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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Conversations Matter – Death & Dying (3)

George 0 Comments
The path to paradise runs through the graveyard.

It is important to have meaningful conversations about death and dying.

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.

.. our society today leaves little room for the contemplation of human finitude. To stave off thoughts of mortality, we like to keep everything around us looking new. We design our clothes to be fashionable for a year or two. Our technology is governed by the theory of planned obsolescence. Our built environment comes with the expectation that certain buildings be demolished and rebuilt every specified number of years. And more than ever, scientists and beauty experts alike are striving to find that elixir for infinite youth. Apart from our life-insurance policies, little reminds us of our mortality.1Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying .

As recognized in earlier posts, meaningful conversations about death and dying are difficult and rarely occur. Essential in keeping us aware of our mortality, it is important to initiate and welcome them.

Awareness of our mortality is essential to die well, ” … ars moriendi hit the mark with its assertion that in order to die well, you must take mortality into account, even when death seems a long way off.”2 Dugdale, L.S.The Lost Art of Dying

For most people death is thought to be “a long way off”; which is not unreasonable considering the likelihood we will “go quickly” is low and most elderly will die a slow death,
“One study found that most elderly are diagnosed as having a disease three years before it will eventually end their lives. On top of that a Rand study found that “Americans will I usually spend two or more of their final Years disabled enough to need someone else to help with routine activities of daily living because of chronic illness” 3The Art of Dying Rob Moll

Expected life spans give people confidence that they will enjoy many years after retirement, which, for many, is coming much earlier than sixty-five. Good news , but it reinforces illusions of immortality and defers meaningful conversations we need to die well.

In the ancient world, victorious Roman generals paraded triumphantly through the streets before adoring crowds. Accounts of these “triumphs” vary, but typically the general was accompanied in his chariot by a servant whose one task was to whisper repeatedly in the general’s ear, Hominem te memento! or, “Remember that you are but human!” The servant’s role was to ensure that the general did not start thinking of himself as godlike, as immortal.4 Dugdale, L.S. The Lost Art of Dying

It might not be a bad idea to have someone around who whisper in our ear “you are going to die”. Maybe a Death Pastor? 🙂 Just thinking.
On a more practical basis, we can be reminded of our mortality with memento mori (remember you must die). Popular in medieval Europe various types of memento mori — were highly popular, they may have been too popular. They were so commonplace that many people stopped paying any attention to them. Perhaps employing some comtemporary momento mori would counter our avoidance of death and stimulate meaningful conversation. As one example, I have included our local cemetery in my daily walk route. Some tattoos are memento mori. Prominently displayed cremation urns are helpful reminders. There are a lot of creative ideas which can remind us “remember you must die”.

It is important to have meaningful conversations before there is an immanent death crisis. In those circumstances, the likelihood of a dying well experience is remote for both the dying and their loved ones.

I believe Timothy Keller’s recent death exemplified what it means to die well. His final words were: “There is no downside for me leaving, not in the slightest.”

More to come.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

  • 1
    Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying .
  • 2
    Dugdale, L.S.The Lost Art of Dying
  • 3
    The Art of Dying Rob Moll
  • 4
    Dugdale, L.S. The Lost Art of Dying

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

We’ve treated our sinfulness as the most true thing about us as humans, rather than our identity as created and loved by God

God Attachment pg 110

Empathy

if you are always dodging your emotions, you will avoid your own experience, as well as avoiding the experience of others. If you always ignore your own emotional suffering, you’ll likely take the same approach to the suffering of others.
There’s always risk when stepping into someone else’s shoes: we might feel a little bit of what they are feeling, which akc touches on a little bit of what we are feeling. As Brené Brown says, “Empathy is a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something within. that knows that feeling.’
God Attachment https://www.amazon.com/God-Attachment-Believe-Feel-About/dp/1501108131

What Christian Leaders Should Be Like
In my early 20s, I attended an event where Tim Keller, an orthodox, evangelical Presbyterian pastor, was having a public debate with a secular humanist. In the nearly 20 years that have passed since the event, I still recall one moment distinctly. The secular humanist struggled with a point he was making and was unclear, something that happens often enough in public speaking. Keller could have chosen to go in for the kill rhetorically and make his opponent look foolish. Instead, he paused and asked, “Is this what you mean?” Keller then restated the secular argument in a clearer, better way, arguing against his own point of view. The other speaker agreed that was what he had meant, and Keller continued, countering the (now much stronger) point.
This generosity and understanding toward those with whom we disagree helped shape the way I now see the world. It had more of an impact on me, as a Christian, than any argument could. Keller refused the easier route of debate, insisting on finding the best argument of others, even if it meant strengthening his opponent’s case. He was in pursuit of truth and kindness, not point-scoring. That night I saw what Christian leaders should be like
Trish Harrison Warren

