Michael Gurian’s father, Jack Gurian (1929 – 2021), a Veteran of the Korean War, passed away in July from Covid pneumonia.   This Veteran’s day we are honoring him with the publication of  Michael’s “A Final Mercy.”

We hope this lyrical oratory, which Temple Beth Shalom in Spokane uses for its Yizkor service (the Jewish service honoring those who have sacrificed and passed on) will also help honor all our veterans, living and dead.

If you would like to hear Michael speak on men’s issues, check out the International Men’s Day Celebration on November 19, 2021.  Michael and others will speak at this event hosted by Jed Diamond.  All the speakers will interact with participants at this online event.  Learn more about it and sign up here:  https://diamondprograms.podia.com/mens-day-forum.

A Final Mercy

How beautiful one life is!  A soul nourishes this world, and when its radiant body cannot live any longer, tears flow from us for the waters of life must flow.  We grieve as the soul leaves a body to flow beyond the world of intentions, beyond attractiveness, beyond fields and battles, beyond machines—back into the waters of the unknown.   Our grief guides each dead soul to settle in a pool below a waterfall where children play and feel holy but know not why for they don’t yet see all the souls glistening around them, in the waters of eternity.

Can the dead make their journey safely back into the waters of life without our prayers?  They cannot.  If not for our prayers, dead souls would dry, wither and die undirected in their journey, never finding the waterfall, the returning-place, the gate of eternity.  If not for our prayers, the dead would hover unseeing above the water, unknown to themselves, unremembered, sorrowers unable to immerse themselves in the waters of life.

Can you feel this truth in your tears?  Can you feel it in the stark, unbending will of your prayers for the dead?  Our prayers of grief light up the pattern of the universe, they are like stars the dead see in the night sky.  Listening to our sad, uplifting songs, the dead hear the holy call to map the firmament again.  Each dead soul regains direction, feels awe at the life cycle, forgets regret, makes peace with sudden voicelessness, trusts our guidance, kisses the children gently, and combines with the ocean of life.

How do we know?  Because one day a child grows up to say, “I want to be such-and-such, just like grandma,” “I want to do such-and-such just like grandpa,” “I miss my sister, who died so young—I  will live my life in her image,” “I will not let my brother die for nothing.”

It is the nature of God’s great world that when we sing the dead to their passing, they enter the minds of the children, showing them ways to holiness, filling them so full of life’s call to ascent and descent that our young gain the courage to walk up out of the pool below the waterfall and commit their whole growing selves, their whole beings, to a journey of courageous life.

Do you see?  Because we want our next generation to live with purpose; because we want them to dream of accomplishments as intimate as love and vast as the sky, we bow now and pray.  For God’s great universe is not set up to let any one part of itself be disconnected from any other part but, instead, for every part to immerse into every other part, and those of us with light in our heads to sing songs of direction to the dead so that in a person’s death shall be that one life’s final mercy.