of Repute – My (archived) website dedicated to the life and music of Dusty Springfield.
• Let's Talk Dusty
• The Definitive Dusty Springfield Collection
• Portraying Dusty on Stage and in Film – Annie Randall (Oxford University Press Blog, April 16, 2013).

Celebrating the Return of Spring

Recently some friends and I gathered at my south Minneapolis home to celebrate the end of winter and the return of spring. Our gathering took place less than a week after the spring equinox, and so we celebrated by sharing spring-related poetry, prose, and song . . . and a spring quiz!

Above (from left): Joe, Raul, Walter, Javier, Barry, and Brent – Friday, March 31, 2017.

Right: With my friend Kathleen.

After a time of winter – after a time of grief, of discontent, of mourning, of darkness that is emotional or physical – after such a time, spring comes. It tends to come upon us slowly, subtly, as if it had sent out spies beforehand.

. . . Spring begins not with a kettledrum, but with the small notes of the piccolo. It whispers itself into our awareness, as we begin to notice that it hasn't snowed for a time, that the days seem a little longer, that there is the occasional blue sky. We find ourselves thinking about the garden, and wondering whether the bulbs will emerge again. We decide not to take the crosstown bus today, because it's just warm enough for a good walk to work where, that afternoon, we will crack open the window to finally let in some fresh air. We notice the first crocus in the park and the red breast of the first robin.

– Gary Schmidt and Susan M. Felch
Excerpted from Spring: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
pp. 3-4

Above: Stephanie and Pete – March 31, 2017.

Above: John, Raul, George, Joe, and Brent.

Lovely spring: Beautiful spring!
The woods with vocal welcomes ring,
And we a grateful offering bring
To our God who sends the spring.

– Excerpted from "Welcome Spring" (a Shaker hymn)

Above: Standing at left with (from left) Joe, Raul, and Javier.

Above: Brent, Omar, Walter, and Barry.






Right: With my friend and work colleague Julia.

The awakenings of spring represent an emergence into full life and consciousness. There is a sense of completeness to this particular motion of spring, a sense of wholeness. Stirrings indicate that we are beginning to move out of darkness, hibernation, and stillness, and that something more needs to happen. But awakenings indicate complete movement from sleep to wakefulness, from inattention to attention, from hibernation to participation, from darkness to light. What has been still and quiet is now fully emerged and ready to take up its role in the cycles of life. The actors have stepped onto the stage, and the great drama is about to begin.

– Gary Schmidt and Susan M. Felch
Excerpted from Spring: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
p. 72

Above: Matt, Joan, George, and John.

This is the time of spring's return; the joyful time, the seed time, when life bursts forth from the earth and the chains of winter are broken. Light and dark are equal: it is a time of balance, when all the elements within us must be brought into a new harmony. The Prince of the Sun stretches out his hand, and Kore, the Dark Maiden, returns from the Land of the Dead, cloaked in the fresh rain, with the sweet scent of desire on her breath. Where They step, the wild flowers appear; as They dance, despair turns to hope, sorrow to joy, want to abundance. May our hearts open with the spring! Blessed be!

– Starhawk
Excerpted from The Spiral Dance
p. 187

Left: Pete and Omar – March 31, 2017.

Above: Brent, Walter, Barry, and my housemate Tim.


_______________________________

A Spring Quiz
(Answers in the comments section below)

1. In the southern hemisphere, the first day of spring occurs in what month?

a) August

b) September

c) October

d) November

2. On the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, the sun is directly over the:

a) Tropic of Cancer

b) Tropic of Capricorn

c) Equator

d) Arctic Circle

3. The term “equinox” is defined as:

a) When day and night are equal in length

b) When the sun is furthest from the equator

c) When Earth’s two poles meet

d) None of the above

4. According to folklore, what can we balance on the ground on the first day of spring?

a) A stone

b) An egg

c) A broom

d) A football

5. In North America, which bird is often seen as symbolizing the arrival of spring?

a) Sparrow

b) Blue Jay

c) Robin

d) Cardinal

6. The Japanese celebrate the arrival of spring by hosting viewings of which bloom?

a) Azalia

b) Tulips

c) Cherry Blossoms

d) Lilacs

7. In the United States, which college sport holds its annual national championship tournament in spring?

a) Baseball

b) Hockey

c) Basketball

d) Both b) and c)

