This week: Professor Jimmy Ha spoke for colloquy. The title of his message was: Momento Mori. He elaborated by searching for what unites us. Jimmy Ha is currently in the middle of a loosing battle with cancer. He is stage four pancreatic. To have him speak for my senior recognition was an honor. He is a gentleman and a scholar. He mused that there are many things that hold us together and unite us as humans and as a community of faith and learning. But what holds us together the most is death. All of us shall die.
Ha told a story of a Roman general who would return from war parading in triumph into Rome to the adulation of the crowd. While he was doing so a slave whispered into his ear, “Momento Mori.” Remember you shall die. It is a call to humility. Ha continued and ended with his thesis that perhaps what truly unites us when we think about live and death is the desire, the need, and the capacity to love and be loved.
This could not help me from thinking about the musical RENT. Fairly early into the musical there is a song sung by a group of people dieing of AIDS. The song is called life support: They sing:
Look. I find some of what you teach suspect.
Because I’m used to relying on intellect.
But I try to open up to what I don’t know.
Because reason says I should have died
three years ago.
There’s only us.
There’s only this.
Forget regret.
Or life is your’s to miss.
No other road
No other day.
No day but today.
At the core of this both Ha’s message and this song is the need and desire of someone else. A community. Love must go both ways. It must be mutual. Love builds community. And community is what we need to survive. Community provides us with the life support to make it through whatever the world throws at us. You see: Jimmy Ha was supposed to die two months ago, but here he stood on this Thursday past. A living testament to the healing power of his family and his community.
Thank you Professor Jimmy Ha for this message, and this reminder.
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