[The day, with all its pain ahead, is yours]

Dear Brandeis community,

 

A few weeks ago, some letters showed up in my office. The handwriting had the peculiar angularity of children just coming into language—each stroke of a letter carved into the page with the tongue-pressed-between-lips attention of the young. Like the notes from Sonia and Alma I keep on my desk, the letters offered a reminder of the many things we take for granted in our adult lives, that might look different through beginner’s eyes. But these were letters with a purpose, beyond just artifacts of childhood—first graders writing to me as part of their changemaker project, to suggest some changes they were hoping to see us make in the school. So, at Ms. Schoentag’s invitation, I made time to come meet with these students and hear more about their plans.

One of their ideas was to have a rainbow flag up in our school, so that, in their words “everyone knows they can love.” What a powerful sentiment! My mind went to one of the most core of Jewish ethics, b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God—the reminder to see the spark of the divine and the humanity in all of us. And so, we raised that flag recently, with the first graders, up on the flag poles with the flags of our many homelands (and, during the postseason, our many local teams). Yesterday, I sat under that flag in the sun talking to Dr. Tarle about an incident of a parent choosing to be less than kind and respectful to a member of our staff—and as we talked we watched students sit in small groups together, run and play together, and I felt profoundly grateful for the example and the leadership of our children, and the guidance of our teachers, to raise that rainbow in honor and support of our shared humanity.

Last week we lost another great poet, in Derek Walcott—a Nobel-prize winner, and easily the most lauded English language poet from the Caribbean. On Monday, the first day of spring, and my late mother’s birthday, I turned to a poem of his from a later book-length work called The Prodigal. The poem is untitled, but is known by its first line, “The day, with all its pain ahead, is yours.” The poem narrates—perhaps better than any I’ve encountered—the experience of the searing, overexposed world after loss: the “ceaseless creasing of the sea,” and the “wind-whitened grass.” After an opening catalog of such difficult beauty, the poem’s heart is in this sentence:

These are all yours, / and pain has made them brighter as absence does / after a death, as the light heals the grass.

Again—what a sentiment! For any of us who have lost those we love, the words will ring true. But the turn Walcott makes toward healing in that final clause is what I find particularly masterful—the reminder that this, in fact, is how we grow. I recommend the poem in its entirety—the colors and rhythms are striking—and I’ll read it to start the Yudcast that accompanies today’s word of the week, which you can find here.

Waking this morning, I encountered the grim news of the attack on London’s parliament which claimed the lives of several people. My heart aches for all involved—for the pain, the fear, the loved ones lost. And I am reminded of our shared work here at Brandeis—to ground our children in a purpose-driven, ethical education, so that they can go out as leaders into the days with all their pain ahead, and help repair our world.

 

Wishing you all weekends full of poems and purpose, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan