Dancing Our Sorrow Away

When I was in College, the Jackson Browne album “Late for the Sky” was in heavy rotation on my apartment turntable. The album’s introspective songs had a certain appeal to a young man growing up and just starting to make his way in the world because they asked big questions about the purpose of life and how to think about all the tricky emotions that come with adulthood.

His song “For a Dancer” acknowledges one of the sad truths about life: that one day everyone and everything we love will be gone. Knowing this, Jackson sings that we owe it to those we love to make a joyful sound with our lives while we are here – and to do our best to spread seeds that will blossom long after we are gone.

Listen on Youtube to: Jackson Browne: “For a Dancer”

The final verse of the song reminds us that we all know people who have had a positive impact on our life (a teacher, coach, parent, friend) and who helped us to become who we are. Those people did great things for us, usually without knowing it. We are likewise called, Jackson sings, to have a positive impact on the lives we touch – even though we may never live to see the fruit of our labors.

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
That you’ll never know

Jackson Browne “For a Dancer“

The song was written as a moving meditation on the death of Browne’s friend; who died in a fire at a young age. Browne explained that his friend was an interesting guy; a great dancer; a great tailor who would make his friend’s clothes; an ice skater who skated for the Ice Follies. “He was a Renaissance man and when I wrote him the song – I was trying to express the idea that your life is a dance”.

I like that image of our life as a dance and that we never know when it will be our last time on the stage. When I think of dancing, I think of being uninhibited, of letting my body react to the beat of the music, and of sharing a joyful personal moment with my dance partner.

When you are busy dancing, you are not worrying about your troubles, or the problems that that you will face tomorrow. Dancing is one of life’s rare human rituals; a moment of pure expression when you are able to forget about your ultimate fate and just focus on making a joyful noise.

A recent Youtube video created by the School of Life Company echoed a similar philosophy about the benefit of living life in the moment. The video was a commentary on the cultural expression “…rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic“, that is often used by people when they want to convey the futility or meaninglessness of a task.

Those familiar with the fate of the Titanic know that the hull was damaged and that the ship was destined to sink; so for the passengers on that ship to concern themselves with the position of the deck chairs is a failure on their part to recognize the true hopelessness of their situation.

Our life situation can become a little like passengers on a doomed liner. Our larger hopes in life have not come to fruition. We have come to see that our career won’t ever flourish; our relationships will always be less than ideal; we’ve passed our peak in terms of looks; our bodies begin to fall prey to ever more humiliating illnesses; society is becoming more dysfunctional than ever and political progress looks highly improbable.

It can start to feel like our ship is going down and that it would be silly trying to improve our condition, let alone find pleasure and distraction in our daily life. It would be to live in denial of the facts. Our instinct instead is to become pessimistic and gloomy about our ultimate end.

However, there is a crucial element which makes our predicament different from that of the passengers who lost their lives on the Titanic. Those passengers only had a few hours to contemplate their fate before the ship broke apart and sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Our ship is going down too, but much more slowly. It’s as if the captain has let it be known that our ship is sinking and we can’t be rescued… but it will likely be a decade or more before we meet our final fate.

So, though we can’t be saved, though the end will be grim, we still have options as how to use our remaining time. We are involved in a catastrophe, but there are better and worse ways of passing the time and filling our days. Under those different circumstances, expending thought and effort on ‘rearranging the deck chairs‘ is no longer ridiculous at all, it becomes a logical step; one that can be turned into a higher calling.

When the larger hopes for our lives become impossible, we can learn to grow inventive around lesser, but still real, options for the time that remains. Keeping cheerful and engaged, in spite of everything, can bring some light through the dark storm clouds that you know are ahead.

Consider, for example, that you are on a very gradually sinking luxury liner in the early 20th century, you might every evening strive to put on a dinner jacket, dance the Foxtrot to the music of a string quartet, sing a cheerful song or settle into the ship’s library to read a good book – even as the water begins to pool at your ankles.

Or you might try to engage in a friendly game of shuffleboard on the slightly tilting deck; or decide to drop-in on a wild party in Steerage; help to comfort some despairing fellow travelers; or just try to have a deep and comforting conversation with a new friend – even though you can hear the sound of dishes smashing somewhere in a galley down below.

