Updated February 6, 2008

URL is http://www.parlorcity.com/secop/meditate.html

Here are meditations my friends have shared.

We Remember Them

In the rising of the sun and in its going down, we remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter, we remember them.

In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring, we remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer, we remember them.

In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn, we remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends, we remember them.

When we are weary and in need of strength, we remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart, we remember them.

When we have joys we yearn to share, we remember them.
So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us, as we remember them.

This is from Gates of Prayer, copyright 1975, Central Conference of American Rabbis and Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, London.

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The following mediation was offered by someone at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Hospice.

DYING

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

In answer to my search for an author to credit, a reader sent this: The poem about a ship being gone from sight is by Henry Van Dyke, and the title is "Gone From My Sight." We got a copy from Hospice that credits him for it, though their own website credits a Henry Scott Holland (!). If you search on the title you can find it in many places online.

 Some of these pages are missing. I am trying to find them.

Page by Sandra Weinhardt, email secop@parlorcity.com