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I had a couple of requests for the quotations I used in the joint Sunday, April 10, Platform Meeting at the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture and Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, Remaking Our Relationship with the Dead (which also featured DuPree accompanied by Barry Kornhauser).
Opening Reading:
"Every life is meaningful in the linkage of life with life. We are each part of a community that acknowledges the interdependence of all people and all the generations that have gone before and those that will come after." - Algernon Black
Quotations for Reflection:
"For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance….."
-- Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Scriptures
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” ― Mitch Albom, from Tuesdays with Morrie
"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking." – Carl Sagan
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
– William Shakespeare
"The dead are not dead if we have loved them truly. In our own lives we give them immortality. Let us arise and take up the work they have left unfinished, and preserve the treasures they have won, and round out the circuit of their being to the fullness of an ampler orbit in our own." – Felix Adler
Closing Reading:
“What matters in the end is not beautiful phrases, but whether we have helped to lessen misery. Whether we put a glimmer of hope into a child’s eye, whether we helped free the prisoner mutilated by the arrogance of the state. Whether we helped stop the suffocation of souls victimized by the weight of economic exploitation or emotional terrorism ….
“This is what will matter in the end as we consider human solidarity as against the compromises with greed, cruelty, and destruction. We need to attain the passionate determination to make each human soul count, to be faithful to life. For in this is the meaning of the world and its solace.”