Of course your life would – from the big picture perspective – still remain a thorough disaster; but you might find that you were at least starting to enjoy yourself.

This kind of attitude and inventiveness is precisely what is need to help us cope with our state. Can we invest the days we have left with meaning even though everything is, overall, entirely dark? Our culture teaches us to focus on our big hopes, on how we can aim for everything going right. We crave a loving marriage, deeply satisfying and richly rewarding work, a stellar reputation, an ideal body and positive social change. What remains when those things are not attainable – when love will always be tricky, politics compromised, or the crowd hostile?

What is our equivalent to seeking the best spot for a deckchair on a sinking Ocean Liner? If marriage is far less blissful than we’d imagined, perhaps we can turn to friendship; if society won’t accord us the dignity we deserve, perhaps we can find a group of fellow outcasts; if our careers have irretrievably faltered, perhaps we can turn to new interests or hobbies; if political progress turns out to be perennially blocked and the news is always sour, we might absorb ourselves in nature or history.

In doing this, we would be turning to what our society might dismiss as Plan-B’s (what you do when you can’t do the things you really want to do). But there’s nothing wrong with that! It just may turn out that the secondary, lesser, lighter, reasons for living are, in fact, more substantial and enjoyable than we imagined.

And after a while we might come to think that they are what we should have been focused on all along – only it has taken a seeming disaster to get us to realize how central they should always have been.

My mother has always been a model to me of this kind of inventive thinking and an example of someone who has always been able to discover new things to do when she can no longer do the things she loves doing.

Now in her 94th year, she has good reasons to be gloomy about her present condition. Her ship has been slowly sinking over the last two decades. She is the last surviving member of her large, close knit, family; she lost her beloved husband after 66 years of marriage; she reads about the passing of friends and acquaintances almost every day in the obituaries; she has lived through several strokes and cardiac operations to place stents in her arteries; she struggles with gradual loss of hearing, eyesight, teeth and memory as well as the humiliating indignities of incontinence and lack of mobility that come with aging.

Despite these life difficulties, it is not in my mother’s nature to be gloomy. She laments what she has lost, yet she finds a reason to be optimistic about her situation and to be happy with the things that she can do. Here are some of the ways my mother has learned to stay cheerful, smiling and engaged in her diminished old age:

• She has learned to navigate an iPad so she can keep track of the Facebook lives of her eight children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
• She has become a late-in life sports fan, following with anticipation the exploits of her favorite New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox teams.
• She volunteers for her Church prayer line ministry, spending time each day praying for those in her parish who are in most need.
• She visits her husband’s grave regularly to sit in contemplation and tend to the flowers and plants.
• She tries to include some form of bodily exercise every day. Short walks with her walker outside on nice days, elderly chair exercises, rubber band stretching exercises.
• She communicates with her smart speaker to listen to music or hear the news (even though she worries about Alexa eavesdropping on her conversations).
• She stays engaged by reading books and bingeing her favorite TV shows.
• She visits French Youtube language web sites so she can enjoy hearing and practicing the French language that she grew up speaking.
• She has become the project manager of her house, assigning her children work to do around the house that she has historically done in the past and overseeing it to make sure it is done to her standards.
• She takes short field trips with her children to places from her past and shares happy memories of the people and events that shaped her life.

I co-share caretaker duties with my siblings and I feel blessed to spend one or two days every week with my mother. It has been a privilege for me to watch how she accommodates the frailties of old age without sacrificing her spirit. She knows the end is near, but she is not afraid; and until the end comes she is determined to wake up with a reason for living – and make sure the deck chairs are properly arranged on the deck.

May we too always find a way to dance our sorrows away.

The Prayers of All Good People are Good

As the days lengthen and Spring approaches here in the Northeast, my thoughts customarily turn to matters of the spirit. It is my Catholic upbringing and roots that have instilled in me the impulse to observe the yearly ritual of Lent – a period of 40 days that begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with the celebration of Easter Sunday. It is done in remembrance of the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert prior to beginning his public life, as well as to give thanks and praise for the great sacrifice that followers believe Jesus made to reconcile us with God.