Lament

If we lock our emotions in the basement in an attempt to keep God close, something else happens: we end up feeling distant. Intimacy happens in the emotional interactions of a relationship and when we hide our emotions from God, we never get the closeness we long for. Bonding is built on responsiveness, feeling that others understand our emotional experiences and that they care. It’s how we know we matter to others. But if we don’t ever share our emotions with God, true bonding never happens.

Suppressing our emotions also cripples our ability to engage in true community with others. When we can’t share our emotions, or respond to the emotions of others, we never experience the belonging we were built for, We might feel like teammates or co-workers but never the family that the apostle Paul describes in his letters to the church. We show up with our bodies but have trouble connecting heart-to-heart, Our Life of faith ends up feeling lonely.
God Attachment https://www.amazon.com/God-Attachment-Believe-Feel-About/dp/1501108131

Waiting

“The church is the community that believes it is not the star of its own story.”

When we refuse to wait we become the star of our own story; when we wait we become supporting actors to Jesus, who is the star.

“With our attention on the anxiety to survive and the rush to do something, God is inevitably replaced as the star of the church’s story. It becomes so easy, particularly in our secular age, for God to be just a subplot of our congregational life.”

When Church Stops Working – Andrew Root and Blair D. Bertrand

Evil in disguise

 …it is almost impossible for any social grouping to be corporately or consistently selfless.
It has to maintain and promote itself first at virtually any cost—sacrificing even its own stated ethics and morality. If we cannot see this, it might reveal the depth of the disguise of institutionalized evil. 

Evil finds its almost perfect camouflage in the silent agreements of the group when it appears personally advantageous. Such unconscious “deadness” will continue to show itself in every age, I believe. This is why I can’t throw the word “sin” out entirely. If we do not see the true shape of evil or recognize how we are fully complicit in it, it will fully control us, while not looking the least like sin. Would “agreed-upon delusion” be a better description? We cannot recognize it or overcome it as isolated individuals, mostly because it is held together by the group consensus. 

Richard Rohr

Social media

Krista Boan: We hear from families that technology is the No. 1 battleground in their homes. Qustodio, a leader in online safety, recently released its annual report and found that 70 percent of parents assert that screens and technology are now a distraction from family time and device use causes weekly or daily arguments in nearly 50 percent of households. A big new study from Cambridge University, in which researchers looked at 84,000 people of all ages, found that social media use was strongly associated with worse mental health during certain sensitive life periods, including for girls ages 11 to 13. Compared with their counterparts in the 2000s, today’s teens are less likely to go out with their friends, get their driver’s licenses or play youth sports.

Consciousness 

… until we move to self-reflective, self-critical thinking, we don’t move to any deep level of consciousness at all. In fact, we largely remain unconscious, falsely innocent, and unaware. Thus, most people choose to remain in that first stage of consciousness, secure and consoled. It’s great to think we’re the best and the center of the world. It even passes for holiness, but it isn’t holy at all.  

Richard Rohr

Viktor Frankl discovered that while the body grows according to what it consumes, the soul grows by the measure of love it pours out.

… consider the possibility that a creature of infinite love has made a promise to us. Consider the possibility that we are the ones committed to, the objects of an infinite commitment and that the commitment is to redeem us and bring us home. That is why religion is hope. I am a wandering Jew and a very confused Christian, but how quick is my pace, how open are my possibilities, and how vast are my hopes
David Brooks The Second Mountain Page 270

View from the Front Porch
Bait & Switch Christianity – Richard Beck

To start, a story.
A few years ago a female student wanted to visit with me about some difficulties she was having, mainly with her family life. As is my practice, we walked around campus as we talked.  

After talking for some time about her family situation we turned to other areas of her life. When she reached spiritual matters we had the following exchange:

“I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God.”

I responded, “Why would you want to do that?”

Startled she says, “What do you mean?”

“Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

“Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you’ve wronged?”

