09. Juli 2009
"A parent buries a child with a few friends and no one knows what to say. Children cremate parents in absentia. We behave this way not because we are without hearts but because we don't know how to enter the dark night and and we fear no return. We will ourselves not to feel death. Judaism acknowledges the horror of death, defines a way of honoring the dead, while it insists that we live. Mourning is mandated and limited. We must leave our homes after seven days, we must cease mourning after 30 days or a year. We are discouraged even from visiting the cemetery too often. The expression "orgy of grief" carries truth. There is a difference between reverence and worship of the dead, and we must honor the distinction.
We need more than rituals to face death. We need faith, faith in the ebb and flow of things, and faith that however we brought blessing to this life, that blessing lasts forever. The love of my grandmother for me has become my love for my grandchildren. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "To have faith is not to capitulate but to rise to a higher place of thinking. To have faith is not to defy human reason but rather to share divine wisdom." At the end of his life Heschel accepted his death as a homecoming. He faced his death with song by feeling gratitude for his life. "I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me." May we live our lives so full of wonder that we face death as a fair price for the gift of life, and may we see all around us that death is the beginning of new life. We die so that others may live."
Malka Drucker
MEMORIAL [---]
We need more than rituals to face death. We need faith, faith in the ebb and flow of things, and faith that however we brought blessing to this life, that blessing lasts forever. The love of my grandmother for me has become my love for my grandchildren. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "To have faith is not to capitulate but to rise to a higher place of thinking. To have faith is not to defy human reason but rather to share divine wisdom." At the end of his life Heschel accepted his death as a homecoming. He faced his death with song by feeling gratitude for his life. "I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me." May we live our lives so full of wonder that we face death as a fair price for the gift of life, and may we see all around us that death is the beginning of new life. We die so that others may live."
Malka Drucker
MEMORIAL [---]
g a g a - 9. Juli 2009, 22:27
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