Lent is meant to be a time of repentance and self-examination which is marked by prayer, almsgiving, and fasting (from foods and festivities). It asks Christians to contemplate eternity, examine all areas of their life and to focus on activities that will repair injustices in our personal relationships with God, with ourselves, and with our neighbors.

Historically, Lent has been an important time in the religious calendar for Catholic and other Christian denominations, but the number of souls observing the practices of Lent has gradually been diminishing for years. It is difficult to convince people of the virtues of self-denial or making amends for past mistakes in today’s modern culture of instant gratification – one in which acknowledging faults is seen as weakness. Most Christian denominations prefer to focus on the glory of the Resurrection while downplaying the message of sorrow and grief that is represented by the Cross.

For many, observing Lent is uncomfortable because it smacks of religious duty and shame. They point out that Jesus himself never established the tradition of Lent as a commandment for his followers to observe and that he actually chastised the religious leaders of his day because “They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden”.

How individuals decide to worship is a matter between them and God, but for me I choose to observe the practices of Lent because they force me to take a hard look at my life and reflect on those things that are stopping me from achieving a greater awareness and intimacy with the Creator. Lent also helps me gain the spiritual discipline I need to overcome bad habits that are preventing me from being at greater peace with myself and my neighbors.

Besides the spiritual benefits, Lent also helps to nurture the important life skills of patience and self-sacrifice. Learning how to delay our impulses for immediate pleasure in favor of long-term goal achievement is a useful skill required for healthy human growth. Being able to control our impulses gives way to the formation of new brain pathways and new habit formation.

Psychological studies show that people who are able to delay their desires for possessions and outcomes are much better adjusted and happier in life. The ability to override the impulse to seek instant pleasure needs to be nurtured in children so that they learn at an early age that impulses will pass, but long term goals are unlikely to be achieved without the ability to sacrifice short-term desires.

The famous “Marshmallow experiment” conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in 1972 at Stanford University found that young children who were able to wait longer for their preferred rewards (an extra marshmallow) tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by school test scores, educational attainment, body mass index and other life measures.

I can’t help but think that the Lenten habits of sacrifice and self-denial that I have practiced over the years has had a hand in the successful achievement of “non-spiritual” goals throughout my life. The decisions I made to focus on studies rather than parties in College, to live a modest lifestyle, to exercise and watch what I eat, reaped benefits in my later life; when they enabled me to secure a good job, provide for my family, retire early and remain healthy enough in my old age to play with my active grandchildren.

While I advocate the virtues of the Catholic tradition of Lent, I want to make it clear that I believe no single religion can lay claim to the mystery of God. There are many paths to the Divine and we run the risk of becoming self-righteous and arrogant when we start to believe that our practices are the only way to God.

This is beautifully illustrated in a passage from the classic novel My Antonia by Willa Cather. The novel tells the story of an orphaned boy living in 19th century Nebraska, Jim Burden, and a newly arrived family of Bohemian immigrants, the Shimerda’s, who are struggling to make a living farming the harsh but fertile prairie.

The scene is Christmas, and Mr. Shimerda, the Bohemian neighbor, who is having a hard time keeping his family warm and fed (and understands little English) comes to visit Jim Burden and his grandparents at their home. Here’s what the narrator Jim tells the readers:

“As it grew dark, I asked whether I might light the Christmas tree […]. When the candle-ends sent up their conical yellow flames, all the colored figures from Austria stood out clear and full of meaning against the green boughs. Mr. Shimerda rose, crossed himself, and quietly knelt down before the tree, his head sunk forward. His long body formed a letter ‘S.’ I saw grandmother look apprehensively at grandfather. He was rather narrow in religious matters, and sometimes spoke out and hurt people’s feelings. There had been nothing strange about the tree before, but now, with someone kneeling before it—images, candles… Grandfather merely put his finger-tips to his brow and bowed his venerable head, thus Protestantizing the atmosphere[. . . .]

