蜜芽传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Rabbi Charley Baginsky

Good morning!

When I was a child, my father would read me a poem by A. A. Milne about "James James Morrison Morrison", who warns his mother never to go to the end of the town without him. Of course, one day she does - and is never seen again.

In my family, we each saw something different in that poem. My father, a teacher, saw the way children sometimes care for their parents. My brother, a child protection social worker, saw a child鈥檚 fear that a parent might leave and not come back. For me, it has always been about loss, the simple truth that people leave us, and there is nothing we can do to change it.

We all know what it is to have an empty chair in our lives, someone who used to be there and now is not. The space they leave can feel impossibly large. And yet, in another sense, they are still with us. I believe those we have loved live on in us: in our words, our values, the way we greet the day, the way we love others. Their presence is felt, even in their absence.

There is a line in the Bible when Jonathan says to David, knowing they may never see each other again: 鈥淵our chair will be empty. You will be missed.鈥�

May we carry the memory of those we love with tenderness. May we live in a way that honours what they gave us. And may we choose life, as they would have wanted for us.

Amen.