A Parent’s Bequest After you have divided what will then be yours, Take to yourselves the one true heritage that came to me from my father, And that came to him from his father, and that you too will some day hand down. It is a heritage that I have no earned, a heritage that I have often failed, a heritage of which I have not always been worthy; But because of God’s endless goodness, it has nevertheless been entrusted to me. Take then this inheritance– My love of God, though in my blindness I have groped for Him and cried out when I could not grasp Him; My love of God’s children, though in fierce pride I saw my own failings in them;
My love of Israel, though I served it less than I pretended I could; My gratitude for life for which I am beholden to millions of men whom I have ill repaid; My hope in eternity which is no man’s due but a promise which life itself holds forth; My wonder before a sunset, my awe of the sea, the lakes, the mountains, the hills, the forests, the storms– And when you have come into this inheritance and when God and Israel and man and life call to you, And when you stand beside the lake and atop the hill I will be with you, together with all the ages of our fathers before us. And you will know that Eternity dwells within you and you will know that you have touched God. Rabbi David Polish,
To the God of Grief and Grace B Y S T A C E Y Z I S O O K R O B I N S O N z”l To the God of weariness and pain, who spoke and sang and breathed in spices and the dust that you are and to which you will return, you, who spoke and sang and breathed the name of God. To this glorious god, of grief and grace, who spoke, who broke, who breathed a song we are song and it is good.
Sing, and shout praise the world is fire! The dust swirls, we skitter and sway, touching flame, touching light. We are light and it is good God yes! It is good. To this great God of infinite rising, I sing your praise In light In love In grief and pain In glorious exaltation I rise and Your holy name is great.
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