At nine o’clock Mr. Shimerda lighted one of our lanterns and put on his overcoat and fur collar. He stood in the little entry hall, the lantern and his fur cap under his arm, shaking hands with us. When he took grandmother’s hand, he bent over it as he always did, and said slowly, ‘Good wo-man!’ He made the sign of the cross over me, put on his cap and went off in the dark. As we turned back to the sitting-room, grandfather looked at me searchingly. ‘The prayers of all good people are good,’ he said quietly.”

Mr. Shimerda’s visit on Christmas Day disrupts the religious harmony the Burden family typically feels in their home. They feel an uncomfortable undercurrent of blasphemy occurring due to the gap in beliefs between the different religions. The Shimerdas came from a western region of the Czech Republic with a large Catholic population while the Burdens were observant Protestants. By his action of kneeling in front of the Burdens purely symbolic Christmas decoration, Mr. Shimerda transforms the tree into an explicitly religious icon.

While the Burdens may not identify, or even agree, with this act of religious display in their house, Mr. Burden decides to tolerate it quietly. “The prayers of all good people are good,” he remarks as Mr. Shimerda vanishes into the Christmas night. It is a noble sentiment and a triumph of religious tolerance on the frontier prairie.

It becomes a moment of divine insight in an era when Protestants and Catholics would not even enter each other’s churches or let their children intermarry. Even Catholics of different ethnicities often didn’t mix, as can be seen in towns even today that feature multiple large churches, only blocks from one another, that cater to different ethnicities (French, Polish, German, Lithuanian, etc.).

It is a good lesson for us to remember, even in this day and age, when so many people have left organized religions to pursue their own personal ideals of spirituality. It is important for us to move beyond our religious silos and be open to all the good people we encounter who may not share our religious heritage but still want to pray for us, hold us in the light, or send us good thoughts or healing energy. All these things can be comforting and helpful when they come from well-intentioned, sincere people with good hearts.

In this season of new life and growth may you bask in the prayers of all good people and no matter what your religious persuasion or beliefs are, may it always be said of you that your prayers are good!

‘Tis a Fearful Thing to Love

I recently facilitated a memorial service for my mother’s sister who lived to the goodly age of 100. My Aunt Jeannette Marie was a loving daughter, mother to 6 children, a grandmother, great grandmother and wife to two husbands.

The Last Photo of my Mother with her Sister

She was one of those people who would light up and make you feel good whenever you were in her presence. She always had a good word for everybody and even though she suffered tragedy in her life – her first dying in a train accident when he was just 24 – it was not in her nature to complain, choosing instead to focus on her many blessings.

With her sister’s passing, my mother, at 91 years old, became the last surviving person of that close 10 member family clan she grew up with. My mother was close to her sister and loved her dearly so it is natural that she is experiencing feelings of sadness, loss and grief. Especially because she no longer has anyone in her life who she can talk to about the “old days” and all the good and bad times they went through together as a family.

To begin the memorial service, I asked my wife to recite the poem ‘Tis a Fearful Thing’ that is believed to have been written by a Jewish Rabbi sometime in the 11th century. It is a moving poem about the intersection of grief and faith and love and it is often shared by Hospice teams with the families of those who are grieving a loved one who is nearing death.

‘Tis a Fearful Thing

‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.

One of the Five Remembrances that Buddhists contemplate during their meditation practices is this one:

I will be separated and parted from everyone and
everything that is dear to me

Anyone who lives long enough knows the pangs of sadness that come with loss. From the moment we are born and bond with our parents, grandparents and siblings; fall in love; marry; have children of our own—we are destined to endure the pain of losing someone we love—over and over again. My mother, at this point in her life, has had to say painful goodbyes to her husband, parents and 7 of her siblings, not to mention many close friends.

It’s enough to make you think that life is just an elaborate setup for suffering. But somehow we still manage to choose life. We choose to make friends, marry, bring new life into the world. We lose a spouse or partner and we decide to give our hearts to a new companion, opening ourselves up to more eventual sorrow. Are we in denial to think that death will not touch this new love too?

Why do conscious and highly intelligent beings make themselves vulnerable to the eventual pain and sorrow that comes with losing the one you love. Is love really something for fools? Is it not insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

What is it that makes us choose to invest in love and life? The poem teaches us that it all comes down to love – because it is ‘a holy thing to love.’ Love, life, death and love again is what it means to be human.