8. According to St. Bede the name of the Christian festival of Easter was adopted from an Anglo-Saxon (Old High German) goddess named:

a) Hara

b) Freya

c) Ostara

d) Hretha

9. The attendant spirit animal of this ancient goddess was the:

a) White hart

b) Hare

c) Raven

d) Blackbird

10. What Gaelic festival is held midway between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice?

a) Samhain

b) Imbolc

c) Beltane

d) Michaelmas

11. “Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.” Who is moved by the joys of the season?

a) Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

b) Great Uncle Bulgaria in The Wombles by Elizabeth Beresford

c) Mole in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

d) Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

12. Which is the real quote by Shelley?

a) O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

b) Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems

c) Awake, thou wintry earth – / Fling off thy sadness!

d) The year’s at the spring / And day’s at the morn

13. How many hares are there in the parlor and the dining room?

Above: Javier, Barry, Walter, Stephanie, Brent, Omar, and John – Hare House, March 31, 2017.

Above: A view of Minnehaha Creek, close to my home in south Minneapolis – Tuesday, April 4, 2017.

There are not days in the whole round year more delicious than those which often come to us in the latter half of April. On these days one goes forth in the morning, and finds an Italian warmth brooding over all the hills, taking visible shape in a glistening mist of silvered azure, with which mingles the smoke from many bonfires. The sun trembles in his own soft rays, till one understands the old English tradition, that he dances on Easter Day.

But days even earlier than these, in April, have a charm – even days that seem raw and rainy, when the sky is dull and a bequest of March wind lingers, chasing the squirrel from the tree and the children from the meadows.

There is a fascination in walking through these bare early woods – there is a pause of preparation, winter's work is so cleanly and thoroughly done. Everything is taken down and put away; throughout the leafy arcades the branches show no remnant of last year, save a few twisted leaves of oak and beech, a few empty seed vessels of the tardy witch-hazel, and a few gnawed nutshells dropped coquettishly by the squirrels into the crevices of the bark. All else is bare, but prophetic: buds everywhere, the whole splendor of the coming summer concentrated in those hard little knobs on every bough; and clinging here and there among them a brown, papery chrysalis, from which shall yet wave the superb wings of the Luna moth.

. . . But we are lingering too long, perhaps, with this sweet April of smiles and tears. It needs only to add, that all her traditions are beautiful. Ovid says well, that she was not named from aperire, to open, as some have thought, but from Aphrodite, goddess of beauty. April holds Easter-time, St. George's Day, and the Eve of St. Mark's. She has not, like her sister May in Germany, been transformed to a verb and made a synonym for joy – "Deine Seele maiet den trüben Herbst" – but April was believed in early ages to have been the birth-time of the world. According to the Venerable Bede, the point was first accurately determined at a council held in Jerusalem about A.D. 200, when, after much profound discussion, it was finally decided that the world's birthday occurred on Sunday, April 8 – that is, at the vernal equinox and the full moon. But April is certainly the birth-time of the season, at least, if not of the planet. Its festivals are older than Christianity, older than the memory of man.

– Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Excerpted from "April Days" (1861)

Again it is spring
Look again it is spring
Time again for birds to sing;
Winter's gray now is past
Vibrant green is here at last.

Gentle rains usher in
Signs of life and joy within;
With each passing day we know
Gone for now are ice and snow.

Now the soil soaks in rain
Green adorns the earth so plain;
With each bud that bursts in bloom
Life springs from its winter tomb.

– John Fagan

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Spring: "Truly the Season for Joy and Hope"
• Spring's Wintry Surprise
• Considering Resurrection
• Let the Greening Begin . . .
• A Springtime Prayer
• In the Footsteps of Spring

Images: Michael J. Bayly and friends.

Considering Resurrection

Humanity was never, and could never be, cut off from the Divine Presence. [Therefore] it is time to consider Jesus' resurrection not in terms of a journey to an overseeing, heavenly God who had disconnected from humanity, but as a transformation from being a human expression of the Divine to living on in the Divine beyond all human limits. It is time to see that "resurrection" will be ours also. It is time to see that "resurrection" in this understanding did not start with Jesus. The human species has always lived in and died into the Divine Presence.

