MEDITATION/PRAYER FOR JEANNETTE HOPKINS
In the same drawer in which she left us her wishes for this memorial service, Jeannette Hopkins also left a passage from a memoir of the actress Rosamond Gaston which tells us something about how Jeanette perceived herself in her last years It reads as follows:
“Now I am in the decline of my eighth decade and live so much more in the people, the books, the works of art, the landscape than in my own skin, that of self. Except as this wee homunculus of a perceiving subject, little is left over. A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die.”
We know that Jeannette identified deeply with “people, books, works of art, the landscape” and did so throughout her life.
There was a Whitmanesque quality to Jeannette’s faith. Walt Whitman, fellow journalist and resident of Camden, who wrote:
“In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less. . .
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.” (p.39 )
Jeannette’s bold and inclusive humanism testified to the democratic splendor of the human and evolutionary story -- to the dream of universal liberty, equality and solidarity; to the free mind and spirit; high adventure and hard work; self-affirmation and moral integrity; the saving power of humor; universal human rights and responsibilities; vigorous participation in public life and positive government for the common good; the rule of law; respect and care for nature, otherkind, and our lives as natural organisms; critical reason and tested experience as the way to truth; artistic creativity and education as the way to build cultures of excellence and make a sustainable place for ourselves in the universe -- in spite of our daily experience of senseless violence and personal and collective betrayal.
It so happens I was scheduled to meet with Jeannette this week to discuss a book project tentatively titled “gospels of the democratic faith.” She would have had much to say that I needed to hear -- and she would have insisted that I hear it. She was no “wee homunculus.”
Jeannette, we grieve your passing and are not ready to let you go into self-less oblivion. You grew your great soul through your great love of the world. It was because of your own strong sense of authorship, won, no doubt, at great cost, that you could speak your mind truthfully to us. You were our spiritual midwife. We insist on remaining in dialogue with you and through you accountable to a world worthy of our respect and striving.
How does one pray at a memorial service for a distinguished congregant of democratic splendor?
Must we not pray for all of us, Jeannette as one among us, one of “we the people” she so loved, a bright star in the heavens of our common humanity and common Earth?
Let us so pray.
We join together on this holy day in thankfulness for the life of Jeannette Hopkins and all those whose labors have sustained us over the generations.
We pray that Jeannette and every man and woman who has been faithful to the promise inherent in the gift of our Earthly existence shall find a lasting place in the enveloping mystery we call reality.
We pray that we shall gather the strength to join her and her comrades in the global struggle between justice and injustice, sufficiency and luxury.
That by such action we shall at last define ourselves as the species which can govern itself in accord with the laws of reason and nature, and establish, as our founders dared hope, “good government from reflection and choice”
We pray that our authorship will be “of the highest usefulness” because it demonstrates the highest rigor, imagination and sympathy, and because we are pursuing it for the “good and enlightenment of all the people” and for the planet, not for the pampering of any class, profession, nation or religion;
We pray that we may each find the redeeming reciprocity Jeannette found between the cultivation of our inner lives and the cultivation of our gardens;
And we pray that like countless persons over the course of history who have found the burden of grief lifted from their shoulders by remembering faithful witnesses to life’s splendor, so too, we will find in our remembrance of Jeannette today consolation for our grief at her passing:
“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.” (Shakespeare)
Amen.
Ron Engel
September 5, 2011
