5
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
Our Wishing Time Alite.aufr
A Sermon for the Eve. of New rear, by Rabbi Leo M. Franklin
SAT at my desk not long
ago trying to formulate
qOPA the thought that might
stir your hearts and lift
your spirits on this night. Outside
the day lay dark and gloomy and
I leaven had hidden her fair face
behind a mist of clouds. The rain
fell evenly and steadily and gave
110 promise that it would cease
for many hours. It was such a
day as does not ordinarily glad-
den the hearts of men, but one
which makes each burden seem
the heavier, palling the spirit that
would lift itself to the vision of
the highest. But by chance while
sitting thus I came upon some
verses sung by a young co-relig-
ionist of ours, and the verses put
into the patter of the rain a new
music and converted the clouds
into messengers of God. It is
Robert Loveman, known by many
as the "Poet of the South" who
in his illimitable cheerfulness
sings thus:
It isn't raining rain to me,
It's raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills;
The clouds of gray engulf the day
And overwhelm the town;
It isn't raining rain to me,
It's raining roses down.
It's raining rain to me,
But fields of clover bloom,
Where every bucaneering bee
May find a bed and room;
A health unto the happy days!
A fig for him who frets!—
It isn't raining rain to me,
It's raining violets.
There is something in a song
like this that reminds us that for
some men the spirit of childhood
is never outgrown. If childhood
is the sweetest part of life, the
gift of imagination is its chiefest
charm. The child lives in a world
of its own creation, in a world of
unreality some would say, and
yet to the child it is as real and as
true as your world of wood and
stone, with its competitions and
its madnesses, with its searching
and striving and straining for the
tangible things to which most of
us are giving ourselves body and
soul. When the child plays that
he is king—and what child has
not played this—he becomes tru-
ly royal in a domain that is worth
while. To the child mind the wish
to be this or that type of the he-
roic lifts it up on the wings of
imagination until for the moment
the wish becomes reality. There's
something mighty fine in Peter
Pan's question, "Do you believe
in fairies?" There's a philosophy
back of those spirits that make
princes out of beggars and that
converts ugliness itself to rarest
beauty.
Now it is only occasionally
that we find one who has out-
grown his childhood years who
can yet call to his aid this won-
derful imaginative faculty and
see, with the eyes of the poet, joy
and light and brightness and in-
spiration even in those things
which to the ordinary vision of
men seem lo have in them noth-
ing, that is bright or beautiful. To
the poet, as to the child, they be-
come beautiful becauselia.„4e
them to be beautiful.
There is On a night like this a
particular reason why I should
pause at such length with this so
simple thought. 'This is our wish-
ing time. It is the time when we
measure up our past and dream
our dreams for the future. It is
the hour when hope and memory
meet. It is the peculiar moment
when we stand upon the narrow
bridge that separates—nay, rath-
er that unites—the eternal past
and the eternal future. We are
conscious now of the element of
time. We know, alas, too well
that the childhood spirit within
us is deepening, hardening per-
haps into the more stolid spirit of
the man, and that it will not be
long that we can look down the
lengthening vista of the years
with the glamour of imagination
upon them, and so we long to re-
new the spirit of our childhood
and to put on our wishing cap, as
it were, and map out what we
would like the future to be. And
for most of us how different is
the future that we dream out for
ourselves from what the past has
been. 0, it is a future without
care and without sorrow and
without loss. It is a future
in which there are no rain
and no clouds, but one of sun-
shine from beginning to end.
It is a future in which responsi-
bilities are lightened and burdens
lifted and obligations lessened. It
is a future freed from misunder-
standings and from illusions and
from mistakes. It is a future pat-
terned after the pattern of some
ancient Paradise in which all
things are good to the eye and
pleasant to the taste of men.
Yet, after a moment's indulg-
ence in such dreaming, we awake
to know how vain it is to think
such thoughts and how utterly
their realization must fail. For
we are living in a world of grim
realities where passions within
and prejudice Without drive and
goad men ; where each is the crea.
ture of an environment to the
making of which he indeed con-
tributes something but not all.