– Michael Morwood
Excerpted from It's Time:
Challenges to the Doctrine of the Faith
p. 125

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Easter: The Celebration of the Sacrament of Transformation
• The Risen Jesus: Our Integral Ground
• The Two Entwined Events of the Easter Experience
• Resurrection in an Emerging Universe
• Resurrection: A New Depth of Consciousness
• Easter Reflections
• Easter Exultet
• The Resurrected Jesus
• Jesus: The Breakthrough in the History of Humanity
• The Passion of Christ (Part 11) – Jesus Appears to Mary
• The Passion of Christ (Part 12) – Jesus Appears to His Friends
• The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
• A Girl Named Sara: A "Person of the Resurrection"
• Resurrection: Beyond Words, Dogmas, and All Possible Theological Formulations
• A Discerning Balance Between Holiness and Wholeness: A Hallmark of the Resurrected Life

Related Off-site Links:
In His Easter Message, Pope Francis Denounces "Oppressive Regimes" But Urges Restraint – Philip Pullella (Reuters, April 17, 2017).
The Pagan Roots of Easter – Heather McDougall (The Guardian, April 3, 2010).

Images: Michael J. Bayly (Easter 2017).

Christianity and the Question of God's Presence in the Midst of Hardships and Heartache

Writer and Christian ethicist Peter Wehner recently had a thoughtful op-ed published in The New York Times entitled "After Great Pain, Where Is God?"

Given my current training in interfaith chaplaincy, along with my overall interest in deeper questions to do with the human condition, I find Wehner's essay to be both insightful and helpful. And with today being Holy Saturday, that strange and empty state of suspension between death and resurrection, it seems a particularly appropriate time to highlight this essay and share an excerpt from it.

Years ago I had lunch with a pastor and asked him about his impressions of A Grief Observed [by C. S. Lewis]. His attitude bordered on disdain. He felt that Lewis allowed doubt to creep in when his faith should have sustained him.

My response was the opposite. Perhaps because my own faith journey has at times been characterized by questions and uncertainty, I found the fact that the 20th-century’s greatest Christian apologist would give voice to his doubts reassuring. And Lewis was hardly alone in expressing doubts. Jesus himself, crucified and near death, gave voice to the question many people overwhelmed by pain ask: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus’ question, like ours, was not answered in the moment. Even he was forced to confront doubt. But his agonized uncertainty was not evidence of faithlessness; it was a sign of his humanity. Like Job, we have to admit to the limitations of human knowledge when it comes to making sense of suffering. “From the biblical evidence,” the Christian author Philip Yancey has written, “I must conclude that any hard-and-fast answers to the ‘Why?’ questions are, quite simply, out of reach.” So, too, is any assurance that the causes of our suffering, the thorns in our flesh, will be removed. So what, then, does Christianity have to offer in the midst of hardships and heartache?

The answer, I think, is consolation, including the consolation that comes from being part of a Christian community – people who walk alongside us as we journey through grief, offering not pieties but tenderness and grace, encouragement and empathy, and when necessary, practical help. (One can obviously find terrifically supportive friends outside of a Christian community. My point is simply that a healthy Christian community should be characterized by extravagant love, compassion and self-giving.)

For many other Christians, there is immense consolation in believing in what the Apostle Peter describes as an eternal inheritance. “In all this you greatly rejoice,” he writes, “though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” It is a core Christian doctrine that what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal, and that what is eternal is more important than what is temporal.

But even so great an assurance as eternal life, at the wrong time and in the wrong hands, can come across as uncaring. It’s not that people of faith, when they are suffering, deny the heavenly hope; it’s that in being reminded of this hope they don’t want their grief minimized or the grieving process overlooked. All things may eventually be made new again, but in this life even wounds that heal leave scars.

There is also, for me at least, consolation in the conviction that we are part of an unfolding drama with a purpose. At any particular moment in time I may not have a clue as to what that precise purpose is, but I believe, as a matter of faith, that the story has an author, that difficult chapters need not be defining chapters and that even the broken areas of our lives can be redeemed.

To read Peter Wehner's commentary in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Discerning and Embodying Sacred Presence in Times of Violence and Strife
• Questioning God's Benevolence in the Face of Tragedy
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
• Within the Mystery, a Strange and Empty State of Suspension
• "Even in This Darkness"
• "We Will Come Together in Our Pain"
• Called to the Field of Compassion
• Colin Covert on Biutiful: "A Work of Extraordinary Vitality"
• Quote of the Day – June 20, 2014
• Prayer of the Week – February 16, 2015
• Prayer: Both a Consolation and a Demand
• Interfaith Chaplaincy: Meeting People Where They're At
• Be Just in My Heart
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All

Image: Michael Belk.

