Monthly Archives: October 2012

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

In Memorium: the Rev.Dr. Jack Mendelsohn (1918-2012)

BEANNACHT (from Anam Cara by John O’Donohue)

For Josie

On the day when

The weight deadens

On your shoulders

And you stumble,

May the clay dance

To balance you.

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the gray window

and the ghost of loss

gets in to you,

may a flock of colors,

indigo, red, green

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

in the curach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

A Year to Remember: mental and physical health

“Sustaining an exercise routine for a fulll year can strengthen your body and your mind, according to new research. The study has implications for reducing the risk of dementia.

A team of researchers from several U.S. universities have found that moderate physical exercise can increase the size of the brain’s hippocampus in older adults . (The hippocampus is involved in all facets of memory formation.) The scientists recruited 120 sedentary adults with no signs of dementia and placed them in two groups of equal size. One group began walking for 40 minutes a day, three times a week. The second group limited its exercise to a stretching and ongoing routine. The walking group showed improved memory function, which was associated with an increase in the size of the hippocampus, a region of the brain that generally shrinks as we age.

Measurement of the left and right hippocampus showed increases of about 2 percent in the walking group. The stretching group saw a small reduction in the size of the hippocampus.”

– source: “Exercise Training Increases Size of Hippocampus and Improves Memory” by K. I Erickson, et. al. PNAS. 1/31/11

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My mother died of Multi-infract Dementia at age 83 having been slowly incapacitated for the previous 10 years. She neither exercised at all nor consistently took her high blood pressure medicine. My father died at 89 1/2 years old from complications of Diabetes.

Litany of Atonement

A LITANY OF ATONEMENT

For Yom Kippur

Responsive Reading #637 (Hymnal: Singing the Living Tradition)

— by Rev. Robert Eller-Isaacs (UU minister, currently servicing inSt. Paul,MN)

For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference.