Sabbath Messages | Sabbath Message: January 24, 2004

Good Sabbath

January 24, 2004

The toughest thing about having recurring bronchial adventures is that I cannot take my morning walks. I have to turn it over to my imagination, in league with my memory. It's like taking a walk through a garden of beautiful but artificial flowers; they look great but you can't bend down to sniff them.

Almost everyone I know has gone through this mysterious revolving tiff with colds and related stuff. If it were anything else we'd suspect terrorists, but Mother Nature has always used mysterious and cunning techniques and none of us can be foolish enough to accuse her of anything more than "looks like rain". (Here I could use some humor, like Woody Allen quipped:"I'm not afraid to die; I just don't want to be around when it happens.") or Montaigne's "man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm (or cure a cold), yet he will be making gods by the dozens."

O Lord, thank You for humor,
For making the comical turtle peak from his shell
In addition to making Eve,
For making a caterpillar turn into a gorgeous butterfly,
In addition to making Adam,
But couldn't You spare the time
To allow Adams to understand the Eves?

Francesco Caracciolo (whoever that is) hit the nail on the head with his observation:"in England there are sixty different religions and only one sauce."(The English took so many centuries to learn how to make good beef, so there was a huge demand for something to cover the mess with.)

As we slowly (but swiftly) trawl towards Valentine's Day (and Fran and my birthdays), my attention begins to turn towards how can so much misunderstanding, between Adam and Eve, turn into a permanent marriage that lasts for more than 50 years? I believe that love is a curative, God's miracle that so many ignore or discard, while waiting for a miracle that will make them wealthy or filthy rich (there is a difference).

Yet true success must include all that can breed happiness and joy, and money may be the least of those factors--or at least necessary, but highly overrated.

However even love needs explanation as poets and cynics have been trying for millennia: "To love oneself is a life-long romance."(Oscar Wilde); "When a cat and mouse agree, the grocer is ruined." (Persian proverb).
Oops, I have to save something for Valentine's Day.

I was informed by letter that I had lost a good friend, Jack Bevash, who passed away from leukemia, Dec.22. Jack and I worked together for several years. He was a gifted architect planner, who never knew how to frown. I remembered this story: Jack told his boss, a famous architect, that he was going to take time off to get married. His boss told him to leave where he could be reached because the decision on who would be doing the planning for the new campus of another University of California (UCI) would be due and could come in while he was on his honeymoon.

However Jack refused to tell any one where the honey moon would be taking place and disappeared to begin married life. As the story was told to me, Jack and his beloved were sitting at an outdoor cafe in Europe when a stranger approached him, asking him if he were Mr. Bevash? Jack was thunderstruck, replying that indeed he was, and asked "why and who are you?" The man answered that he was from Pinkerton, hired by his boss to track him down and that he had, and that Jack was to return to lead the staff on planning the new campus. I always loved that story and Jack is now with the Great Pinkerton helping plan the newest portion of Heaven.

So God, as I grow old, I lose more friends
But that is life, isn't it?
But we never really lose any one we love
For a flower may prove artificial.
But true friendship is the rich aroma of real life.

"Societies are renewed by people who believe in something, care about something, stand for something." (John W.Gardner)

In these days of fierce politics, which I believe to be the primary danger to this republic, where words are redefined by zealots who care to win at any cost, including liberty and fellowship, we are enriched by the souls who fill our minds with thinking, who cheer us on through our own shortcomings, and the parents who plant most of what is good within us. They may be gone, but so close to us when their teachings are remembered and needed. Perhaps imperfect like all mortals, they still are the fuel which propels us towards love and kindness.

Have a beautiful Sabbath, with someone who enriches your mind or soul,

(My thoughts of love go to Linda for her beautiful letter and to Tim wondering how his fight with cancer goes?)

sandy