Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: February 4, 2006
Good Sabbath
February 4, 2006
Long life means that you watch friends, relatives, the famous, the loved ones, as they reach eternity. This past week we lost Coretta Scott King, Moira Shearer and I learned of Becky Smith--Pam and George's beloved 27-year old daughter--passing. I'm sure I've written about Becky who was supposed to live only into her teen-years, maybe, afflicted with in incurable disease that never diminished her smile or personality, even when she could barely move; still she outlived her incredible Dad, who fought to find the cure for his daughter's plague, having lived a full life.
Moira Shearer, this lovely red-head ballerina, with whom so many of us had fallen in love through the movie, the Red Shoes (1948) (she couldn't have been 80, already!). Dying young preserves youth forever, for they never have a chance to grow old. (Martin Luther King was only 39 when he was assassinated.) I remember her exquisite dancing--with a doomed heart—in The Story of Three Loves, starring James Mason, as she danced to Rachmaninov's romantic music, and I fell in love again.
My wonderful Frances had studied ballet and I always saw my red-head in Moira. Fran's Mother, Ceil, had been a professional ballerina. Oh, did I tell you I've loved ballet and its music all my remembered life? Now you know why.
Ballet and its music removes violence from my mental marquis. I love Tango music but can't abide by the ridiculous lack of facial expression and jerky movements of the dance-even to Ravel's Bolero.
I've been slowly reading Bruce Feiler's, "Where God Was Born", describing his journey through the holy-lands where religions were born. I became completely fascinated by the Zoroastrians of Persia. He wrote:" I was beginning to think, that this religion might be the first light unto the nations, a religion so tiny that its contributions to Western religions have long since been forgotten as it was consumed by other traditions."
We seem to be effective at creating religions, usually forgetting their supposed devotion towards bringing us together as God wished, as they drove us apart, accompanied by the ritual slaughter due this "devotion". Nothing has so dramatically divided us from each other more than our religions. Why is that so? Present day crisis prove that once again, as we in the west fear the birthplace of that great religion, Iran, as it moves toward its own destiny, perhaps insuring the end of all others.
What is there in our nature that makes us such fertile ground for hate, envy, jealousy and failure to listen to God and why we were placed here?
"One day the Lord will root out all lips of smooth speech and the tongue which speaks proud things. They speak with a lip of smooth speech and with a double heart." (From the Psalms)
As I celebrate the departed with fond memories, I pray that humankind will remember that together we may discover the miracles for which God created us, but only together.
sandy