The poem’s closing words reflect a profound truth that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and the best character traits of the human species:

It is a human thing, love
a holy thing, to love what death has touched.

Love survives death. Death destroys the body but it does not touch love—or erase love. The body is impermanent but Love is eternal. We somehow know at the deepest level that life is about love. It may be that our divine purpose is to love, no matter how painful the loss of a loved one will be, and to send that love out into the heavens.

We choose to deeply love someone because we believe and trust that it will always keep us connected. Love becomes the unbreakable tether between those of us “here” and those who have passed on. It is knowing this that enables us to overcome our fear of the certainty of death and separation.

To love deeply is holy. Holy. Love keeps us connected to the Creator of all Beings, to all of those we have loved and all those to come.  Even though my mother is sad when she thinks about all the loved ones in her life who death has touched, she still feels a holy connection with them which helps season her grief with painful joy and a spiritual component of hope that leads her to believe she will be reunited with them someday in the afterlife.

Let us embrace that love which is not severed by death. Painful, fearful, a thing for fools? Perhaps. Perhaps for some, at first. But it is also a holy thing… A holy thing to love.

Making Pies

Image Courtesy of TableTalk Bakery

My wife and I had the good fortune to attend a Patty Griffin concert last year. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Patty’s work, she is a musician in the Folk/Americana tradition best known for her intimate, stripped-down songwriting style.

The New York Times praised Patty for “[writing] cameo-carved songs that create complete emotional portraits of specific people…(her) songs have independent lives that continue in your head when the music ends.”

While listening to a playlist of Patty’s work prior to the concert, I encountered one of those haunting songs. After the first listen, I found myself re-playing the song over and over – each successive playing leading to a new revelation in my mind.

The name of the song is “Making Pies“. You can hear Patty sing it in this Youtube clip and you can study the lyrics below.

“Making Pies” – Song Lyrics by Patty Griffin

The song narrative unfolds slowly, moving backwards in time. It grows more powerful as the listener begins to read between the lines and piece together an image of the life of a lonely woman and how she came to be that way.

The opening verse tells of a woman taking the short walk to her job at the TableTalk pie factory where she dons a plastic cap on her head and begins the task of making pies all day. It is evident that it is a job she has been performing for many years because when she began working there her hair was not gray.

When she shows a picture of her nephew’s birthday party to a co-worker we understand that she probably has no children of her own to celebrate. She takes on volunteer work at her parish because “it gets me out” and helps her to pass the time. While she sits at the church office typing copy, she occasionally glances at a picture of Jesus’ staring down at her from “way up there on the wall”.

Another photo shown to her co-worker finally reveals the heart-wrenching reason why the woman is alone. Her long ago “sweetheart” was a soldier who went off to war but never came back. Her love perished, along with the hope and dreams of a lifetime – destroyed by the bombs that “rained on the world“.

A rolling tide of thoughts and emotions rolled over me while listening to the song.

First came the realization that TableTalk Bakery is a real pie company headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts – located less than 30 miles from the town where I grew up. The company was founded by Greek immigrants in 1924 and it continues to operate today, producing over 250,000 pies daily.

TableTalk pies can often be found in my kitchen cupboard, which I like to pair with a cold glass of milk and enjoy as part of a sweet breakfast treat. I will never be able to open one of these pies again without thinking about this song.

I am unaware of the origins of this song or how Patty came up with her source material, but more than likely it is based on a true story. Patty grew up in New England and she probably knew someone or heard from friends or family about the lost love story of “the Greek and his Italian girl“. Knowing that the bakery was a real place and the song is most likely based on a true event made the song resonate with more meaning.

The song manages to be both depressing and uplifting, depending on the emotional state of the listener. In one sense it is heart-breaking because you can see the life of monotony that a once vibrant young woman, now older and gray, has been resigned.

She’s showing pictures of her nephew because she has no kids of her own and is forced to live vicariously through her sister. Clearly, she had aspirations of having a family with “the Greek“, but it was so long ago that when she describes the photo of the two of them taken before the war, she uses the word “Italian girl” to refer to herself rather than “me” – as if the girl in the picture were an entirely different person.