She thinks and answers, “Yes.”

“Well, why don’t you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God.”

Obviously, I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture. Specifically, when the student said “I need to work on my relationship with God” I knew exactly what she meant. It meant praying more, getting up early to study the bible, to start going back to church. Things along those lines. The goal of these activities is to get “closer” to God. To “waste time with Jesus.” Of course, please hear me on this point, nothing is wrong with those activities. Personal acts of piety and devotion are vital to a vibrant spiritual life and continued spiritual formation. But all too often “working on my relationship with God” has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being. 

The trouble with contemporary Christianity is that a massive bait and switch is going on. “Christianity” has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed “spiritual” substitute. For example, rather than being a decent human being the following is a list of some commonly acceptable substitutes:

Going to church

Worship

Praying

Spiritual disciplines (e.g., fasting)

Bible study

Voting Republican

Going on spiritual retreats

Reading religious books

Arguing with evolutionists

Sending your child to a Christian school or providing education at home

Using religious language

Avoiding R-rated movies

Not reading Harry Potter.

The point is that one can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being. Much of this activity can actually distract one from becoming a more decent human being. In fact, some of these activities make you worse, interpersonally speaking. Many churches are jerk factories.

 … contemporary Christianity has lost its way. Christians don’t wake up every morning thinking about how to become a more decent human being. Instead, they wake up trying to “work on their relationship with God” which very often has nothing to do with treating people better. 

I need to be a more decent human being…

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Conversations Matter – It ain’t easy

George 1 Comment

You can measure the health of relationships, teams, and organizations by measuring the lag time between when problems are identified and when they are resolved. The only reliable path to resolving problems is to find the shortest path to effective conversation.
…The longer the lag time during which you act out your feelings rather than talk them out, the more damage you’ll do to both relationships and results.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

This post continues reflections on Heather Holleman’s The Six Conversations, I will return to Death & Dying later, frankly I need a break.
In writing this series and attempting to have meaningful conversations, I have discovered meaningful conversations are not easy. It is no surprise death and dying conversations are difficult, but generally it ain’t easy to have meaningful conversations.

Based on experience, I contend that there is an inverse proportional relationship between meaningful conversations and the caliber of relationship. i.e. the closer the relationship the more difficult, or less likely, it is for meaningful conversations to occur. There are exceptions, but the key point is “meaningful”. Close relationships are typically filled with fun, entertaining and informative conversations but when meaningful and/or serious topics arise— not so much. Either the conversation shuts down or it is diverted to a less risky topic.

If you fail to discuss issues you have with your boss, your life partner, your neighbor, or your peer, will those issues magically disappear? No. Instead, they will become the lens you see the other person through. And how you see always shows up in how you act. Your resentment will show up in how you treat the other person.

Crucial Conversations

That is a reality that should prompt serious assessment of the health of the relationship or, at a minimum, an examination of how qualified I am to have meaningful conversations. Hopefully these posts help us become better qualified.

Barriers to meaningful conversations

FEAR AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
IN chapter 7 Holleman observes: “most people fear more than anything else in the world. Shame. They fear exposure. They fear looking stupid. They become incredibly self-conscious that people are evaluating them.”
I believe that to be true, and with those closest to us, the fear of shame rises exponentially. Reasons why meaningful conversations are often more difficult are several. Holleman identifies shame and self-consciousness as a significant factor.. I found these citations worthwhile counsel for dealing with shame and self-consciousness:

The more weakness, failure, vulnerability, and shortcomings you display in conversation, the more close conversation partners become. Why? It’s because you can experience acceptance, unconditional love, and a common bond of shared weakness.

(p. 110).

“self-disclosure is the process of revealing personal information to another person, and it is a well-documented behavior that promotes liking and closeness within new relationships…the more you share embarrassing or vulnerable things about yourself, the more people will like you, trust you, and connect with you”

(p.110-111)

Other people need conversation. You offer a great gift to them when you enter into a conversation. Margaret Wheatley, an expert in community building, reminds us that “we can also take courage from the fact that many people are longing to be in conversation again. We are hungry for a chance to talk. People want to tell their story, and are willing to listen to yours. People want to talk about their concerns and struggles. Too many of us feel isolated, strange, or invisible. Conversation helps end that.”

(pg. 112-113).

