One of the gifts that has been bestowed upon me is your patience and understanding as I fulfill my duties as the interim College Chaplain for the spring term. Though an officer of the Tucker Foundation, my primary responsibilities have been to serve the Dartmouth Jewish community as its Rabbi. Being in the position of interim chaplain has expanded my horizons of what life is like for so many students at Dartmouth, particularly those who seek a Divine/Spiritual dimension or relationship in their lives. It has placed me in a position to see a broader Dartmouth. I would like to share with you some observations in light of a tragedy that has sent our community, once again, into shock and into grief and into mourning.
Three days ago, early on Tuesday morning, Matthew Demaine '04 passed away. It was his first year at the College. He was an artist and a member of the lacrosse team. In the words of so many, he did not fit the stereotype of the student-athlete: he was open to a variety of experiences, such as building a sculpture from an upright piano that he had acquired for this purpose and then disassembled. His friends came to talk about their relationship to him with me as chaplain; they said what he meant to their lives to seek some comfort through their grief.
As so many tears rolled down their faces, I could not help but feel that these students were too young to experience such an unpredictable tragedy. No one wants young people to feel this kind of pain, it simply is not fair. A young life, filled with creativity, is not supposed to die. How shocking when there is no cause, no way to predict and thus prevent or at least prepare for this fatal loss of life. We want to protect, to nurture, and to shelter you. Dartmouth is a place of transition to a world filled with promise. It is not supposed to be, nor is it, a place for tragedy and death.
But the simple truth, indeed the religious truth, is that we can neither protect nor shelter any of you from the uncertainties and unpredictability of life and death. While we may comfort ourselves in such notions as "Matthew was here for a higher purpose and God took him" or "He is in a better place," they do little to ameliorate the grief that you experience when death overtakes someone whom you love -- whom you have a relationship with.
I know very little about the Divine purpose in all of this. I'm not sure I subscribe to the notion of a Higher purpose in Matty's death because I tend to think these kinds of thoughts in retrospect (after an event), rather than before it. I like to think, despite God's omniscience, that I have some form of free will. I do incorporate into my own heart the ambiguity of my own Faith's response to death; "ashes to ashes," "dust to dust," yet praying, as an expression of hope, that God will take the soul to a "Garden of Eden."
Shortly after Matty's death, a group of students came together to talk and to share their profound grief and loss. One young man in particular could not stop crying. A young woman, another student, held him tightly, her arm around his back in an effort to console him so that he would not feel so alone and lost in the depths of that sadness. It is in this human instinct to touch and to be with another that made me reflect on the meaning of two of my favorite passages in the Bible, "Humanity is made in the Divine Image" and "It is not good for a person to be alone." The Dartmouth community, in its fullest dimension, can be a place where, in these dark realities of loss and pain, we explore and experience how fragile life itself is, and how, in the reflection of the Divine Image, we are to respond.
Matty's death is tragic. If there was anything I could do to change this, I would. For me, there is consolation. It has been the privilege of being with some of you in this time of loss, for it has allowed me to experience our common humanity and how connected we can be to one another.
