Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JORINDE VAN DEN BERG
As I climb the three flights of stairs up to our condo, I think to myself, “Neither dragging up my groceries nor my weary old bones is something I will miss when we move into our single-level home in the 55+ community next month.” Recently, I have started feeling as if my powers are waning and I can no longer keep up with a world that is turning too fast.
But what am I talking about?!
Turning too fast…
When Tina Turner was my age, she went on her “Wildest Dreams” tour, dancing in over 250 shows like only the Queen of Rock & Roll could, filling stadiums all over the world…and then she would still not be done! She would not retire from touring until she was 61 years old.
Tina performing in her “Wildest Dreams” concert tour
“What energy and drive!” I think breathlessly arriving at my front door. While depositing my groceries on the counter, I remember her first come-back tour called “Private Dancer.”
I was a nineteen-year-old, opera-loving nerdy student when I saw Tina on MTV. It was like lightning struck or a near-spiritual vortex pulled me in. I was poor and would never go to another pop concert again, but I made it to far-away Rotterdam, where on Monday, April 8, 1985, I was in a giant stadium in the presence of a woman who was possessed by the spirit of music and rhythm.
Like an untamed lioness, Tina Turner personified feminism while defying racism and ageism. I remember looking around me and wondering why this woman in a weird wig had such a hold over young and old. Right next to me were what I perceived as an “older couple” in demure clothes clapping and singing along as much as I and the sixteen thousand or so other fans.
When Tina Turner appeared a quarter century later on the cover of the German issue of Vogue in April 2013, she was the oldest to do so at age 73. By then, her spiritual side that had until then been hidden had become more apparent.
Like me, Tina was a Nichiren Buddhist, founded by a 13th century Japanese monk, who promoted the chant “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,” the heart of the Lotus Sutra, to tap into one’s innate Buddhahood–regardless of gender, age, or status, a revolutionary idea at the time.
Tina Turner is a prime example of the main tenets of Nichiren Buddhism’s cause-and-effect, and of what it means to do “human revolution,” or as she states in Happiness Becomes You, “When our thoughts, words, and deeds are aligned with our most positive intentions, magic happens.”
Tina in a Buddhist meditation pose
The groceries in the fridge and pantry, I sit down and turn on the radio. Then I hear it: “Tina Turner, one of Rock and Roll’s greatest stars, died in her home in Switzerland at the age of 83, after a long period of illness.”
I start crying because I remember, feeling inconsolable when my mother died of cancer while caring for my father with Alzheimer’s, the only thing that brought me peace was Tina Turner’s song “Beyond.” After all the abuse, the hardships, and heartbreak, Tina had found her happiness in Switzerland, and then shared her love and wisdom with the world. Now she was no more. She was “Beyond” because as she narrated on the song of that title:
Love makes us feel safe and brings us closer to God
When you go beyond that’s where you find true love
Keep singing, singing takes you beyond, beyond, beyond, beyond
Jorinde van den Berg, Ph.D. is an educator, writer, and global citizen. As a Dutch woman in the Washington, D.C. area teaching college English to often older women from over 160 countries, she is keenly aware of both the beauty and cruelty of life for aging women around the world. She is currently looking for an agent for her recently completed WWII trilogy called Kairos’ Muses about how three real-life, little-known female resistance fighters from Holland and Belgium saved over 20,000 Jewish children, pilots, and other fugitives. To contact Jorinde: Jorinde9@gmail.com
