"Death is not putting out the light...
It is extinguishing the candle because
the dawn has come!"
~Rabindranath Tagore
PROCESSIONAL SONG: "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
First reading: Ecclesiastes 3
There is an appointed time for everything,
and a time for every affair under the heavens.
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to tear down, and a time to build.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them;
a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away.
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to be silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.
God has made everything appropriate to its time. I recognized that there is nothing better than to be glad and to do well during life. I recognized that whatever God does will endure forever; there is no adding to it or taking from it. Thus has God done that he may be revered. What now is has already been; what is to be, already is; and God restores what would otherwise be displaced.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians, 13
EXCELLENCE OF THE GIFT OF LOVE.
Now I will show you the way which surpasses all the others. If I speak with human tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. If I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give everything I have to feed the poor and hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. Love is never rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth. There is no limit to love's forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.
Love never fails. Prophecies will cease, tongues will be silent, knowledge will pass away. When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child I used to talk like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became a man I put childish ways aside. Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.
OFFERTORY SONG: "The Prayer of St. Francis"
COMMUNION MEDITATION:
from the conclusion of "On Walden Pond"
by Henry David Thoreau
It was often said of Mike that he "heard the beat of a different drummer..."
Those are the words of Henry David Thoreau, who also said "We are constantly invited to be what we are."; and who suggests we "let him step to the music which he hears...", and "only that day dawns to which we are awake."
The following words of Thoreau speak for Mike --
who has now awakened to a new dawn.
"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.
The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost: that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them...
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life.
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
"When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy."
~Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet
RECESSIONAL SONG: "On Eagle's Wings"
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