This is Jenny Meadows, writing on behalf of Peggy Jarrett, who is in London.
Brad's funeral was last weekend, and Roy Whitten delivered the homily. Peggy thought you would like to hear/read about the man who co-founded the More To Life program with Roy more than 25 years ago.
Roy and Brad
at first Leadership Conference
Asilomar, late 1980s
at first Leadership Conference
Asilomar, late 1980s
In Celebration of the Life of
K. Bradford Brown
8 September 2007
K. Bradford Brown
8 September 2007
It’s not often that someone writes the very words that others use to try to describe the arc of his life. But Brad did a lot of things that other people don’t do very often.
We all have our moments of greatness; this man seemed to have one after another.
I wonder if Brad ever thought that when this day finally arrived, and we’d be gathered together as we are now – his family in front, with Joanne, Annie, Linda, Rick, Chris, Sara, Joel, Ky, and, always, Kenny in spirit, and the rest of us, all around them – I wonder if he ever thought we’d use these words:
There are no extraordinary people, only ordinary people who do extraordinary things with what they’ve been given.
He probably did think of it, because he knew how to think long, and hard, and deeply about things that truly matter in life: like family, friendship, how to be a husband, a dad, a partner, things like illness and recovery, separation and coming together, and how to live your days for all they’re worth.
He did take hold of life with both hands, didn’t he? When he did something he did it full-on, an archer letting go of the arrow, Let’s just see how far this one flies!
Here’s a teenager, who teaches himself to play the trumpet, organizes a group of adult musicians and, at age 17, he’s booking dates for Brad Brown and the Men About Town.
Here’s a twenty-something, married now, four children in production, working his way, first, through college, and then through seminary, running his own dry cleaning business (the first drive-in cleaners in California!) week after week, month after month, year after year, every Saturday morning washing his delivery trucks, the sides of which proudly proclaim:
Sunshine Cleaners: as good as any, better than many.
Better than many, indeed.
He was like that as a priest, too. Just imagine him with a clerical collar, cut loose in a church… yes, it was just like that.
I remember him stopping an entire congregation in the middle of the first hymn. If you’re going to sing, sing! Look at the words, open your throat, and let those words have their way with you!
It took my breath away, especially since it was my church!
By the way, remember that today as you sing:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see.
The strife is o’er, the battle is done, the victory of life is won. All is well, all is well, all is well with my soul.
Don’t make me stop you in the middle!
And, years later, when the now Dr. Brown set his hand to therapy, he was so out on the edge that miracles happened in his corner office in Los Gatos, week after week.
Brad was 49 when we met. I had been on sabbatical, had been shaken inside out by That which shakes us in that way, and, in my absence, Brad had been asked to be with my church for a month. When I tried to talk about what had happened to me during those strange and wonderful three months, one of my parishioners said, I really can’t make sense of what you’re saying, but there was a guy here, while you were gone, that sounded like that.
We all have our moments of greatness; this man seemed to have one after another.
I wonder if Brad ever thought that when this day finally arrived, and we’d be gathered together as we are now – his family in front, with Joanne, Annie, Linda, Rick, Chris, Sara, Joel, Ky, and, always, Kenny in spirit, and the rest of us, all around them – I wonder if he ever thought we’d use these words:
There are no extraordinary people, only ordinary people who do extraordinary things with what they’ve been given.
He probably did think of it, because he knew how to think long, and hard, and deeply about things that truly matter in life: like family, friendship, how to be a husband, a dad, a partner, things like illness and recovery, separation and coming together, and how to live your days for all they’re worth.
He did take hold of life with both hands, didn’t he? When he did something he did it full-on, an archer letting go of the arrow, Let’s just see how far this one flies!
Here’s a teenager, who teaches himself to play the trumpet, organizes a group of adult musicians and, at age 17, he’s booking dates for Brad Brown and the Men About Town.
Here’s a twenty-something, married now, four children in production, working his way, first, through college, and then through seminary, running his own dry cleaning business (the first drive-in cleaners in California!) week after week, month after month, year after year, every Saturday morning washing his delivery trucks, the sides of which proudly proclaim:
Sunshine Cleaners: as good as any, better than many.
Better than many, indeed.
He was like that as a priest, too. Just imagine him with a clerical collar, cut loose in a church… yes, it was just like that.
