Targeted by those trapped in an unnamed rage, Tyre Nichols became Jesus.

For all the world to see. Not in the way he might’ve ever imagined as his mom addressed when interviewed about his dreams of perhaps becoming known one day for his exquisite art photography, where he shared the beauty of a world when the light is just right.
A view that might well be the way Jesus saw our world. A view from Love’s embrace. By all accounts Tyre Nichols lived in the harmony of that beauty. He knew love and lived it.

His was a sober voice in a chaotic world.

Blue Bridge Photo by Tyre D Nichols

Tyre Nichols

“My son was a beautiful soul and a good boy,” notes his mom. He was a power of example for all young people in life, and his mom is convinced that he will be remembered so that no other human being suffer this.

He had dreams. He was innocent. He was beautiful. He was human. He was a dad. He was a son. He loved. He was loved. His mom said he loved sunsets. photography. skateboarding. #TyreNichols' friends say he was a calm supportive voice in any room, encouraging his friends in their dreams, and he loved life.

Photos are inserted with excerpts of his rendering from his photography site to see the world as he did, a love for the beauty in life, a friend to all and this world.
“Hey guys - My name is Tyre D. Nichols. I am an aspiring photographer. Photography helps me look at the world in a more creative way. It expresses me in ways i cannot write down for people…My vision is to bring my viewers deep into what i am seeing through my eye and out through my lens…People have a story to tell why not capture it…I hope to one day let people see what i see…Your friend, Tyre D. Nichols”

My heart aches for this beautiful soul and what he suffered, for his family in the senseless loss and cruel horrific taking of his precious life.

His mom, RowVaughn Wells, is herself the view of true compassion and the voice of its visceral suffering in our world.

She speaks in thoughtful compassion about the shame the five burly men accused of murdering her son brought to themselves and to their own families. She begged parents to not allow their children to see the video the world saw for the first time of the horrific series of actions that ended her son’s life by the same men she said who that night came to her door, apparently lied about what had taken place, and told her she couldn’t go see her son at the hospital.

Tyre’s mom spoke about having a pain in her body, unexplained, until she found out the timing of that was at the same time her son was being pummeled to death yards from their home.

When the monster of violence in the form of the uniformed assigned protectors of law in the video stalked and viciously ejected him without reasoning from his car, Tyre Nichols spoke first in even, nearly gentle inquiring tones asking ‘what did I do?’ Instead of answers, came terrorizing profanity, impossible directives, relentless screaming.

His was a sober voice of reason in the midst of metastasized madness. And as they attacked him from the onset and tangled, grabbed and twisted his fallen figure, he looked up at them directly, letting them know he was just trying to get home, he suggested, ‘You guys are doing a lot.” as if he was attempting to appeal to their humanity while they violated his.

He cooperated as they added more pain in the form of attempting to pepper spray or taze him or both and suddenly he ran for his life when his organism recognized on some level a fate that was imminent.

He ran for the safety of home - just a few blocks away - where he would go to a dinner every night prepared by his mom on his work break. He never made it there.

Early on in the event as documented in the video, somehow one of the monsters of violence got sprayed with pepper spray by accident as the camera indicated. The rage from the onset of the attack intensified, accelerated and multiplied in the form of apparent reinforcements who arrived to track him down, more violent men twice Tyre Nichols’ weight arrived. More cars appeared.

Taking turns, as if planned that way, once they had him on the ground, by now feet from his dinner waiting at home, they peppered sprayed him without reason. One of them appeared to kick his head twice with great force like a football, pulverizing his head, pummeling his body.
That apparently didn’t satisfy the agenda of violence. Another was compelled to strike him more than once with a metal baton as he was held down, continuing to punch him on the ground and then they stood him up to receive what appeared to be a raging slug punch in the face that, in the shadow of the darkest hour, seemed to send his head clear off his shoulders.

They dragged him to lean his slender body up against a car, reprimanding his less than conscious figure when it slumped from agony, to sit back up. They left him there. All that was left was the neglect that followed. No one rendered the medical attention he needed. An ambulance showed up like an afterthought after too much time had passed for it to meet the call for aid.

That he was not recognized as human is an understatement.

Perhaps even worse could it be that Tyre Nichol’s personhood, his bright elegant presence in the world was in such contrast to what they presented.
He was so very clearly human in the midst of monsters, so clearly innocent, so calm by comparison in his voice at first, cooperative without cause, so vulnerable, so aware, that his very being clearly reflected a life they might never imagine for themselves.

Could it be an almost silent unrecognized jealousy fueling rage among those trapped in the madness of systemic aggression further promoting the violence that expressed a drive to kill off what they couldn’t bear - his humanity - his innocence - his awareness that Love is real because it revealed what they had abandoned within themselves.

