What Outlives Life? -- A Memorial Address for Yom Kippur 5765

“FIVE QUESTIONS IN SEARCH OF AN ANSWER”
PART FIVE –
“What Outlives Life?”
A Memorial Address for Yom Kippur 5765
September 25, 2004

Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn
Temple Sinai
New Orleans, Louisiana

    Her name is synonymous with the phrase: “death and dying.”

    The death last month of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross causes us to salute her remarkable research and her articulation of the five stages of dying. Hers was surely pioneering work upon which others have gone on toward even greater accomplishment.

    Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ family reports that Elisabeth accepted her approaching death just as she had tried to help so many others to do. I was interested to read that not long ago, in reviewing her illustrious career, the 78-year-old psychiatrist had confided:

The only incontrovertible fact of my work is the importance of life.

    “The importance of life,” that phrase adroitly returns us to our theme for these High Holy Days: “Five Questions in Search of an Answer.” I intended to speak about life’s brevity on Rosh HaShanah Eve, asking “Got Time?” And then we really addressed the same issue, but from a particularly Jewish mindset, when we wondered: “Why Be Jewish?” On Rosh HaShanah morning for those able to get here.

    Our next two questions, “How Can We Make a Difference?” and “What in the Name of God?” invited us to reverse the popular notion that the moral climate of our world is beyond our effecting. And finally, his for his memorial service, I wonder what would Elisabeth Kubler-Ross have offered in response to this last question: “What Outlives Life?”

    It is a worthy and important question as this Yom Kippur Day draws toward its close and we now gather to remember and reverently honor our dear dead. At such a moment what could be more appropriate than to ask: “What Outlives life?” And I have a one-word answer which will come as no surprise: Love— love alone outlives life.

I
Love is Vulnerable

    I have three brief observations to share with you on this simple and yet most complex of human emotions. First – love is vulnerable. Our presence here is proof of it. The poet tell us:

Never give your heart away, . . . he that hath wife and child hath given hostages to fortune. . .If love should count you worthy and should deign one day to reach your door pause, err you bid him welcome. He wakes desires you may never forget. He shows you stars you never saw before. And yet how sad if you should turn him away from the door.

    Oh, some of us may be tempted, given the hurts and pains of loss which invariably accompany giving our hearts away, to remain alone and unattached. Some refuse to invest in love because we know that it makes us vulnerable. Philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead used to insist that “the number one lesson in life is to remember that all good things perish.” Yes love is vulnerable. And there is nothing we can do about it, because our hurting comes from the honest depths of our being.

    I was reading the craziest article in the “New York Times,” February 11, 2004, titled “Funerals With a Custom Fit Lighten Up a Solemn Rite.” It described any number of popular new funeral features- releasing white doves at a certain point, cowboy theme funerals using a pick up truck instead of a hearse, the deceased’s ashes compressed into an artificial diamond to fit on a keep sake ring, CD ROMs produced displaying the deceased talent at swinging golf clubs, or singing karaoke, or whatever. Funeral chapels now have sets such as the special motorcycle set in the midst of which a specially styled casket is placed.

    But what got me was the quotation by a Roman Catholic Priest who was maintaining that funerals ought no longer be sad or even solemn. This priest said:

I try to leave grief out of the funeral.

Apparently, this is what he tells the relatives and friends of the dead:

How many of you think George here went to hell? No hands go up. So let’s have a celebration. We don’t want anyone grieving. If anyone’s going to grieve, we’d like them to leave right now.

Now I think that’s outrageous! Love is vulnerable, and the expression of pain and shock must invariably accompany the loss of a precious dear one. It’s not just a multimedia opportunity and a trip home, it’s saying farewell and laying to rest a precious dear one who has played a central role in our entire world.

Leslie Weatherhead once told of a group of archeologists who discovered an Egyptian tomb containing the sarcophagus that enclosed the mummified figure of a little child. They opened it and read the inscribed words of the infant’s mother,

Oh, my life, my love, my little one; would God I had died for thee!

No celebration there! That idiot Priest ought to be sent off to a truly competent psychiatrist to have his psyche rewired. He is completely out of touch with his humanity and at a loss as to what love entails. Love is vulnerable and vulnerability means pain and risk.