I remember him stopping an entire congregation in the middle of the first hymn. If you’re going to sing, sing! Look at the words, open your throat, and let those words have their way with you!
It took my breath away, especially since it was my church!
By the way, remember that today as you sing:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see.
The strife is o’er, the battle is done, the victory of life is won. All is well, all is well, all is well with my soul.
Don’t make me stop you in the middle!
And, years later, when the now Dr. Brown set his hand to therapy, he was so out on the edge that miracles happened in his corner office in Los Gatos, week after week.
Brad was 49 when we met. I had been on sabbatical, had been shaken inside out by That which shakes us in that way, and, in my absence, Brad had been asked to be with my church for a month. When I tried to talk about what had happened to me during those strange and wonderful three months, one of my parishioners said, I really can’t make sense of what you’re saying, but there was a guy here, while you were gone, that sounded like that.
Do you remember that first lunch, Annie and Jeanne? Such a sense of homecoming, like-minded souls who had happily found each other.
I mention such a personal moment, because now, 28 years later, I know that it was often exactly like that for everyone who got to spend time with him.
He had a special way of being with you, didn’t he? A way that felt like it was just the two of you, friends in the Quaker sense, warriors of the spirit, standing together for something fresh, something real and profound, on the edge of a great adventure.
So many times, when you were talking to Brad, you weren’t just talking to him, but through him to something deep, and lovely, and ultimately hopeful – hopeful about the world, and hopeful about your place in it.
When you talked to him it was sometimes as if eternity itself was listening in. Ordinary conversations would shift into a higher gear, and what happened next was greater than the sum of its parts. With Brad, there was always more on offer: Have you thought about this? Would you like to try that?
He couldn’t help being a priest, he couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, seeing what he could do to bring heaven and earth just a little bit closer for the person he was with in that moment.
It started with a late-night walk, on a lonely street, many years ago, when he looked up and saw a cross on the top of a building.
It came out of the blue and hit him right in the heart. He’d been touched, as Blaise Pascale said, ... not by the god of books and words, but by the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… fire, fire, and more fire.
This experience, of being changed in a moment, never left him. He sometimes said, ‘If it can happen to this little farm boy from Reno, it can happen to anybody.’
He was on a mission, and you nearly always knew it. He had good news and he wanted you not just to hear it, but to get it.
St. Paul put it this way:
Nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God.
Brad put it like this:
There is no event in your life through which G-O-D is not working to call forth your highest and most noble self.
He knew that you could never know when somebody would suddenly break free – like a prisoner leaping the walls and dancing across the field – forever changed.
That was what he wanted, that was why he was so determined, like a terrier with a bone in its teeth.
Lord, could he hang on to you when he was fighting for you. He’d work with you until you got to the very bottom of things, and, just when you were breathing a sigh of relief, he’d find a trap door in the corner, and take you even deeper, into what you’d always wanted.
He wanted nothing more and nothing less than to see someone’s spark of divinity burst into flame, to have their greatness on full beam, a light on a hill, showing the way for others. He lived for that, he strove for that, and he knew how difficult it could be.
He knew that God comes to us wrapped in the cloak of ordinary experience: sometimes with a touch so light that the soul turns like a flower to its sun, and sometimes with such a shock that expectation is confounded and we are left on our knees.
He knew that on some things, we just don’t get a vote. In those times – like Kenny, and Matilda, and all those separations, confrontations, and sheer hard times that were part of the fabric of his very human life – he learned how to wrestle his demons to the ground and hang onto a sure and certain faith, that in this too, the gifts of life will come, if you can just hang in there, baby, and find in yourself one little word: Yes.
This was never more true than during these past few years. As his disease progressed, sometimes he would say, Well, if you were God, what would you give me at this point in my life?
What would you give this man, who had such a capacity to see greatness in others, to whom loving and being loved mattered so much, whose self-respect was so strong that he could help others find their own esteem and ultimate worth, this strong sailor, who could run like the wind well into his 70s, who had generated scores of courses, hundreds of teachers, and thousands upon thousands of changed human beings in private, public, and corporate life?
Well, most of us would have thrown him a parade. God, of course, had bigger plans.
So our Brad, who had indeed done extraordinary things with what he’d been given, this man wound up losing just about everything that for so long he had been able to trust: movement, balance, memory, recognition of those he loved, trust in those who loved him – reduced even to searching the house for that remarkable mind of his which had carried him so well, for so long,
through so much.