Could it be they could not beat the knowing, the oneness, the love for life out of him? His last cry was for his mom before the rage of those trapped in it killed him. His attempted calm at the beginning. His wisdom fueled remarks. His willing spirit. His intended trust. His attempt to appeal. The nobility of his run for his life. And finally his agonizing outcry for the Love we all belong to that the whole world has heard.

Many can speak to the issues of broken policing and systemic brutality. On a personal level, something more than bad training was at work here. Deeper.

The symptom of an annihilation within is very personal. More personal than many people want to ever get with themselves or anyone else. It can be a polite form of programming for a child, a systemic drive in a work environment or religion, a compulsive educational sphere, a parental slight, or anything else that drives out what is essential to a person with expedient attempts to get rid of those essentials unique to an individual’s life in the embrace of virtue, wisdom, care, inclusion, all elements of Love’s authority.

From all walks of life - people have been stolen away from the value of awareness of their true belonging, dismembered from their very being, dismantled from the oneness that Tyre Nichols by all accounts knew he belonged to.

This is a game changer in our world. It is bigger than any conversation. There are no categories to control. This is about valuing the reality of Love that the world has abandoned in the annihilation of our humanity on a totally personal level as a result of that detour.

It is the trap our world finds itself in. The fracturing of our policing, our politics, our policies, parenting, our transactional professions and personal interactions have left us without something vital within ourselves…without the knowing awareness of oneness.
Tyre Nichols lived from that space. By all accounts he was rooted there. He wasn’t living to prove anything. He was simply living. He went home for dinner at night.

“My son was sent here on an assignment and he’s completed that assignment.” HIs mother speaks from the realm of Love’s authority.

It is madness, an annihilation of humanity in living beings, by often polite systemic programming, cultural isolation, over achievement, the practice of the absence of love, hatred of the other giving way to a raging, perhaps unconscious jealousy of those who have become what they hate - when confronted by the presence of those who live quietly out loud from dignity, integrity, and a vulnerable strength in our world.

Embraced by a knowing awareness from true belonging to Love, this is who we are. It is wisdom.It is embrace. It is compassion. And in the end compassion is always the sole survivor.
“My son’s heart was that of a modern-day Messiah,” reflects his mom, “Why else would he be sacrificed in this way?”

Tyre Nichols knew something. His mom knows something. They live from the certitude, peace and comfort of that knowing. And that knowing is our saving grace.

Volunteer Railroad Photo by Tyre D Nichols

We all belong to Love. It lives inside each of us. There is a way. We each are called to open to it. To allow Love to touch all our woundings. To not cut each other off. Allow this moment to take us there. Give the suffering a chance to show us something about our own stories.

To discover that what is true is real - we are One. We are loved. Cherished. We are rooted in the fullness of true belonging.

Now is the only time.

Tyre Nichols lives forever from here.

A Tribute to Tyre by Susan DRENNAN GABRIEL bunn

Tyre Nichols

Reflecting on the value of virtue in the fold of the lonely

cry of Love aware, the calling of certain wome

n in our

land of the free, home of the brave.

Haunted by a quiet journey, thoughts about Cassidy Hutchinson came into view as 2022 became a year older. A year so full it spilled its unresolved content into the days of the new year. My thoughts wander across the pond where I recall another woman of note, Queen Elizabeth. Both women were companioned last year by the public. One as she left our world. The other as crisis gripped our nation and brought the young American center stage in that same world. Both heroic women. Each jolted by life at around the same age by very different circumstances.

Queen Elizabeth was 25 when her beloved father passed away and she entered what became a 7 decade reign as Queen.  Cassidy Hutchinson was around the same age when she was jolted by a surprise quite different, a betrayal from the White House she had served as assistant to the Chief of Staff of the then President of these United States.

I reflect on Cassidy Hutchinson today as a new season in time cycles us all forward into a new year absorbing unresolved content from the year just passed. We lost Queen Elizabeth and all that her presence became in our world held close to the fabric of belonging by year’s end.  As the Queen departed, Cassidy Hutchinson was catapulted onto the world stage.

Hutchinson’s virtue was grabbed at behind the scenes apparently as we all gained access to the spark of her individual strength in the public eye. The young staffer stood up in the midst of the predominance of male cowardice and cruel mischief orchestrated by a good ole boys styled fraternity serving a less than dignified existence - ring kissers to a former leader who is addicted it seems to grabbing things that aren’t his. 

When the entourage of gutless wonders attempted to ‘handle’ Ms Hutchinson pre-testimony to the Jan 6 committee, something within her very being became unsettled. They are said to have tried to grab her by her virtue and it backfired. She could not abandon the deeper ground of her character, the place that holds integrity in all human beings, though many have forgotten who they are in the deep of their own being. Cassidy Hutchinson did not forget who she is. She stayed with herself, with what is true and she told it.

