Category: Death & Dying

All Saints’ Day was established as an opportunity to honor all the saints, known and unknown.

All Saints’ Day has a rather different focus in the Reformed tradition. While we may give thanks for the lives of particular luminaries of ages past, the emphasis is on the ongoing sanctification of the whole people of God. Rather than putting saints on pedestals as holy people set apart in glory, we give glory to God for the ordinary, holy lives of the believers in this and every age. This is an appropriate time to give thanks to members of the community of faith who have died in the past year. We also pray that we may be counted among the company of the faithful in God’s 

https://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/worship/christianyear/all-saints-day/

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, liturgy, Christian Calendar and numerous other terms familiar in church history were not a part of my spiritual heritage. Engaging death and dying has produced an appreciation for them, particularly as related to confronting our finitude. Death avoidance is revealed when All Saints Day is not acknowledged. I had the opportunity to watch a video of an All Saints Day service and found it to be meaningful and helpful in understanding a different perspective. You can watch the entire video below.

Here are some excerpts from Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon “Death After Life”

DEATH AFTER LIFE

…my two favorite days in the liturgical year are Ash Wednesday and All Saints …the former being the day you are reminded that if you are not in your grave, you are one day closer to it, and the latter being the day when we speak the names of those who have died and offer thanks for their lives.

I’m so grateful that the Christian calendar has days set aside to just call a thing what it is; days where we confront the truth of our mortality. And I love that we have the gall to do it right smack in the middle of our death-denying culture, a culture where we are so often offered the message that we can live forever with the right combination of yoga, injections and elective surgery. But while the false promises of immortality through self-improvement might sell product, they do nothing for us in any real way other than to make us feel like we can avoid the most inevitable thing in the world:

That you will die.

And I will die.And so will every human being ever born.

I’m so sorry to be the one to say it, but there are no exceptions, I’m afraid.

We who gather today and speak the names of those who have died this year will one day be the ones whose names are spoken on a Feast of All Saints in a year to come.

It stings a bit, does it not? Like, how dare I say this.

But the truth about our mortality is only offensive if it’s heard as an insult and not a promise. 

I mean, to my ego immortality sounds great, but to every other part of me it sounds exhausting. And kinda boring, honestly.

Because it is the fact that we do not live forever that makes life so precious.

And Rare.

…none of us has been promised another day. We have this day only. But we have been promised the impossible – that death is not the final word. I am reminded of that line from a famous Auden poem – Nothing that is possible can save us, We who must die demand a miracle.

Nadia Bolz-Weber

…. supposedly from a First Nations tribe: “When you came into this world, you cried and everyone smiled with joy at your arrival. When you leave this world, may you smile with joy and everyone cry at your leaving.”

The series of posts on death and dying have been challenging, exhausting, frustrating, disappointing and rewarding. One thing I have learned for sure: If you are looking to have an extended conversation with someone; don’t start with death or dying. Almost without exception, anytime I introduce death and dying into a conversation, the conversation either ceases or is diverted to more relevant subjects i.e. weather; prima facia evidence of the denial of death.
It is an interesting contrast that the consensus of scholars, theologians, psychologists, sociologists, et al is awareness of our mortality is essential to living life well.

As a Christ-follower I can truthfully say that I do not live with a conscious, abiding fear of death; however, should I unexpectedly come face to face with death, it would be terrifying and I would desperately seek to avoid it. Coming to grips with those conflicting realities, it no longer seems so curious people who believe most fervently in divine healing also cling most doggedly to the technology of mortals. I can empathize with the woman, when faced with the immanent death of a loved one said,
“No, Doctor,” she replied. “We are Christians, and we believe that Jesus can heal. We believe in miracles. You do whatever you can to keep him alive.”

A recent Harvard study found that patients with high levels of support from their religious communities are more likely to choose aggressive life support and to die in intensive-care units. They were also less likely to enroll in hospice. Why might this be?

Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying (p. 6)

Tim Keller in his article entitled”Growing My Faith in the Face of Death” describes his experience with the troubling paradox some Christians experience when faced with death and offers a possible answer to “Why might this be?”

One of the first things I learned was that religious faith does not automatically provide solace in times of crisis. A belief in God and an afterlife does not become spontaneously comforting and existentially strengthening. Despite my rational, conscious acknowledgment that I would die someday, the shattering reality of a fatal diagnosis provoked a remarkably strong psychological denial of mortality. Instead of acting on Dylan Thomas’s advice to “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” I found myself thinking, What? No! I can’t die. That happens to others, but not to me. When I said these outrageous words out loud, I realized that this delusion had been the actual operating principle of my heart.

The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that the denial of death dominates our culture, but even if he was right that modern life has heightened this denial, it has always been with us. As the 16th-century Protestant theologian John Calvin wrote, “We undertake all things as if we were establishing immortality for ourselves on earth. If we see a dead body, we may philosophize briefly about the fleeting nature of life, but the moment we turn away from the sight the thought of our own perpetuity remains fixed in our minds.” Death is an abstraction to us, something technically true but unimaginable as a personal reality.

For the same reason, our beliefs about God and an afterlife, if we have them, are often abstractions as well. If we don’t accept the reality of death, we don’t need these beliefs to be anything other than mental assents. A feigned battle in a play or a movie requires only stage props. But as death, the last enemy, became real to my heart, I realized that my beliefs would have to become just as real to my heart, or I wouldn’t be able to get through the day. Theoretical ideas about God’s love and the future resurrection had to become life-gripping truths, or be discarded as useless.

Tim Keller https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/tim-keller-growing-my-faith-face-death/618219/

I fear, like Keller, the actual operating principle of my heart and the heart of many Christians is :“What? No! I can’t die. That happens to others, but not to me.” Beliefs not subjected to a crucible of memento mori (“Remember! You will die!”) will atrophy and become mental assents; ultimately useless when death becomes a personal reality.

People who want to die well must be willing to confront their finitude. We do not have to accept death, invite it, or wish for it. But we must be prepared to say, “Yes, I am human and therefore mortal. One day I will die.” We cannot both cling to the indefinite extension of life and effectively prepare for death.

The Art of Dying

 I am a big fan of the ideas of the art of dying. I’ve given it a lot of thought. And had some experience not of time but of being with people and helping them find a holy death of some sorts. The thing about death is that it is outside of our grasp, in most cases. That means for me that it’s one of those absolute wild cards. We don’t know if we will go quietly or with scream, as we don’t know if we will be covered in blood or covered in a quilt. We don’t know if we will be glad life is over or clinging to the last vestiges of every breath. It’s such a wild card. And even if we plan well, we have no idea when where why how. So it’s gotta be more like jazz than like a symphony don’t you think?

Marilyn Elliott

How real are our beliefs?

STILL ON THE JOURNEY