I’m so embarrassed, he said, as the end relentlessly approached. And even to that embarrassment, he kept saying Yes, and yes again.
Of course this would happen to him, of course he would wind up paralyzed for periods of time, where all you could see moving was his belly, bouncing up and down, as inwardly he laughed at the holy irony of it all.
And, finally, in his last lucid moment, he said, That’s enough, now, and then, he died quietly, in the company of angels, in the middle of the night.
That was so different from the end that many of us would have chosen for him. Personally, I would have preferred that all of us had been there: certainly his family, whom he so dearly loved but also all the rest of us, thousands of us, somehow, at his side, cradling his body, letting him know how very, very much we loved him, singing, praying, whispering him on his way to that Mystery of which he so often spoke, and on which he had wagered a life well lived.
However, as Brad often said, If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans.
We didn’t get to do those things then, but there’s nothing stopping us from doing them now. As we now carry on with our lives, we can take him with us in that mysterious way that puts death in its place, that knows endings are simply beginnings, that knows while Brad is now absent from our eyes, he is perhaps even more present in our hearts.
Just like we can sense the people we love, even when they’re miles away, we can sense Brad now, can’t we? This is all part of the mystery and the majesty of existence. In life there is death, and in death there is life.
I want to give us all some time now, to be with Brad in any way that you’d like. Close your eyes if you’d like, and find him – with all the others who have passed – in your heart of hearts.
Perhaps you have news for him, perhaps a Thank You to give. And remember to listen, for, knowing Brad, you’ll probably hear a reply.
Go ahead ...
So here we are, at the end of an era… and the beginning of another.
Look around you now, at the people God has brought you this day to your left and right, in front of you and behind, look at them, and, in your own way, make a connection…
Now think of all the other people who are part of your life: your neighbors, and colleagues, and friends, and family.
How will you do extraordinary things with these people with this life of yours? The same way Brad did. You trust yourself and the One who called you to take this journey. You keep your face to the wind, you listen inside to that high and noble self, you respect the unique genius that God has given you, that capacity, in Thomas Merton’s words, to be yourself without getting tough about it.
You look for the thing you’ve been hesitating to say, and you say it. You look for the action you’ve been frightened to take, and you take it. You take the chance of getting it wrong, and even more you take the chance of getting it just right.
You get up every day, load what you’ve got into your ship, raise the canvas, and let the wind fill your sails. And, slowly, over time, you learn what Brad and all faithful people know: first, it’s the wind that’s in charge of the journey… and, second, it will always take you home.
And for this, all we can say, and all we need to say, is thank you, thank you, and, again, thank you.
I mention such a personal moment, because now, 28 years later, I know that it was often exactly like that for everyone who got to spend time with him.
He had a special way of being with you, didn’t he? A way that felt like it was just the two of you, friends in the Quaker sense, warriors of the spirit, standing together for something fresh, something real and profound, on the edge of a great adventure.
So many times, when you were talking to Brad, you weren’t just talking to him, but through him to something deep, and lovely, and ultimately hopeful – hopeful about the world, and hopeful about your place in it.
When you talked to him it was sometimes as if eternity itself was listening in. Ordinary conversations would shift into a higher gear, and what happened next was greater than the sum of its parts. With Brad, there was always more on offer: Have you thought about this? Would you like to try that?
He couldn’t help being a priest, he couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, seeing what he could do to bring heaven and earth just a little bit closer for the person he was with in that moment.
It started with a late-night walk, on a lonely street, many years ago, when he looked up and saw a cross on the top of a building.
It came out of the blue and hit him right in the heart. He’d been touched, as Blaise Pascale said, ... not by the god of books and words, but by the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… fire, fire, and more fire.
This experience, of being changed in a moment, never left him. He sometimes said, ‘If it can happen to this little farm boy from Reno, it can happen to anybody.’
He was on a mission, and you nearly always knew it. He had good news and he wanted you not just to hear it, but to get it.
St. Paul put it this way:
Nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God.
Brad put it like this:
There is no event in your life through which G-O-D is not working to call forth your highest and most noble self.
He knew that you could never know when somebody would suddenly break free – like a prisoner leaping the walls and dancing across the field – forever changed.
That was what he wanted, that was why he was so determined, like a terrier with a bone in its teeth.
