Relationship
Rabbi Zoë Klein
This week a woman came to me
To tell me a story she thought I might like
That happened years ago,

Her grandson was seven years old
And had a great many fears,
Most of all he feared the unknown of death and dying,
His parents edited out scenes from movies
That would be sure to upset him
To a point
Where they could hardly console them,
And so most Disney,
Bambi and the Lion King
Among many more
Were carefully screened,

It was the year that the Hale Bop comet
Was swathing the sky with its tail of light,
And the grandmother was fascinated by the sky
And wanted to see it as well as she could,
After all, it wasn't even supposed to arrive
For another 200 years, people had thought,
It was a once in a lifetime event.

She picked up her grandson and they went to the Griffith
Observatory where there were thousands of people.
There her son heard that the comet was not going to return
In the earth's sky
For another 25,000 years.

He said told his grandmother,
"You won't be here when it comes again."
And she said very gently to him,
"You won't either.
But-the next time it comes,
I will save a cloud next to me in heaven,
And we will lounge together you and I
On our clouds
And we will watch it together, alright?"

When she dropped her grandson off, he ran into his house
And his parents said, did you see the comet?
And he said, did I see it! I saw it through the big telescope,
I saw it through little telescopes,
And I saw it with my eyes!
And-
I will see it again in 25,000 years,
With my grandmother
While we lounge on clouds in the sky.

In Tuesdays with Morrie, Morrie says,
"Death ends a life, not a relationship."

What does it mean to believe that,
That relationship survives death?
As the song of songs says,
Love is strong as death,
Death does not conquer relationship,

A congregant came to my office
Who had lost her father,
She came with her husband
And her two children
That I might be able to explain death to them
And where their grandfather had gone.
And this woman,
This beautiful mother
Had each of the children bring their favorite toy stuffed animal,
And we talked about how the toys that are the most loved,
Are the ones that are the most tattered and torn
And we spoke of aging in the same way,
That as our bodies change
It is a sign of how much we've been loved,
By family,
Friends,
By God.
The toys that looks brand new,
They have never been played with.

"What is real?" asked the velveteen rabbit one day, when he and the toy skin horse were lying side by side in the nursery. "Real isn't how you're made," said the toy skin horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When someone really loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but REALLY loves you, then you become real." "Does it hurt?" asked the rabbit. "Sometimes," said the skin horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the skin horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Once you are real, you can't become unreal again." - Margery Williams

We must learn this,
That we are made real by love
And we cannot be made unreal,
That relationship survives death
And not only death,
But all parting-.

The Golden Butterfly
by Zelda

When the golden butterfly wends its way
through a river of colors and scents
toward its flower mate, and clings
as though this flower were the star
of its secret self -
an inexplicable clamor of hope
rises in every heart.

And when that beautiful flutterer
abandons the weary petals
and vanishes in space,
the lonely moment wakens in the world,
a soul vanishes in infinity.

The relationship between a flower and a butterfly,
When they come together
An inexplicable clamor of hope,
When these tiny delicate things come together
When the butterfly alights,
And the flower tips a bit,
Something changes in the world,
And when they part,
There is that sigh
In the poem, Zelda writes
That a soul vanishes into infinity,
She compares the relationship
To a soul,
An infinite soul,

The infinity of a relationship
To see my children cry
When they were very little
When I would go to work in the morning,
My goodness
It was as if something tragic was happening,
Of course now, they are accustomed,

But then it was hard,
And still
There are traces,
As with any parting,
Ever,
Between parent and child,
Or butterfly and flower,

Yesterday when I took my four year old son home,
He brought out of his pocket
Two little plastic gems,
He had squirreled from school,
And he handed one to me,
Saying,
"whenever you are at work,
and you miss me,
talk into the gem,
and I will talk to this one when I miss you."

And this is something he thought of on his own,
to hang onto relationship
even when apart.

"The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltor may crumble, They're only made of clay....but, oh my dear, our love is here to stay."

When I told my family that I would be leaving Connecticut,
That we would be moving to California,
And that is where we would probably stay
The rest of our lives,
It felt like a tragedy,
But we underestimate relationship,

How it can transcend time zones,
Transcend distance,
How out of relationship
We can create something that will outlast the two of us-

A book,
A message,
A child-

The title of the book is
A woodcutter and his daughter-

Martin Buber wrote:
"When a person encounters another person in total immediacy, he or she may also experience a glimpse of God."

"All actual life is encounter."

"The purpose of relation is the relation itself-touching the You. For as soon as we touch a You, we are touched by a breath of eternal life."

When we reach out our hand to a beggar,
We are the butterfly to the flower
And the world is a better place

And when we are alone,
We are never alone
The four angels all around us
Michael, Rafael, Uriel, Gabriel,
And Shechina upon our heads

There is a poem that reads
Take a lump of clay,
Wet it, pat it,
Make a statue of you
And a statue of me
Then shatter them, clatter them,
Add some water,
And break them and mold them
Into statue of you and a statue of me.
Then, in mine, there are bits of you
And in you there are bits of me.
Nothing ever shall keep us apart.

All life is in relationship
And death ends a life not a relationship
It is love, learned the velveteen rabbit
That makes us real,
And it is connection,
According to Buber
That brings us into immediacy with God

And so touch hands,
Look into eyes,
And be born.