Weekend of Glees and Sadnesses

How they balance ... Glee and Sadness. A friend invited us to a very crunchy prayer service .... mixture of guitars and drums, liturgy and Scripture. A small group of people, very different than Marsha and I in their take on the world ... connected to each other and to their meditations. I have sought to learn how to cherish the excitement of others .... I suppose that exists as a goodly portion of the core of my religious sense ... the lifelong process of learning to revel in the joys of another's harvest. Ah! And we were invited to lunch with our friend and his family, afterwards.

Indeed! I think this is a part of successful Playing in the Last Quarter ... of accepting the unfoldings ... generation after generation. Children, Grand-children.

I suppose another core part is the ability to share in the sadness. An ex-student of mine -- now, I suppose, a 55'ish year old man -- wrote about the death of his Mother, at 90.

Sad when we lose our people ....

 

My religious tradition says two different things in confronting death ....

 

Baruch Dayan Emes .... Blessed is the Truthful Judge (upon hearing that someone important to a friend has died)

 

and

 

HaMakom Y'nachem eschem b'sh'ar aveilei Yrushalalayim .... this one's harder to translate .... usually it's rendered as May God (literally The Place or, I suppose, The Cosmos) bring you comfort (tho, that word used for comfort has more the meaning of Bring You Around) among the rest of the Mourners of Jerusalem, etc. 

 

Much seemed to change in my view of the World as I had to say good-bye to my Mother, even tho she had been victim of Alzheimers for many years and under the spell of both inner and outer directed aphasias. I needed to be "Brought Around" to a new place .... Later, I chose the words "NACHAMU" for my license plate ... it's the imperative form of that same verb "Y'Nachem ... Nachamu" that calls out from Isaiah 41 and begins Handl's Messiah .... Nachamu, Nachamu Ami ... Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye, My People .... says your God. Or as I would have it "Come Around! Come Around!"

 

May it be that through the door of deep sadness, that we do, indeed, all come around to integrate that cleansing sadness and its cousin, the welcome state of song-infused joys.