THE FOUR OF US
This day of inner reflection begins to wind down, even as our physical energy fades. Yet despite the exhaustion of body, our meditations and our prayers have brought a concomitant renewal of spirit – a rush of soul strength, sustaining and invigorating.
In our Reform tradition, Yizkor rightly comes near the end of this Day of Atonement. This apogee in high poignancy takes place just as we reach the perigee of our energy. Our defenses are down; our openness expands. At this moment, we are more willing to risk encounter with our psyche’s tender side. Remembering makes us softer; it coats the hard edges that come in the course of dealing with the everyday. Thoughts of loved ones past make us gentler. They cast a soft back-light, putting the needs of the everyday behind a scrim of the conscious into a sort of subdued silhouette. Reflecting upon the memory of loved ones makes us all kin – one with royalty and paupers, with saints and sinners alike – it humanizes us.
I wait for Yizkor much as one awaits take-off. There is the eager anticipation of going somewhere special ... admixed with the uneasiness of potential disaster. I look forward to connecting now with those I have loved in days and years long passed, and yet I know there is a kind of uneasiness attached ... a potential for more pain than anticipated. And so my brief Yizkor sermons are important for me. I write them for myself, as if to apply the balm in advance of falling; as if to buoy myself against the possibility of sinking; as if to clarify and mark an emotional trail in anticipation of potentially hazy feelings or uncharted thoughts.
During these past several weeks, four unique people died – one was a princess, one a nun, one played baseball, and one thought the impossible. Each in his or her own way bequeaths to us an insight and a message at this time of personal reflection. Let me see if I can share these thoughts simply.
Princess Diana, as we know, died at night in a car accident. She was mourned by nearly everyone on the planet. Four out of every five TV sets in the world were tuned to her funeral – to the ceremony and to the song and to the words spoken. Her death was all the more tragic because she was so young and vital, still fresh with the dew of dreams and the iron determination to make a difference. An enigma, she was at once woman and child, adoring mother and alluring model. She could dress in regal gowns and appear in public with confident charm; she could kick back in the company of friends and confidants and giggle like a teen.
Before our eyes, the Spencer duckling grew into a Windsor swan – graceful, effective, modest despite her easy connections with and to the powerful and the beautiful. She moved through the world with ease, espousing causes that we knew were right and good – hugging AIDS patients and raising money for medical research, picking up a leprous child while speaking about caring for the underprivileged, and politicking world leaders to put an end to the use of land mines that kill and maim long after battles are ended. Few worthy causes went begging; she did not hesitate to use her notoriety and influence to raise money or conscience. A mega-millionaire, working folks saw her as a divorcee and a single parent who managed to get along just fine; a celebrity by any standard, millions saw her as a champion of the underdog, an ombudsman for worthy causes. Diana was a member of the world as few ever could be and as most might only dream they were.
So what is it about her that brings our mourning into perspective? She reminds us of that special someone – a parent, an aunt or uncle, a spouse, a child, an unusual friend who made us feel like royalty. That special someone who elevated us and acknowledged us and made us feel so very ... significant. The death of that someone diminished us, reduced our sure sense of worth and of belonging.
And on a personal, inner level, we mourn the acts we have performed and the words we have spoken that were beneath us and therefore robbed us of a part of our dignity and took away from us feelings of being royal and noble and created in the image of the Sovereign of the Universe. We mourn those who entitled us and empowered us ... and we mourn those acts of ours which made us less than regal.
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (gonsa ba-jack-hu) was born in 1910, the youngest of three children, in Skopje, to an Albanian builder. At 18, as a novitiate, she entered the Loretto order, which ran mission schools in India. At age 28, she received a calling to serve the poorest of the poor. She left her order and moved to Calcutta’s slums to set up her first school. Within the next few years, she would found her own order – Missionaries of Charity, and a hospice for the dying, as well as orphanages. She would receive the Padma Shri award for distinguished service from the Indian government, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Medal of Freedom award from the United States – our highest civilian honor – and honorary US citizenship.
