TED DREIER

Happy birthday, dear Ted Dreier

Ninety years and filled with bliss

Your very presence lifts us higher,

Just to have you here like this

You chose to take your education

In physics and in engineering —

Knowledge and its application —

That’s the course that you were steering

You’ve always been a man of knowledge,

Harvard Class of ’23,

You helped to found Black Mountain College

And what a place that proved to be

Einstein came, and Fuller too,

A case of like attracting like

We know they came to be with you,

To build the flame you’d helped to strike

This college, founded on the arts,

Was your creative innovation:

Not only minds but also hearts,

You knew, required cultivation

It was experience you sought

You knew there must be something more

And what a glimpse you must have caught —

Black Mountain was an open door

You engineered huge submarines,

Nuclear engines used for driving

Now we see what that work means:

You worked on vehicles for diving

Your love of physics . . . submarines . . .

The college that you helped in founding . . .

In all these many, disparate things

We see the depth that you were sounding

You found Maharishi, you opened wide —

You’d found what you’d been searching for

You took his knowledge deep inside

And it became your very core

Maharishi gave to you a key

A vehicle for diving, yes —

But in a vaster, deeper sea:

The ocean of pure consciousness

That consciousness, both yours and ours,

You found within your simple heart

The source of all creative powers

The source of science and of art

“Theodore” means “Love of God”

We see now what this name was for:

To say it is to give a nod

To Him Whom all our hearts adore

And “Dreier,” we must also add,

Translates roughly “Man of Three”

Your forbears must, through you, be glad

To find the one, the unity

We honor you for all you’ve done —

Great achievements, near and far

For wife, for daughter, and for son

But most of all for what you are

With Bobbie, your beloved wife,

You’re gentle, cultured visionaries

Noble values all your life —

Humanity’s own dignitaries

“Spend time with elders” — this we read

In classic texts of Ayur-Veda

Time with you is time indeed,

Time that we would never trade

So on this very honored day

We wish you perfect health, of course,

But also, never far away,

Complete connection with the source

You’ve completed decade nine,

And we’ll all celebrate again

A little further down the line

When you’ve completed decade ten.

Happy birthday, dear Ted Dreier

Ninety years and shining bright

It’s your Self that we admire

Your ageless and immortal light

May 21, 1992