JOURNEYS NEAR AND FAR
PART FIVE

A CLOSE LOOK AT THE FAR JOURNEY

A Sermon for Yizkor 5764
October 6, 2003






Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn
Temple Sinai
New Orleans, Louisiana



Since Rosh HaShanah and the arrival of our New Year ten days ago, you and I have been thinking about "Journeys Near and Far." We've said that "Near Journeys" are those thought provoking and terribly important twists and turns which predictably comprise every life. Near Journeys are those plateaus in life to which we arrive such as our wedding day, a graduation, our first house, the job offer, the first child born, the second divorce, grand parenthood, retirement, the closing-up of the old family home.

Then, of course, there are also those "Far Journeys" in which, over a lifetime, we gradually attain an understanding of ourselves in connection with our Jewish identity and the 4000 year old Jewish story. And in "Far Journeys" we see ourselves as sons and daughters of our parents, completely unable any longer to deny that so much of them and their personality is within us and is at our essence.

Of course, this poignant moment addresses the farthest journey-- the journey of our mortality. Every year on Yom Kippur, by taking death out of the closet of denial, we Jews dare to challenge the larger society's last taboo: recognizing our finitude.

Comedian, Woody Allen, summed it up when he insisted:

It's not that I mind death so much,
it's just that I don't want to be
there when it happens.

I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker which depicts a disillusioned man being escorted to the Gates of Heaven by an angel who's obviously trying to make this transition as easy as possible. But the new arrival can only despair:

Well, so much for antioxidants.

Such is our common story. We all live in disappearing worlds. Life is a going away partly from the moment we arrive. So take some time and let them know you've made the scene. Even more importantly, make sure you know you've been there. Get your head together on this issue of our transience. Easier said, I assure you, than accomplished.

I remember participating in a doctoral seminar some years back, with about 15 of my fellow clergy. The facilitator, a psychiatrist, asked us each to consider our own dying, to take "A Near Look At The Far Journey."

And we were told "go ahead now and write your own obituary notice."

Well with that, our little group began to fall apart. One clergyman broke down in tears. Another was angered by the assignment and declared that our teacher was "sick and warped." We none of us found it an easy exercise, but we finally realized that when you and I are so scared of dying, we are probably also people who are scared of living. So what we come to believe about death, will play a great factor in how we live our life.

In a recent biography I learned that Teddy Roosevelt use to insist:

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die. And none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy and duty of life.

Teddy Roosevelt would not have been put off by the Death Clock for a second. Have you read about it? No? Well all you need to do is go to the Website at www.Deathclock.com and enter your birthdate and gender, and there you'll have it: Your projected date of death. Yes, I'm serious. There it will be right before your eyes.

You may ask the clock to ascertain your date with destiny based on three possible reckonings: normal, optimistic or pessimistic.

According to the Death Clock, the owner, Raymond Camden of Lafayette, LA, claims, George W. Bush has til Thursday, April 16, 2020. Al Gore is due to leave this mortal coil on Monday, January 10, 2022. Of course, it's all an educated guess, but it takes a dose of realism to access that site, doesn't it? I wonder, how many, now that you know about www.Deathclock.com are going to check it out after the break the fast tonight? Few, very few I would predict.

When it comes to this subject of death, our Judaism is overwhelmingly realistic, but then, sometimes not so. Here's what I mean. Last night, in Synagogues all over the world, there were millions of Jewish men who on Kol Nidre Eve wore their white kittle shrouds-- literally the burial garb-- as they stood before God and sought atonement. It's a pretty "in-your-face" custom to underscore one's finitude, isn't it? Orthodox men are married in this kittle, they wear it every Kol Nidre, often too at the Passover Seder, and then, upon their death, they wear it for eternity.

How is it possible, the ancient rabbis asked, to fulfill the requirement, "Repent one day before your death?" I mean, how would a person know for sure? And tradition answers: "Well then, repent every day, because each one could be your last." Now, that's realism!

But, like most everyone else, we Jews have our share of superstitions pertaining to death. Tombstones, were instituted to keep the spirits of the dead in the cemetery ground rather than coming back home with the mourners after the funeral. Vestiges of that fear remain today, though we are unaware of it, when we visit a cemetery and place a small stone on the grave site of our dear ones.

Covering of mirrors and washing the hands upon leaving the cemetery before re-entering our homes-- these too are folk customs rooted in the fears that the dead will haunt us and that death is contagious.

If truth be told, we're all here today because, in a beautiful and helpful manner, I think our dead do haunt us! They continue to minister to us as a presence and they remain very much alive. And, as Noah ben Shea reminds us:

People who are gone are not. Their spirit offers us a hand to higher places, as we offer their spirit, through memory, a continued life in this world.

Since I heard Garrison Keilor read it last winter on The Writer's Almanac, this poignant verse of Philip Darcey has played and replayed in my mind. He titled it "Guest of Honor." Listen carefully to this man's conversation with someone he never met.

Everyday, I drive by the grave of my fiancee's father. She lost him when she was one. He's our intimate stranger, our guardian angel, floating a la chagall just above our heads.

