Reflections from the Elmvale Cemetery

On a hot summer day not so long ago, I stopped at a charming cemetery near Elmvale, Ontario, just off the road to a friend’s cottage on Christian Island. Two dozen or so tombstones stood quietly, their inscriptions beckoning. I love reading them, as many do, because they compel me to imagine the lives of men, women, and children—people with mismatched socks, scraped elbows, and moments of love—who walked this earth before me.

Each epitaph, like “Arthur P. Macdonald, Born 1802, Died 1865, A Father, A Husband, and a Good Man,” is an abridged biography, a whisper of a life. As I read, I realized we, the living, are descendants of millions, temporary stewards of a world shaped over millennia. Our existence peels back another layer of truth from a sweet fruit, planted and sown by countless hands before us.

This thought led me to ponder whether our purpose is tied to the era we inhabit. Rashi, the great Jewish commentator, touches on this in his analysis of Noah, described as “righteous in his generation.” Rashi suggests that had Noah lived in Abraham’s time, his righteousness would not have matched Abraham’s, and his role in shaping the world might have been diminished. Timing, it seems, matters.

This question of time and purpose deepens when considering the Jewish belief that all Jews stood at Sinai when God gave the Torah. If true, you and I stood among former slaves, brushed elbows with Ruth the Moabite, Rabbi Joseph Caro, and Moses himself. God, it appears, required every Jew—past, present, and future—to be present at that moment, empowering us to fulfill the divine call to be a ‘light unto the nations’. Our collective purpose, seems, once again, intricately tied to the spectrum of time.

Perhaps every action we take is born from eons of prior deeds, serving as a foundation for future ones. If we traced a single act—say, honoring our parents—backward and forward through time, we might find it stretches from Sinai to an eternal future.

The idea that all Jews stood at Sinai suggests we are bound together across generations, our purpose woven into the fabric of time itself.

As I mused, I noticed a woman nearby breastfeeding her baby and a man walking his Pomeranian puppy. I wondered what they thought as they gazed at the tombstones. My mind wandered moreso —to a fisherman in Mesopotamia in 600 CE and to a young girl skiing in Switzerland in 2100. I asked myself: Do we all, across time, ponder our purpose and time’s effect on our lives? Am I bound to that woman, that man, the fisherman, and the girl—today and always? Are you?