As Mother Teresa, she was this all too frail persona who persevered. She suffered from malarial fever, survived three heart attacks, pneumonia, broken ribs, clogged arteries, and who knows what other infections and infirmities picked up in the crowded streets of India’s ample slums. She lent dignity to her calling. A sister to the poor in every sense of the term; a role model par excellence. She was as close to selflessness as one might ever aspire to. Every monetary award received, and there were many, was plowed back into the work of her Order of Nuns, so that ever more hospices, schools, and orphanages could be built and run for the benefit of the poor and the dying, widows and orphans, the lepers and other outcasts of society. Her example of compassion for the sick, was so stunning as to leave us breathless.
And so we mourn for that vital spirit who lived among us and showed us how to care like few can care. She reminds us of those few or many who cared for us and taught us how to walk and to talk and to sing and to soar. We mourn those who connected us to our religious roots, and shared first stories of our people with us. We mourn the ones who taught us right from wrong, values and traditions, and led us to a sure sense that an infinitely patient God watches and waits for us to realize the power of our good side and to act upon it. We who are lucky enough, remember the one or two who traced a line between us and God and between us and the earth and told us in no uncertain terms that we belong to both this place and to that – to the physical world as well as to the spiritual world.
Oh, yes, and on a personal level, we mourn our moments of selfishness and the callous way in which we carefully, craftily avoid opportunities to help and to heal others, to sooth and to ease the burdens of others even when it calls for little if any sacrifice on our part. We mourn our loss, our lack of concern ... our indifference to suffering and pain in those near at hand. And we mourn the loss of social conscience for the downcast and the outcast – that in this society of such abundance they must make due with so little. A nun reminds us to say a personal “Ayl Malay” for that part of our own self that hides behind the façade of being too busy or too self-important or too preoccupied to grapple with the needs of or to respond to the cries of others.
“Whitey,” as his friends called him, died of a heart attack at the age of 70 in a New York hotel room where his team was staying. He had been the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies – announcing their games for over 35 years. He was a good announcer because he knew the game and he loved the team and the city. Not only was he a broadcaster, but he was an avid rooter and fan of the sport. And yet, it was not as an announcer that he was most widely known, for Richie Ashburn had made his mark with 12 superlative years roaming center field in the 1950s for the “Whiz Kids,” as the Phillies were then labeled.
Two years ago, Richie Ashburn was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. Some 200 buses carrying over 25,000 Philadelphia fans came all the way to Cooperstown, NY, to see the ceremony. Although belated by decades, he had most certainly earned the honor. He had won the batting title twice, gotten over 2500 hits, led the league in walks, hits, triples, stolen bases, and career on-base percentages. He was elected to the National League all-star team five times, holds the Phillies record for most consecutive games played, and had an arm that could more often than not nail runners at the plate. Had he played in the 1990s instead of the 1950s he would have merited a contract in the mega-millions.
In his honor, the Phillies retired his jersey, the number 1. In his memory, Cooperstown flew the flag at half-staff and a wreath was placed next to his plaque. Phillies players chose to wear black arm bands bearing his retired number, and team management draped Veteran’s Stadium in black for the last part of the season.
I admired Ashburn; he was a gutsy player. I hated the way he could beat my Cincinnati Reds with the bat or the glove in any given game. And so we mourn all who played the game of life to the nth degree. All who honed their skills and their craft and did the very best – giving life their all each and every day. It doesn’t matter whether they are white collar, or blue collar, or as the commercial once said, like Richie Ashburn, no collar at all. They played hard and fair and turned us all into fans and rooters.
Rest in peace, Richie Ashburn, you just slid safely into home. And you remind us of the friend or relative who constantly encouraged us to do our best regardless of talent or lack thereof. Always, there was someone who showed us what “play” could be; perhaps a young friend or a coach or a teacher or a parent or a sibling or even an employer; how we miss that relationship, now.
And within ourselves, we miss and mourn the playfulness of yesterday that we have lost somehow in the process of growing up and getting on. And we miss the closeness of team play, the oneness in striving to accomplish the seemingly impossible, the rising anticipation and the failing and the getting back up to try again. We mourn the loss of remembering how good it felt to be more than oneself while at the same time enabling others to grow beyond their innate skills. And we mourn the loss of personal worth associated with having won dishonestly, with having cheated in order to reach an objective so that the victory tasted saccharin and felt hollow. Would that we could play that part of life all over again. And we mourn taking too seriously what was at the onset only meant to be a game. And others got hurt, and we were the proximate cause of pain, and we were left feeling stupid in our own eyes, and our name and our fame were tarnished.