A young woman, getting started in life, with all her investments to get her there, in her twenties who I can only surmise, in the beginning, must’ve been thrilled to be working at the White House.  What young up and coming bright twenty something college grad wouldn’t be? Surrounded by and serving up to grown, mostly men around her. People she had respected and served with the best of her being day in and day out, who in the end tried to take her honest character hostage in service of a desperate gangster gain.  They apparently coached her to pretend in order to protect their grab. This is typical of perpetrators. But when they tried to grab her by her virtue she said ‘no’.

What father, what brother would do to a daughter or sister what such scavengers might attempt to misguide into their favor? Much less a bunch of practiced politicians and lawyering subordinates in the gaslighting of an aspiring assistant. Who does that?  Betrayal is not a natural condition in our world.  It has to be learned. What man would dismantle innocence to fracture goodness in a young innocent? I can only imagine the loneliness there.

People are waiting for the gangster in charge to be made accountable by the DOJ and the special counsel, to come down hard and heavy on both the key enablers, ring kissers, and the one noted for harm threatened and caused to the land of liberty, the one who coined the ‘grabbing phrase …and they’ll let you do anything'. 

Taking a step back, on a subtle yet very powerful level, perhaps on the deepest level, the former guy and such men are down. Brought down by a class act, a deeper awareness, the elegant conscience, the innocent feminist, a compassionate professional, the youth of American’s heart, the strong soul, the companion of the lonely, the vulnerable, the shunned and shattered, betrayed and tattered cry in the darkest night of this nation’s life. Cassidy Hutchinson in her moment of acting on the deep integrity of her very belonging made those accountable when they tried to grab her by her virtue and she said ‘no.’

One more long look down to the horizon’s touch. The way back or the road ahead is that oh so personal moment of reflection and where there is reflection there is always light.

- by Susan Drennan Gabriel bunn

The practice of the absence of love takes many polite forms.

GOP lawmaker and candidate remarkable silence amidst the violent crime, attack and intimidation of opponents, election workers, police, voters, and their families is a visceral theft of American birthrights.

The once Republican political party has been ‘grabbed.’ They have morphed into the fold of anti-democratic corruption, companioned now with domestic terrorists.

Gaslight that launched the shower of lies was the first weapon of mass seduction that shocked us all. A raining of lies that fracture, confuse, fragment and destroy democratic essentials and ignited a divided population to rob community by cruel means.

Silence also plays a major role. It energizes intimidation, infecting and infiltrating any space or form left unaware, unprepared, or innocent to its once body politic.

This is a strategy designed to feed distortion. This silence fuels violence. A movement to blanket doubt over our remarkable election process to steal all of our freedoms. It destroys the fabric of what belongs to each and every American - the essential right to live in peace.

It is not so much what we are seeing. It is what we are not seeing that has become so effectively destructive.

The definition of terrorism is “the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, with the goal of furthering political, social, or ideological objectives.”

This has become a GPS of practice, kind of an unwritten mission statement of the silently complicit turned gangster. It is inhumane.

Betraying their oath of office right before our eyes, giving way to election deniers, power seekers, unqualified contenders, gullible followers each day by not standing up for the character of what is true fact. They dishonor without consequences their vow to protect content that is critical to democracy that afforded their power in the first place.

Gutless silence is now sharp as a weapon. It opens a way for anti-democratic terrorism in its most polite form to replace the rule of law across our land.

What has been a daily, constant tapping against the foundation of all we hold dear is dismantling individual rights to elections, personal freedoms and future rights of our children. It violates all - all that our fathers and mothers and friends and heroes gave their lives for, namely freedom and peace.

No matter the political persuasion, women, people of color, our children - all of us will lose what is essential if those who are complicit in the violence of silence are not voted out of office. Elections where our vote counted until now will be no longer if election deniers take office on any level of government.

Our right to vote and choose who represents us will vanish if we don’t overwhelm the ballot box with a blue streak.  That means vote blue down ballot. It is not a political choice- it is a life choice. It is an emergency

Vote for what belongs to each of us - we the people. Vote for your children, for their future, for your forefathers, for your parents, for our freedoms, for the rule of law, for peace, for Love’s authority in a lost world.

Vote for Democracy. End the showering of lies. Vote to save America from a ‘rain’ of terror. -

SUSAN drennan GABRIEL bunn

11/5/22 in Philadelphia

The chokehold on democracy now breaks open, advanced by a field of flags waving in the breeze of freedom’s exhale to mark the first light of a new day in a long time for these United States. Hundreds of thousands of beautiful souls lost in the wake of a poacher and a pandemic.

“I know these are dark times but there is always light”- President Joe Biden waving goodbye to Delaware to begin again in DC..

Along his way now a newly elected President is joined by the first woman, first of color Kamala Harris elected to be Vice President. Together they render a new team into the service of the next story of the people of the United States of America. We are grateful yet grieving. We are sad and scared. We are ready and relieved.

