preamble to purpose
10/18/2009
Trying to capture in words what I understood in the car driving home in the dark — paradoxically, insight always dawns at night, it seems. I had turned on the radio and entered into a collage of Erich Kunzel’s life and work, a memorial. Kunzel, the conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, left this life just recently, conducting, in spite of cancer, almost to the end.
Erich Kunzel: a life fully lived; his gift fully shared and not held back…. This thought immediately overshadowed by another — The brevity of life; what’s the point, I felt in that moment. The enormity of the loss combined with the brevity of the gift of his presence; what’s the point, I asked again…
But it is the life we are in. Whether it is, by turns, hell or purgatory or heaven, we are not allowed to know while we are in it. There is nothing left except to live it.
And living it for me – I have just now understood, little by little I am understanding – it is about no more lost girls. It is about finding the ones whose selves are buried; it is about teaching parents so that it happens to fewer and fewer – and when it does happen, it is not so extreme – so that as many as I can touch are spared the pain that I myself experienced and are encouraged if they must travel through it.
It is a sacred purpose worthy of a life.