Jesus: Our Guide to Mystical Love in Action

Part 3

The Wild Reed's 2017 Holy Week series concludes with a third excerpt from "Resurrecting the Authentic Christ: Jesus as Guide to Mystical Love in Action," an interview with scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey published in the 2012 collection of Harvey's works entitled Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action. (To start at the beginning of this series, click here.)

This year's series also includes images that seek to depict Jesus as the embodiment of the Cosmic Christ, which, says Harvey, is an expression in the West for the universal force of divine love, "the force of active, divine love that streams from the godhead to the creation."

In Jesus's life, you see what it actually means not only to realize the divinity of the heart of one's humanity, but to live it out. Jesus was not content only to realize he was divine at the core of his being. Realizing it made him very conscious of how to act as a divine being in the world, which simply means to act on behalf of everyone who is brokenhearted and destroyed and at a loss and humiliated in the culture, to serve the afflicted and to serve them with tremendous courage at the core of life.

I think this is Jesus's challenge to all of us, whatever path we're on. Do we love enough? Are we prepared to have not merely spiritual experiences and mystical awakenings, but actually to take responsibility for them and to work with their insights in the real, to transform the real into a clearer and clearer image of that love and justice that we discover to be the truth of God and the truth of ourselves.

This is Jesus's call to the world. He's saying, first of all, open up to the Divine within you. Really open up. Plunge into the divine part,
into the core of your being, open up your sacred heart, see the world radiate the fire of the sacred heart, see every being as utterly and totally holy, know nature as holy, know each animal as holy.

Then he's saying you have to take that knowledge into action in the world. You can't simply revel in it and enjoy it. You are responsible for it. You have to enact it, first in your inmost life as a soul, and then in the life of the heart, then in the mind, and then in the life of action within the world, which is to be nothing less than a completely divine, completely human being, working with the Divine in the human to transfigure the human more and more into an image of the Divine.

That is the Christ challenge and the Christ path.

– Andrew Harvey
Excerpted from "Resurrecting the Authentic Christ:
Jesus as Guide to Mystical Love in Action"
in Radical Passion: Sacred Love & Wisdom in Action
pp. 235-236

For more of Andrew Harvey's writing at The Wild Reed, see:
• Jesus: Our Guide to Mystical Love in Action (Part 1)
• Jesus: Our Guide to Mystical Love in Action (Part 2)
• The Cosmic Christ: Brother, Lover, Friend, Divine and Tender Guide
• Jesus: Path-Blazer of Radical Transformation
• The Essential Christ
• Andrew Harvey on Radical, Divine Passion in Action
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Andrew Harvey
• Toby Johnson on the Mysticism of Andrew Harvey
• A Dance of Divine Light
• Reclaiming a Wise, Spacious, and Holy Understanding of Homosexuality

See also:
• Why Jesus Is My Man
• Called to the Field of Compassion
• Jesus: Mystic and Prophet
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence
• Keeping the Spark Alive

Images: Artist unknown.

Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri

An album I've been listening to a lot these past few months is Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri's 1998 release, Where Rivers Meet, which I came across just last year.

It's a beautiful collection of recordings, one which has been described as the duo's "most adventurous." This is because the "rivers" of the album's title can be seen to represent, among other things, the influences of east and west, artfully blended and brought to musical life through Kiki and Carmelo's sublime collaboration with musicians from both India and the UK. The result, says the Mundell Music website, is "an ambient and unusual album," one which bears testament to the duo's "enthusiastic commitment to their musical muse, regardless of fashion or trends."

Tonight I share the album's closing track, "Wake Me From This Sleep." It's a beautiful meditation on that type of consciousness that mystics from all the great spiritual traditions say we experience when we become one with the Divine Presence within and beyond all things. The Wild Reed's current Holy Week series speaks to this type of union, as does this blog's numerous posts on the Sufi Way.

Following the video of "Wake Me From This Sleep" is a review by Kevin Cooper of Kiki and Carmelo's November 7, 2014 concert at St Mary’s Church in Lowdham. (Yes, the pair is going strong! Their latest album is the beautiful A Place Where I Can Go.)

I surrender the fight
I have no desires
I am home again
Peaceful waters calm the restless fire

Wake me from this sleep
Bring me hope and prayers to keep
Our hearts cannot be divided
Where rivers meet

In dreams I wake
Steal away from the night
With no words said
Breath the silence in the morning light

Wake me tenderly
Blood of my Blood
Hidden so deep
Our hearts cannot be divided
Where two rivers meet

Given that Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri’s songs often have a spiritual focus, it was apt that their Lowdham return was at the resplendent St Mary’s Church.