Other barriers which come to mind are:

Secular society
Disenchantment
Meaningful conversations are rituals in which the presence of scared can be seen and felt and experienced. In a society in which belief in God is just one human possibility among others; they are are avoided and/or discountedbecoming casualties of a secular mindset which eschews the sacred and resists transcendence.

Individualism
In a society where concern for self is the highest priority, there is no foundation for meaningful conversations, which require empathy and concern for others .

Digital Communication
There is an increasing reliance on digital communication to “converse”with others. Useful and sometimes helpful, digital communication cannot replace human face to face interaction required for meaningful conversation.

Noise/Distractions
The difficulty of having meaningful conversations amid the noise and distractions of every day circumstances should not be underestimated. Engagement with others is subordinated by smartphones constantly notify us of texts, email, Tik Tock, Facebook, Twitter notifications. The secular mindset even often makes children and pets distractions.

Proximity
Without question, face to face is the context most conducive to meaningful conversations. The way communities and families are structured and function often inhibit proximity.

Other barriers could be mentioned, and those above deserve more explanation; but I think that is enough to support a contention that meaningful conversations ain’t easy.
I am increasingly convinced the absence of meaningful and loving conversations is a major factor contributing to discord and division in our society including families and churches.

Closing thoughts

  • Meaningful conversations are rare and precious. Due to their transcendent nature, they are received, not manufactured; like a fragrant rose, we must attend to their presence or miss full experience. Pay attention to relationships and such rare occasions, stop and smell the roses.
  • For conversations to be meaningful and loving , participants will value and exhibit concern for others, empathy, humility —overtly Christian qualities.
    “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others”. Philippians 2:3–4;
    which explains, in part, my assertion that meaningful loving conversations are a spiritual discipline.
    Meaningful, loving conversations are not exclusive to Christians but the reality of a famine of meaningful conversations among Christians, and between Christians and others, is cause for deep concern and self-examination.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 3 Comments

Ethic of Jesus

“…the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have ‘gotten us nothing.” – DJT, Jr

…the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go. Decency is for suckers.

  • unreligious cruelty toward immigrants, 
  • selfish refusal to vaccinate to protect the most vulnerable 
  • veneration of a vulgar, misogynistic cult leader. 

If you wonder how so many “people of faith” can behave in such ways, understand that their “faith” has become hostile to traditional religious values such as kindness, empathy, self-restraint, grace, honesty and humility.

Peter Wehner

Wisdom

Maybe what we lack isn’t love but wisdom. It became clear to me that I should pray above all else for wisdom.

We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love rightly. How should we love so that life will really come from it? I believe that what we all need is wisdom. I’m very disappointed that we in the Church have passed on so little wisdom. Often the only thing we’ve taught people is to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve either mandated things or forbidden them. But we haven’t helped people to enter upon the narrow and dangerous path of true wisdom. On wisdom’s path we take the risk of making mistakes. On this path we take the risk of being wrong. That’s how wisdom is gained.

Richard Rohr

Social media

Krista Boan: We hear from families that technology is the No. 1 battleground in their homes. Qustodio, a leader in online safety, recently released its annual report and found that 70 percent of parents assert that screens and technology are now a distraction from family time and device use causes weekly or daily arguments in nearly 50 percent of households. A big new study from Cambridge University, in which researchers looked at 84,000 people of all ages, found that social media use was strongly associated with worse mental health during certain sensitive life periods, including for girls ages 11 to 13. Compared with their counterparts in the 2000s, today’s teens are less likely to go out with their friends, get their driver’s licenses or play youth sports.

Purity

Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy. They only create insiders and outsiders. They are mechanisms for delivering our drug of choice: self-righteousness, as juice from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil runs down our chins. And these purity systems affect far more than our relationship to sex and booze: they show up in political ideology, in the way people shame each other on social media, in the way we obsess about “eating clean.” Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from….  

Nadia Bolz-Weber

Finding truth

“The process by which we find truth is maybe the most important thing. It takes work to locate, and often as soon as we think we have grasp it comma it slips away. Truth is not a script. It is not a cheat sheet for life. Truth does not come from picking a set of answers and then arranging all the questions so that they line up correctly. Truth starts with questions, it requires an openness – to other points of view and experiences, to being wrong, to changing one’s mind. A commitment to truth involves A passionate embrace of critical thinking.”