And finally, Viktor Frankl was called to his eternal rest this past month. He was 92 years of age, and that in and of itself was a miracle. For Dr. Frankl was a Holocaust survivor. He had every opportunity to escape the Shoah. A brilliant psychiatrist, he had received a visa granting him permission to teach in the United States. But he came home one day to find a slab of marble on the kitchen table. His father had rescued it from their synagogue in Vienna. The Hebrew letters read, Kabayd et Avicha v’et Imecha – Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. Quietly, he let the precious visa expire.
He spent the war years in Auschwitz, emerging from that dark kingdom without a living relative – all others had perished there. He remarried; he began to write. Twenty-five books flowed from his pen. In 1946, the year before The Diary of Anne Frank came out and three years before Orwell's 1984, he finished his magnum opus, Man's Search for Meaning: Experiences in the Concentration Camp. It is as deeply somber a book as any to come from the era. And yet, it is a strangely hopeful book even though it is inescapably about death.
In the years after the war, Frankl founded a school of psychotherapy, built an institute bearing his name in the Vienna of his youth, lectured around the world, and lived to see Man's Search for Meaning reprinted in 23 languages selling at least nine million copies. He was a close friend of Sigmund Freud who he deemed a genius, but with whom he disagreed. Sigmund probed the mind and found the id and the ego, Viktor searched for and likely found the soul.
“Everything can be taken away from man,” he reflected, “but one thing – to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances – to choose one's own way." The sane are those who accept this charge and do not expect happiness by right. That idea Frankl calls “Logotherapy,” which views suffering not as an obstacle to happiness but often the necessary means to it – less a pathology than a path. Logotherapy amounts in nearly all situations to the advice, "Get to work." Other psychologies begin by asking, "What do I want from life? Why am I unhappy?" Logotherapy asks, "What does life at this moment demand of me?" Happiness is not prescriptive; it can’t be planned for. "Happiness just happens." It is found when we are engaged in transcending [our self], [when we become] capable of acting in love for others. Life should find us out there in the world doing good things for their own sake."
Frankl spent 25 years in the United States, lecturing, appearing on TV, holding professor emeritus status at Berkeley, and occasionally saying controversial things, such as his suggestion in the seventies that America should erect on its West Coast a "Statue of Responsibility."
Viktor felt the pain inflicted by human beings on one another; he experienced the outcome of human depravity and evil; he suffered every form of physical hardship and emotional degradation ... and in the process discovered a new form of psychotherapy. Out of the pathology of evil and the moral abyss of Existentialism, Frankl taught that life has meaning if we give of ourselves to good works, and to love without conditions.
And so we mourn the loss of all who made life meaningful for us – those who made life worthwhile and safe and secure, who protected us from the storms as best as possible and were there to dry us off when we failed to reach shelter in time. We mourn for those who loved us despite our failings and who sought our welfare even when we were less than deserving.
And while we’re at it, we mourn our senseless acts that deprived a relationship of meaning or of trust. And we mourn the self-pity that we take into our hearts when our dreams are delayed or our joys frustrated. And we mourn for the self-pity we elect for ourselves when our goals are not realized or our plans are thwarted – when we cast about looking for someone or something else to blame instead of moving on to the next possibility and the next and even the one after that.
A princess, a nun, an all-star, a survivor – we are in and of each of them, for life itself is a constant search for nobility, and for service, and for play, and for meaning. In remembering them, may we be reminded of our loved ones who shared their best qualities with us. And in remembering our loved ones, may we also work through the failings of our own spirit that block us from moving on along life’s path with courage and dignity, joyfully, positively, meaningfully, lovingly toward that sure sense of personal resolution and of inner peace. Kayn y’he ratzon
All 100 sermons in Forty Years of Wondering are available in softcover and digital versions. Click here.
https://www.amazon.com/Forty-Years-Wondering-Sermons-Raymond/dp/1735889636/
It would be wise for each of us to read Rabbi’s 1997 Yizkor sermon before we enter these High Holy Days.