Whilst she may never escape the legacy of her 1976 chart topping duet with Elton John, "Don’t Go Breaking My Heart," Kiki Dee is a singer songwriter whose contribution to music cannot be under estimated. This latest acoustic concert demonstrated the versatility and integrity of an artist who, despite the fact that she no longer sells out vast arenas, still has much to offer an industry that is becoming ever more formulaic and increasingly driven by commercial success rather than creativity and talent.

Having been a former backing singer with Dusty Springfield, the first European artist to sign for Tamla Motown, having had numerous hits in the 70’s; Kiki Dee has been one of the truly great British singers. After having fulfilled an admirable fifty year stint in the music business, she still managed to take to the stage as if she were 19 again. Accompanied by her long time collaborator, musical partner, and virtuoso guitarist Carmelo Luggeri, she was as brash as ever with that iconic red bob.

The first half of the show was very fluid, with the pair changing between different styles and eras. This concert combined a mixture of Dee’s own material, hits from her back catalogue and collaborations with Luggeri from their most recent albums. "Salty Water" and "Amen and Goodbye" were from the east meets west themed album, Where Rivers Meet, and there were also tracks from the couple’s Walk of Faith album; "Everybody Falls (Habit Of A Lifetime)" and "Like Nobody’s Child."

Of course, many in the audience secretly yearned for Dee to perform the classics that have cemented her status as a star performer, such as the sensuously beautiful "Amoureuse," and "I’ve Got The Music In Me." And when she did they were rapturously received. A particular audience favourite was the stripped back, raw and honest version of "Don’t Go Breaking My Heart," which was absolutely sublime.

In amongst Dee’s and Luggeri’s songs was an array of covers ranging from Depeche Mode’s "Personal Jesus," through to Sinatra’s "It Was a Very Good Year," to Kate Bush’s "Running Up That Hill," with fine versions of Leonard Cohen’s "Dance Me To the End of Love" and Janis Ian’s "At Seventeen" thrown in for good measure.

Ending the night with a very gentle version of Buddy Holly’s "True Love Ways," hastily followed by a truly sublime take on the Motown classic, "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" which justifiably earned the duo a standing ovation.

This acoustic experience was one that for all of the right reasons, will remain in my memory. What with the awesome setting of the old church, Dee and Luggeri effortlessly blended their soul, pop and rock roots into heartfelt, emotionally thrilling music. What a terrific evening!

– Kevin Cooper

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don't Go Back to Sleep
• "Joined at the Heart": Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• A Passage to India
• Learning From the East
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible
• The Source Is Within You

Previous featured artists at The Wild Reed:
Dusty Springfield | David Bowie | Kate Bush | Maxwell | Buffy Sainte-Marie | Prince | Frank Ocean | Maria Callas | Loreena McKennitt | Rosanne Cash | Petula Clark | Wendy Matthews | Darren Hayes | Jenny Morris | Gil Scott-Heron | Shirley Bassey | Rufus Wainwright | Kiki Dee | Suede | Marianne Faithfull | Dionne Warwick | Sam Sparro | Wanda Jackson | Engelbert Humperdinck | Pink Floyd | The Church | Enrique Iglesias | Yvonne Elliman | Lenny Kravitz | Helen Reddy | Stephen Gately | Judith Durham | Nat King Cole | Emmylou Harris | Bobbie Gentry | Russell Elliot | BØRNS | Hozier | Enigma | Moby (featuring the Banks Brothers) | Cat Stevens | Chrissy Amphlett | Jon Stevens | Nada Surf | Tom Goss (featuring Matt Alber) | Autoheart | Scissor Sisters | Mavis Staples | Claude Chalhoub | Cass Elliot | Duffy | The Cruel Sea | Wall of Voodoo | Loretta Lynn and Jack White | Foo Fighters | 1927 | Kate Ceberano | Tee Set | Joan Baez | Wet, Wet, Wet | Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy | Fleetwood Mac | Jane Clifton | Australian Crawl | Pet Shop Boys | Marty Rhone | Josef Salvat

Jesus: Our Guide to Mystical Love in Action

Part 2

The Wild Reed's 2017 Holy Week series continues with a second excerpt from "Resurrecting the Authentic Christ: Jesus as Guide to Mystical Love in Action," an interview with scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey published in the 2012 collection of Harvey's works entitled Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action. (For Part 1, click here.)

