A Toast to Mary Travers

Yesterday I attended the memorial for Mary Travers at Riverside Church in Manhatten. Growing up, my family has had a close, wonderful relationship with Mary and her husband Ethan. The memorial was exquisite, a kaleidoscope of brilliant speakers and stars, including Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Senator John Kerry, Senator George McGovern, Senator Max Cleland, Bill Moyers, Tom Paxton, Rabbi David Saperstein, Rabbi Dan Syme, Whoopi Goldberg, Theo Bikel, of course Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow, along with many more. It was four richly textured hours culminating in an extraordinary "This Land is Your Land" which could only have been better had Mary's voice been there, but her spirit was all around. Here, I'd like to share the words I spoke at the memorial. Blessings to all --

A Toast to Mary Travers - Rabbi Zoë Klein

The dining room table
Is an altar,
The words shared around it,
Offerings.
How many times
Had Mary sat at our table,
How many times at friends' tables,
At my brother's table,
Cutlery clinking,
Laughter ringing,
Everyone interrupting,
Subtlety, winking,
Stories sliced in edgewise...
Course after course
Of opinionated discourse,
Thoughtfully spiced with
Philosophical musings...
Artfully spiked with
Humor and play...
How many times
At Mary and Ethan's table,
In that rustic room
Where Mary's heart was the hearth
And Ethan's love an eternal ember...
In their home
Which is so delicious
It might well be made of gingerbread.
How many times
Did we lift our glimmering glasses
To life, to love,
To justice, to passion...
To imagination,
To every wild irrational
Vision of perfect peace
And fair distribution of power...
The out-of-reach utopian world
For which we pined and debated
While we relished the hours
Infused with the spirit
Of loving one another...
At their table, gleaming,
As an altar...

Toast after toast,
We lifted our tumblers
To many things...

To your love,
Mary and Ethan,
On your wedding day,
When you married
Under a canopy of branches and flowers
In my parents' backyard.
Mary walked down the aisle of grass
Holding a small sculpture
From my father's studio,
And during the ceremony I looked up
And was struck
To see the maple trees
Had aligned their branches
Into a perfect heart against the sky.
A toast to your wedding 18 years ago,
And to trees and to roots
That run so deep.

I remember a toast around the table on her patio,
- Minted iced tea -
She had called us and said,
Hurry, come over,
The wisteria
Which only bloomed once a year had opened.
A toast to flowers,
To beauty,
To hope...
Mary, Mary, bright luminary,
How does your garden glow,

She told me once she could identify
Each gray strand in her platinum hair,
This one civil rights, this one Vietnam,
El Salvador, she named each atrocity
That turned her spun gold to silver...
Mary, Mary, revolutionary...
Silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids ought to be free.

She was a wizardress of voice...
Sang her soul
And spoke for the voiceless.
She could scathe or soothe...
She informed and inspired agents of change,
And because of her,
My husband and I are both rabbis
Who can say that
When we find ourselves in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to us...
Whispers words of wisdom...
 
She was a radiant sun
with a galaxy orbiting around her...
and just as rays of light
continue to rush through time and tide...
so shines Mary...
While we, the astronomers,
try to interpret her dancing light,
she climbs
higher and higher...
a golden star
pinned to the velvet black
of God's deep night,
a rival to the North Star,
a multi-faceted diamond...
let this light shine forever,
let this light - undimmed -
steer the ships,
guide the troops,
chart the wanderers,
dispel the gloom,
orient the dreamers,
and infuse the living
with courage
and wonder
and love.

Mary, Mary, come sweet chariot,
Coming forth to carry her home...

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down that stream...
Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary,
Life is but a dream...

So, a toast,
On Mary's birthday...
I ask you please,
Lift your glasses high,
Filled with light,
All of us at Mary's table,
Hands cupped,
Filled with memory,
Sweet to drink,
Aged to perfection,
Everyone here holds in his or her hand
And heart a draft of the fountain
Of her gifts, her generous soul,
We raise our crystal chalices together,
Raise them high...
To Mary,
On your birthday,
L'chayim.