Recognitions Village People Aaron Bolus – Celebration of Life
“God Favours Us Eternally” This eulogy was presented by Lawrence Denef on March 8, 2012. We have come to honour Aaron Bolus and celebrate his life. Aaron died a young man. But then, life isn’t valued by its accumulated achievements, or measured by its duration. It’s depth that counts. Once our heart has been turned to experiencing life’s innermost intensity, it is completely fulfilled and privileged; that is, it will, even in anxious moments, spontaneously have effects on everything of which it is a part. So it was for Aaron. Aaron learned, earlier than most, that every time life asks us to give up a desire, to change our direction, or redefine our goals; every time we lose a friend, break a relationship, or start a new plan we are invited to widen our perspectives and to touch, under the superficial waves of our daily wishes, the deeper currents of affirmation and hope. Every time we are jolted by life we are faced with the need to make new departures. |
Nature is determined by a rhythm, a change that we experience as day and night, summer and winter, ebb and flow, warmth and cold. “The great does not remain great, nor small what is small, the night has twelve hours and then comes day,” as Bertholt Brecht puts it. Or as the author of Ecclesiastes says, “Everything has its appointed hour, there is time for all things under heaven: a time for birth, and a time for death, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build, a time to cry and a time to laugh.” Aaron respected life’s changing times. He knew that experience lives in transitions. He lived his life as a finely tuned instrument, and in the end he was able to acknowledge that there is an end to our life on earth. But that’s only part of the story. He also became evermore conscious that transience is not separation. The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke puts it this way, “Once one has discovered a carefree security in the simple conviction that one is part of a melody, to which all scents, feelings and dreams contribute in equal measure, and that one’s individual voice completes and perfects the full chorus, where the least counts as much as the greatest, one can consciously and quietly come to his own.” In other words, when one adopts an image of life lived more deeply than most life today is lived; that is, when one relates the two voices – the one belonging to a specific moment and the other to the group of people living in it, life becomes and remains “a work of art,” part of a “courageous melody that shimmers behind our fading steps.” When you are singing but can not lift your voice and other’s join you who can lift theirs, you know that something rare is happening. Life’s greatest tragedy is the loss of love. For Aaron love was constant. He was loved by many, loved many, and was enabled to walk the path he was on together with them. |
Today we have gathered to acknowledge the reality of our loss and to affirm the reality of love – to live in the sacred space where sorrow and love meet, where the finite is embraced by the infinite. Christian Wiman, speaking as only a poet can, says, that in this space, we not only feel love re-enter us, but are profoundly re-connected to what is remote and inexpressible, all the way up to the stars. I’m sure the apostle Paul had this deepest root of love in mind when he included his ode to love in a letter to the Christians at Corinth: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends....Faith hope and love abide these three; Life is a song . . . sing it. - Sai Baba
“Keep your head up, “The purpose of life is to help others. Helping my friends helps me.” “Brothers in heart, love and mind don’t need words to speak…” Aaron Bolus |
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