I must release my grip on (the) well-known bar

Transcription

1 Holding on and Letting Go Author and trapeze artist Danaan Parry writes in Warriors of the Heart, her book about people facing great change, Every once in a while as I'm merrily (or even not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It's empty and I know... that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that, for me to grow, I must release my grip on (the) well-known bar and move to the new one. What an image. Life as a trapeze artist.

2 Sometimes when we ve lost someone or something dear to us, it feels like we are the trapeze artist, high above, hurtling through space, grasping for something to hold onto. This can be a terrifying feeling. In the dance of letting go and holding on, sometimes we don t catch the new bar the first time, and that can leave us still clinging to the old bar. But we try again. And sometimes many times. This can be a terrifying process, and lonely, and exposing, and not at all with the feeling of being grounded. But still we try. It is a practice.

3 Rabbi Harold Schulweis uses the image of the trapeze in this poem about loss: Hold on and let go On the surface of things, contradictory counsel. But one does not negate the other. The two are complementary, two sides of one coin. Hold on for death is not the final word The grave is not oblivion. Hold on Kaddish, yahrtzeit, yizkor. No gesture, no kindness, no smile evaporates Every embrace Has an afterlife in our minds, our hearts, our hands.

4 Hold on and let go. Sever the fringes of the tallit and The knots that bind us to the past. Free the enslaving memory that sells the future to the past Free the fetters of memory that turn us passive, Listless, resigned. Release us for new life. Lower the casket, the closure meant to open again the world of new possibilities. Return the dust to the earth not to bury hope but to resurrect the will to live.

5 We who remember are artists, aerialists On a swinging trapeze letting go one ring to catch another. Hold on and let go a subtle duality that endows our life with meaning Neither denying the past nor foreclosing the future. We are part of the flow of life the divine process, which gives and takes creates and retains. We, too, must give and take, seize hold and release. Adonai gives and Adonai takes

6 Blessed be the Name of God s Sovereign Glory. I have been with many of you in your times of loss, co-officiating at your loved ones funerals, gathering with community for shivas, and sitting together through the pain of difficult and uncertain times. We have shared raw moments of grief standing in a circle in the Board Room, your hands tenderly tearing the k riah ribbon, sometimes barely able to do so, sometimes doing so with strength often with both reluctance and duty. When I ve chanted Adonai Roi, The Lord is my Shepherd, it has felt like we were in the valley of the shadow of death together. Being with you I have borne witness to the struggle of holding on and letting go, and this has taught me a lot about how to deal with my own losses.

7 Jewish ritual can offer a safety net when we feel as if we are in the abyss, and Judaism gives us a framework for mourning and remembering, including this very Yizkor service. The structure of Jewish mourning gives us a way both to remember and to imagine as we honor our loved ones and look ahead to what life will be without them. Both are necessary, two sides of one coin. Often our rabbis eulogies give us a way to look back, to be in the present, and then to look ahead. In these remembrances are so many life lessons, so many examples of how to honor and really live life, and so many reminders of the message, Our days are scrolls; write on them what you want remembered.

8 Even though we are here to remember a person, or perhaps more than one person, and maybe someone who has been gone a long time, the High Holy Days and the Yizkor liturgy lend themselves to revisiting or facing all kinds of loss loss of life, loss of a marriage, a pregnancy, a dream. And sometimes our loss is more ambiguous, leaving us struggling to even know what to grasp for as we try to make sense of our feelings. And yet we keep grasping, reaching out for that bar that we hope will swing our way soon.

9 Poet Mary Oliver writes: Poet Mary Oliver writes: to live in this world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go May we have the courage to let go when we need to let go and to hold on when we need to hold on,

10 until we can grasp next bar coming our way.