But more than this, we cannot fail
to see if we analyze with any de-
gree of intelligence the meaning
of living, that life would be but
vapid and empty were it to flow
along in blissful and peaceful har-
mony uninterrupted by an occa-
sional sorrow or disappointment
or loss, and untouched by the
great passions of the world. It is,
after all, only the life that has
lived through storm and stress,
that has had to struggle against
itself and against the world, that
has touched the deepest depths of
being. The law of compensation
is universal. They who have not
felt the heavy hand of affliction
upon them cannot understand the
happiness that is the highest.
They who have not been down
into the depths cannot appreciate
the glory of the vision on the
heights. They whose hearts have
not been palled cannot know the
thrill of new found peace. And
so to wish for a future that is
all calm and unruffled would be
unworthy the serious-minded
man and woman. It would be
the dream of what the Germans
call the "Luftmensch" of him who
lives in the clouds and far, far
away from the realties of life. For
the fact is that there is no magic
wishing-cap that we can put on
to convert the grim spectres of
darkness and disappointment and
death that come into our lives
into fairy visions of things beau-
tiful. There is for us no Aladdin's
lamp that we can rub to make our
wishes for riches and for content-
ment and for peace instantly real.
For the things that are worth
while we must go through the
agonies of travail and we must
dig our way out of the pit of des-
pair and out of the abysmal dark-
ness and out of the shaft of the
grave into the higher plane of
soul satisfaction with the things
that are. For the truth lies here,
that while we cannot, with all our
striving and all our struggle, with
all our pining and with all our
praying, drive the gaunt, stalking
form of misery out of the human
world, we can so change it to our
spiritual vision that it will seem
to be other than it is to us. That
is to say, man living in a world
not of his making, and compelled
by circumstances over which he
has no definite control, to meet
untoward conditiOns, cannot act-
ually change these conditions but
he can 'change himself ; he can so
train and direct his own attitude
toward them as to throw about
them the glamour of imagination
and thus change the cruel into the
kind and make for himself those
experiences that would crush a
timid soul, messengers of uplift
and inspiration.
The poet could see in the rain
the glory of awakening .nature ;
why cannot you and I see in the
clouds and in the darkness that
oftentimes beset our lives, means
of self and soul rejuvenation
through which you and I shall
come to mean more to ourselves
and to the world? Where most of
us arc lacking is in that self con-
trol which some call will power.
It is because we do not will suf-
ficiently to be the masters of our
destinies that fate deals us such
crushing blows. It is because we
lie down beside our burdens and
weep over them too much that
they prove unbearable. It is be-
cause we lack that childhood gift
of sweet imagination to rise su-
perior to homely circumstance
that we remain drudges through
all our lives. It is because we
cannot see even in our narrow
and confining environment the
possibilities of leading a broad life
and touching the eternal things
that we become mentally and
spiritually crippled and weaken-
ed. It is because we look upon
things only with the eye physical
and not with that soul's eye that
invests the crudest things with an
element of the divine, that the day
and the hour means all to us and
what lies beyond means nothing.
We do not seem able, most of us,
to propone ourselves into the
thought of the vast and infinite,
but we are content to measure the
universe by the range of our
physical vision, thus losing the
best and the deepest and the high-
est things that life affords.
Now the will or the wish to be
greater than we are and to see
things in their largeness and to
interpret the universe in terms of
the highest is only another form
of prayer. Prayer is an appeal
to the source of strength that we
may be strong to meet the duties
of each day. That prayer which
asks for a subversion of the laws
of the universe is sacrilege. That
prayer which seeks of God that
He shall rain special bounties,
which we have not earned, into
our lives, is impudence. The true
prayer is that which asks for a
frame of mind which shall enable
us to see the goodness of all
things and for an attitude of soul
to appreciate them. The true
prayer is the prayer for self-
control, the prayer for vision, the
prayer for strength. It is answer-
ed not in . g flood of unmerited
meicies, not in the opening of
Heaven's gates with a rain of ma-
terial good things, nor in the mir-
acle that shall shelter you and me
from the logical effects of our
own acts, nor from the ten thou-
sand disappointments that lie in
wait for us upon our daily paths,
but it is answered in our own
heightened power of appreciation
of the meaning of our own exist-
ence and in our greater readiness
to meet the obligations of each
day.
According to the legend when
the great King Solomori, lay
dreaming, an angel of God asked
him what most he might wish,
promising him that it would be
instantly granted. And the king
asked not for mercy, not for