A song for Rich Kilmer

Today Deb Perkins our church organist, and a talented musician, played a tribute on the piano to a lovely man Rich Kilmer. It was the Bach/Gounod of Ave Maria. This song is a prayer. For that reason, it is like life itself. There is a bitter sweetness to this piece that stirs my newly aquired compunction. Which I've learn is also what is known (historically) as a "gift of tears"... though I didn't realize it was anything close to a gift (and saw no real use for it until recently). When I am now stirred to compunction, in this case because of the immense beauty, frailty, pain, and reality and sharp, brevity of life and loss, I weep. And now that I am not jolted by those tears, I can be in those moments unencumbered, and enjoy the music; and also realize, though perhaps still with wet eyes, that God is very much in all of reality, in my world and the next one. Even so, in those moments also, "Jesus wept".

Like a prayer, we are like a breath. We come into this world, and there is beauty, and joy, and sadness, and sorrow, bitterness, goodness, vanity, excellence, and excess, dryness ... and then we are gone. The things we have done are then over. It is brief. Our friend Rich, dear Rich, and his sweet, smiling face, and his good nature are gone now, suddenly from us, and this life. And he passes to another.

It was so lovely and fitting of Deb to play a tribute.

To hear what I mean, listen to a rendition of the song on you-tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMdhEt7J31Y

See you soon, Rich.
We miss you already.