L'Chaim

Lately, I’ve been having trouble using their word “God” to refer to the things and beings I used to refer to when I used that word. Being of Jewish persuasion (I’m talking son-of-a-Rabbi-type persuasion) (and that was a lot of persuasion) it hasn’t been all that easy for me. A word, especially the God one, has a lot of power.

But as I grew older and older, I felt further and further from that very word. It just stopped feeling right. It lost its power to describe what I really felt, the big connection, so to speak, the eternal enchilada in its entirety. Like too weak. Like wrong. And now I can’t even say “God Bless You” to someone without wincing.

So I’ve been looking for another word. A substitution that would feel as embracing, as, well, holy, but not, you know, divine.

So I searched through my ever-dimming recall of Jewish lore, and I came across a common expression that practically every Jew (and many of the non-) uses. One that doesn’t really have anything godly about it, but seemed to me, probably given my current end-of-life circumstances, something I could believe in, something smacking of spirituality, tasting of totality, and yet sufficiently innocuous to include whatever persuasion you're persuaded by.

It’s a toast, is what it is. Not rye or wry, though both are quite tasty, especially hot with cream cheese maybe. It’s the word l'Chaim, as celebrated graphically and auditorially below:

Yup. With all the joy that song implies, and all the meanings and occasions that toast celebrates: to life. All of it. The beginning of it. The living of it. Even the end of it.

Try embracing that, bundling it into a toast, a blessing, a wisdom.

I think, now that I think about it, that that’s one of the many revelations that led me to choosing the Expression Swing as my memorial gift to our local park. Seeing a parent and child celebrating a moment of intimate union. Both sharing joy. Celebrating life. O, yes, L'Chaim!