Gaslight has had its effect in after glow. A quenched greed, its own untreated epidemic, anesthetized a population.. A narrow point of view insulated. A permeating hatred slithered, its shadow snaps now in predictable cycles intended to shock, fracture, and sting the most vulnerable.

It did that.

We rise now to a new season.

Traumatized and torn like children of abuse when the predator’s cycle breaks, comes a new season. Hope is floating in the afterglow of gaslight. So are we. Trepidation too. All of our personal and collective wonderings tread water here.

And in this moment, at this reflecting pool we are reminded of what allows us to float,

to wait, to see, to rise up, to show up, to move forward, to stand alone, to come together,

to be embraced by LOVE’s authority.

Compassion is always the sole survivor.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that.” - American Saint Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Can our three distinct equally empowered and partnered yet separate branches of government perched ever so delicately and deliberately by our forefathers be drawn back to their balance and engage via the intended mechanism to mend and fortify a fragile democracy now cracked by its own complicit corruption?

Hatred was the fuel. Racism the factor. And the drive of the abuser served up the compulsion. Ring kissers were in. American independent thought was out. The language of a paradigm of lies proved to be the weaponry and the lullaby both to destroy a nation, seduce a citizenry, and suffocate diversity amongst its people.

There was no politic here.

There was the dismantling of our essentials.

It did not work.

Lady Liberty cried out,

"Time's up!"

That time is finally here.

Love is coming home to the People’s House in service of these United States.

this way. this light.

this.

America.

"And the glow from that fire can truly light the world." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Party of One.

Notes from The SuzeMuze.

Since I was a kid I have crushed on Abraham Lincoln. I would devour any yarn penned about his years growing up into the great servant of our beloved America that he became. I was aware of his true love who died young, how it broke his heart wide open, and wondered about whether she had loved him back in the same way. His generous way with people as store clerk, post master, friend, and ultimately politician, I cherish knowing about.

That he was really funny with a brilliant sense of humor, though pensive and authentically sad. I‘ve argued that his sadness was not clinical depression as some have rumored. His sadness was real. It was about something. Look at the warring divided citizenry he was enveloped in. Who wouldn’t be sad?

Lincoln never forgot what Love is meant to do in our world. It is meant to fuel and feed everything. This was his fabric, this knowing. His very being. This was his belonging. What made him discard a prepared speech and deliver a divinely inspired call. - a cry for humanity at Gettysburg.

My career emerged early in my late teens on-air in radio/TV news and later presidential politics invited me into its fold as a writer and for press relations, position papers and to get at the heart content of speeches. One of my original songs had advanced a candidate at a national convention gathering. Colleagues and candidates were all democrats. So was I. When I got invited to the inauguration I wasn’t that excited about who we were celebrating, Though I was thrilled to go to this remarkable occasion and swim in the history that resonates there. So I went in honor of Abe Lincoln. I kept this to myself. I was inspired by Lincoln and I was a party of one.

The power of Lincoln’s spirit and presence haunted me in the halls of my own story. A footprint parallel almost touching came to the forefront of recognition. I shared the revelation in a book I wrote,”They say a man bearing the family name planted the very first corn in Sangamon County Illinois. He lived in the same place at the same time in history as Abraham Lincoln. Both families migrated from Kentucky. Both men were lawyers. They could have easily bumped into each other at the State Capitol in Springfield. I kind of like that idea. It warms me to think of such a thing. History lives. History breathes. History is here. Now. In me.”

To this day, when the opportunity presents itself, I’ve incorporated Lincoln’s story and power of example into kids music arts storied programs and little TV vignettes.

I have so longed for the soulful party of Lincoln to re-emerge. One that connects with his wisdom and wounding and character and commitment in service of our democratic principles and the people who are this precious humanity. In all this time, while I have seen glimpses professionally and politically I never expected its heart to rise completely. Until now.

With all the horror of what we have been through, the betrayal of the complicit GOP has actually provided a gateway, an actual blessing without intent, forcing the birth of a true 21st century party of Lincoln at The Lincoln Project founded by top notch integrity, remarkably brave, gifted, former all star republicans now engaging all the other groups of former republicans, independents, veterans, moms, young people from all walks of life who have risen up now to unite with the Democrats to bring democracy home again.

This is a party I can fully belong to. The party of The Lincoln Project. Inspired and fueling a fire of the phoenix of great leaders and citizens who serve the totality of this vulnerable diverse humanity with dignity, grace, and a soulful mission.

Truly and still a party of one - in the truest sense of what that means. One party. Uniting all. One true nation. - These United States. Under God. Indivisible - with Liberty and Justice for All.

-Susan drennan Gabriel bunn The SuzeMuze #LincolnVoter

Democracy united.

party of one.