I go to him for love-lessons. He touches my hand with that tenderness the dead have for the living.

When I touch her hand so, she knows where I've been. At the wedding, he'll give her away to me.

And the glass he'll raise to toast us will be a chalice brimful of sun, his words heard all the more clearly for their absence, as stone is cut away to form dates.

We know that memory is a powerful force. It allows us to both remember and to cherish what we once had and will never fully lose.

Last April we were gathered right here in this sanctuary, to pay tribute to our unforgettable friend, Renna Godchaux on her sudden passing. Her son, Stephen beautifully eulogized his mom remembering how just a few days before her death the two of them had attended the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. The Festival speakers were George Plimpton and Dick Cavett, lecturing on the works of Truman Capote. Renna wanted to sit in the front now, and so they did.

Stephen then recounted for us all:

(The speakers) were charming and witty and interesting and my mother really loved the afternoon. (She) had, of course, read everything Truman Capote had ever written....and at least five or six times, my mother would turn to me because she had something to add. And I kept shushing her because we were on the front row and I didn't want Dick Cavett or George Plimpton to yell at us.

And now, I wish I hadn't shushed her. I want to know what she was going to add.

I pondered Stephen Godchaux's words and wondered whether the question could be asked of most of us here today, "What do our dear ones have to say to us right now, when they are far beyond our shushing?"


I.

They Understand Our Grief

To begin with, no doubt they would assure us, that they understand how much we grieve and how we long for those wonderful times when we lived side by side.

I saw a stone engraved in a cemetery which affirmed:

If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to Heaven and bring you home again.

But that's not going to happen is it? I believe our dear ones would want us to remember that our memories of times together can bring us back to the highest living of our life. Memories of their personal standards of conduct can in fact inspire us to accept nothing less for the living of our lives.

When tennis star, Arthur Ashe died of AIDS, he was still a very young man. He wrote this magnificent and loving letter of farewell to his young daughter. It was a letter which will keep her company until her own dying day. Listen.

I may not be walking with you all the way, or even much of the way, as I walk with you now. Don't be angry with me if I am not there in person, alive and well, when you need me. I would like nothing more than to be with you always. Do not feel sorry for me if I am gone. When we were together, I loved you deeply and you gave me so much happiness I can never repay you. When you feel sick at heart and weary of life, or when you stumble and fall and don't know if you can get up again, think of me. I will be watching and smiling, cheering you on.

No shushing them now. Our dear ones understand our grief.

II.

Life Is A Journey

But second, I think that our dear ones would remind us that like they, we too are pilgrims on the way, and that the end of the journey will always remain a mystery. Some of us will delight to linger in the past, reluctant to let it go. Still others, glory in the captivating present, resenting any notion that we must move along.

The fact of our existence is that we are gypsies upon the earth and one day we shall each break camp for the last time in this world and book passage on the final adventure of death. As the children of God, such dear friends, is the nature of our journey.

Now I know that there are those who insist there is no journey, that death ends it all. But, I'm led to conclude otherwise. For me, death is always homecoming. Have you heard the story of the two strangers, a small boy and an old man, who were fishing not far from where we are right now, on the banks of the Mississippi? Though the fishing was poor, the conversation was good. And by the time the sun began to sink in the west, they had talked of many things together.

At dusk a large river boat in the distance moved slowly toward them. And when the boy saw the boat, he began to shout and wave his arms to attract the attention of those on board.

The old man watched for a while, and then he said,

Son, you're foolish if you think that boat is going to stop for you; it's on its way to some far more important place, and it can't stop for a little boy.

But then the boat began to slow down, and it moved toward the bank. It came near enough to the shore that a gangplank could be extended, and as the boy came aboard, he turned to his new friend on shore, and confirmed:

I'm not foolish mister. You see, my father is captain of this ship.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his new book, a masterpiece on the 23rd Psalm-- describes that depth of faith which many of us find strengthening.

Kushner readily admits:

God does not, God cannot promise us happy endings in a world where laws of nature and human cruelty take their daily toll. God's promise is not that we will be safe, but that we will never be alone.

Do you remember that assignment to write our own obituaries? I've written and re-written mine many times in my mind. I hope to have many years ahead in which to perfect it. But I wonder if you've ever read the epitaph of poet, Edwin Markham? He offers such helpful advice:

Let us not think of our departed dead as caught and cumbered in their graves of earth; but think of death as of another birth, as a new freedom for the wings outspread, a new adventure waiting on ahead....

So, dear ones, if you pass my grave sometime, pause long enough to breathe this little rhyme: 'Here now the dust of Edwin Markham lies but lo, he is not here; he is afar on life's great errands under mightier skies, and pressing on toward some far higher star.

Such is the nature of the Far Journey to which we've now taken a close look. No, there were no secrets divulged here this afternoon, though our dear ones do communicate when we don't shush them. But of course, it's still a mystery isn't it? The facts will take us only so far. Faith brings us the rest of the way:

Birth is a beginning and death a destination.
But life is a journey, lived stage by stage,
from birth to death, to life everlasting.

Amen.