Lord, could he hang on to you when he was fighting for you. He’d work with you until you got to the very bottom of things, and, just when you were breathing a sigh of relief, he’d find a trap door in the corner, and take you even deeper, into what you’d always wanted.
He wanted nothing more and nothing less than to see someone’s spark of divinity burst into flame, to have their greatness on full beam, a light on a hill, showing the way for others. He lived for that, he strove for that, and he knew how difficult it could be.
He knew that God comes to us wrapped in the cloak of ordinary experience: sometimes with a touch so light that the soul turns like a flower to its sun, and sometimes with such a shock that expectation is confounded and we are left on our knees.
He knew that on some things, we just don’t get a vote. In those times – like Kenny, and Matilda, and all those separations, confrontations, and sheer hard times that were part of the fabric of his very human life – he learned how to wrestle his demons to the ground and hang onto a sure and certain faith, that in this too, the gifts of life will come, if you can just hang in there, baby, and find in yourself one little word: Yes.
This was never more true than during these past few years. As his disease progressed, sometimes he would say, Well, if you were God, what would you give me at this point in my life?
What would you give this man, who had such a capacity to see greatness in others, to whom loving and being loved mattered so much, whose self-respect was so strong that he could help others find their own esteem and ultimate worth, this strong sailor, who could run like the wind well into his 70s, who had generated scores of courses, hundreds of teachers, and thousands upon thousands of changed human beings in private, public, and corporate life?
Well, most of us would have thrown him a parade. God, of course, had bigger plans.
So our Brad, who had indeed done extraordinary things with what he’d been given, this man wound up losing just about everything that for so long he had been able to trust: movement, balance, memory, recognition of those he loved, trust in those who loved him – reduced even to searching the house for that remarkable mind of his which had carried him so well, for so long,
through so much.
I’m so embarrassed, he said, as the end relentlessly approached. And even to that embarrassment, he kept saying Yes, and yes again.
Of course this would happen to him, of course he would wind up paralyzed for periods of time, where all you could see moving was his belly, bouncing up and down, as inwardly he laughed at the holy irony of it all.
And, finally, in his last lucid moment, he said, That’s enough, now, and then, he died quietly, in the company of angels, in the middle of the night.
That was so different from the end that many of us would have chosen for him. Personally, I would have preferred that all of us had been there: certainly his family, whom he so dearly loved but also all the rest of us, thousands of us, somehow, at his side, cradling his body, letting him know how very, very much we loved him, singing, praying, whispering him on his way to that Mystery of which he so often spoke, and on which he had wagered a life well lived.
However, as Brad often said, If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans.
We didn’t get to do those things then, but there’s nothing stopping us from doing them now. As we now carry on with our lives, we can take him with us in that mysterious way that puts death in its place, that knows endings are simply beginnings, that knows while Brad is now absent from our eyes, he is perhaps even more present in our hearts.
Just like we can sense the people we love, even when they’re miles away, we can sense Brad now, can’t we? This is all part of the mystery and the majesty of existence. In life there is death, and in death there is life.
I want to give us all some time now, to be with Brad in any way that you’d like. Close your eyes if you’d like, and find him – with all the others who have passed – in your heart of hearts.
Perhaps you have news for him, perhaps a Thank You to give. And remember to listen, for, knowing Brad, you’ll probably hear a reply.
Go ahead ...
So here we are, at the end of an era… and the beginning of another.
Look around you now, at the people God has brought you this day to your left and right, in front of you and behind, look at them, and, in your own way, make a connection…
Now think of all the other people who are part of your life: your neighbors, and colleagues, and friends, and family.
How will you do extraordinary things with these people with this life of yours? The same way Brad did. You trust yourself and the One who called you to take this journey. You keep your face to the wind, you listen inside to that high and noble self, you respect the unique genius that God has given you, that capacity, in Thomas Merton’s words, to be yourself without getting tough about it.
You look for the thing you’ve been hesitating to say, and you say it. You look for the action you’ve been frightened to take, and you take it. You take the chance of getting it wrong, and even more you take the chance of getting it just right.
You get up every day, load what you’ve got into your ship, raise the canvas, and let the wind fill your sails. And, slowly, over time, you learn what Brad and all faithful people know: first, it’s the wind that’s in charge of the journey… and, second, it will always take you home.
And for this, all we can say, and all we need to say, is thank you, thank you, and, again, thank you.
- Roy Whitten, co-founder of the More To Life program
