by Jeanne Denney
Many of you who know me, know that I have had a wonderful friend for many years, 22 to be exact. This friend mentored me through a thesis, taught with me in grad school, sent me two trillion emails about two trillion things with a thirst for mental jousting, and the curiosity of a giant puppy. We argued for years, laughed for years, gave each other the best of love, care and friendly trouble we could. This is my friend Mark Brady. Mark had many roles in my life, but one of the later ones was as a fellow board member of SoULL. I have more than a heavy heart to report that Mark died rather suddenly on July 31, just after his 79th birthday.
I have so very much to say about this large hearted man who started his life in the projects of New Haven CT, who was on his own at a very young age when his single mother was taken away for alcoholism and mental illness. Who after his first profession at 17 (being a theif), somehow managed to become a house builder, to drive a pickup west to be present for "San Francisco 1972", and later became a PHD transpersonal psychologist, a neurscience educator, an award winning novelist, a playwrite, and a teacher of many, many, many things: parenting, altruism, listening skills, AI. As far as I know, Mark never charged the many people he guided for the sharing of what he knew. He trusted that his benevolence and generosity would evoke return. You can read more about things he was proud of in this blog he wrote in 2022 after cancer treatment. He continued on after that to do many things to be proud of, including solid support of us in SoULL.
Mark and I met after I requested a new mentor in my first year of grad school at ITP (2003). There was nothing wrong with my first mentor, I just knew I had someone else I had to be with. From Mark's first response it was like meeting a friend I had known forever. The questions, the banter and the humor began. I remember how deeply I was met, his genuine curiosity, how delighted he was when I told him that I always got in trouble in groups, always "bumbling into the bone closets" (alas, a fellow subersive!). The unusual presence he gave to his students. This went on for years.
When I started my thesis year (Year 3), I remember getting the large binder of how I was to do my thesis and totally freaking out. What was I going to DO??!! For some reason, this guy who had been with me every day in email thick and thin for 2 years suddenly disappeared for a MONTH, leaving me with only one question. "What are your deepest questions?" I felt so abandoned! But dang if that question did not land and lead me perfectly. In the silence, I realized that I needed to study non-verbal communication with a group of people who were rarely interviewed on their experience: the dying. Mark and I were the two subversive "death people" at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology (ITP). He mentored me through my thesis project on presence with non-verbal hospice patients, and continued his support for years after in projects and teaching together, in friendship. “Only amateurs give up relationships when they end a graduate program.”
Mark was also both a trickster creative and a trickster philanthropist. He loved to plan delightful surprises for people. For example, leaving $5 bills in the knots of trees for hikers to find. To his friends, things would come in the mail. A book. A tee shirt. A tiny telescope in a box (to turn my view around). I remember the belly laughs when I would figure out the joke and who it was from. He did this for many people. Most recently, when I was struggling and profoundly under water with the school, I got a purple tee shirt with large, bright pink letters that said "MAKE IT EASY ON JEANNE". These messages of kindness have been a life preserver over and over.
The thing is...we fought, or...disagreed…a lot. About science. About healing methods. About consciousness. About language. About what really supports parents. About the biases of gender. About how to teach about trauma. About money, and generosity and charging for the help you give people. More recently about AI. As I look back I can see that this was one of the main dynamics between us. To joust like fighting partners. To toughen each other up, help each other get better, and sometimes to knock each other off of our high horses so we could see better, or at least with a little more humility.
So I am in grief, and also a deep contemplation about the profound nature of long friendship, and what goodbye really means. Meanwhile we, as a community, have lost a truly amazing human, a bodhisatva to the core.
I wonder if I could ask all of you to offer him our silent blessing and thanks, even if you do not know him, because his work has touched all of mine and many others. He certainly deserves the very best send-off we can communally give him. Oh, and not to let him off the hook…we elected him our first “Board Member in Spirit” on the SoULL board today. He agreed (we think) to continue to advise, support and protect as he always has done.
I am including a poem I wrote about Mark many years ago. Mark, may you recognize how deeply you are loved, and by how many as you go through your process of becoming all of us.
This one was like a moonfilled loom
Where delicate gifts are woven in and out of threads
Borne of the heart’s madness
A master weaver
Working only with
Silk, water and ash
A cool lake
Where we went to drink, bathe
And see our own faces
Still, this one had drawn his own blood
And drunk it, so that he knew the rules
Of salt and history
He had played his own harp
and he listened a long time
into the conch shell
For that particular note
that some part of me was humming
but could not hear
And so
it is right
for me to
thank him.
- 2005
Want to read more or comment on his memorial page? You can find it here.