Jon Ward 

Presented without comment

Abraham Twerski:

The bearded Twerski goes to the airport in his Hasidic garb — the hat, the long coat, the buttoned white shirt. Another Jew, this one modernly dressed, is annoyed by Twerski and unloads on him: “What’s wrong with you? Must you insist on parading around in that medieval get-up as if it were Purim? Don’t you realize how ridiculous you look? You bring nothing but scorn and embarrassment upon us Jews!”

After letting the angry man continue for a while, Twerski says, “I fail to understand what thee art saying. You do realize that I’m Amish, don’t you?”

The modern Jew’s anger quickly turns to embarrassment. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he says apologetically. “I didn’t realize that you were Amish. You look so much like those Hasidic fellows. You should know that I have nothing but respect for you and your people — keeping to your ways without bowing to society’s wills and whims.”

Belonging 

Most Americans report significant feelings of non-belonging. As the report notes, “64 percent of Americans reported non-belonging in the workplace, 68 percent in the nation and 74 percent in their local community.” Even worse, “nearly 20 percent of Americans failed to report an active sense of belonging in any of the life settings,” 
Belonging Barometer

Tithing

The study released last week by Lifeway Research, a firm affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, found that 77% of Protestant churchgoers in the U.S. affirm that “tithing is a biblical command that still applies today.” Only 10% rejected this belief and another 13% were unsure.

Yet, the study found that only 12% of Methodist churchgoers tithe; 17% of Restorationist/Church of Christ churchgoers tithe; and 19% of Lutheran churchgoers tithe. Lutherans were also most likely to reject the notion of tithing, with 59% saying they don’t embrace the teaching. 

 Evangelical beliefs in tithing have declined by 6% since 2017, according to the online survey—and also varied by age. Only 66% of respondents aged 18 to 34 affirmed that tithing is currently applicable, the lowest of any demographic group.

Faith

Faith is not something we are trying to do well or to somehow get right. It is rather an immersive participation in the very life of God—on earth as it is in heaven. To be full of faith is to be infused by the life of God in such a way that crucifies our old sin-sick life and reveals our resurrected life in Jesus Christ, filled by the Holy Spirit, to live the glorious life human beings were originally intended to live. All along, from the very first day to the present day, from first to last, we were intended to live by faith.

J D Walt

View from the front porch:
Today is my 81st birthday. Not much pizzaz with 81, but I appreciate the many Happy Birthdays. It is always good to have another birthday.
I am coming to understand this time of my life is liminal space. Richard Rohr describes liminal space well:

Liminal space is an inner state and sometimes an outer situation where we can begin to think and act in new ways. It is where we are betwixt and between, in transition, having left one room or stage of life but not yet entered the next. We usually enter liminal space when our former way of being is challenged or changed—perhaps when we lose a job or a loved one, during illness, at the birth of a child, or a major relocation. It is a graced time, but often does not feel “graced” in any way. In such space, we are not certain or in control.  

The very vulnerability and openness of liminal space allows room for something genuinely new to happen. We are empty and receptive—blank tablets waiting for new words. Liminal space is where we are most teachable, often because we are most humbled. Liminality keeps us in an ongoing state of shadowboxing instead of ego-confirmation, struggling with the hidden side of things, and calling so-called normalcy into creative question. 

It’s no surprise then that we generally avoid liminal space. Much of the work of authentic spirituality and human development is to get people into liminal space and to keep them there long enough that they can learn something essential and new

I just hope I can remain here long enough to learn something essential and new.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Conversations Matter – Death & Dying (2)

George 0 Comments

Post # 2 — Conversations Matter – Death & Dying. “The Slavery of Death” and “The Lost Art of Dying”, and “The Denial of Death” are helpful resources. Interestingly, several recent sermons and podcasts have addressed death and dying. Our local cemetery is apart my regular walking route.
The more I engage the subject of death and dying, the more I am impressed with the profound implications they have for living.This is the first post addressing some thoughts and ideas about death and dying.

Why isn’t death and dying talked about ?

The following citations can be a helpful in beginning to answer — Why isn’t death and dying talked about ? Emphasis is mine.

