Choose a Star

When I die choose a star and name it after me that you may know I have not abandoned or forgotten you. - David Ignatow

How do you want to be remembered? It’s a question, oddly enough, which has provoked me for as long as I can recall.

I’ve often wondered where I got this obsession with my legacy.

Did it come from my family? Did it come from my religious upbringing? Or did it simply come from within?

Whatever the source, the question of how I will be remembered has seemingly always been with me. It has been a driving force in my life, pushing me to accomplish things I didn’t think were possible for me. I’d like to think that it has made me better than I might otherwise have been. It ultimately led me to pursue a religious vocation, because the question of how we shall be remembered is, I think, essentially a religious one.

Especially for Unitarian Universalists, whose primary concern is with this life, the question of how we shall be remembered is an important one. We express no certainties about the afterlife. But we definitely believe in this one, in the importance of living the best life of which we are capable. Someone has said that while we may doubt whether there is life after death, we are certain that there is life before death, and that it is for living well.

Sherwin Nuland, author of the rather depressing book How We Die, has written that,

The fact that there is a limited right time to do the rewarding things in our lives is what creates the urgency to do them. Otherwise we might stagnate in procrastination. The very fact that at our backs, as the poet cautions his coy mistress, we "always hear/ Time’s winged chariot hurrying near" enhances the world and makes the time priceless.

Unitarian Universalists are often said to have a belief in the "immortality of influence." I’m sure we are not the only ones who believe this, but I would say that it is probably more true of more of us than of most other religious persuasions. It is the immortality that is written of in the ancient Wisdom of Solomon:

The memorial of virtue is immortal, because it is known with God and with people. When it is present, we take example of it, and when it is gone, we desire it. It weareth a crown and triumph forever, having gotten the victory, striving for undefiled rewards.

I think this is why the author of the Book of Proverbs wrote that, "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold." How we live our lives in the here and now, in this present moment, is the most valuable thing: it will have an impact long after we are gone. Perhaps it will last forever. I can’t say for certain, but that is certainly my faith. The good we do will last long after our own lives are finished. Maybe it will actually change the world for the better, if only in a small corner of it. That is my hope.

I believe that giving our children a sense of the importance of living a good and meaningful and productive life is one of the most important religious lessons we can teach. We may no longer believe in the old story of redemption and salvation as it is taught in many churches, but we still believe that it is of utmost importance to use well the gifts and talents that we have been miraculously given to make a difference in our world. We still believe in the importance of living the best life of which we are capable. We still believe that it is more important to do the right thing than to do otherwise. We believe that goodness and compassion ought to be the ultimate goals of life.

Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman once wrote:

Religion can teach us . . . how to understand the goal of life in the presence of mortality. That goal is that we should create a pattern that will be a blessing and inspiration to those who come after us. When we die, those who have been touched and illuminated by the flame of our being should think of us with joyous reminiscence. We can face death nobly when we resolve so to live and to work in the years allotted to us that no one shall cry in frustration or anger when we have gone, that no one shall silently curse the day of our birth, but rather that they shall recall our day upon earth in the concert hall of memory and shall laugh with the over-brimming joy that a dear one walked the earth bravely and lovingly once upon a time.

And name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

Often at the end of memorial services I quote a little poem that I love from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
always in every prayer of mine for you,
because I have you in my heart.

Poet Wendell Berry has a beautiful line in one of his elegiac poems, where he writes of a loved one who has died, that "He’s hidden among all that is/ and cannot be lost." I think this is the same idea that David Ignatow is trying to convey in asking his daughter to choose a star to remember him by. There is a way in which the good we have done and the love we have given while we are here on earth is never really lost.

The novelist George Eliot once wrote,

. . .The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and with me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest now in unvisited tombs.

Or as Emerson so beautifully puts it, "What is excellent,/ As God lives is permanent;/ Hearts are dust, hearts’ loves remain."

The so-called "great infidel," Robert G. Ingersoll, wrote that, "Character survives; goodness lives; love is immortal." For as long as I can remember that has been my faith. What is most important is how you live your life in the here and now. It is never too late. We cannot know what follows our present life, but we do know that our actions today make a difference in the world, if only in the hearts of those who love us.

In the words of our concluding hymn,

Spirit of great mystery,
hear the still small voice in me.
Help me live my wordless creed
as I comfort those in need.
Fill me with compassion,
be the source of my intuition.
Then when life is done for me,
let love be my legacy.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock