A Most Powerful Prayer

A Guide to a Meaningful Life

Whenever I conduct a funeral, I begin with the same prayer. It is called Birth is a Beginning, and it was written by Rabbi Alvin Fine in the 1940s.

Inevitably, at least one person at the service asks me for a copy of it. (A complete text is included below.)

Something about its words and rhythm touches our souls.

And over the years, I’ve developed an annotated version to help you see what makes it so powerful, especially if you have ever lost someone you love.

Its opening words:

Birth is a beginning and death a destination and life is a journey.

A simple enough opening, it uses alliteration (B, B and D, D)to capture the feeling of a completed journey.

The underlying philosophy is that our life is a story rather than a collection of random events.

Every good story begins and ends, but the journey is what gives it meaning.

As Cervantes said in the classic novel Don Quixote: “The road is better than the inn.”

From childhood to maturity and youth to age

This verse uses poetic parallelism: childhood is to youth as maturity is to age. Each word echoes its counterpart.

Yet, childhood is not the same as youth, and maturity is not the same as age. One reflects chronological order. The other refers to character.

We hope they work in sync.

From innocence to awareness, and ignorance to knowing. From foolishness to discretion, and then, perhaps, to wisdom.

Again, Rabbi Fine uses parallelism to explore the idea of growth. Innocence is similar to, but not the same as, ignorance.

And knowledge is not the same as awareness. If we understand the difference, we may reach wisdom.

What is wisdom?

Professor Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania comes closest when he says,

"The wise person is someone who has expert knowledge about the meaning of life (what really matters) and how to plan and manage a meaningful life."

We know it when we see it.

From weakness to strength, and strength to weakness, and often back again; From health to sickness and back, we pray, to health again.

So much is outside of our control. We get sick. We heal. And we get sick again.

Judaism believes in free will, but we also acknowledge how much we do not know and control.

Acknowledging that truth is a step toward healing. This verse just resonates with real life.

From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love, from grief to gratitude, from pain to compassion, from fear to faith.

When I read this at a funeral, I think of the imperative to give every human being the benefit of the doubt.

If they were easily offended, look for times when they forgave. If they ever caused you pain, look for times they were compassionate.

And let's give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. Life becomes about growth when we focus on our aspirations rather than our flaws.

From defeat to defeat to defeat, until looking backward or ahead, we see that victory lies not at some high place along the way, but in having made the journey, stage by stage, a sacred pilgrimage.

In this verse, Rabbi Fine redefines the notion of pilgrimage.

Typically we think of a pilgrimage as a journey to a specific place. Catholics make a pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago. Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

But for Rabbi Fine, life itself is a pilgrimage. It is one continuous journey. What is the destination?

He doesn't say, but I say God.

If we grow through each stage of life, we move closer to God. That makes life a sacred pilgrimage.

This approach also brings a different framework to life. The "high places" along the way (and the low ones, too) become less remarkable when we look at the journey as a whole. They are simply parts of a larger tapestry.

One more refreshing part of this verse.

Rabbi Fine acknowledges the defeats we all face in life. Nobody gets through life unharmed.

As a parent, I never want my children to experience pain and difficulty, but I know they will. That's life. Instead of pretending they will never have to deal with suffering, I hope to teach them ways to grow through it.

As Ernest Hemingway put it, "The world breaks everyone, and some are strong in the broken places."

Birth is a beginning and death a destination and life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage, to life everlasting.

This closing verse repeats the opening one, with the added comfort and vision of "life everlasting."

Now the simple interpretation would be that Rabbi Fine is referring to the idea of an afterlife for the deceased.

Their physical death is simply leaving this physical world and entering into the next state of eternal life.

Of course, that is possible, and Judaism has a rich tradition of belief in the afterlife. But we can also read it differently.

"Life everlasting" refers to the reverberations of one's life on those of us who remain here on earth.

I heard a teaching recently echoing this idea.

We die twice. The first is our physical death. The second is when our name is no longer mentioned.

The first death is inevitable. The second death is not.

How does our name stay alive? In Judaism, it comes through those who say Kaddish for us.

The Kaddish is a Jewish prayer of mourning said every year on the anniversary of a loved one's death. We say their name and read the prayer.

In so doing, we bring life everlasting.

The Full Prayer

Life is a Journey

Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
And life is a journey: 
From childhood to maturity
And youth to age; 
From innocence to awareness
And ignorance to knowing; 
From foolishness to discretion
And then perhaps to wisdom. 

From weakness to strength or
From strength to weakness
And often back again; 
From health to sickness, 
And we pray to health again. 

From offence to forgiveness, 
From loneliness to love, 
From joy to gratitude, 
From pain to compassion, 
From grief to understanding, 
From fear to faith. 

From defeat to defeat to defeat
Until, not looking backwards or ahead, 
We see that victory lies not
At some high point along the way
But in having made the journey
Step by step, 
A sacred pilgrimage. 
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
And life is a journey. 

--Rabbi Alvin Fine