That which flowed in him flows beyond him, on
In him a true humanity has been won.
Some words of a poem by Ylva Eggehorn
Stand still in the Pain
Stand still in the pain,
Rooted in that in you which is light.
Let the sword go through you.
Maybe it’s not a sword at all.
Maybe it is a tuning fork.
You become a note.
You become the music
You always longed
To hear.
You didn’t know you were
A song
We bear witness to the wonderful energy for good that flowed in Bruce for family, friends, young people, community and strangers.
To Bruce & Margaret, their love story -started in Jameson hall UCT, many years ago. She a young activist, and Bruce, well she saw his promise. Their children and their families have grown & flourished
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
unknown
Your story together is remarkable in every way, and I am so aware of your closeness.. and Bruces love and presence for and with his family, despite all the demands on his life.
When I heard my first love story
I started looking for you
Not realising how blind I was
Lovers don’t finally meet
They’re in each other all along
Rumi
Of Bruce, I liked what Heather Goedeke has written: We are grateful that your ‘heart-print’ beats at Herschel.
And the words of Andrew Scott: Bruce had a remarkable gift for making everyone feel they mattered…
He had the unique ability to educate and encourage the potential of people…
He was deeply spiritual and believed that every pupil should feel included and experience a true sense of belonging… He encouraged acts of kindness… Just for today he would begin…
Andrew reminds us: Bruce disliked, emails, whatsapps, preferred to meet over coffee. He felt the smell of coffee made the staffroom a happy place.
And what a big change in his retirement with the Heads Development Trust which took him into township schools – the mentoring of Heads of schools, constantly giving and learning.
What a contribution he made in our world of Education.
The burden of his illness is lifted: Bruce is at peace. His suffering has ended.
Grief is such a mystery, death brings relief, but it leaves you alone. It is like, and unlike the tidal sea– The waters can be placid. But when you least expect it, the tide comes in, brings its memories, its joys, the achievements of a family together, and many tears.
But your friends and family here will be with you; A circle of love and understanding.
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene
11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
Mary: I am known – here is intimacy. God knows us and calls us by name.
One Movement of our service today is to remember- to say that Bruce was really known to us. What’s more Bruce got this, he knew the name of every child in the school.
We are here to share memories of Bruce with all his gifts and peculiarities and difficulties, restlessness– that made him into the person you know and love,
Expressing our feelings of connection- of our and his knownness,
our intimacy
We stand together as a circle of love and hope,
like a golden cocoon,
within the possibilities of faith,
around Margie, Joe, Mike, Nicola, spouses, children, grandchildren and those so close to him
The Poem: The Morning after the Night you Left…
See opposite collumn
continue from end of the poem
Mary Magadalene had known the weight of such loss,
and was aware of the hurt and suffering
of the one she loved.
She looks into the darkness of the tomb
until she sees the angels of light.
So like Mary there is still the journey through the darkness of loss, to the light of something different.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says about Loss in his Works, vol. 8, Letters and Papers from Prison (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), letter no. 89, page 238.
There is nothing that can replace the absence
of someone dear to us, and one should not
even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it.
At first that sounds very hard,
but at the same time it is also a great comfort.
For to the extent the emptiness truly
remains unfilled one remains
connected to the other person through it.
It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness.
God in no way fills it but much more
leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve—
even in pain—the authentic relationship.
Further more, the more beautiful and full
the remembrances, the more difficult the separation.
But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy.
One bears what was lovely in the past
not as a thorn but as a precious gift
deep within, a hidden treasure
of which one can always be certain.
Bruce has been a special gift to all of us.
Some words of a poem by Ylva Eggehorn
Stand still in the Pain
Stand still in the pain,
Rooted in that in you which is light.
Let the sword go through you.
Maybe it’s not a sword at all.
Maybe it is a tuning fork.
You become a note.
You become the music
You always longed
To hear.
You didn’t know you were
A song
Stand still. Be still and know that I am God. Bruce once gave a talk to the girls about being still.
This place of Standing Still is a place from which you can be found in a new way and emerge more courageous and human with a wisdom and understanding so many of your friends and family will need in the days ahead.}
Ultimately Resurrection reminds us
that our life story is part of a greater story.
Not just some of our stories but all of our stories.
It tells us that our physicality is part of the eternal truth
and forever matters to God.
What matters in our lives is that we
die to all the false selves/the masques
that emerge in us and begin
to experience something of our true self,
the self which overcomes greed, success , fame
and self- centredness – and which knows enough
about our woundedness, and suffering,
and hurt of ourselves and those we have hurt,
and yet knowing that we are loved
and can enter confidently into every new day.
The self that expands beyond ourselves,
And experiences the divine in us.
The resurrection affirms that this true self, our deep soul,
will continue its journey into God, into Love.
As in birth we emerge from an interior life
To a larger world of wonder
So in death
We emerge
“for a further union, a deeper communion” as T. S. Eliot says.
Stand still. Wait in love family, friends
for God to do God’s work of healing and wholeness in you,
so that you can be found in a new way
and carry Bruce’s adventurious story,
his knownness and connectedness with you,
into the coming days.
I wrote sonnet in honour of Bruce a few days ago, which ends with this couplet:
That which flowed in him flows beyond him, on
In him a true humanity has been won.
The Morning after the Night you Left
For Bruce Probyn, educator
The morning after the night you left,
revealed a mist thick in its swollen silence.
The earth wept in the grayness.
It was as though the moistened molecules,
were trying to find the contours and shapes of our lives.
That was mostly all that was different
The sun still found a way through to us
And the poplars and the ilex glistened
As the girls filled lawns and walkways
in their blue of new beginnings.
Hands were still raised in prayer.
A girl’s voice filled the Mary Jagger with
We will never walk alone
And the Egyptian geese honked their love call
Unashamedly from the chapel turret.
Voices still swelled and thinned in corridors;
the breath rhythm of a school,
bells rang for exits and entrances.
Some were just aware of the echoes of their footsteps,
and of the empty parking bay.
True your ghost was there
walking through the minutes of our hours
But we shushed you away for we were larger now,
A fountain filling the emptiness
With our new found confidence.
For you had humoured us into ourselves
Untensed us into our beings
And common-sensed our humanity
That was the nascent difference
On the morning after the night you left.
