It could all go in a minute. It WILL all go in a minute.
This life is a brief stop, whether I die tomorrow or in fifty years.
I would love not to know this, to have the innocent certainty that,
when loved ones set out on a journey, they will return unharmed,
that I can go out to sea in my boat, play in the waves and not be swallowed up.
But I am more grateful now than I ever was in my innocence.
In the end it is all a gift, is it not? The brief entwinement of body and soul,
the breath of God that gives and sustains human life,
creates such a colorful, sparkling trail as it arcs through time.
It is so ephemeral, and yet it affects everything.
As we say when we open our eyes every morning:
“modeh ani l’fanekha – I give thanks to you, God of life which is eternal, for returning my soul
to me this morning.
Great is your faithfulness.”
—Rabbi Margaret Holub, Lifecycles, Volume 1: Jewish Women on Life Passages and Personal Milestones (Jewish Lights), edited by Rabbi Debra Orenstein