“Americans like to appear as if they give death hardly any thought at all.” The American lifestyle is thus “for people to create a living world where death seems abnormal and accidental. [Americans] must create a living world where life is so full, so secure, and so rich with possibilities that it gives no hint of death and deprivation.” We accomplish this feat, through acts of death avoidance. Americans live with “the conviction that the lives we live are not essentially and intrinsically mortal.” But this is a neurotic fantasy. McGill calls it a “dream,” an “illusory realm of success.” So how is this illusion maintained? “Americans accomplish this illusion by devoting themselves to expunging from their lives every appearance, every intimation of death. . . . All traces of weakness, debility, ugliness and helplessness must be kept away from every part of a person’s life. The task must be done every single day if such persons really are to convince us that they do not carry the smell of death within them.”

Vast portions of American Christianity are aimed at propping up the illusion, giving religious sanction to American death avoidance. We see this in the triumphalism within many sectors of Christianity—the almost manic optimism of church culture that cannot admit any hint of debility, disease, death, or decay. These churches are filled with smiling cheerful people who respond with “Fine!” to any inquiry regarding their social, financial, emotional, physical, or spiritual well-being. Due to many churches’ explicit and implicit religious sanctioning of the American success ethos, church members become too afraid to show each other their weakness, brokenness, failure, and vulnerability. Such admissions are avoided, as they threaten to expose the neurotic lie that sits at the heart of Christian culture and American society—that death doesn’t exist.

[““You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.”
Genesis 3:4 NIV]

Death and Life: An American Theology – David McGill via The Slavery of Death- Richard Beck

We don’t know how to deal with death, and so we ignore it as much and for as long as possible. We concentrate on life. The dying don’t want to impose their plight on the people they love, even though they may be eager, even aching to talk about what it means to them now that they face it. Doctors and others fail to pick up on this desire, because they project their own reluctance to deal with death onto the patient. Sometimes the dying will ask that their loved ones make no fuss over them, hold no ceremony, just cremate them and move on; as though they were doing the bereaved a favour in colluding in their aversion to death.
Death undermines meaning. Something important is lost when one forgets this. …
The connection of death with meaning is reflected in two often-discussed features of human life as we understand it today.
The first is the way in which facing death, seeing one’s life as about to come to an end, can concentrate the issue of what we have lived for. What has it all amounted to? In other words, death can bring out the question of meaning in its most acute form.
The second is the way that those bereaved, or left behind, struggle to hold on to the meaning they have built with the deceased, while (unavoidably) letting go of the person. This is what funeral rites have always been meant to do, whatever other goals they have served. And since a crucial way of doing this is to connect this person, even in his death, with something eternal, or at the very least ongoing, the collapse of a sense of the eternal brings on a void, a kind of crisis.

The Sting of Death – Charles Taylor

…the fear of death must be present behind all our normal functioning, in order for the organism to be armed toward self-preservation. But the fear of death cannot be present constantly in one’s mental functioning, else the organism could not function. Zilboorg continues: If this fear were as constantly conscious, we should be unable to function normally. It must be properly repressed to keep us living with any modicum of comfort. We know very well that to repress means more than to put away and to forget that which was put away and the place where we put it. It means also to maintain a constant psychological effort to keep the lid on and inwardly never relax our watchfulness.
And so we can understand what seems like an impossible paradox: the ever-present fear of death in the normal biological functioning of our instinct of self-preservation, as well as our utter obliviousness to this fear in our conscious life: Therefore in normal times we move about actually without ever believing in our own death, as if we fully believed in our own corporeal immortality. We are intent on mastering death….
A man will say, of course, that he knows he will die some day, but he does not really care. He is having a good time with living, and he does not think about death and does not care to bother about it—but this is a purely intellectual, verbal admission. The affect of fear is repressed.

The Denial of Death pg 15-16

A few thoughts:

  • My church experience confirms death avoidance as the norm. That is troubling in at least two ways:
    First, it is clear indication of the infusion of American society into the Christian culture.
    Second, it is evidence that humanity, including Christianity continues to believe Satan’s lie, “You will not certainly die.”.
  • Death provides a perspective on life like nothing else; which explains, in part why we don’t talk about it. We don’t want to face hard truths. It is terrible enough to get to the end of life and realize how meaningless it was with no hope to change anything. “in order to die well, you must take mortality into account, even when death seems a long way off”
  • I am finding this discussion theologically challenging. Its tentacles reach deep into some long held assumptions.
  • A prime example of a theological quandary comes via a Christian’s response to a doctor’s suggestion that life saving measures for her terminally ill loved one be abandoned:“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.” 
  • Finally: 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?

STILL ON THE JOURNEY