A Eulogy for Today

This day makes me sad

Friends mourn children

who never came to be while

others

turn their children into monsters

such that we celebrate their death sentences.

How can I mourn

for murderers

while Jewish potential died on train tracks

this week?

The world is filled with those who hate

(and those who love, surely)

while the innocent are

buried

under rubble

so much human waste

and I know which side I’m on

but I fear

I fear

that when I tell my teenage sister

“sometimes love just isn’t

enough”

I’m not merely speaking about her latest boyfriend drama

it’s the human drama I fear

Hate is in the lead today

I don’t believe in vengeance and yet

I sometimes wonder what it would take to get the world

(humanity)

the clean slate we so desperately

need

 

If I could immerse us all in a mikvah…

dress us all in pure priestly white and make us

observe

the Yom Kippur fast…

 

Ah, but I can’t even fill my own pews.

 

We all fall. We all fail.

I know with morning there will be joy

(the Psalmist tells me so)

and hope

and new children

But today makes me sad

 

I know You’re out there

but I feel You not.

Come back to us.

Help me make it through this day

through the darkness and back into the light

Help me have the strength to lead others even when I know not where we’re going

Help me to find my way back to hope and faith in humanity

(faith in You is so much easier than faith in Us).

 

Help me to remember that today, too, has been given a death sentence

So that tomorrow might be better.


-EKG’15