This year's series also includes images that seek to depict Jesus as the embodiment of the Cosmic Christ, which, says Harvey, is an expression in the West for the universal force of divine love, "the force of active, divine love that streams from the godhead to the creation."

One of the things that you discover in mystical experience is that the universe is alive in its ultimate depths. There's a very astonishing correspondence between the human consciousness and the divine consciousness. The whole that is the universe is both utterly impersonal and utterly and totally personal. In many mystical traditions the personal aspect is said to be a person. In Hinduism it's said to be the Purusha. In Sufism it's said to be the Friend or the Beloved; and in Christianity it's said to be the Cosmic Christ.

Everyone who's had a mystical experience has come into contact with what you could call the Cosmic Christ, but a very important way of connecting with the fullness of the Cosmic Christ is, I believe, looking at how the Cosmic Christ expressed his or her nature in the life of Jesus. Why this is important is, I believe, because Jesus brought a unique intensity of justice to the world's experience of God.

Other great liberators have helped us to see the nature of desire, to see how we must deal with our emotions, to see the nature of the illusion of the world, but I think Jesus, more than any of the great liberators, wanted to use this power of awakening to transform the existing conditions of the world, to create what he calls the Kingdom on earth. This Kingdom is the kingdom of justice, mercy, and radical equality. It's this kingdom that we need to create on the planet now if it's going to be preserved. We need a mystical awakening that's simultaneously an opening to the highest transcendent godhead and the mystical awakening that makes us aware that we are committed, through that awakening, to act responsibly at every level in society, to change society. We need an awakening, in other words, that's political and active and social and economic as well as purely personal. Jesus is a tremendous guide to the radical inclusiveness of such an awakening.

– Andrew Harvey
Excerpted from "Resurrecting the Authentic Christ:
Jesus as Guide to Mystical Love in Action"
in Radical Passion: Sacred Love & Wisdom in Action
pp. 231-232

NEXT: Part 3

For more of Andrew Harvey's writing at The Wild Reed, see:
• Jesus: Our Guide to Mystical Love in Action (Part 1)
• The Cosmic Christ: Brother, Lover, Friend, Divine and Tender Guide
• Jesus: Path-Blazer of Radical Transformation
• The Essential Christ
• Andrew Harvey on Radical, Divine Passion in Action
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Andrew Harvey
• Toby Johnson on the Mysticism of Andrew Harvey
• A Dance of Divine Light
• Reclaiming a Wise, Spacious, and Holy Understanding of Homosexuality

See also:
• The Passion: "A Sacred Path to Liberation"
• A Uniquely Liberated Man
• Liberated to Be Together
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don't Go Back to Sleep
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Hazrat Inayat Khan
• "Joined at the Heart": Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism

Images: Doyle Chappell. About Chappell's depictions of the Cosmic Christ, Kittredge Cherry of Jesus in Love Blog writes:

A Cosmic Christ appears with subtle LGBT symbolism in the work of Chicago artist Doyle Chappell.

He has done variations on the Cosmic Christ theme for years – most recently in colorful windows dedicated Sept. 20, 2015 at A Church 4 Me Metropolitan Community Church where he is a member. The phrase “Cosmic Christ” refers to Christ who is continually incarnated in all creation.

“In the windows for A Church 4 Me in Chicago, the Christ wears a diamond earring on the left ear which for me is a bit of a gay reference,” Chappell told the Jesus in Love Blog.

Multiple intersecting and nested pink triangles within triangles repeat a symbol imposed on gay prisoners in Nazi Germany and later reclaimed by the LGBT community.

“The triangle is more than a gay symbol,” Chappell explained. “It is to me a symbol of ancient wisdom that points to a higher level of consciousness toward the ‘Omega Point’ as expressed by the philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the first theologians to show interest in the ‘Cosmic Christ.’”

Chappell’s art is also inspired by the book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance by Matthew Fox, a Dominican friar who became an Episcopal priest and helped launch the Creation Spirituality movement.

Ultimately Chappell used LGBT imagery to enhance his vision of a Cosmic Christ for everybody. “My main intent was to honor the idea that ‘The Cosmic Christ’ is in all that has been created since the Big Bang and beyond our concepts of Christianity . . . in all particles of creation and certainly all life and honors all who seek to connect with the sacred wisdom,” he said.