In another sense there is a kind of admiration for the woman’s resilience and determination to carry on in the face of the absurdity of life. There is an extraordinary tale behind her ordinary existence which makes her more than just a spinster to be pitied.

Instead of sharing her life with a partner, she satisfies herself with being happy for her sister and her nephew. She gets on with her life, filling it with things to do, things that take time away from the loneliness. She could choose to ‘cry or die‘ from the injustice and unfairness of life, but instead she chooses to make the best of her lot by making pies.

Suddenly, making pies becomes an act of seemingly limitless courage. Characters like the one in this song are often overlooked by society but Patty Griffin shows how the most inconspicuous individuals often have the most poignant tales to tell.

Everyone who suffers life-changing loss, when you become irreparably changed by the loss of what is most valuable in the world to you, must find a coping mechanism to get them through the day and distract them from the all-encompassing sorrow. The coping mechanism for this woman was to close her eyes and make pies all day.

It brought back a memory of a time in my own life when I was in the midst of dealing with my own life-changing loss. As my young wife, attended by her two heart-broken daughters, lay inside the house dying of breast cancer, I remember mindlessly spending hours outside shoveling the heavy coat of fresh snow that had fallen overnight on my driveway.

My neighbor came by and volunteered to clear the snow with his snowblower, but I refused his offer because at that moment my coping mechanism was to shovel snow. It was the only thing under my control and I didn’t want to stop.

Another thought that occurred to me as I listened to the song is that the war had not only taken away her sweetheart and hopes for the future, but it may also have shaken her faith in God and thrown into question her religious beliefs.

She goes to type for Father Mike because “he ain’t hard to like“, observing that Jesus is looking at her from “way up there on the wall“, somehow indicating that she feels distant from Jesus and that her faith is something she struggles with.

It is not uncommon for people of religious faith to feel abandoned and alienated from God when bad things happen to them and they feel like their prayers are not being answered.

It would be natural for the woman in the song to have these feelings, but the impression I get while listening is that though she feels distant, she has not renounced her faith. I imagine she looks up and feels God calling her still and maybe thinks of this Bible verse that has comforted many of life’s afflicted.

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

May all of you find the resilience and determination to carry on and “make pies” when life-altering tragedy visits you.

“love that well which thou must leave ere long”

I was browsing a local magazine called Parable and I happened upon an article on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, written by Gary Bouchard, the Chair of the English Department at Saint Anselm College.

Because of the sonnet’s lyrical and artful meditations on love, death, and time, Professor Bouchard felt it to be the closest thing to the perfect poem that he had ever encountered. He asked readers to consider their own accumulating years, and those of their loved ones, and to read the Sonnet imagining that they were speaking to their parent, spouse, child, grandchild, or a dear friend as they were about to leave you.

Sonnet 73

by William Shakespere

That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire 
Consum'd with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Shakespeare, and the generations of humanity that preceded us, considered recognition of our own mortality as the beginning of wisdom. Sonnet 73 captures in a profound way the relentless effects time has on the physical body and  how the recognition of our inevitable death serves to strengthen our love for those we love most in the world.

The sonnet speaks not of the actual moment of death, but rather of a time just after sunset – when the sun has vanished – but there is still some light in the sky, a time when the cooling air alerts us to the rapid onset of darkness and when we know how quickly sleep; or death’s second-self might be upon us. 400 years later, Shakespeare’s kindred spirit Bob Dylan would refer to this period in life as the time when “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there“.

The sonnet also highlights the paradox of our physical existence. The very wood that fuels a fire become the ashes that choke it off. Just so in illness and aging, we are done in by the very things that once nourished us. The hips and knees that helped us run become our daily aches. The heart that kept us living for so long, becomes a source of worry as it weakens.

Everybody encounters sorrow. If you live long enough you too will be witness to the twilight fading and leaving of those you love – and when our own time gets near, we must say goodbye to all those we hold dear. It is during these times that perceptive souls will “love more strong” the people which we “must leave ere long“.

