Being in the day

An email came into my inbox late last month that filled me with incredible sadness.

A certain musician I'd never met had died in a car accident in northern Ohio.

His name was Jared Jacobsen, the longtime organist at Chautauqua Institution in western New York state. My wife and I watched Jacobsen's instrumental mastery over most of the 40 years we've been attending Chautauqua events.

Jacobsen was a world-class organist and hosted the Sacred Song Service each Sunday evening during the nine-week Chautauqua season. The 70-year old Jacobsen sat with his back to the audience, and we watched his wizardry, fingers flying all over the keys, hands pulling out stops, feet massaging pedals. He made that instrument, said to be the largest open-air organ east of the Mississippi, his own -- capping off those Sabbath night worship experiences with his thrilling interpretation of "Largo," from G.F. Handel's opera "Xerxes."

Jacobsen finished the 2019 season on a Sunday night, and he was dead by the following Friday.

His memorial service was held in Chautauqua's renowned amphitheatre, a location which long ago hosted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and aviatrix Amelia Earhart, and which this summer bore witness to the comedy of the Smothers Brothers. Streamed on the institution's website, I watched from home. The organ sat mute, unplayed out of respect, with Jacobsen's slippers prominently displayed beside the pedals.

In a way difficult to explain, I felt a profound sense of grief. Yet I readily confess I didn't know Jacobsen and had never even heard him speak.

Readers may commiserate by recalling the loss so many Americans experienced with the sudden death in 1997 of Princess Diana, a stranger who connected on some level with them.

A question my wife has for the Maker of all things, when her day comes to face the infinite is, "How is it that in order to get through life we must make attachments yet have to watch as we lose them one by one?"

It feels to her, and to me, like a ripping, a tearing, of the soul when someone who means something to us is lost, even if the person is unknown on a personal level.

In my life, I've officiated the funerals of approximately 250 people. Too many. Former clergy colleagues will boast, if that is an appropriate verb, of numbers notably higher than mine.

So much grief and finality. We have no other frame of reference but this life. We have the post-resurrection stories of Jesus, yes, but we're not Him. When the funeral ends, when the casket closes, when we depart the cemetery, we are brought face-to-face with the prophet Isaiah's words:

"All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. (Isaiah 40:6-7)

A medical doctor friend tells me all he really does, as a physician, day in and day out, is to "delay the game...for the outcome is certain."

Fair enough. We're not getting out of this life standing up. Got it.

When this writer is tempted to woeful stupefaction by the "certain" outcome of the human condition, that death is coming, that the only variables are the manner and the timing, Jesus kicks me in the pants.

He lulls me out of my listless despairing with inspiring words.

The words admit the reality of life's unavoidable end but tell us to keep moving forward in the meantime.

"As long as it is day (read: life), we must do the works of him who sent me. Night (read: death) is coming when no one may work." (John 9:4)

Night came for Jared Jacobsen suddenly.

If you opened your eyes this morning, you are in the day. Get going and remain hopeful.

None of us knows when the sun will go down. That's ok. It's day until it isn't, and I'm good with that plan.