II
Love is Valuable

    Second, love is valuable. The bestowal of love confers value on those whom we love. An innocent child receives a little goldfish swimming in a bowl and days later that goldfish is floating on the surface of the water in the most peculiar fashion, the little child understands that the fish has died. And she cries her eyes out upon its discovery.

    Love is valuable. In its own way it confers value and worth upon another. A man meets a woman or vice versa, and stars shine in their eyes. What they see in one another is only truly apparent to them because they see one another through the lens of love.

    Others say, “well what in the world does she see in him?” And vice versa. But for them, love says:   “It’s worth it.” It’s worth the struggle, the defeat, and the gamble the pain, and ultimately the loss.

Love infuses life with value.   I don’t often do this, but I want to share a portion of a magnificent letter which dear Ginny Threefoot, whom we lost this year, shared with her beloved Sam and their daughters back in November 2002. She titled it: “Thoughts for the Hereafter” And I mean talk about love conferring value and pronouncing, “it’s worth it.”

    Said Ginny (so sweet, so courageous a person) to her dear ones:

Remember me with smiles and laughter because that is what you contributed to my life.
Thank you for allowing me to use you as an excuse, at my age, for joining you in such
youthful activities. (I blush to say) as playing in a public fountain and getting in a
burlap sack and going down on those super slides.
I dreamed of such childish antics, thank you, thanks to you I participated in many of them.
Thanks for my grandchildren who also kept me young at heart with their imagination,
innocence and awe at each new discovery. I want them to know how much they
contributed to my comfort and joy.

Love is valuable— it confers value on those whom we love. It concludes, “It’s worth it!” and infuses life with value.

Poet M.L. Hall captures it in his beloved poem:

If I should die and leave you here awhile,
Be not like others, sore undone, who keep
Long vigils by the silent dust, and weep.
For my sake - turn again to life and smile,
Nerving thy heart and trembling hand to do
Something to comfort other hearts than thine.
Complete those dear unfinished tasks of mine
And I, perchance, may therein comfort you.

III
Love is Vindicated

“What Outlasts Life?” Love! But remember— love is vulnerable. Love is valuable. And finally, “LOVE IS VINDICATED.”

Rabbi David Wolpe notes that:

There is both certainty and mystery in limitation. We know life will end but not when; we know that death defines life but we seek to minimize its power. . . .

    Hemingway put it like this: “All true stories end in death.”

    Edward Cohn said — faith in God brings with it faith in the wisdom of the order of things.

    When I say that “LOVE IS VINDICATED” I mean to say that there is a loving energy that is not of this world. I call that God.

    You know that after a visit to my mom at the Poydras Home, which is just nearby, I sat down in my car and jotted these thoughts under the title: “Joinings and Separations”

An infant is born joined to the breast and gradually we separate. We grow, go to school, separate from our parents slowly but join with our peers as beloved friends. We discover precious mentors, role models who become like parental figures. We graduate and fall in love – sometimes two or even three times. We leave our home, and initiate a new union. We parent a child and nurture them to be moral, sacred and respectful of their self-image and finally we decline with age and ultimately die. There are only two possible realities to console us now in which we may take comfort.

1.    At the end of the day we succeeded in making a healthful difference by our lives and our love. Perhaps something of our life’s work and example will even be remembered and transmitted by others with a smile down through the years after we’re gone.

2.    We long to be reunited with that Life Force which gave us all birth and in which, upon our return, we will live forever.

    Our love here on earth is not enough. We strain our vision toward the Eternal Gates but we see nothing clearly. Creatures of time, mortal and made of clay, we are gathered at last to the everlasting goodness and love.

    I’ve read a good bit, especially on this subject, but I must tell you that nowhere is it more beautifully and forcefully conveyed than in our old Union Prayer Book. For me, these words remain the very backbone and abiding trust of my personal faith.   You too may find strength and comfort in these few words of utmost confidence:

In life and in death we cannot go where Thou art not, and where Thou art, all is well.

Love is vulnerable. Love is valuable. Love is vindicated.

Amen.