I witnessed the slow decline and early death of my wife to illness over a three year period and I can honestly say that during that difficult time together our love for each other did grow more strong and each good day toward the end felt like a precious gift.

Likewise, towards the end of my 87 year old father’s life, every meeting with him felt like it could be the last; and each parting embrace was thick with untold meaning and love between a father and a son that cannot be expressed in words – we would look deeply into each other’s eyes and he would say “Goodbye, my boy”.

We ought to treat each meaningful parting in our life as a kind of prayer. Especially if it is a leave-taking accompanied by illness and evident aging. No one knows when we will see the ones we love again.

Acceptance of the fact that that our lives will fade or are fading – like the leaves on the trees, like the light at the end of the day, like diminished flames – should deepen our gratitude for the great gift that is our life.

“A Good Day is a Laugh and a Cry”

An ex-convict speaking at a prison ministry event I attended several years ago recalled that his grandmother always used to say to him that “a good day is a laugh and a cry”. I was struck by the wisdom in that observation and of how those two basic emotions become more important as we age and experience all the joys and sorrows that life has to offer.

Joy and sorrow are universally experienced and part of what makes us truly human – we all live our lives between a laugh and a tear. Both emotions are valuable because humor amplifies our sense of well-being while sorrow and grief help us to deal with the difficult times in our life.

Scientific studies have confirmed the benefits of both laughter and sorrow. Laughter has been shown to be powerful medicine because it helps lower blood pressure, reduce stress levels, fight off sickness, provide relief from chronic pain and even improve muscle tone.

Crying is also beneficial to our health in ways that are complementary to laughter (which is why most people usually feel better after a good cry). Crying can wash toxic chemicals out of our body and lift our moods by releasing psychological tension and exposing painful emotions that need to be addressed before we can move on.

Washington Irving got to the essence of why we shed tears when he wrote these words:

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

This phrase also highlights that laughter and crying are not mutually exclusive. It is is important for us to recognize the humor in our life even during our moments of sorrow. One of the things I cherish most about my relationship with my wife is that In the midst of our most sorrowful moments we can also share a laugh; and in the middle of our laughter we can recognize loss and grace which can raise tears.

So, my recommendation to you is to make every day a good day and find a reason to laugh and cry. Here is one of my favorite jokes to help you get your day started with a  laugh…

Did you hear about the dyslexic, agnostic insomniac? He stayed up all night wondering if there was a dog.

If you love, there will be sorrow…

Life is fragile and there will come a time for all of us when we experience seasons of loss. The REM song reminds us that “Everybody cries. Everybody hurts sometime“. The history of my painful losses include the death of my beloved Grandmother during a Christmas Eve house fire, the sudden fatal heart attack of my favorite Uncle and Godfather, the losing fight my wife and Mother of my two children fought against breast cancer and most recently the slow decline of my 87 year old father and best friend who suffers from COPD and has been placed in Hospice care.

During each of these losses I have suffered periods of profound sorrow. I loved them deeply and they were a major positive influence on helping me to become the person that I am today. I am who I am because of who they were, and because of the sacrifices they made on my behalf. They loved me first before I was able to fully love them. They supported me and cheered for my successes and taught me that losing can sometimes be more important than winning.

Love is not without cost. When we dare to love, we risk being hurt. Sorrow is the price we pay for choosing to love. I read somewhere once that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference – a conscious effort not to invest any energy in growing the relationships we have with others.  We can decide not to fully love the people in our lives and to remain indifferent – insulating ourselves from the possibilities of getting hurt by them. This is the sentiment in the Simon & Garfunkel song I am a Rock in which they sing:

“…if I never loved I never would have cried – I am a rock, I am an island – and a rock feels no pain and an island never cries”

It’s true, if we love there will be sorrow and pain and sacrifice; but what is the alternative? To not love? To avoid tenderness? To miss out on the joy that comes from sharing life’s small and big moments with people you care about? To never understand what it means to be fully human?  That would be an alternative that would be a much greater loss.

So be grateful for those you love and those who love you, celebrate the time you have with them because it will not last forever, lean on them when your burdens become hard to bear and take solace during your seasons of sorrow knowing that the dead live on in the hearts of those who have loved them.